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…
Playwrights often complain bitterly about the subjectivity of critics. A.R. Gurney, author of such classics as The Dining Room, has given several lectures around the country in which he rants about the fact that everyone, including professional viewers, comes to the theater with certain preconceptions that make it impossible for…
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:…
‘Tis the season to be jolly, go shopping, trim the tree, and light the candles. And to be falsely pious. Right this moment it’s ultrachic to embrace that Christmas and Chanukah spirit, even if it doesn’t extend as far as helping a homeless man on the street, or committing a…
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…
While I am genuinely thrilled by the growth in the number of small theater companies and theatrical experiments cropping up in the local scene over the past two years, I am also aware of certain demons that nascent groups may encounter no matter how hard they try to avoid them…
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…
It may sound surprising to some, but I have long suspected that David Mamet may one day be regarded as highly as Shakespeare is today: as a playwright of such skill, breadth, and intellect that every element of his work — from dialogue to plot to premise to characterization –…
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…
There’s a certain time in every would-be playwright’s life when he or she feels compelled to imitate the so-called “absurdist” authors such as Pinter, Beckett, or Ionesco. In many cases, because the tyros don’t understand that these grand masters do not randomly choose their symbolic dialogue and situations, the novices…
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…
When I first learned of David Cronenberg’s plans to film the play M. Butterfly, I declared that the project was doomed to disaster. Now that the movie is out, people mention my prediction and commend its accuracy. How did I know? Mainly because certain plays do not translate into the…
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…
Time is alarmingly relative. Anyone who is rapidly aging knows the truth of time’s subjective effects. When you’re ten or eleven, it seems as though your next birthday will never arrive. However, when you pass 40, years fly by with such alarming speed you suffer from emotional whiplash. What, 1994…
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…
As John Lennon and Paul McCartney once wrote: “I should’ve known better.” Rock and roll has always worked best as anthems of youthful power and rebellion, so something had to be rotten in the state of Broadway when the majority of the critics and theater audiences so readily accepted 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…
