Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 27th, 2004
Synopsis
Jane (Renee Stahl) drifts through contemporary LA. She wants to be a writer, but is reluctantto share her uncompleted work in her writing class. She makes a living typing up term papers.She has a model boyfriend, who is off doing a shoot in Italy and misses her terribly, but she isn’tsure what she feels about him (if anything at all). Then there’s the memory of a car crash thattorments her. Enter an young artist, with whom she begins an affair...
This is very much a...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison (Helen Mirren) is on the job again with anotherpolitically charged case. In this instance, a skeleton is dug up that might be that of a young blackwoman. Her disappearance six years ago was badly handled by the police, to the point thatcharges might be laid. The investigation is not only explosive racially, but the way it plays outcould help or destroy careers, Tennison's among others.
As ever, the Prime Suspect series delves r...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
We are in a magnificent art deco hotel in Berlin. Here we come to know a disparate groupof characters: the world-weary ballerina (Garbo), the gentleman thief (John Barrymore), thedying man on a last spending binge (Lionel Barrymore), the scheming stenographer (JoanCrawford), and the unsavoury tycoon (Wallace Beery). These characters’ lives intersect andcollide over the course of a momentous night.
This is not the best-written Hollywood production. The plot is implau...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 26th, 2004
Synopsis
DCI Tennison can’t ever get a nice, straightforward case that won’t destroy anyone who goesnear it. This time the murder of a young boy is just the first link in a chain that leads to explosiverevelations of child prostitution and police connections. Tennison’s life is made even morecomplicated by the fact that she has to knock heads again with her old enemy St. Bill Otley.
One could be forgiven for detecting a pattern, or even a formula, emerging in this series.Eac...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 24th, 2004
Synopsis
Jean-Louis Trintignant is Nicolas, a quiet, put-upon bank teller. On impulse one day, he seesa pretty young woman (Jane Birkin) and puts a very unsubtle move on her. It works. Thistransforms Trintignant’s life, especially once he confides to his crippled writer friend (Jean-Pierre Cassel). The latter begins to live vicariously through Trintignant, directing his every move.Our hero is soon sleeping with one woman after another, and through them making theconnections that see...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 23rd, 2004
Synopsis
After the mayor of a tiny hamlet is decapitated by an irate populace, the Powers That Be(mindful of an upcoming election) decide to appoint a total moron as temporary mayor. Thetheory is that an idiot won't get himself into trouble. The idiot they find is Juan Vargas (DamiánAlcázar), who arrives with his wife and a head filled with plans to do good things for thecommunity. We all know what is paved with good intentions, though, and confronted with acomplete lack of funds, o...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 23rd, 2004
Synopsis
Jenny (Steffanie Pitt) is tormented by dreams where she sees herself, as a young child,murdering her mother. Her psychiatrist father (Patrick Mower) is of no help, and so she sneaksout of her home one night to return to the asylum where her family once lived, and where hermother died. Three other people – a mad priest, a phony medium (Ingrid Pitt) and a drug addict– are also drawn to this location by forces they do not comprehend. It turns out that they are alltormented by...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 22nd, 2004
Synopsis
Meg Ryan plays Manhattan English teacher Frankie Avery. When parts of a dismemberedyoung woman are found in her back garden, Ryan is questioned by Detective Mark Ruffalo.Ruffalo asks Ryan out, and before long they’re at it hot and heavy. But the day of the murder,Ryan was in the same bar as the victim, and witnessed, in the shadows, a man being fellated.That man had the same tattoo as Ruffalo, and Ryan begins to fear that her new lover is, at best,a liar. At worst...
...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 22nd, 2004
Synopsis
Here are three more cases involving the gambling-addicted, cantankerous, infuriating yet stilloddly likeable criminal psychologist Fitz (Robbie Coltrane). “To Be a Somebody” has him upagainst a dangerous skinhead (Robert Carlyle). In “The Big Crunch,” the menace is a dangerousreligious cult. And “Men Should Weep” has a serial rapist who graduates to murder, indirectlybecause of Coltrane.
Of course, the actual murder investigations are only part of the story here, an...
Posted in: Disc Reviews by David Annandale on February 21st, 2004
Synopsis
David Hemmings is a jaded photographer plying his trade in Swinging Sixties’ London. Outtaking pictures in a park, he shoots a series of pictures of a couple apparently having anargument. The woman in the pictures (Vanessa Redgrave) subsequently turns up at Hemmings’studio, wanting the pictures back. Even more mysterious is a shot Hemmings took sometimelater, after the argument. Is there a body in the picture? The more he blows up the picture,seeking the answer, the grainie...
