Hugh Grant, star of Mike Newell’s current Four Weddings and a Funeral, is also the star of Australian John Duigan’s new Sirens. Grant plays a young, vaguely liberal English vicar who is sent to the outback by the bishop of Sydney. His mission is to persuade painter Norman Lindsay (Sam…
If playwright Geoffrey Hassman were a high school freshman, and if his play Jacob’s Blanket A currently running at the Drama Center in Deerfield Beach A were his first attempt at writing, I might cut him some slack. Some of the characters are endearing, the pace is not slow, and…
On paper, they probably seemed like wonderful ideas. How about a reworking of His Girl Friday, set at a big-city newspaper, but with an ensemble cast full of likable stars? Maybe they could crack a hot story about a couple of teenagers who are being railroaded for murder, huh? Or…
Before the antics of Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, before Jerry Lewis won over the fickle hearts of the French, lo, even before Milton Berle was belted with numerous pies in the face and Buster Keaton tripped over his own feet, a very famous writer wooed the crowds…
Say what you will about the sorry state of theatrical film exhibition in South Florida; some of our local movie houses are at least trying to remedy the situation. One of the most popular offerings from the 1993 Miami Film Festival, Bigas Luna’s Jam centsn Jam centsn, did not begin…
The mix-up-at-the-sperm-bank premise, the basis for 1993’s vacuous Made in America, takes a turn for the kosher in Vadim Jean’s and Gary Sinyor’s Leon the Pig Farmer. The quirky, oddly engaging little film has its Miami premiere this Saturday at the Colony Theater as part of the Jewish Film Festival…
“One hundred rinses cannot wash away these kinds of stains,” warns Duilio, eighteenth-century patriarch of the Benedetti (“the blessed”) clan in the rolling hills of Tuscany. He’s a poor farmer speaking to his fellow villagers in the town square, where a French lieutenant named Jean will be executed at dawn…
While pure lighthearted entertainment is fine from time to time, I freely admit to preferring art, whether on stage, screen, page, or canvas. If someone were to pin me down and demand a definition of art — a term so often abused — I would state that it is simply…
I can’t help it. It’s a reflex action. I hear the word “documentary” and some uncontrollable voice from deep within me screams, “Boring!” I realize it’s an irrational response; after all, I’ve seen plenty of entertaining documentaries. Then again, most of them have had something to do with rock music,…
Am I the only viewer in America who has a problem with the recent spate of slacker movies? From Slacker to Singles to Dazed and Confused, a trend seems to be emerging, the salient characteristic of which is the romanticization of sloth and navel contemplation. Not that I have anything…
Even though it’s my usual task to comment on the work of playwrights, directors, and performing artists, I must open this review with a barb directed toward a fellow critic. William A. Henry III recently wrote an impossibly ignorant paragraph in the February 14 issue of Time magazine. In discussing…
The drug dealer with a guilty conscience — has there ever been a phonier Hollywood invention? That’s what Sugar Hill, which debuted locally at the Miami Film Festival, is all about. Wesley Snipes stars as Roemello “Ro” Skuggs, a heroin dealer who wants out. Of course, he doesn’t want out…
Truly satisfying basketball movies are rarer than celibate NBA players. From Drive, He Said to White Men Can’t Jump, Chu Chu and the Philly Flash to Hoosiers, the essence of the game has eluded Hollywood’s grasp. It’s not just the fact that removing the elements of competition and unpredictability takes…
Johnny is a bitter but brilliant guy with a taste for rough sex, the quintessential angry young man drifting through a London netherworld of emotional cripples. He’s got no shortage of places to go, but he’s searching for a warm place to stay. When he finally finds it, he leaves…
A great evening at the theater is composed of a whole host of elements, some obvious, some more subliminal. The basic minimum is an excellent script and superb cast. Then lighting, sound, costumes, and other technical effects — or the stark absence of them — contribute more. But what about…
Kim Basinger has amazing nipples. It’s a bad sign when you walk out of a movie theater and the thing that most sticks in your mind is some physical quirk of one of the lead actors. I exited The Bodyguard, for example, unable to get over Kevin Costner’s haircut. It…
“Let’s stop playing the dying fag!” exhorts Lawrence Helman, producer of the controversial movie Sex Is…, which opens at the Alliance Theater on Miami Beach this Friday. “Marc [Huestis, the film’s director] and I were tired of always seeing gays portrayed in the media as monogamous or abstaining — but…
In their infinite wisdom, Sony Pictures Classics, whose offices are in New York, decided to independently release the intricate French drama The Accompanist here in Miami on the eve of the Miami Film Festival. The Festival is an extremely popular and eagerly anticipated orgy of foreign movies that would sate…
Nick Nolte playing the lead in a musical — now there’s something you don’t see every day. Nor, for that matter, will you see it any day, thanks to the early test-screening audience that gave the musical sequences in I’ll Do Anything a thumbs-down — way down. Writer-director James L…
Remember the old scenario about describing a blind date? “Is she (he) cute?” you ask. “Well,” comes the halting answer from your friend. “She (he) has a great personality.” Of course this means a night with a refugee from the animal shelter. But let’s suppose we update that anecdote for…
Hotshot architect Vincent Eastman barrels down a slick mountain road in his classic 1968 Mercedes 280SL. He rounds a tight curve to discover a dilapidated VW van that has stalled while attempting to enter the thoroughfare ahead of him. Eastman swerves into the left lane to avoid the van –…
Let’s hope the L.A. earthquake didn’t claim any acting coaches. After viewing the latest outings by Madonna and Sharon Stone, Hollywood is going to need every last one. Madonna’s new film is director Abel Ferrara’s Dangerous Game, one of those self-indulgent film-within-a-film exercises. It’s hard to tell exactly where art…
