Year of the Comet
Year of the Comet 1992, PG-13, 89 min. Directed by Peter Yates, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Penelope Ann Miller, Timothy Daly, Louis Jordan, Art Malik. This one should pretty much sink without a trace, so I hate to even stir the waters by detailing how inept it is. Sufficient to say that…
Edward II
Edward II 1991, NR, 91 min. Directed by Derek Jarman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Steven Waddington, Andrew Tiernan, Tilda Swinton, Nigel Terry, John Lynch. To describe Edward II as “high concept” doesn’t even begin to nail down its complexity. What British director Jarman has done here is rework Christopher Marlowe’s 16th century…
Mediterraneo
1991’s Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film is based on a true story about a small troop of Italian soldiers abandoned on a Greek island while World War II rages on around them.
Overseas
Overseas 1990. Directed by Brigitte Rouan, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Brigitte Rouan, Nicole Garcia, Marianne Basler. Three French sisters live the lives of detached colonialists in late-Forties Algeria in this auspicious directing debut by Rouan (who also stars as one of the sisters). Their world is filtered through a scrim of privilege…
Passed Away
Passed Away 1992. Directed by Charlie Peters, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Bob Hoskins, Blair Brown, Tim Curry, Frances Mcdormand, William Petersen, Pamela Reed, Peter Riegert, Maureen Stapleton, Nancy Travis, Jack Warden. Wouldn’t you know it — fresh out of the hospital from a brush with cardiac failure, and Dad Scanlan (Warden, in…
The Player
The Player 1992. Directed by Robert Altman, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Whoopi Goldberg, Fred Ward, Peter Gallagher. The Player is an insider’s movie about Hollywood, but from the outside looking in: it’s Altman through the looking glass. From its brilliant and sublime opening sequence to its self-reflexive ending,…
Toto the Hero
Belgian writer/director Van Dormael delicious little film examines – through flashbacks, mainly – the life of a now-elderly man who believes that he was switched at birth with a neighbor child and has thus been denied the privileges and wealth he might otherwise have enjoyed.
White Sands
White Sands 1992, R, 101 min. Directed by Roger Donaldson, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Willem Dafoe, Mary Eilzabeth Mastrantonio, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson, M. Emmet Walsh, James Rebhorn. Like the fine granules in the New Mexico desert of the title, the explanations in the politically tinged thriller White Sands are elusive,…
