Monthly Archives: June 1999

Cornered

Dick Powell plays a French-Canadian pilot in Buenos Aires tracking down the collaborationist who killed his French wife during World War II. By reputation, an effective noir thriller (1945), adapted by John Paxton from a John Wexley story and directed by Edward Dmytryk; the same screenwriter, director, and star had filmed the Raymond Chandler adaptation Murder, My Sweet the previous year. With Micheline Cheirel, Walter Slezak, and Morris Carnovsky. (JR) Read more

The Loss Of Sexual Innocence

Mike Figgis contemplates the various stages of a filmmaker’s life, the Garden of Eden story, and guilt over the state of the third world in one of the most pretentious movies ever made, a textbook example of what James Agee used to refer to as rigor artis. Figgis, a sometimes (or at least onetime) enterprising filmmaker, deserves credit for using the freedom and commercial clout he won from Leaving Las Vegas to make relatively edgy and high-risk projects, but that, alas, doesn’t make them interesting or good. For an ambitious mess of this kind, Bill Forsyth’s Being Human (1995), even with all the studio tampering, is substantially more nourishing and original; this is gold-plated navel gazing in the worst 60s style. With Julian Sands, Saffron Burrows (as twins in the most bearable segments), Stefano Dionisi, Kelly Macdonald, and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers. (JR) Read more