Word: schickele
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...Auto Focus tells this story as affectlessly as we just have. It's a conscious aesthetic choice by director Paul Schrader, not an accident of ineptitude. But no matter--his objectification of sad and stupid material is neither tragic nor transgressive. It is just undramatic and uninvolving. --By Richard Schickel...
...rich, suburban, uptight. Suzette visits Vinnie, looking for a loan, and manages to loosen up both her and her family. Writer-director Dolman's comedy isn't exactly a barrel of emotional surprises, but its great cast underachieves admirably. There are worse ways to pass 94 minutes. --By Richard Schickel...
...paradise--and maybe, in Chabrol's mind, a metaphor for the way the bourgeois sleepwalk around their problems. Merci pour le Chocolat occasionally succumbs to Mika's legato rhythms, but it is more often a sly, subtle comedy about the oh-so-gentle art of murder. --By Richard Schickel...
...also a secret, obsessive, ultimately violent relationship with its members. Williams' passage from nerdiness to nastiness is plausibly managed. But the movie is also predictable, too pat psychologically. Its main message? Don't get too friendly with folks on the other side of the service counter. --By Richard Schickel...
...mind of Wag the Dog, in which the darker political consequences of fooling around with Mother Nature were stressed. But within its own wacky terms, Simone is a funny, smart, improbably successful satire on contemporary celebrity obsessions, the waning summer's most delirious comedy. --By Richard Schickel...