Email Author Michael Sragow

1997 Stories by Michael Sragow

• Drivel, He Said

  published December 25, 1997

  The ad line for As Good As It Gets is "A comedy from the heart that goes for the throat." Isn't this simply another way of saying, "You'll laugh,... More >>

• Bad Faith

  published November 20, 1997

  John Grisham's The Rainmaker lulls you into the mindset you get while reading a best seller at the beach. What a sad thing to say about a Francis... More >>

• I Lost It at the Multiplex

  published October 9, 1997

  Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigour, and industry which began long... More >>

• Them There Bugs

  published August 21, 1997

  When the beautiful entomologist rips open the chest cavity of a huge bloodthirsty insect in the sci-fi nightmare Mimic, it turns into Thoracic... More >>

• Dear Old Dad

  published August 14, 1997

  In the not-so-brave new world of independent filmmaking, low-budget movies premiere at Sundance or Cannes and win plaudits from over-psyched... More >>

• Road Worrier

  published August 7, 1997

  Jerry Fletcher, the hero of Conspiracy Theory, is a comic, glamorous variation on Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Like Travis, he's a New York... More >>

• Learning Disabled

  published July 31, 1997

  187, a number favored by adolescent thugs, is the California state penal code for homicide -- and a harsh sentence for all involved in this... More >>

• A Royal Pain

  published July 24, 1997

  Mrs. Brown (a Cannes hit and Miramax release) is dignified to the dead max -- brownish-gray in mood and look and spirit. It's based on the true... More >>

• The Usual Suspects

  published July 3, 1997

  One speech and one prop from Men in Black combine to sum up the movie. An alien in four-legged earthly form delivers the speech: "You humans,... More >>

• The More You Pander, the Blander

  published June 26, 1997

  Slapstick decadence is the dominant style at the Disney studios this summer, reaching all the way from Touchstone Pictures' action hit Con Air to... More >>

• A Waste of Honey

  published June 19, 1997

  To get into a good-lovin' mood before each date, a college housemate of mine croaked along to Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" while blasting it... More >>

• A Grand Illusion

  published May 29, 1997

  In a season of lumbering big-screen circuses, Rough Magic provides a rowdy creative sideshow. It's the kind of haywire high-wire act that suspends... More >>

• Coffin Nailed

  published May 1, 1997

  On the savvy festival-and-promo tour that helped the necrophiliac Kissed net advance praise everywhere from the Atlantic Monthly to Newsweek,... More >>

• Lack of Concentration Camp

  published April 24, 1997

  No one has exploited the historical-epic form better than David Lean. At his peak he used its spaciousness and breadth to develop characters with... More >>

• This Property Condomed

  published April 3, 1997

  Film actors are generally said to have good chemistry or no chemistry. But bad chemistry in movies does exist, and a sleep inducer called... More >>

• An Accident Waiting to Happen

  published March 20, 1997

  Cult auteur David Cronenberg crashes and burns -- his talent, that is -- in Crash, a vain attempt at a techno-age Persona. It follows a demented... More >>

• Luke Till You Puke

  published March 13, 1997

  In the last chapter of the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi Special Edition, an intergalactic window display of creepy and cuddly critters... More >>

• Stings Like a Bee

  published February 20, 1997

  Like a black Jay Gatsby with a bulging build, Muhammad Ali possessed a special radiance in his championship years that came from his ability to... More >>

• Force Filled

  published February 20, 1997

  Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back, the continuation of George Lucas's Star Wars, is a classic fantasy in its own right, and I vastly prefer... More >>

• Shot Out of a Conan

  published February 13, 1997

  Robert E. Howard, the subject of Dan Ireland's wonderful debut film The Whole Wide World, created the sword-and-sorcery genre with his Conan... More >>

• River Deep

  published February 6, 1997

  William Faulkner's novella Old Man has a biblical magnetism, a primal moral pull. During the horrifying Mississippi flood of 1927, convicts are... More >>

• Excessive Use of Force

  published January 30, 1997

  At a twenty-year remove, Star Wars comes off as less the work of a wizard than the weird obsessive outgrowth of an eccentric American primitive.... More >>

• Route 666

  published January 16, 1997

  Watching Reese Witherspoon incandesce in the role of a sixteen-year-old girl stumbling through the reform school of hard knocks in Freeway, I was... More >>

• Disregarding Henry

  published January 16, 1997

  When an incredulous Jane Campion fan asked what I hated about her version of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, I immediately responded,... More >>

• The Movie Audience with the Mind

  published January 2, 1997

  "Long live the consciousness of the pure who can see and hear!" That statement by pioneer Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov kept reverberating... More >>