Robbie Coltrane Movies

The bluntly titled The Fruit Machine stars Emile Charles and Tony Forsyth as a pair of homosexual Liverpool teenagers. Though their sexual orientation may be the same, Charles and Forsyth hold diametrically opposed outlooks on life. Gradually, a romance develops between the two -- but before things progress much farther, the film suddenly switches emotional gears. Witnessing a gangland execution, Charles and Forsyth are forced to defend their lives against an onslaught of villains. The Fruit Machine seems unsure of what sort of movie it would like to be, though many of its individual components are handled with utmost confidence by director Philip Saville. The film was originally titled Wonderland. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Music and comedy share the stage in this performance film, which records a four-night variety show presented in 1987 as a benefit for the human rights organization Amnesty International. A handful of top British comedians were on hand for the revue, including Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie, Lenny Henry, Ben Elton and Phil Cool, with special appearances by John Cleese of Monty Python and the puppet troupe Spitting Image. (American comic Emo Phillips also performs his standup act.) Several leading musical stars of the day also contributed their talents to the event, including Peter Gabriel, Duran Duran, Kate Bush with David Gilmour, Lou Reed, Jackson Browne with Paul Brady, Mark Knopfler with Chet Atkins, Bob Geldoff, Youssou N'Dour and Nik Kershaw. As the title suggests, The Secret Policeman's Third Ball was preceded by two other Amnesty International benefit shows coordinated by John Cleese, with several more to follow. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Per its title, Chinese Boxes plays the riddle-wrapped-in-a-mystery-wrapped-in-an-enigma angle to the hilt. Will Patton plays an innocent American who finds himself in the middle of international intrigue. With West Berlin as backdrop, the story takes so many twists and turns that one may well need a book of directions by fadeout time. Robbie Coltraine and Gottfried John are among the supporting actors who are not what they seem and never say what they mean. Chinese Boxes was a fairly smooth German/British collaboration, with little indication of any on-set communication breakdowns (surely somebody understood what was going on). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This talky avant-garde film about a pair of women looking for answers to unformulated questions is a journey through dense, non-stop verbosity partially balanced by good photography and music, a leavening sense of humor, good characterizations by Robbie Coltrane and Dominique Pinon, and a cameo appearance by French philosopher Jacques Derrida (the deconstructionist). Leonie (Leonie Mellinger) and Pascale (Pascale Ogier) travel aimlessly between London and Paris, searching for the origins of ghosts that populate their psyches: from Karl Marx to Franz Kafka, from psychoanalysis to dream analysis, and even the cinema itself, no apparition is left unturned. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

The true-life horror story of Jack the Ripper gets a new spin in this screen adaptation of the acclaimed graphic novel by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell. In 1888, a ruthless and cold-blooded killer begins hunting prostitutes in East London, and while the murderer's work is savage, the mutilation of his victims suggests the fiend has an extensive medical background. Amidst a background of political unrest and barely contained scandal among the royal family, the murderer's grisly exploits shock and frighten all of England, and one of Scotland Yard's top inspectors, Fred Abberline (Johnny Depp), is put on the case, along with his partner, Peter Godley (Robbie Coltrane). Abberline, depending on one's viewpoint, is either blessed or cursed with second sight, and while he blurs his ability to see future events with opium and other drugs, he still has an uncanny ability to ferret out dangerous criminals, which is put to the test as he and Godley search for the Ripper. As Abberline and Godley investigate the neighborhood where the crimes occur, they become acquainted with the prostitutes and street people who were friends and compatriots of the victims, and Abberline finds himself falling in love with Mary Kelly (Heather Graham), a beautiful Irish streetwalker. As Abberline tries to identify the killer before Mary Kelly can become the next victim, he and Godley have to contend with Sir Charles Warren (Ian Richardson), their superior who is keen to pin the murders on a culprit who isn't British, and Sir William Gull (Ian Holm), a respected physician who has his own ideas about the murders and the benefits of psychosurgery. From Hell marked a change of pace for Albert Hughes and Allen Hughes, the sibling directorial team best known for their gritty depictions of America's urban underground in such films as Menace II Society and Dead Presidents. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Jennifer Leitzes made her directorial debut with this gangster comedy. Claire (Kyra Sedgwick) and terminally ill Nick (Stanley Tucci) kidnap an Asian man, put him in the trunk, and drive away. Realizing they've got the wrong person, they pull off a second kidnapping and then dump their first victim. At headquarters, the Boss (Robbie Coltrane) rules over an eccentric group. When the Boss' mistress Kitty (Robin Tunney) checks out, Claire and Nick are dispatched to find her. A few double-crosses later, Kitty, Claire, and Nick are all on the run from the Boss' hitmen. Shown at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

A priest discovers that being the leader of the Catholic Church can be hazardous to your health in this satiric comedy. Cardinal Rocco (Alex Rocco) and Monsignor Vitchie (Paul Bartel) are two high-ranking Vatican officials who have been using the church's business dealings to launder funds for Vittorio Corelli (Herbert Lom), a crime boss involved in illegal arms trading. After the death of the aging and infirm Pope, Rocco and Vitchie plan to nominate a successor who will go along with Corelli's schemes, but quite by accident, small town priest Giuseppe Albinizi (Robbie Coltrane) is named the new Pontiff. Albinizi is a reluctant spiritual leader who prefers cars, women, and rock & roll to church business, but when he discovers the level of Rocco's corruption, he has him removed from the Vatican. Rocco and Vitchie are not taking Albinizi's plans to clean up Vatican finances lying down, and they discover that the new Pope's has a not-so-little secret. Before he joined the priesthood, Albinizi fathered a son out of wedlock with Veronica Dante (Beverly D'Angelo); the boy grew up to be Joe Don Dante (Balthazar Getty), a rock star who's romancing Corelli's daughter. After complaints from Catholic groups in the U.S., the distributors of The Pope Must Die changed the title to The Pope Must Diet. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Tony award-winning British musical comedy star Robert Lindsay makes his first important American film appearance in Bert Rigby, You're a Fool. Lindsay, of course, plays the title character, a coal miner who dreams of becoming a big showbiz star. Only problem is, there's very little demand for Bert Rigby's impersonations of Buster Keaton and Gene Kelly. Undaunted, Bert heads to Hollywood, where, while working as a butler in the household of movie mogul Jim Shirley (Corbin Bernsen), he must fend off the advances of Shirley's hot-to-trot wife, Meredith (Anne Bancroft). Befitting the old-fashioned nature of Bert Rigby's behavior and tastes in entertainment, director Carl Reiner adopts a "retro" approach to his material; at times, the film looks as though it was made in 1939 rather than 1989, despite its R-rated sex, profanity, and body-function jokes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Writer/director Derek Jarman injects his patented iconoclasm in this biography of Renaissance artist Michelangelo Merisa da Caravaggio. Nigel Terry plays the title role, whom (according to Jarman) essentially told his own life story in his paintings. Caravaggio travelled among thieves and prostitutes, many of whom were his models. He once killed a man, kept a deaf/mute child as a virtual slave, and squandered every penny he ever made. That we should care anything about so miserable and obscure a personality is a tribute to Jarman's filmmaking savvy--and the number of elements from his own well-publicized life that he injects into the film. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this romantic comedy that wobbles along on a shaky plot -- the first full-length feature of a Brit TV show -- Dennis (Adrian Edmondson) is on vacation with his mother when he invents a tall tale of his involvement with a drug cartel in order to impress a woman he likes. Sure enough, his story accidentally tallies with what the police already know, and before he can cry "wolf," Dennis is sent off to the coast with two undercover cops. One cop is a woman (Jennifer Saunders) and the other her former boyfriend (Harvey Duncan) -- but the woman has to pretend to be Dennis' lover. Then along comes a string of several unique policemen and a few real drug smugglers, one in drag, adding their eccentricity to the growing group of comic characters. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Director Bertrand Tavernier provides an unexpected feminist slant to the otherwise standard sci-fi trappings of Death Watch. Harvey Keitel plays a man of the future who has had a camera implanted in his brain. The mechanism, which is endowed with special X-ray properties, is activated by the user's eyes. Keitel is assigned by ruthless TV producer Harry Dean Stanton to secretly probe the subconscious of a dying woman, played by Romy Schneider. Stanton is only interested in the grim spectacle of what goes on inside the brain of someone who knows she's doomed. Keitel, on the other hand, becomes increasingly compassionate--and disgusted by the tawdriness of his assignment--as he stares into Schneider's tortured psyche. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The first installment of the two-film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows follows Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) as they search for the pieces of Voldemort's (Ralph Fiennes) soul that he extracted from his being and hid in obscure locations both far and wide. If the trio is unable to locate and destroy them all, Voldemort will remain immortal. Despite their long friendship, a combination of dark forces, romantic tensions, and long-held secrets threaten to sabotage the mission. David Yates directs. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi