Daily Archives: February 26, 2002

Festival In Cannes

As long as writer-director Henry Jaglom is satirizing the way both Hollywood blockbusters and indy features get pitched, this Cote d’Azur comedy has some flavor, and Ron Silver gives a swell impersonation of a cool and slimy studio executive. Unfortunately, the movie also has plenty of glib ideas about the irrational factors that lead to sexual and romantic coupling, all of them unconvincing, and the awkward Jaglom-style improvisation by the actors and the monotonous crosscutting (a Jaglom specialty) only make this exercise seem even more padded and attenuated. Among the participants/victims are Jenny Gabrielle, Greta Scacchi, Kim Kolarich, Rachel Bailit, Craig Mann, Zack Norman, Anouk Aimee, Maximilian Schell, and Camilla Campanale, with cameos from Peter Bogdanovich, Louise Stratten, Faye Dunaway, and William Shatner, among others. 99 min. (JR) Read more

Kissing Jessica Stein

Though the feeling persists that this movie wants to bring the spirit of Neil Simonmeaning the Jewish middle class and the New York suburbsto lesbian farce, this adaptation by costars Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen of their own off-Broadway play is both better and worse than that description implies. Better because the cast is wonderful and the story is commendably free of the sectarian us-versus-them tone of many romantic gay movies, and worse because the jazzy vocals are too strident and Charles Herman-Wurmfeld’s direction lacks the polish of a well-mounted Simon comedy. Still, this is possibly the funniest lesbian romp since Go Fish. 94 min. (JR) Read more