moonspinner55

Italian-French-Spanish co-production from co-writer-director Michelangelo Antonioni is an exceedingly slow drama involving a documentarian in Africa who exchanges identification with a dead man found in his hotel, eventually learning of his shady dealings in the arms race. Rumination on alienation--how a man becomes disconnected from his own life--has a striking look with location shooting all over Spain, Algeria and Germany. Still, Luciano Tovoli's vivid cinematography is about the best of it. We understand where Antonioni stands on the futility of war and the purposeless of our existence; so, despite an interestingly low-keyed performance from Jack Nicholson in the lead, there's not much here to hold our interest. * from ****

Married lady working a roadside diner conspires with a drifter to bump off her husband. Grim, dull version of James M. Cain's bestseller is more explicit than the 1946 noir but far less effective. Jessica Lange is well-cast (she's usually worth watching), but Jack Nicholson is all wrong for this role, Anjelica Huston wasted as Madge the Lion Tamer. Director Bob Rafelson and screenwriter David Mamet want seamy sensuality--sex in the sticks--but they also want to "say important things" and, by the backend of this overlong 122mn box-office dud, interest is wholly dissipated.*1/2 from ****

Well-heeled wife of a rising attorney in Southern California (Meredith Baxter Birney) has body issues stemming from childhood--seems her wheedling mother once told the girl, "Your father left us because you were bad!" She's on a binge-and-purge cycle, which she keeps hidden until she passes out one afternoon while driving with her daughter. "Kate's Secret" (from two overeager female writers, Denise DeGarmo and Susan Seeger, who have too much to say in a short space of time) is really two different movies: one-part domestic soap (is Kate's husband fooling around with his sexy law partner?) and the other part a rehabilitation drama. However, since the host of high-strung women we meet in the clinic have issues that are never dealt with satisfactorily, the histrionics and counseling feel like padding. The writers attempt to build in a little suspense: will Kate overcome her bulimia and make weight, or will she die in this (rather plush and cushy) hospital ward? Do you have to ask? *1/2 from ****