Sleepy Hollow
Directed by Tim Burton Starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Casper Van Dien
Burton's adventurous, beautifully mounted treatment of the Washington Irving story set at the end of the 18th century features a pallid and deadpan Depp as an eccentric, idealistic New York police constable dispatched upstate to the village of Sleepy Hollow, to investigate three gruesome murders which are blamed on the troubled ghost of a headless horseman. The rich imagery - dreamy and nightmarish - can be tilted in either direction with a mere flick of Burton's unerring sense of the macabre.
Summer of Sam
Directed by Spike Lee Starring John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino
Packing a visceral charge, Lee's vibrant film is set in New York during the summer of 1977 as the city sweats through a heatwave and the fear instilled by the serial killer known as Son of Sam. This is the backdrop to the fictional story of two fiery young Italian-Americans in the Bronx - a sexually insatiable hairdresser (Leguizamo on terrific form) and a bisexual punk (Brody).
8 1/2 Women
Directed by Peter Greenaway Starring John Standing, Matthew Delamere, Vivian Wu, Amanda Plummer, Polly Walker, Toni Collette
Understandably passed over for cinema release here, Greenaway's daft movie, the nadir of his career to date, is a shallow and rambling Fellini homage with Standing as a widower businessman encouraged to pursue his sexual fantasies by his son (Delamere) who gathers an assortment of women for their pleasure-seeking. Greenaway attempts to enliven this trite and grossly self-indulgent yarn with unlikely sexual situations, and he saddles the characters with some truly ludicrous dialogue.
Alan Parker's film of Angela's Ashes, reviewed last week, is now available for VHS rental or to hire/buy on DVD.
