One thing there’s no shortage of in this country is monitoring. Jesse Helms’s people monitor painters and photographers for homoerotic imagery or anti-Christian iconography. School boards monitor classic books for obscenity. There are even quasi-religious organizations out there that can tell you how many times Joe Pesci uttered variations on…

“Welcome to Beston,” the sign reads, “Home of the Bulldogs.” It’s a safe bet that the folks residing in that sleepy little upstate New York town never met a bulldog like Bridget Gregory (a.k.a. Wendy Kroy). Bridget is a Manhattan girl from the top of her impenetrable black shades to…

My momma always told me that year-end top-ten lists are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. A quick glance through other film critics’ nominations for the best and worst of 1994 confirms Momma’s wisdom. For example, Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers and Entertainment Weekly’s Owen…

Any idiot can write a boffo opening to a movie. The hard part is sustaining the suspense, comedy, or action for 90 minutes and then wrapping it all up neatly into a satisfying conclusion. That is why so many movies start with a bang and end with a whimper. It’s…

Robert Altman is the most feared slugger in American cinema. When he really connects, as he has in the past with M*A*S*H, Nashville, and The Player, he knocks the ball out of the park. So powerful is his stroke that even when he’s just trying to make contact he’s still…

Here we go again. Another painfully sincere filmmaker embraces the enduring myth of the noble savage. Jodie Foster, sweetheart of the Gap-and-Birkenstocks set, not only stars in Nell, she produced it as well. Foster is a talented, articulate actress with both brains and guts, two commodities in short supply in…

If you’ve ever watched a junior high school theatrical production of a venerable, time-honored play in which no one gets anything quite right — not the acting, not the sets, not the direction — then you’ll recognize the discomfort caused by the off-pitch romantic comedy Speechless. Screenwriter Robert King (author…

Redemption. Now there’s something I could use a little of. It’s been one of those weeks, man. Like any red-blooded American boy who ever played in little league, I experienced emotions I never thought were there when I heard about the cancellation of the baseball season. It was without a…

Few movies pack as much potential for stirring up controversy as Cyril Collard’s Savage Nights. At heart it’s a traditional love story. But what sets Savage Nights (originally titled Les nuits fauves) apart is its topicality. Consider: Collard adapted the film (in French with English subtitles) from his autobiographical novel…

Don’t fuck with Fresh. He may be only twelve years old, but Machiavelli himself couldn’t play the street any better than this pint-size prince. Fresh Sr. is a speed-chess hustler in New York City’s Washington Square Park — “Bobby Fischer? Put him on speed and I’ll chew his ass up”…

Quentin Tarantino and I have something in common: We’re both movie nuts who once worked behind the counter in video stores. I can’t speak for Tarantino, but most of my customers were couples (or one member of a couple renting something that both would see). And in nearly every case…

You can’t really blame the distributors of A Good Man in Africa for emphasizing the presence of Sean Connery in the film’s cast. After all he’s perfect for the role of high-principled Dr. Alex Murray, the only white man in the emerging West African nation of Kinjanja who cannot be…

There are three possible reasons to see Baton Rouge: Antonio Banderas, Victoria Abril, and Carmen Maura. If you’re not fond of the work of at least one member of that triumvirate of popular Spanish actors, you probably will have a hard time sitting through this clumsy Spanish film noir. And…

While the actors all turn in fine performances in director Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman the real star of the film is the food. Not since Babette’s Feast and Like Water for Chocolate has a motion picture given such mouthwatering due to meals. The film opens with widower Tao…

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Oliver Stone has gone over the edge and he wants to take you with him. Stone’s new film Natural Born Killers is a splatterfest with a heart as black as gunpowder. Think Bonnie and Clyde with assault weapons. Remember that scene in Brian De Palma’s…

Last summer’s Cliffhanger elicited gasps from audiences as macho action-movie hero Sylvester Stallone scaled up and rappelled down sheer mountain walls. Stallone’s biceps bulged, his deltoids popped, and his face contorted like a world-class athlete’s from the strain. Stories appeared in the press portraying Stallone as fearless as a Wallenda…

Although I’ve always been a vocal opponent of censorship in almost any form, after viewing the racy Color of Night I’ve had a change of heart. The time has come for Hollywood to start policing itself. I’m not talking about explicit sexual content A no, if anything I’d like to…

It’s “the last decade of the Cold War” (as the opening titles inform us) in post-Franco Spain. Anti-U.S. sentiment is sky-high. Fred, the gung-ho advance man for the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet, has just arrived in Barcelona, showing up unannounced at the apartment of his less-than-thrilled cousin Ted, a sales…

The Lone Rangers, a struggling L.A. rock and roll power trio, can’t even come up with a name that makes sense; as several characters in the film Airheads point out, you can’t be a lone ranger if there’s more than one of you. But, like most unsigned bands, they believe…

I wondered where Tom Clancy, the inexplicably popular flag-waving hack author of The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games, was going to turn for source material now that the Cold War has ended. As Gomer Pyle, a U.S. Marine with an understanding of the complexities of international politics about…