A domestic melodrama with an interesting historical background,* Inch’Allah Dimanche is the first nondocumentary by Algerian-born Yamina Benguigui. It explores such intriguing issues as cultural dislocation and cultural collision but is too awash in sentimental theatrics to be of serious value. At Toronto, however, they took the whole thing very seriously, according the film their […]
Daily Archives: February 17, 2007
Marked Woman is a good, tough, atmospheric film wrought from the Charles “Lucky” Luciano case prosecuted by Thomas E. Dewey, whom Governor Herbert Lehman had appointed special prosecutor in New York City in 1935. The trial of the mobster that ended in his conviction for tax evasion took place in 1936. The Michigan-born Republican was […]
Most of us have a fondness for “What if . . .” stories, but it’s always quite a trick to pull such a story off. Headed for a dead end from the start, The Illusionist is a dispiriting entry in the genre. It’s a slow, studied, long-winded playing-about with history, specifically, late nineteenth-century Austrian history, […]
