On the strength of his Hitchcockian-thriller debut, Mute Witness, writer-director Anthony Waller was hired to direct this belated sequel to the 1981 horror comedyAn American Werewolf in London but lycanthropy in the City of Light just ain't what it used to be. The movie offers plenty of gruesome make-up and special wolf-transformation effects and there are some effectively spooky moments in the plot involving an underground population of hungry Parisian werewolves. One of them is seductively played by Julie Delpy, who is rescued from attempted suicide by an American tourist (Tom Everett Scott, from That Thing You Do!) but ultimately can't hide her dual identity when darkness falls and the full moon shines. The movie begins well but gradually succumbs to nonsense and mayhem, prompting critic Roger Ebert to observe that "here are people we don't care about,doing things they don't understand, in a movie without anyrules". In other words, you'd have to be a die-hard horror buff to give this one the benefit of the doubt.--Jeff Shannon
Master filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci applies his considerable talent to this haunting adaptation of the Paul Bowles novel. John Malkovich and Debra Winger play Port and Kit Moresby, characters loosely based on Bowles and his wife Jane, who flee New York for North Africa, where they hope to find mystical truths that will reignite the spark of their marriage. But instead they lose their moral bearings (with help from a friend, played by Campbell Scott, who has an affair with Kit) while travelling deeper and deeper into the Sahara. Before long, what started as a vacation at exotic lodgings has descended into a tour of hell, as they stumble farther and farther into an unknowable spiritual territory. Though long and at times slow-moving, The Sheltering Sky features marvellously nuanced acting by Malkovich and Winger and visionary filmmaking that makes the landscape at once picturesque and threatening. --Marshall Fine
Please wait. Loading...
This site uses cookies.
More details in our privacy policy