Andrew Sarris

I finally caught up with that much abused chick flick, Sex and the City, directed by Michael Patrick King, from his own screenplay, based on characters from the book by onetime New York Observer columnist Candace Bushnell. I happened to have been a steady patron if not a rabid fan of the half-hour television series. How did the two-hour-plus movie compare with the HBO series? As the French would say, pas mal. It started slowly and unpromisingly in a giggly fantasy fashion, and when I use the term “fashion,” I do so advisedly. But when Sarah Jessica Parker is left at the alter by Chris Noth, all the pathos of a rejected 40-year-old woman floods her face with a burst of Zolaesque realism.  read more »

Diminished Capacity
Running time 92 minutes
Written by Sherwood Kiraly
Directed by Terry Kinney
Starring Matthew Broderick, Alan Alda, Virginia Madsen, Dylan Baker, Bobby Cannavale, Louis C. K.

Terry Kinney’s Diminished Capacity, from a screenplay by Sherwood Kiraly, is based on Mr. Kiraly’s gentle and yet hilariously hectic novel spoofing the insane predilections of people entangled in the mania surrounding the hunt for an obscure baseball card of a Chicago Cubs player from the early days of our national pastime. Again, as with The Wackness, for a low-budget project, Diminished Capacity is blessed with a blue-ribbon cast. Most notably, Matthew Broderick as brain-damaged Cooper, a downward-drifting Chicago journalist, and Virginia Madsen as Charlotte, a spunky, divorced mother of one and Cooper’s former flame in their hometown, LaPorte, Mo.  read more »

The Wackness
Running time 110 minutes
Written and directed by Jonathan Levine
Starring Josh Peck, Ben Kingsley, Olivia Thirlby, Famke Janssen

Jonathan Levine’s The Wackness, from his own screenplay, takes place in New York during the summer of 1994, when the newly inaugurated mayor, Rudy Giuliani, was beginning his now notorious crackdown on all sorts of petty crimes and even mere nuisances. His name is taken in vain several times during the course of the narrative, as if he and he alone were responsible for taking all the fun out of the Lindsay/Dinkins Fun City. Still, “fun” is spelled for the most part as D-O-P-E to the musical accompaniment of the hip-hop rants of the period.  read more »

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson
Running time 118 minutes
Written and directed by Alex Gibney
Starring Hunter S. Thompson, Johnny Depp

Alex Gibney’s Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, narrated by Johnny Depp, gets so far inside the tortured soul of its subject through his writings, musings and media sightings that it is amazing how much of the outside world breaks in to illuminate the political and social convulsions Hunter both reported and embodied. Indeed, Gonzo turns out to be the most absorbing film, fiction or nonfiction, I have seen this year.  read more »

The Last Mistress (Une Vieille Maitresse)
Running time 104 minutes
Written and directed by Catherine Breillat
Starring Fu’ad Ait Aattou, Asia Argento, Roxane Mesquida, Claude Sarraute

Catherine Breillat’s The Last Mistress (Une Vieille Maitresse), from her own screenplay, is based on Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly’s provocative 19th-century novel, and is her most ambitious undertaking to date in terms of a formal narrative with period costumes and a targeted mainstream audience. Hence, most of the nudity and sexuality are deferred to the film’s climax, in which a penniless and newly married aristocrat discovers that his passion for an old discarded mistress can outlast his supposedly eternally true love for a beautiful, virginal and wealthy heiress of noble lineage.  read more »

Tell No One (Ne Le Dis à Personne)
Running time 125 minutes
Written by Guillaume Canet and Philippe Lefebvre
Directed by Guillaume Canet
Starring Francois Cluzet, Marie-Josée Croze, Marina Hands, Kristin Scott Thomas

Guillaume Canet’s Tell No One (Ne Le Dis à Personne), from a screenplay (in French with English subtitles) by Mr. Canet and Philippe Lefebvre, is based on a best-selling American mystery novel—Tell No One. Whereas the book was set in New York, the film was shot in Paris with many changes from its literary source. In its present form, it is as much a love story as a murder mystery, with more than its share of Hitchcockian quirks and surprises.  read more »

Trumbo
Running time 96 minutes
Written by Christopher Trumbo
Directed by Peter Askin
Starring Joan Allen, Brian Dennehy, Michael Douglas and others

Peter Askin’s Trumbo is based on the play, Trumbo, by Christopher Trumbo, and is clearly a labor of love and ideological affinity for all the Hollywood celebrities who participated in the production. The Hollywood blacklist ensnared the playwright’s father, Dalton Trumbo, and many other talented people in the period of the cold war, the House Un-American Activities Committee, Senator Joseph McCarthy, J. Edgar Hoover and other cruel relics of a bygone era. Trumbo’s withering take on these instruments of his torture could be used as a club against the Bush-Cheney administration for its perceived assault on the Bill of Rights in the name of national security.  read more »

Brick Lane
Running time 102 minutes
Written by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones
Directed by Sarah Gavron
Starring Tannishtha Chatterjee, Satish Kaushik, Christopher Simpson, Zafreen

Sarah Gavron’s Brick Lane, from a screenplay by Abi Morgan and Laura Jones, is based on the rapturously received 500-page first novel by Monica Ali. The story begins on a sustained lyrical note as teenage Nazneen (Tannishtha Chatterjee) and her little sister Hasina (Zafreen) chase each other across the sensuously photographed rice paddies next to their home in a village in Bangladesh. The musical accompaniment is a melodious Bangladeshi children’s song composed by Jocelyn Pook.  read more »

Get Smart
Running time 110 minutes
Written by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember
Directed by Peter Segal
Starring Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne Johnson

Peter Segal’s Get Smart, from a screenplay by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember, is based on a satiric television series with characters created by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. In fact, Mr. Brooks and Mr. Henry are listed in the film’s credits as “consultants.” This leads one to wonder if the timely jabs at an anonymous Bush-like president and a Cheney-like vice president can be attributed at least partly to the Brooks-Henry team.  read more »

Charles Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947), in a new 35mm print, will be shown at Film Forum for one week, June 13 to June 19, at 2, 4:30, 7 and 9:30. Chaplin (1889-1977) is supported by Martha Raye, Isobel Elsom, Marilyn Nash, Mady Correll, Irving Bacon, William Frawley and Charles Evans. The film was originally titled A Comedy of Murders, and the idea was reportedly suggested by Orson Welles, though it may have also been based on the real-life Parisian serial killer Landru, the subject of several French films.  read more »

Quid Pro Quo
Running time 82 minutes
Written and Directed by Carlos Brooks  read more »