One in a Milan

Il Ladro di Bambini (Stolen Children) is a small film that packs a mean wallop. You don’t realize what a tour de force you’re watching until midway through, and then not because of a Crying Game-like plot twist or a whiff of Scent of a Woman-ly bombast. Rather, Bambini wins…

A Bilge Too Far

Thank goodness for small favors: the new Disney release, A Far Off Place, is not a Newsies-magnitude bomb. On the other hand, the best thing about the film (a loose adaption of two books by Laurens van der Post, A Story Like the Wind and A Far Off Place) is…

Straight Up, with a Twist

“It is not a dance; [it is] synthetic sex turned into a spectator sport,” asserts choreographer Jeffrey Holder. “If they turned off the music, they’d all be arrested,” adds phlegmatic comedian Bob Hope. The object of such moral outrage? A vulgar, animalistic dance known as the Twist. Canadian documentary filmmaker…

I Dot You, Babe

During the Seventeenth Century, aristocratic women often glued little dots of black taffeta to their faces or breasts to accentuate the whiteness of their skin. On the forehead such a mark was called a “majestique,” near the eye a “passionne,” and near the lip a “galante.” On the chin, it…

Stepin Retchit

The NAACP once accused controversial FBI director J. Edgar Hoover of being prejudiced. The cross-dressing pit bull’s characteristically sensitive response was that he was buddies with Amos (Freeman Gosden) and Andy (Charles Correll), white men who played embarrassing black stereotypes on a popular radio program. Needless to say, the NAACP…

Sleeping Dog

As a young actor, Robert De Niro learned a lot by studying, and occasionally emulating, Marlon Brando. Who would have guessed that De Niro would someday go so far as to mimic the Godfather’s penchant for taking the money and running? Chances are that Mad Dog and Glory wouldn’t have…

Meaner Streets

Harvey Keitel plays the profane, heavy-betting, dope-sucking, whoremongering police officer of the title. It is a role that affords this underrated actor the kind of exposure that has eluded him to date: full frontal nudity. In addition to the family jewels, we get to see Keitel masturbating (fully clothed) in…

Going for Baroque

Nearly a decade ago film critic Vincent Canby of the New York Times vilified the work of French director Alain Corneau, dismissing it as “lethargic, pretentious, overblown, neopoetic nonsense.” Since that review, no American distributor has been daring (or batty) enough to market another of Corneau’s movies in this country…

Lethal Lampoon

It’s about time Van Damme, Gibson, Stallone, and the rest of the macho fantasy boys got a good beating. It comes at the hands of Emilio Estevez and Samuel L. Jackson in the satirical Loaded Weapon 1. This goofy pair of police partners (Colt and Luger, of course — one…

Soft Focus

Extreme Close-Up was Paul N. Lazarus III’s first feature film, and the independent producer had delivered it on time and under budget. There was just one remaining hurdle — the rating. Lazarus had promised his backers the film would receive no worse than an R from the MPAA. This was…

Sham Fatale

When Fatal Attraction came out five years ago, a lot of critics noted the cleverness of its central reversal: making Michael Douglas, the picture’s straightlaced, family man hero, into a sort of masculine damsel in distress. Many of these same critics gleaned other intriguing subtexts from it: the war between…

Little Tramp Lives

How does a moviemaker reinvent the man who reinvented the movies? Richard Attenborough, brave soul, throws all his daring and affection into this daunting task, and a bit of foolishness, too. Attenborough’s ambitious biopic Chaplin will never be mistaken for Citizen Kane (or for Gandhi), but it’s no W.C. Fields…

Star Implosion

A few weeks ago, when I dismissed The Bodyguard and The Distinguished Gentleman as limp vehicles for “dwarf stars,” I received voice-mail messages from annoyed readers. They weren’t Mark David Chapmanesque, If-my-man-Kevin’s-in-it-then-it-must-be-mannah-from-Heaven-so-you-better-put-your-grubby-hands-behind-your-head-and-get-in-the-damn-Chevette-type people. They were just confused as to exactly what, in my book, constituted a worthwhile, quality “star vehicle.”…

One Union Under Mob

The ultimate plain-talker, Jimmy Hoffa was never known as an author of fine ironies. But one real beauty clings to him eighteen years after his disappearance: He remains a hero to a lot of the people he stole from. Director Danny DeVito, screenwriter David Mamet, and leading man Jack Nicholson…

Vermin on the Mount

Can evangelists be parodied? It’s doubtful. The most full-throated parody withers in the face of reality. When Alec Baldwin played the young Jimmy Swaggart, cousin and close friend of the young Jerry Lee Lewis, in Great Balls of Fire!, he was pallid. If I’d been the great, dynamic performer Swaggart,…

Redemption in Toyland

First off, the homage to Magritte so prominent in the ads for Barry Levinson’s gaudy, grandly entertaining live-action cartoon Toys — Robin Williams against a cloudy sky, wearing a red bowler hat with a window through which we see the same image repeating itself on a smaller and smaller scale…

It Isn’t Easy Being Mean

Ebenezer Scrooge has been learning the error of his ways for 150 years now, but The Muppet Christmas Carol may mark the first time that frogs, pigs, assorted vermin, and pop composer Paul Williams have gotten in on the redemption of the world’s most famous miser. Charles Dickens still dispenses…

Beyond Cruise Control

Whether he’s doing the bugaloo in his underwear, hanging around the pool hall with Paul Newman, or playing hero in airplanes and race cars, Tom Cruise remains Hollywood’s most insubstantial matinee idol — cute as a bug, light as a feather. That’s right: the Troy Donahue of his time. In…

Killer Instinct

Bill Friedkin and Bill Clinton may not have noticed, but the death penalty has been abolished by all Western democracies save one, by the modern countries of the Orient, and by the newly minted republics of the former Soviet Union. That leaves China, Iran, assorted Third World dictatorships, and the…

D.C. Comics

As soon as Frank Capra stops spinning in his grave, he may find a couple of laughs in Eddie Murphy’s election year farce, The Distinguished Gentleman. This noisy burlesque about political shenanigans owes so much to the Capra classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington that Marty Kaplan — screenwriter, executive…

Aladdin’s Limp

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…

Slapstick Wanna-Be

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…