It happens every spring with numbing predictability. The crush of Christmas blockbusters and Oscar contenders peters out sometime in mid-January, and with one or two exceptions the pickings A at least in terms of first-run domestic theatrical releases A remain slim until the advance guard of the big summer films…
Gombo, the ingenuous hero of Close to Eden, wields a mean urga. The preferred tool of the Mongolian rancher, the gadget resembles a long fishing rod with a noose at the end of it and is one handy piece of equipment for a guy trying to scratch out a living…
In the annals of American cinema, has there ever been an actor whose first name so accurately critiqued his performances as Woody Harrelson? In Doc Hollywood he was Woody the lovestruck hick; in White Men Can’t Jump he was Woody the street-hustling ballplayer; Indecent Proposal offers us Woody the architect…
The kitchen and the bedroom. In 1910 Mexico, a woman’s choices, bound by tradition and the macho ethic, were severely limited. Like Water for Chocolate, the film adapted by Laura Esquivel and her director/producer husband, Alfonso Arau, from Ms. Esquivel’s internationally best-selling novel, is the raunchy, romantic, dreamlike rendering of…
As a rule, the last place a movie critic wants to view a film is at a promotional screening. Such events, if successful, are usually loud and crowded, two factors that are not exactly conducive to thoughtful analysis of the motion picture in question. The WMXJ-FM (102.7)/Community Newspapers-sponsored showing of…
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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.”…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
