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…
Although Hadleyburg, U.S.A. will have closed by the time you read this, ACME Acting Company’s mistakes in choosing this play warrant a postmortem — especially if South Florida venues seriously consider mounting new works as part of a steady theatrical menu. ACME’s artistic director Juan F. Cejas and many other…
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…
The saying is well-known: there are three sides to every story. His side, your side, and the truth. In the interest of fairness to the theatrical community and my readers, this column will address another side of that pesky little political hotbed — the $170-million Dade Performing Arts Center. To…
“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…
In the age of so few statesmen and so little great theater, I feel privileged to recommend New Theatre’s production of Mountain, a three-person, no-prop, no-set show. It builds its magic from flawless direction, excellent performances, and the ingeniously written tale of Supreme Court Justice and statesman extraordinaire William O…
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…
Welcome home, Woody. We’ve missed you. Manhattan Murder Mystery marks the return to form of the reigning king of one-liners, Woody Allen, and his reluctant queen, Diane Keaton. If the year’s ugliest custody battle accomplished nothing else, at least it scratched Mia Farrow from the lineup and reunited Annie and…
The singer who holds the vibrato on a note a bit too long. The dancer who takes three extra leaps. The piano player who tinkles around on one end of the keyboard until you’re anxious for him to move on. All represent examples of the show business phenomenon commonly called…
Hollywood’s fascination with plots involving benevolent ghosts who interfere in humans’ lives peaked with Topper in 1937. Since then it’s all been downhill. There have been exceptions — Heaven Can Wait and All of Me, for example — but ever since Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore slopped a lump of…
The cinematic version of the long-running (or maybe it just seemed that way) TV series The Fugitive has so little in common with its small-screen progenitor that truth in advertising laws would have seemed to mandate a name change. On the small screen, phlegmatic sourpuss David Janssen played the indefatigable…
Over the years, various local theater educators, artists, and yours truly have tried to determine why Miami regards the dramatic arts as a sort of leprous beggar: pathetic enough to throw a few coins its way but too unsightly and inconsequential to develop and build up with hard, hefty cash…
What is it about summer weather that propagates bad comedies like Nebraska corn? Anyone who has suffered through Life with Mikey, Son-in-law, Weekend at Bernie’s Part 2, Dennis the Menace, Hocus Pocus, and Another Stakeout knows what to expect if the sewer line beneath Biscayne Bay finally blows: wave after…
It’s easy to see why Michael Crichton, who wrote the novel and the first draft of the screenplay for Rising Sun, eventually became so upset with director Philip Kaufman’s vision that, depending on whose version of the story you believe, he either abandoned the project or was removed from it…
In an essay called “The Decline of Quality,” Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Tuchman writes of Michelangelo, who locked all potential helpers out of the Sistine Chapel while he spent four painful years on a scaffold carrying his famed work to completion. “That is what makes for quality — and its…
Lesbians have always gotten a pretty raw deal from Hollywood. They’ve generally been portrayed as either villains or seductresses, take your pick. Sure, you’ll find the occasional self-consciously sensitive film (usually made by a man) like John Sayles’s Lianna or Robert Towne’s Personal Best, which took themselves so seriously that…
An esteemed acting teacher named Richard Pinter, himself a student of the great coach Sanford Meisner, once succinctly explained to his students (including me) the difference between real life and life as properly written and acted for the stage. “If we wanted belly-scratching reality in drama,” he began, “we’d take…
When the Actors’ Playhouse invited me to review their production of playwright Jane Wagner’s dramatic triumph, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, I took several deep breaths and said a prayer for Donna Kimball, the local actress slated to star in the one-woman show. A skilled…
You don’t always get what you pay for. Weekend at Bernie’s II and Son-in-law are lame excuses for comedies, but seeing them will still lighten your wallet noticeably. Meanwhile Studentfilms, Inc., an offshoot of Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Film Center in New York City, has compiled a touring exhibition of eight…
Remember Vic Hitler, the narcoleptic comic in Hill Street Blues? Terry Kiser received an Emmy Award nomination for his portrayal of the comedian with the penchant for nodding off just when he had an audience rolling in the aisles. Like most of the quirky characters who populated Hill Street, Vic…
