Warning lights ought to flash in every filmgoer’s head any time the words “based on a true story” or “adapted from a play” are used to promote a motion picture. A true story is one thing, but based on a true story — that’s like the difference between 100 percent…
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to avoid giving away the endings of films in my reviews. But sometimes a movie is so predictable I can’t help myself. I feel that old temptation and I end up writing something to the effect of: “You know from the moment you…
I can’t really say I knew Bill Cosford. I met him a few times at previews. He liked popcorn. He was usually the first one out of the theater when a screening was over, no doubt a pre-emptive maneuver designed to avoid becoming entangled in endless “So, whadjathink?” queries from…
Everyone has heard that shopworn saying, “The third time’s a charm.” But what if you’re successful the first two times you try something? Does that mean you’ll blow it the third time around? If your name is Oliver Stone and you’ve carted away Best Director Oscars for Platoon and Born…
Manifest Destiny. What a clever two-word rationalization for the indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of indigenous peoples and the bald-faced theft of their land. On September 5, 1886, Chiricahua Apache warlord Goyahkla, better known as Geronimo (a moniker bestowed upon him by the 3000 or so Mexican soldiers whose…
Have you ever been to a party where someone you don’t like tells a long-winded story about some fabulous adventure they had and you know it’s a good yarn but you don’t enjoy it because you can’t get around the fact that the storyteller is a jerk? Welcome to Six…
One of my colleagues here at New Times who lived in Spain has asked me not to compare Bigas Luna, director of the anarchic sexual farce Jam centsn Jam centsn (one of the well-received offerings at this year’s Miami Film Festival), with Pedro Almod centsvar, Luna’s better-known contemporary. I feel…
Everybody’s a damn movie critic these days. When the president of the United States calls a time-out in the middle of his GATT announcement to give Schindler’s List two thumbs up — way up — you know the field has become saturated. What’s next — Al Gore urging every American…
The one thing it is not is brief. The bird it most resembles is not a pelican but a turkey. And the answer to the question all of America has been waiting to hear is…no, Julia Roberts does not contract jungle fever with Denzel Washington. She gives him a peck…
Hey, gang — let’s put on a show! Ever since Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney made careers out of that story line in the late Thirties, it’s been the most overused (and frequently the lamest) premise in television and motion picture history. It’s like an unwritten law of TV sitcoms:…
Two guys fightin’ over a dame. If it ain’t the oldest plot on the books, it’s one of them. The guy-girl-guy triangle has been a dramatist’s staple since Lancelot and King Arthur’s old lady Guinevere bumped uglies in the woods outside Camelot. I’m-no-good-at-being-noble Bogart beat out Paul Henreid for Ingrid…
Hollywood is pretty evenly divided over the question of whether Tom Hanks’s portrayal of a gay attorney with AIDS in the upcoming film Philadelphia will mark the dawn of a new era of tolerance in mainstream cinema or the end of Hanks’s bankability. Will his on-screen kiss with Antonio Banderas…
Robin Williams’s movies tend to fall into one of two categories: the comedian Robin and oh-so-earnest Robin. In the first mode, the peripatetic comedian essentially just adapts his stand-up routine to the cinematic role at hand so that what you get on-screen is a variation of Robin Williams in concert…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Clint Eastwood as an aging lawman who relies on gut instinct in leading a manhunt for a killer who is not only smarter than Eastwood, but also more complex and interesting. Clint is paired with a feisty female with whom he clashes…
All you really need to know about Disney’s The Three Musketeers you can learn from the movie’s theme song, “All for Love.” Like the film, the tune merges big-name performers with half-hearted renditions of lackluster writing. Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart, and Sting all lend their vocals to the song penned…
Bob gets sick and then dies. That’s the entire plot of My Life reduced to its essential elements. Director-screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (the man who wrote Ghost) pads it with some forced introspection and manipulative hand-wringing. Robert and Gail Jones are expecting their first child when they discover that Robert…
Remember these movie titles: Bobby Deerfield, Cruising, Revolution. They are the answer to a trivia question that is bound to arise over and over after the theatrical release of Carlito’s Way. To wit: “Is Al Pacino capable of making a bad movie?” Yes he is, but this isn’t one of…
The Jamaican bobsled team’s quest at the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary captured the world’s imagination for a combination of reasons. A big part of the appeal was the sheer improbability of four ragtag guys from a tropical island that hasn’t seen a snowflake in a millennium competing in a…
Damn, this is embarrassing. As much as I hate to admit it, this is the third week in a row I’ve actually liked a movie I have to review. And not just some elitist French film where everybody sits around talking about their affairs and listening to classical music and…
Let’s not mince words. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is the most visionary, creepy, macabre, funny, peculiar stop-motion holiday-fable/ghost-story/romantic-comedy/musical ever. Of course, it may well be the only creepy, macabre, funny, peculiar stop-motion holiday-fable/ghost-story/romantic-comedy/musical, but that’s part of its appeal. It is, quite simply, like nothing you’ve ever seen…
Looks like it’s official: Repression is this year’s Big Theme. The Age of Innocence, based on Edith Wharton’s novel, was great stuff if you’re into movies that revel in period detail, subtle wordplay, unconsummated passion, and meticulous manners. But that film’s leading man, torn between his affection for a proper…
Little Casey is late for school. As kids in a hurry are wont to do, he bolts into the street without looking, directly into the path of an oncoming car being driven by Doreen, a waitress at a local hash house. Doreen slams on the brakes — too late! Casey…
