Word: novelization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fires a gun or slashes a victim to slivers in The Wings of the Dove, the sexy, spectral new film from Henry James' novel. But mortal predators are at work, and their weapons are smiles, thin and precise as stilettos. The smile of smarmy Lord Mark (Alex Jennings) says, "He's boring" or "Her money is too new" or, late at night when he's drunk too much, "You'll do." His friend Maude (Charlotte Rampling) has a practiced irony in her smile; life has taught her to walk gracefully among land mines and, en route, to plant...
Johnny has a high school girlfriend, Carmen (Denise Richards), who becomes the hottest pilot in the star fleet. This gives director Paul Verhoeven, always a coldly calculating craftsman, and writer Ed Neumeier, adapting a Robert A. Heinlein novel, a chance to satirize old-fashioned aerial-combat movies too. Johnny also has a frustrated high school admirer, Dizzy (Dina Meyer), who lands in his platoon, finally gets his attention and then heroically dies. This gives the filmmakers a chance to strike that note of romantic self-sacrifice--death transfigured--that is integral to movies of this kind...
Jamaica Kincaid is a writer of stinging force, rare intelligence and, alas, a single, anguished theme: her bitter resentment of her mother--who, as the author herself seems to realize, was merely a limited, self-absorbed woman. But in book after book (notably a brilliant, tormented novel, The Autobiography of My Mother), Kincaid displays the wounds of her unhappy childhood as a poor, bookish black girl in Antigua. Her new volume, an irritating navel contemplation titled My Brother (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 198 pages; $19), repeats the pattern of familiar, well-written complaint. (Opinions differ; in what appears...
Harvey Jacobs' American Goliath (St. Martin's; 346 pages; $24.95) celebrates the long and glorious tradition of deception with an inspired novel based on the 1869 Cardiff Giant hoax...
Jennifer Jason Leigh is perfectly cast in Agnieszka Holland's adaptation of Henry James's novel. An awkward young woman starved for affection is caught between a cynical, distant father and a spirited but selfish young suitor. Holland's camera work and sense of period is engaging throughout, and her trademark comic acuity leavens the somber arc of the story. Eventually, though, Leigh asserts herself just long enough to break your heart. Like its heroine, the film misses true magnificence, but its intelligent cast and sensitive story-telling are more than enough to recommend...