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…
Manic-depression. One minute you’re irrepressible, irresponsible, and irresistible. The next minute you’re slipping into a pit of deep despair, depression, and despondency. If you’re like Mr. Jones, the lead character in the new film of the same name who suffers from the condition also known as bipolar affective disorder, there…
It’s an ironic title: There’s not much joy in The Joy Luck Club, and the characters’ luck is almost always bad. The Joy Luck club is not really a club at all, but a mahjong circle comprising four middle-age Chinese women living in San Francisco. The circle’s founder, Suyuan, has…
If Malice is a good example of Hollywood’s idea of suspense — tracking down a mysterious psychopath — Un coeur en hiver aspires to a higher order of thriller that the best art explores: unraveling the mysteries of the human heart. That is the puzzle presented by Stephane, a violin…
Malice, Harold Becker’s high-profile career gaffe, is one of the strangest films I’ve seen in a long time. Or maybe I should say two of the strangest films, because there’s so little connection between the first 45 minutes and the balance of the film that they should have been separate…
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. As a team they’ve been responsible for three of the finest movies of the past quarter-century: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull. Even their near-misses have made for compelling filmmaking; it’s hard to imagine a director-actor tandem alive that wouldn’t be proud to…
Seems like only yesterday the prevailing view was that the advent of pay-per-view movies, videotape rentals, and laser-disc technology would combine to spell doom for the nation’s movie theaters. The summer of 1993 proves just how little the pundits actually know. From the last week of May through the first…
There’s a lot of Travis Bickle in Clarence Worley, and there’s a lot of Taxi Driver in True Romance. Clarence and Travis are both lonely guys. Misfits. Taxi Driver’s Travis is an insomniac who frequents Times Square porno palaces late at night, in part because they’re the only movie theaters…
If the boys and girls of summer tend to get overlooked come Oscar time, the opposite is true of their fall and winter counterparts. In November and December Hollywood traditionally rolls out the heavy artillery, both to take advantage of holiday moviegoers and to ensure that the big star vehicles…
For those of you who only read the first sentence of a movie review to find out whether the critic liked a film or not: RUN DON’T WALK TO SEE SON OF THE PINK PANTHER, THE LAFF RIOT OF THE SUMMER! For the rest of you: stay away at all…
Derivative, contrived, and predictable — Tim Metcalfe’s screenplay for Kalifornia hits the big trifecta. How’s this for a far-fetched plot: Brian Kessler is a struggling writer whose girlfriend, Carrie, is a photographer. He received an advance to do a book on serial killers, but when the movie opens he’s already…
Diehard Patrick Swayze fan that I am, I counted down the minutes with bated breath until the opening of his latest masterpiece, Father Hood. I was not disappointed. Keep your DeNiros and Brandos, your Garcias and Washingtons. Give me Patrick Swayze in a film that can’t make up its mind…
They’re having a devil of a time up in tiny Castle Rock, Maine. Ever since the arrival of sinister old Leland Gaunt and his quaint little antique shop, the town’s been going to hell. Literally. At first Sheriff Pangborn, a former homicide detective from Pittsburgh who moved to Castle Rock…
“Fuck fuckin’ Hollywood, those queer dick-smokin’ motherfuckers,” snarls Billy, the hot-tempered, acid-tongued suburban brat-turned-mobster at the core of Amongst Friends. Every incendiary frame of 26-year-old Long Island native Rob Weiss’s stunning feature film debut echoes the sentiment. The independently-produced Amongst Friends came out of nowhere to galvanize audiences at this…
The bad guys have Jean-Claude Van Damme cornered in an abandoned warehouse packed with surreal floats from bygone Mardi Gras parades. He’s outnumbered twenty to one. They have motorcycles, automatic rifles, grenade launchers — you name it. All he’s got is an old pump shotgun. Blam! Make that nineteen to…
There’s a lot to like about Orlando, Sally Potter’s new film based on the 1928 novel of the same name by Virginia Woolf. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s hip, and it’s a visual feast (a feat made all the more remarkable by writer-director Potter’s paltry four-million-dollar budget). There’s also a…
