To condemn Dressed to Kill as a Hitchcock rip-off is to miss the sheer enjoyment of Brian De Palma's delirious thriller. Homages to Hitchcock run rampant through most of De Palma's earlier films, and this one's chock-full of visual quotes, mostly cribbed from Vertigo and Psycho. But De Palma's indulgent depravity transcends simple mimicry to assume a vitality all its own. It's ...
To condemn Dressed to Kill as a Hitchcock rip-off is to miss the sheer enjoyment of Brian De Palma's delirious thriller. Homages to Hitchcock run rampant through most of De Palma's earlier films, and this one's chock-full of visual quotes, mostly cribbed from Vertigo and Psycho. But De Palma's indulgent depravity transcends simple mimicry to assume a vitality all its own. It's ...
Director Mimi Leder's third movie, Pay it Forward, finds her moving into softer, more intimate territory after making her name with a pair of high-budget action spectaculars, The Peacemaker and Deep Impact. This is a would-be heart-warming fable about the power of human kindness, but it's handled with such heavy sententiousness as to suggest that she might do better sticking ...