Mary Kay Place

Friday October 15, 1999      Cedric Kahn's relentless "L'Ennui" is such a rigorous exploration of sexual obsession that it proves to be a most demanding film. Virtually devoid of eroticism and sensuality, it depicts with the utmost realism a 17-year-...

Friday April 28, 2000      "Some people are born with a knack for faith. They're not afraid of permanence, they're at home with it. When it comes to bonding with another human soul, they're going to consider that bond sacred." That's Joline (Heather...

Friday October 29, 1999      "Being John Malkovich" is a clever and outrageous piece of whimsical fantasy that is unique, unpredictable and more than a little strange. You could see a lot of movies over a lot of years and not hear a line of dialogue as...

Rose Troche's "The Safety of Objects" is too much of a good thing. In interweaving the fates of four neighboring families in a leafy suburb, Troche, who drew from the short stories of A.M. Homes, tackled one household too many. While Mary Kay Place, as...

In its first two-thirds, "My First Mister," which marks Christine Lahti's feature directorial debut, looks to be a winner. But it takes a disastrously wrong turn toward the end that all but destroys the good work that's come before. Leelee Sobieski's...

Titles like "Human Nature"--or "Happiness" or "Pleasantville" or even "Parenthood"--are more or less guilty pleas in advance that what you're going to get is Irony with a capital I, the name being merely a mask for the unfettered, unadorned Truth that...

In the new romantic comedy "Sweet Home Alabama," Reese Witherspoon plays Melanie Carmichael, a hot New York fashion designer who, on the night of her debut collection, is whisked off to Tiffany's for a marriage proposal. Her boyfriend (who's the mayor's...

Between the end of summer and the edge of winter and the holiday season, the movies shrink. The budgets are lower; the weekend totals dip. As young acolytes await the second coming of Harry Potter on Nov. 15 and older fans count the days until Pierce...

Enid Zentelis' affecting and intimate "Evergreen" deals with family life and coming of age and is the kind of small, deeply personal American film that rarely surfaces even in art theaters these days. The usual route for an independently made first film...

C. Jay Cox's "Latter Days" is a love story involving two people from such radically different worlds that it is inevitable their lives will be turned upside-down, never to be the same. Yet Cox expresses a profound belief in the transforming power of love,...

Friday August 2, 1996      Even at the bare-bones level, film is such a cumbersome art, so dependent on mechanics, logistics and throngs of people, that it's a surprise and a pleasure to discover a new writer-director capable of almost casually bending...

Friday December 13, 1996      In theory no subject is off-limits to satire, and the bolder the choice the better--provided, of course, you have the talent, imagination and, most important, the courage to go the distance.      With "Citizen Ruth,"...