A naive foreigner with a funny accent arrives in New York City and learns some tough lessons about survival before adapting and ultimately triumphing over adversity. Quick, that describes: (A) Coming to America (B) The Godfather, Part 2 (C) Crocodile Dundee (D) An American Tail (E) Tarzan’s New York Adventure…
Hypnotism works only if you allow it to. Even then not everyone who wants to be hypnotized can be. Jim Jarmusch movies are like that. You have to want to fall under Jarmusch’s spell to enjoy his films, and even then you might never make it into the fully entranced…
Jeez, has it really come to this? Have cell phones, fax machines, and personal computers assumed such an integral role in our harried lives that we prefer securely chatting away in the comfort of our homes to the more exciting possibilities of face-to-face human contact? Hal Salwen, the first-time writer/director…
The makers and distributors of the stale Argentine confection Killing Grandpa would love for me to compare their bland bonbon to the deliciously sexy Mexican mousse Like Water for Chocolate. There are a few similarities: Magic realism informs both tales, and both exalt the power of passion to the point…
John Woo has often cited the films of Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) as among his greatest influences — particularly 1967’s Le Samourai — and it’s easy to see the connection. Even in France, Melville spent most of his career as a cult director: His series of gangster films, starting in 1956…
A different, more “traditional” (in the sense that Naked Killer’s gleeful man-maimers are a tad atypical) kind of serial killer prowls the streets of Roberto Benigni’s drop-dead comedy The Monster. This film’s mass slayer preys on women; the movie opens with a shot of elevator doors slowly opening and closing…
There’s no getting around comparing the lurid Hong Kong lesbian assassin flick Naked Killer with Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Like Meyer’s cult classic, this over-the-top romp from the busy workshop of prolific filmmaker Wong Jing details the deadly shenanigans of a handful of lusty, bloodthirsty felines (two of…
Know anybody in L.A. who could use a 1988 Nissan Sentra? Filmmaker Matthew Harrison needs to unload his this week, when he returns to New York City after a year in Lotus Land. New York native Harrison moved to the West Coast shortly after his remarkably accomplished low-budget feature Rhythm…
How sorry can you feel for an attractive, intelligent young woman who earned upwards of six million dollars per year by willfully engaging in an ongoing criminal enterprise and arrogantly thumbing her nose at the law until undercover cops busted her? Not very, especially considering that the woman didn’t need…
Reviews of each new Pedro Almod centsvar film seem to fall into one of two categories: (1) He’s back! [NEW FILM NAME HERE] is his funniest movie since Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown! (2) He’s lost it! [NEW FILM NAME HERE] is nothing like Women on the…
Director Franco Zeffirelli reminds me of George Foreman. Like the larger-than-life boxer, Zeffirelli is a one-dimensional slugger. They both hit hard but telegraph their punches; put either man into the ring with powerful, straight-ahead material (Joe Frazier in Foreman’s case, operas such as Rigoletto or Don Giovanni in Zeffirelli’s) and…
As anyone who reads this column with regularity knows, I make it a point to boycott that annual orgy of industry politics and self-congratulatory ass kissing known as the Academy Awards. On Monday night, March 25, it seemed as if everybody I know A not to mention most of the…
In Flirting With Disaster, writer-director David O. Russell continues to tap into the fertile subject of family to create his edgy comedies. In his first film, 1994’s acid-washed Spanking the Monkey, Russell fashioned a sensitive, understated black comedy out of his nineteen-year-old male protagonist’s confusion over sexual politics, masturbation, and…
If men such as Guy Baran didn’t exist, neither would books about smart women and foolish choices. Strong, handsome, intelligent, and confident, Guy attracts a lot of interest from members of the opposite sex who do not realize that his impeccable faaade masks a cruel, arrogant, manipulative liar. Mia and…
Maybe Spike Lee figured, “I made a great movie [last year’s Clockers] about a serious subject [crack and violence and their impact on ghetto life]. The film got excellent reviews, but nobody saw it. Maybe if I make a frivolous movie [Girl 6] about a titillating subject [phone sex] and…
Ever notice how you can never wager on really interesting propositions? For example, you could have made a fortune betting that Fernando Trueba’s Two Much would be a mess. If only some bookmaker had offered odds against the made-in-Miami movie’s success. All the ingredients for a flop were in place…
Mike Nichols’s The Birdcage has a lot in common with Two Much. Both contemporary comedies make extensive use of bustling Miami Beach as a location. Both stories center on characters who pretend to be somebody they aren’t. And neither Birdcage director Nichols nor Two Much star Melanie Griffith has enjoyed…
Fans of black comedy and fiendishly frisky film noir rejoice: The Coen brothers are back! The savagely funny Fargo is a vicious sidesplitter, easily the drollest, hippest, sweetest satire Joel and Ethan Coen have dreamed up since 1987’s Raising Arizona. The film marks a return to form for the sick…
A bottle rocket is little more than a glorified firecracker on a stick. You point one upward and light it, but you can never be sure that it’ll fly in the direction you want it to go. Sometimes bottle rockets just fizzle out. At best they sparkle, streak skyward, and…
Mutiny Aftershock 2005 (Black Arc/Rykodisc) Of all the spin-off satellites orbiting George Clinton’s Parliafunkadelicment mothership, Mutiny was arguably the best A and one of the few to distance itself from its former employer. The group was formed in the late Seventies by drummer Jerome “Bigfoot” Brailey, the coauthor of several…
At the risk of coming off like some stodgy codger bemoaning the passing of the good old days of American cinema, it really does seem to me that these days they don’t make quality American movies like they did in the Seventies. The Godfather (I and II), Five Easy Pieces,…
Belinda and Philip Haas’s (she produced; he directed; they both wrote the screenplay) slow but absorbing production of Angels & Insects reminded me of Peter Greenaway’s 1982 The Draughtsman’s Contract. Both films are English period pieces, although Greenaway’s film is set in the Seventeenth Century, while the Haases’ takes place…
