Eddie Murphy’s metamorphosis from foulmouthed ghetto comic into suave leading man is now almost complete, but so far it’s been about as successful as Woody Allen’s bumbling reincarnation as a lox-and-bagel Cary Grant. Because at least when Murphy was talking dirty and raising feminist hackles, he brought some hyperkinetic energy…
Set in a hazy, non-specific, post-apocalyptic future, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s black-hearted satirical comedy from France, Delicatessen, makes no attempt to conceal its sources of inspiration, pictorial and thematic: A predominant one is Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (which, of course, drew from wide literary sources such as Orwell’s 1984 and…
In my Spanish-English dictionary, the following words are translated in sequence: machacar (or machucar): to pound, to crush machete: heavy knife macho: male animal, male part, manly Sometimes, in learning a language, one can glean meaning from other words with similar root sounds. The connection seems to hold true in…
One False Move is a knuckleheaded title for a diminutive detective thriller — particularly as, both in its plot and the filmmaking in general, there are about as many false moves as barbecued ribs at a wild hog jamboree. Directed by former actor Carl Franklin and written by another actor,…
When reviewing a mixed bag of theatrical offerings such as the Seventh International Hispanic Theatre Festival, a Spanish-speaking Anglo reviewer (such as yours truly) could easily fall into the trap of generalizations. Latin theater reflects these beliefs, portrays this, says that in certain typical ways, et cetera. But such flat…
A work of mesmerizing lyrical power and profoundly human dimension, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust celebrates the bond of women, the richness of culture and tradition, and the mystery of nature with bracing, impressive authority. Unlike so many of our contemporary media products passed along the popular-culture conveyer belt,…
“An opera – a gothic, Teutonic, thickly textured hybrid of various theatrical and cinematic conventions. To call this film Wagnerian would be understating the case, because even the Ring has its light and shade…[it] recalls the elliptical and symbolic world of Strauss-Hoffmannsthal’s Die Frau ohne Schatten, with its somber metaphysical…
After viewing the current New Theatre production of George Bernard Shaw’s Bonaparte: Man of Destiny, I was instantly reminded of a recent dinner conversation with a colleague on this paper. He commented that regrettably, there remain few good Shavian actors. I agreed, but added that Shaw would prove a challenge…
As Goldie Hawn traipses through it early in Housesitter, the fictional New England town of Dobbs Mill (Concord and Cohasset, Massachusetts) is a patch of retro-colonialist Americana: star-spangled flags hang over modestly ornamented homes, the wood-panel architecture recalls the idealistic haze of Norman Rockwell’s illustrations for the Saturday Evening Post,…
Dear Pia, Here I sit, all breathless and giddy (as you were on-stage), almost as short and adorable, wondering how I can praise your immense theatrical gifts enough in one scant review. You bring to mind an interview, years ago, with a big-lipped British rock star who rejected my idea…
The Hollywood office of the CIA has pulled off its slickest trick in years. When last we saw him, singlehandedly combating the Evil Empire in The Hunt for Red October, the agency’s ace analyst, Jack Ryan, looked remarkably like the heartthrob actor Alec Baldwin. His new mission for the Langley-based…
Never having put much stock in the concept of acquired tastes, the films of Derek Jarman, for all their incidental beauties, continue to leave a bad impression on me: too much flash, too little insight is the short of it. Jarman belongs to a generation of British filmmakers who came…
“I don’t see how that time could turn into this time,” agonizes an ex-Royal Air Force officer, remembering the days when jobs seemed to rain from the heavens over his merry ol’ nation and nice girls dared not drink in pubs. Songs of romance and loverly dreams hypnotized comely couples…
Whoopi here, Whoopi there, Whoopi everywhere. Like a coral-bound moray eel furiously biting off more than it can chew, the ubiquitous Goldberg has been, in the main, an eyesore since she blazed on Broadway in her 1984 subcultural solo act. In one comedy spectacle after another – Jumpin’ Jack Flash,…
From stage left of the paint-splattered canvas set – designed to evoke faded brain cells – music begins. Themes from glaring examples of lowdown popular trash, such as snippets of the McDonald’s song about deserving a break today and the twice-incarnated Addams Family whistle, waft ominously through the air. Like…
Every moviegoing generation must contend with the fact that great directors don’t come in bunches, though, as P.T. Barnum observed long ago, suckers do. And it’s to these poor, born-every-minute souls that Slacker, a subcultural tribute to vagrancy by first-time filmmaker Richard Linklater, is unwittingly dedicated. The film is populated…
Don’t be misled by her sex: She’s big. She’s mean. She’s bald. In a world filled with scampering rodents calling themselves macho, she stands firmer and taller than a forest oak tree. In the solitude and vastness of outer space, she fears no evil. No challenge is too great. No…
There are doubtless many people who will see The Waterdance and deem it courageous, dignified, powerful even, for its well-intentioned compassion toward the disabled. I beg the forbearance of those whose lives have been afflicted with disability, and beg to differ with those whose contention it is that any movie…
Now must we brace ourselves for the start of the silly season. Richard Donner’s undigestably dreadful Lethal Weapon 3 opened this past Friday, and the box-office blitzkrieg continues this Friday with the return of Sigourney Weaver’s parasite-pulverizing space mama, Ripley, in Alien 3, Encino Man (another SoCal comedy), and finally…
Lately, there’s been a lot of tongue-clucking and finger-pointing at Brian C. Smith’s Off Broadway Theatre. The artistic director stands accused of pandering to a predominantly Jewish audience in the (often futile) attempt to make a profit producing live theater. And the critics who make these accusations certainly offer enough…
And now for the other film nominated for an Academy Award for 1991’s “Best Foreign Language Film,” the one that eventually beat Raise the Red Lantern for the Oscar: from Italy, Gabriele Salvatores’s Mediterraneo. It’s not by any means a bad film, nor, I hasten to add, is it especially…
When it comes to heaping praise on foreign films, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has not been, traditionally speaking, a very good judge of quality – artistic, scientific, or other. Any audience member with a journeyman knowledge of the movies can casually bet his house that, of…
