Film

...Elements of realism and surrealism, leftist ideology and neo-Freudian-ism are combined in a psycho-political dissection of everyday madness within the family...

...When Joseph Returns Intimate drama about the development of a relationship between a young orphan bride and her mother-in-law...

...It's about the redemption of Frank Galvin—a warmed-over, up-from-the-gutter tale that, in the end, lacks narrative and emotional credibility...

...The family in this case consists of a middle-aged brother and sister who are bound together by morbid symbiotic ties...

...The film has its moments, but the work as a whole fails to jell...

...Sayles has again demonstrated his ability to write engaging dialogue, and has brought to the screen a group of unusually convincing characters...

...The Verdict is a superbly crafted film, thanks to a gold mine of talent: Sidney Lu-met directed it, playwright David Mamet wrote the script, and Paul Newman and others carried off excellent performances...

...But Galvin encounters a powerful array of forces that seek to block his way...

...A lawyer friend throws Galvin a sugar-coated crumb—a negligence case that is not expected to go to trial but will yield a hefty fee after it's settled out of court...

...And the Italian actors who dub the voices are fine, too...

...Yet The Verdict, as Newman has noted, is "not an attack on the legal system or the Catholic Church or hospitals...

...Notable performances are delivered by Teri Garr, Charles Durning, Bill Murray, and director Pollack as Dorsey's harassed agent...

...The movie is essentially a drama of personal redemption: Boston lawyer Frank Galvin, played by Newman, tries to make something of his alcohol-drenched, divorced, middle-aged, unpromising life...

...Furthermore, there is a crippling contrast between the way The Verdict has been realized—its gripping imagery—and the banality of the story...

...Some overindulgent editing produces tedious moments—for example, montage sequences of dancing at a gay bar, and another dance episode intercut with flashback shots of lovemaking...

...Independence Day A mixed bag stuffed with more thematic material than the filmmakers know what to do with: updated echoes of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street, feminism, a battered wife subplot, madness, cancer, and the dilemmas of young love—all leavened with dashes of light comedy...

...After Dick departs for the Toronto Film Festival, Lianna goes to dinner with Ruth, her child psychology teacher, and what had begun as a crush on the slightly older woman develops into a romantic and sexual relationship...

...The reclusive sister begins behaving peculiarly and appears to be going mad...

...Return of the Secaucus Seven, written and directed by John Sayles, was a delightful surprise of 1981...

...Her life does not become idyllic, but by the end of the film Lianna has gained an important measure of personal autonomy...

...The vague conspiracy includes the Archbishop of Boston, who claims his hospital needs a clean reputation to "continue doing good in the community...

...Cases of medical negligence are real, of course, and corruption in the judiciary certainly exists...

...the head of Boston's most prestigious law firm and his stable of junior partners...

...She met and married her husband Dick, who teaches film and English, when she was one of his students, but dropped out of college to have and raise children...

...I also remarked that the men and women who appeared in the film seemed more like actual people than the characters of other current films...

...He decides on the spot that he has an obligation to reject the easy settlement and fight the case in court...

...The film focuses on the underground activities of a young woman who specializes in the "liquidation" of collaborators and Nazis, and raises the moral and political issues of armed resistance: Its depiction of the making of a terrorist suggests more than a few contemporary parallels...

...I can think of no other film that more credibly depicts the lives of academics and gays...

...Sometimes, the powers that be conspire to stifle the truth...

...This is an exceptionally well-acted and good-looking movie...

...But in most other respects, the movie is disarmingly fresh, thoroughly contemporary in detail and texture, and funny...

...Nor does he explain how a lawyer can win a case when the only inculpatory evidence has been ruled inadmissible, or how an alcoholic can cure himself instantly...

...This film by Zsolt Kezdi Kovacs provides more proof that the Hungarians are currently producing some of the best films in the world...

...At the beginning of the film, Galvin is so desperate for clients that he solicits business at funerals...

...The cinematic realization of Lianna falls short of what Variety would call "state of the art...

...he throws her out of the house and takes custody of the children...

...Feeling a need to find something more in her life, Lianna begins taking courses at night to complete her degree...

...Confusing as it is, Dorsey's is a true confession, verified by the preceding scenes of this clever, affecting, and improbable comedy...

...With inspired direction by Sydney Pollack, a script by Larry Gelbart and Murrey Schisgal—with enough funny material for several films—and excellent acting, it's no surprise Tootsie flies...

...Galvin's turnaround comes too easily and seems unearned...

...In my review two years ago, I stated that the low-budget production was not a brilliant or strikingly original movie, but did boast interesting characters and superb dialogue...

...Galvin visits the subject of the dispute, a young woman who was turned into a vegetable when doctors at a Catholic hospital anesthetized her improperly...

...The movie features brilliant acting by Michel Piccoli and Anouk Aimee in the principal roles...

...Lianna is the thirty-three-year-old wife of an untenured college professor and the mother of an adolescent daughter and a very precocious thirteen-year-old son...

...Galvin persists, however, and appeals to the jury's sense of justice and innate goodness...

...The Girl with the Red Hair From the Netherlands, a tragic drama based on a true story about the Dutch resistance during World War II...

...When Dick returns, Lianna tells him of the affair...

...But the result is not unlike an episode of Dallas staged as if it were Othello...

...Engaging performances by Kathleen Quinlan as.the spirited young heroine and Frances Sternhagen as her sympathetic mother...

...Why does this profoundly disillusioned man, who was once framed for jury tampering, suddenly acquire a deep faith in justice...

...In addition, Lianna is more sensitive to the problems of starting over than Starting Over was, and reveals a greater understanding of the consequences of crossing sexual bounds than Making Love...

...Dick has continued to pursue casual affairs with his female students, and the marriage has become little more than a fiction maintained for the sake of the kids...

...Cine-matographer Andrzej Bartkowiak has given The Verdict dramatic lighting and colors and the composition of a Caravaggio painting...

...Tootsie is a hit and one of the rare contemporary works that deserve to be ranked with the best American comedies of the 1930s...

...She finds a place to live, a job, and new friends, and eventually she wins back her children's affection...

...a political judge whose allegiance to the defendants is never in doubt, and a double-crossing woman...

...Leap Into the Void Difficult, slow-moving, and stunningly original film, written and directed by Marco Bellocchio...

...The filmmakers effectively use a cinematographic process that mutes all colors, except for the red of the female protagonist's hair...

...All that I wrote at the time applies today to Lianna, Sayles's second film, shot in Hoboken, New Jersey, where he lives, and made with the same production team...

...Lianna finds no support from her best friend, who is frightened by the events, so she takes charge of her life alone...

...Lumet doesn't show the answer...

...But her breaches of decorum have a therapeutic edge, and it becomes clear that it's the order-loving brother who's the crazy one...

...In the case of two recent releases, the more polished and attractive film is easy to forget once the house lights come up, while the other—a low-budget production by a young director and relatively unknown actors—grows sharper with time...

...He wins his case—only because the jury disregards instructions from the bench—and regains his self-respect...

...M Hits and Misses Tootsie At the conclusion of this movie, actor Michael Dorsey (Dustin Hoffman) admits to the woman he loves (Jessica Lange): "I was a better man with you as a woman than I ever was a man with a woman as a man...

...Through it all, Lianna explores her new sense of sexuality, and reestablishes relationships with friends...