Critical Care (1997)

An impassioned, often funny, equally preposterous health-care yakathon that proves that (last year's Night Falls on Manhattan notwithstanding) storied director Sidney Lumet has truly and entertainingly lost his marbles late in his career (A Stranger Among Us, Guilty as Sin — I rest my case). In Critical Care, the nicely cast Spader has the right world-weary disbelief as a doctor who boinks the daughter (Sedgwick) of a terminally ill patient, only to find himself enmeshed in a right-to-die lawsuit. But whenever you think the movie's getting its act together, Lumet brings on Wallace Shawn as a devil or, God help us, Anne Bancroft as a nun. And while the underlying point is a strong one — that the medical technocracy denies human dignity to its patients — the endless talk may have you switching over to ER. Kevorkian will want his own copy, though. C+