Email Author Bill Gallo

1999 Stories by Bill Gallo

• Good Grief!

  published December 23, 1999

  At first glance Pedro Almodovar's All About My Mother seems uncharacteristically grim for a filmmaker with such a demonic sense of... More >>

• Anywhere but There

  published December 16, 1999

  The heroines of Gavin O'Connor's offbeat road movie Tumbleweeds are a struggling single mother named Mary Jo Walker (Janet McTeer) and her... More >>

• Grand Illusion

  published November 25, 1999

  The world's demand for minimally talented 30-year-old high school dropouts who believe they're great poets or great musicians or great movie... More >>

• Pop Icons Redux

  published October 28, 1999

  Trust Allison Anders and her old running mate Kurt Voss to come up with a piquant, carefully observed movie about tarnished hope, overfed vanity,... More >>

• The Littlest Victim

  published October 21, 1999

  Actor Frank Whaley has appeared in more than 30 movies, including Swimming with Sharks and Pulp Fiction. But none of them cuts as... More >>

• Lots o' Libido

  published October 7, 1999

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! The repressed Irish-Catholic schoolgirl that Molly Shannon plays on Saturday Night Live is certainly not... More >>

• The Way We Live Now

  published September 23, 1999

  Grownups, take heart. Even if you misspent your summer at the movies pigging out on reheated space adventure, slob humor, and stubborn, old... More >>

• Season Finale

  published August 19, 1999

  It has been almost 40 years since Eric Rohmer, riding the crest of the French New Wave, embarked on the first of his Six Moral Tales. The... More >>

• New Rules

  published August 19, 1999

  If Kevin Williamson has anything to say about it, the good works of noble movie schoolteachers like Mr. Chips and Miss Dove and Mr. Holland will... More >>

• More Bedroom Bedlam

  published August 5, 1999

  It's always amusing when the movie industry discovers its spiritual side. Profoundly secular institution that it is, Hollywood promotes, at its... More >>

• Get Me Outta Here

  published July 29, 1999

  For Morgan J. Freeman (a young writer-director, not the well-known actor), comic timing couldn't get any worse -- or better. That's because one... More >>

• That Summer of '77

  published July 1, 1999

  To hear Spike Lee tell it, Summer of Sam means to be a panoramic view of the summer of 1977 in New York City, when temperatures shot into the high... More >>

• The Value of Loyalty

  published June 24, 1999

  Woe to the scribbler who presumes to rewrite a master, unless he is so deft that his invasion of privacy produces something new and exciting. ... More >>

• Just Another Final Frontier

  published June 10, 1999

  In John Sayles's Limbo, which is set amid the rough-and-tumble of southeast Alaska, an ex-salmon fisherman with guilty memories (David... More >>

• Irish Stew

  published June 3, 1999

  It has not been lost on the Quinn brothers (actor Aidan, cinematographer Declan, and writer/director Paul) that in old Gaelic culture the tribal... More >>

• Up Close and a Little Personal

  published June 3, 1999

  The peerless Ethiopian distance runner Haile Gebrselassie is a tiny man (five foot three and barely 115 pounds), but in his native country his... More >>

• Star Trek: A True Story

  published May 27, 1999

  If your poodle is decked out in the complete Captain Kirk uniform, you've taken Klingon language classes, or you once mailed DeForest Kelly a... More >>

• Let's Put On a Play

  published May 27, 1999

  Relentlessly hip? You better be. Enjoy pretentious talk about the great god Art and the hidden meanings in old gangster movies? Couldn't hurt.... More >>

• High School Unhinged

  published May 6, 1999

  The latest release from MTV Films, Paramount Pictures' bouncing baby, is set in a high school and has been inoculated with the usual doses of... More >>

• Into the Heart of Bleakness

  published April 15, 1999

  When we first see Isa, the 21-year-old heroine of Erick Zonca's The Dreamlife of Angels, she is trudging under the weight of a huge backpack... More >>

• The Ultimate Illusion

  published April 1, 1999

  Stuffed full of fantasy comics, addicted to action, and steeped in digital technology, the frenetic moviemakers Andy and Larry Wachowski have done... More >>

• Neo-Screwball Strikes Out

  published March 18, 1999

  At the movies the fun-loving temptress has been liberating the buttoned-up clod ever since Katharine Hepburn's leopard made off with Cary Grant's... More >>

• Chance of a Lifetime

  published March 11, 1999

  In the three decades that director Ken Loach has been a steadfast champion of the British working class, his films have lost none of their sting.... More >>

• The Mobster and the Shrink

  published March 4, 1999

  When hit men wore hats and Cadillacs had running boards, the average Mafia don could knock off the Tattaglia brothers in midafternoon and sit down... More >>

• Soul of the Matter

  published February 11, 1999

  In The Eel, which won the Palme d'Or at the 1997 Cannes International Film Festival, director Shohei Imamura once again demonstrates his empathy... More >>