In The Corruptor, directed by James Foley, a war among rival gangs in New York’s Chinatown is in progress. The leader of one of the gangs, Henry Lee (played by Ric Young), who is The Corrupter in the story, has decided that the best way to eliminate his rivals is to provide what police officers […]

Director Matthew Bright loves young women, who are at the center of his films of sex and violence. He also loves children’s stories. In Confessions of a Trickbaby, which enjoyed a prescreening at the American Cinematheque on July 15, 1999, he tells a variant of the Hansel und Gretel fairy tale by focusing on two girls,

In Cookie’s Fortune, director Robert Altman takes us to Holly Springs, Mississippi (a town halfway between Memphis and Tupelo) for a mystery caper. Although filmviewers and two of the actors know who is responsible for a death, the police do not, but the real mysteries are wrapped up in the Faulknerian characters, their foibles, and the

The fate of unwanted children is usually left out of debates on abortion; the film is based on the novel of the same title by John Irving. Not so in The Cider House Rules, directed by Lasse Hallström. The film takes place in the 1940s, beginning at an orphanage in St. Clouds, Maine, where illegitimate children

  The Hongkong film Meishaonian zhi, directed by Yonfan, has had several retitlings. One title, Bishonen, translates Beauty, though another title is Double Life of a Cop. Regardless, the film is a love story involving gay men in Hongkong that tries to provide fictional background for a scandal within the port city in which a prominent business executive possessed

Angela’s Ashes is perhaps the saddest film of 1999, but with a happy ending. Directed by Alan Parker, the film is based on the autobiography of Frank McCourt, who is played by three actors at various stages of his life (Joseph Breen, Ciaran Owens, and Michael Legge). McCourt also co-wrote the screenplay. The story begins in

  Discrimination, life, and love among women in Vancouver, British Columbia, are featured in the film Better than Chocolate, directed by Anne Wheeler. Nineteen-year-old Maggie (played by Karyn Dwyer) has just dropped out of college, is sleeping on the couch in a back room of the Lesbian-run Ten Percent Bookstore, and is trying to get her

  The “soap opera” is a very American genre, so we should not be surprised to learn that films depicting enigmas faced by ordinary Americans will captivate many Americans. The Ozzie & Harriet days of simple problems are gone, so the late 1990s are likely to confront Americans with more existential dilemmas. We should have

In 8MM, a widow asks private detective Tom Welles (played by Nicholas Cage) to find out whether a film in the safe of her late husband, in which a young woman is murdered, is a real or simulated “snuff film.” Her attorney Longdale (played by Anthony Heald) picks Welles, as he seems to be an amateur

  Director Bruce Beresford, whose Driving Miss Daisy was nominated for a Political Film Society award in 1990, has been fascinated with the criminal justice system in most of his best films. In this case, there is an appearance of murder when a husband secretly arranges his own disappearance from a sailboat while anchored down for the