Search for 1996

Movies have always used the "from the makers of..." line. You know, "a new film from the makers of Lawrence of Arabia" or "a new film from the makers of Glory". Kingpin employs this time-honored tradition, except, in this case, it proudly cla...

Sexual taboos come in all shapes and forms -- bestiality, pedophilia, incest -- but none creates a more vivid image than that of necrophilia. So, when I say that Kissed is the character study of a necrophiliac, recognize that this film is intended...

In Lone Star, writer/director John Sayles (City of Hope, Passion Fish) cannily blends drama, romance, mystery, and social observation into a satisfying, if slightly overlong, whole. In the hands of a lesser film maker, this material could easi...

Winner of the Camera d'Or at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, Love Serenade, the feature debut of Australian director Shirley Barrett, has the kind of nasty, biting wit that juries at film festivals seem to appreciate. For the most part, movies ...

Manny & Lo, the debut feature from writer/director Lisa Krueger, is a wonderfully- textured comic fantasy about family life. With only a few missteps along the way, this film takes us on a deceptively complex journey of discovery into a world t...

What do you get if you use Tim Burton, the inspired and irreverent director of Batman and Ed Wood, to combine an invasion force of bug-eyed, big-brained Martians, a star-studded cast featuring some of the biggest names in Hollywood, and a huge spec...

Arriving in the latter half of the summer, Danny DeVito's Matilda beats out such worthy contenders as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Harriet the Spy for best family fare of the season. In fact, I haven't enjoyed a so-called "children's film" this...

Undeterred by the universally hostile reaction to her previous holiday picture, Mixed Nuts, director Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seattle) is back at it again this year with Michael, the second angel-comes-to-Earth feature of the month. While this ma...

"It's my considered opinion that in the fullness of time, history will record the greatness of [Michael] Collins and it will be recorded at my expense." -- Eamon De Valera, President of the Republic of Ireland, 1966 Of the more than five dozen...

The first star vehicle of the summer of 1996 is also the first major disappointment of the season. Mission: Impossible, the big screen resurrection of the popular late-'60s/early-'70s series, fails to generate much in the way of excitement or ...