Maybe he should only tackle comedy when he s not directing himself at the same time. The fatally miscast Mr. Heston and Ms. Seldes, who are definitely old enough to know better, are as funny as gunshot wounds. My reaction to them all is one of profound humiliation. But what the hell they ve survived worse assaults. They ll survive Town and Country .
Nobody survives The King Is Alive .
This pretentious bilge is by Danish director Kristian Levring, one of the four wackos who founded Dogma 95, a laughable manifesto dedicated to stripping the superficials of modern filmmaking and getting back to the essence of story making. This deranged notion is responsible for the brain-dead works of Lars von Trier, including Bj rk in last year s Dancer in the Dark , the worst movie I ve ever seen until The King Is Alive . The Danes wouldn t know how to tell a story or strip filmmaking of superficiality if eight tons of raw film stock fell on their heads in the middle of a strawberry-rash festival. Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is terminally drawn to this kind of septic waste, gets raped and poisoned and dies bleeding and vomiting on a mud floor. Before this horror concludes, everyone joins her, and not a moment too soon.