I suppose the mere fact that I’ve never seen a movie quite like Desperado should qualify as a high compliment. After all, these days so many movies seem like so many other movies, which seemed like so many others before them, that a little originality deserves praise in and of…
Early in Jeffrey, the big-screen version of Paul Rudnick’s funny-sad off-Broadway play about a gay man wrestling with love and intimacy in the Nineties, there’s a hilarious scene that neatly and astutely anticipates the film’s commercial dilemma. Two male characters share a sloppy kiss. The camera cuts away to an…
The most unnerving — and delectable — skill of film noir masters such as John Huston, Billy Wilder, and Jules Dassin may have been the way they turned all of human relations into a slippery fiction, a pack of lies, an extended alibi. In the dangerous netherworld of these movies,…
The Seventies refuse to die. Whatever else you say about that God-forsaken decade, it has proven incredibly resilient. Disco –both the music and the fashions — has made a strong comeback. The Reagan, Bush, and Clinton administrations have made many Americans nostalgic for those of Ford and Carter. Saturday Night…
A dumb movie is one thing, but a dumb movie about the importance of education — now that’s something special. The only thing dangerous about Dangerous Minds is the glibness with which it treats its subject matter. Even the title is a transparent attempt to sex up what is (or…
Only three American actresses have proven to Hollywood they can attract large audiences by name recognition alone — Demi Moore, Meg Ryan, and Julia Roberts. Moore is by far the worst of the three, a relentless publicity machine whose presence in wretched box-office triumphs such as Disclosure proves that moviegoers…
As everyone knows by now, Waterworld is the most expensive movie ever made. Fierce Pacific thunderstorms, logistical nightmares, a nasty feud between director and star, the star’s insistence that scenes be re-shot because he didn’t like the way his hair looked — such were the problems that ran the tab…
If American adults are still capable of being shocked by the behavior of teenagers, then Larry Clark’s Kids is the movie that will shock them. The New York City teens we meet here for one harrowing 24-hour period talk dirty. They pursue sex and drugs with casual single-mindedness. They lie…
With a pitch-perfect performance from precocious eighteen-year-old music video starlet Alicia Silverstone and a sharp, sassy, knowing script from writer-director Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Clueless steps right to the head of the class of high school comedies, surpassing even Heckerling’s own previous foray into that perilous territory…
Who would argue against Luis Bu*uel’s deserving a place in the filmmaking pantheon? Not only have many of his works become roundly considered classics, but the man produced great art for nearly half a century. Bunuel displayed a talent for using vivid imagery to jolt audiences from the first scene…
Man, we’ve seen some scary faces staring out at us from magazine covers in the past two weeks. First Newsweek ran that infamous sketch of the Unabomber. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the uncanny resemblance to Weird Al Yankovic? Has the FBI explored the correlation between…
A ten-year-old boy named Omri gets an antique cupboard for his birthday. The cupboard looks commonplace but Omri soon discovers it has magical powers. Put a toy figurine inside, close the door, turn the key, and presto! When you unlock the cupboard, a tiny living, breathing, flesh-and-blood creature stands in…
First Knight, a new effort from Ghost director Jerry Zucker, purports to tell the tale of King Arthur’s ill-fated marriage to Lady Guinevere — a young English noblewoman who fell madly in love with the aging king’s most trusted knight, the virile, reckless Lancelot. The film makes hash of the…
Sometimes small movies are just that. Not artsy. Not gritty. Not cutting-edge. Not chancy. Not distinctive. Not great. Not terrible. Just small. The Crude Oasis is small by design. Small in scope, small in budget, small in emotional impact. Writer-director-producer Alex Graves apparently figured he’d avert risk by keeping everything…
“Astonishing.” “Haunting.” “Riveting.” “Darkly funny.” “Remarkable.” Those are some of the words critics at other newspapers around the country have been using to describe the extraordinary documentary Crumb, director Terry Zwigoff’s painfully candid portrait of his friend, legendary underground cartoonist and world-class misanthrope Robert (better known as “R.”) Crumb. To…
Last week I fretted that a nice, small film such as A Pure Formality would get lost in the stampede of ticket buyers in the throes of Batfever. I was half-right. Over the weekend of June 23-25, A Pure Formality registered as a mere blip on the winged rodent’s radar…
Amazing, really, the similarities between the brooding superhero of Batman Forever and the Priscilla-meets-Woodstock inhabitants of the documentary Wigstock: The Movie. Start with the obvious parallel: Batman patrols the mean streets of Gotham City in a tight batsuit that exaggerates his padded muscles; Wigstock’s drag queens strut their stuff in…
Well, Batman did it again. Swooped down just in time to save the day. An aura of resignation had started to permeate the superhero’s stomping grounds. (Gotham City? Get real. We’re talkin’ Hollywood, babe.) Just as surely as he dispatched nefarious supervillains Two-Face and the Riddler, the Caped Crusader laid…
What summer movie season would be complete without at least one film based on a Michael Crichton novel? Welcome to Congo, a shamelessly derivative jungle adventure that attempts to cross Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark with King Kong but ultimately feels more like a bad Tarzan movie…
The South Beach Film Festival presents a juried showcase for small independent films (made-in-the-U.S.A. offerings predominate) that would not otherwise see the light of a projector in South Florida. Last year’s inaugural SoBe Fest included two outstanding features — Spare Me and The Making of “…And God Spoke” — and…
A handsome man in a snappy gray suit lies crumpled A unconscious? dead? A on a cobblestone street. A mysterious woman in black carrying a bright red purse to match her flaming crimson lipstick rounds the corner and cautiously approaches the body. She jostles the man with her foot. He…
I know a lot of women who proclaim loudly and often that men are dogs, but this is the first time I can recall seeing a film that takes the accusation literally. The main character in Carlo Carlei’s Fluke is a family man who dies in a car crash as…
