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- guardian.co.uk,
- Sunday July 11 1999 21.43 BST
Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987, 18, Entertainment, Retail) One of the great films about the Holocaust, Louis Malle's semi-autobiographical masterpiece concerns the friendship at a Catholic boarding school in German-occupied France between two 12-year-olds - one from a wealthy Catholic bourgeois family, the other a Jewish boy being hidden by the priests. A truthful, deeply felt, beautifully acted picture. Virtually flawless.
Enemy of the State (1998, 15, Buena Vista, Video/Rental, DVD/Retail) Enjoyable, formulaic thriller about the threat of sophisticated surveillance equipment in the wrong hands. Will Patton, among a huge cast of familiar faces, stars as a liberal Washington lawyer targeted for destruction when he accidentally comes into possession of a video incriminating the National Security Agency. The pounding music, fast cutting and pyrotechnic violence are the hallmarks of director Tony Scott and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
The Siege (1998, 15, Fox-Pathé , Rental) Political thriller, by the creator of thirtysomething, Edward Zwick, on the touchy subject of Islamic fundamentalist terrorism in the United States. As an FBI agent, Denzel Washington investigates a series of hostage-taking incidents, his Arab-American assistant Tony Shaloub sees his innocent family demonised when the insensitive military move in on Brooklyn's Islamic community. The picture tries to show how short-sighted foreign policy initiatives can create future scourges for the nation's back.
Pecker (1998, 15, Entertainment, Rental) Once the reviled master of bad taste, now the beloved past master of dated camp, John Waters turns a benign eye on a young Baltimore short-order cook whose photographs of his grotesque family and neighbours makes him the toast of fashionable New York and a local pariah. Lewd, crude, funny, oddly innocent, with a charming performance by Edward Furlong as the ingenuous hero.
