As you read this, Aladdin is drawing hordes of parents and preteen children to multiplexes everywhere. But is it a true kid flick, plugged directly into the subconscious of what Emerson might have called the Overtot? And is it really as timeless as its makers would like to think? The…
It’s no mystery why Home Alone became one of the most successful movies of all time. The first clue lies in that seductive title, a situation that kids with siblings daydream about: a little autonomy in their own houses. Flawlessly defending yourself and your turf, as Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) does…
The solid triumph of Bill Clinton and the brutal lashing of the religious right suggest that the country is ready to move forward again instead of twenty steps back. With a renewed spirit of hope, the mass audience heads to the laboratory, resolved to try brave experiments, such as saluting…
I mentioned in a previous column that this quote is attributed to Eugene O’Neill: “The artist who tries to save the world loses himself.” I’d like to add that, in the case of Edward Albee, the artist who tries to save himself loses his art. Desperate to retain his former…
Dead at 40, Malcolm X saw, did, and experienced more than most people who live to be twice his age. The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which Alex Haley wrote as a first-person narrative after interviewing Malcolm for more than two years, is the sort of book that cries out for…
In The Year My Voice Broke, director John Duigan showed a feel for what Wordsworth called the “visionary dreariness” of a certain kind of rural landscape — rolling hills bare except for occasional clusters of giant rocks or the isolated gnarled tree — a landscape short on conventional picturesqueness that…
Remember Wait Until Dark, the 1967 thriller with Audrey Hepburn cast as a blind woman? Alan Arkin was the crazed thug who tormented Hepburn, moving her furniture around and hissing threats. Wait Until Dark was scary fun, yet it also generated an empathy for the disabled woman in her darkened…
Talk about Undead. Vlad the Impaler, Prince of Darkness, Aristocrat of Evil — call him what you will. Count Dracula has haunted the movies since 1921, when the great German director F.W. Murnau first rousted him from the coffin in a primitive silent called Nosferatu. Since then, this durable ghoul…
Since I’m about to deal with a murder mystery/courtoom drama — Aaron Sorkin’s 1989 Broadway hit, A Few Good Men, which is now enjoying a satisfying production at the Caldwell Theatre Company — allow me to play Sherlock Holmes for a moment and hypothesize how this particular work came into…
A member of a gang called the Reservoir Dogs — known only by his alias, “Mr. Blonde” — has just driven from a botched jewelry store heist with a patrolman stuffed in the trunk of his car. Although Mr. Blonde (Micheal Madsen), like his cohorts, suspects that one of their…
If I ever question the validity of devoting so much time to theater criticism in a town like this, there’s no stronger reassurance than the occasional, sudden privilege of attending a momentous event or meeting a luminary from the world of the stage. Last week I enjoyed the honor of…
When Gary Sinise was playing Tom Joad in the acclaimed Broadway version of The Grapes of Wrath, he was fortunate enough to receive a visit from the author’s widow. After Elaine Steinbeck expressed her approval of Sinise’s interpretation of her late husband’s work, the actor mentioned it seemed high time…
In an effort to market the newest commandment — Thou Shalt Have Family Values — both major political parties have made attempts to define just what a family is. According to their guidelines, several groups didn’t cut the mustard. Forget gay couples and straight married ones without children. And forget…
Night and the City is a movie about bruisers and losers. Robert De Niro plays Harry Fabian, a perennially hopeful ambulance-chasing attorney living in New York City’s SoHo district, who decides — later in life and for no apparent reason — to realize dreams of hitting the big time. What…
Long before film critic Michael Medved became the insipid defender of family values and de facto darling of the Quayle campaign he is today, he had something a critic desperately needs or he’s dead in the water, a quirky sense of humor. Medved, with the help of his brother Harry,…
Though I was provided with excellent seats for “Give ‘Em Hell Harry!”, and though artistic director Arnold Mittelman was gracious enough to invite me to his theater balcony supper afterward, I must confess that I walked out of the play shortly after intermission. Now, as a critic, one might argue,…
Never having been particularly enamored of fly fishing, male bonding, or Presbyterianism, I did not read Norman Maclean’s autobiographical novella, A River Runs Through It, until very recently — and only then to coincide with the film version directed by Robert Redford and at the prodding of some friends who…
‘Tis the season to face the theater of 1992-93, so a broad review of last year’s high and low points seems to be in order, as well as a peek into which shows ahead merit breaking into the piggy bank. And since everyone in this place remains too polite to…
To enter Ridley’s Scott’s 1492: Conquest of Paradise and its phantasmagoric fifteenth-century world, you will need to check your piddling prerequisites at the door. Historical scholarship, stylistic authenticity, narrative cohesion — attributes the dull, unsophisticated mind might expect in a portrait of Christopher Columbus and his times — are deemed…
I had the privilege of attending two Bob Marley concerts in my life. Both were in the Seventies and in England, an island not as far removed from Marley’s own, Jamaica, as their different climates and race denominations would indicate. The English worshiped Marley’s outsized personality and were equally captivated…
Admittedly, it’s helpful of the Miami Herald to separate theater listings into “Professional/Equity,” “Professional Non/Equity,” “Community,” “Dinner Theater,” and “In Spanish” (as if Spanish is a show-business category), but such divisions mean nothing unless they are defined. As South Florida gains a more vital, arts-oriented population and more refugees from…
“Ingmar Bergman is, in my most carefully considered opinion, the greatest filmmaker the world has seen so far.” (The italics are mine.) Those words were written by critic John Simon in 1972 in what remains the definitive book in English about the Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman Directs. But twenty years…
