Only three American actresses have proven to Hollywood they can attract large audiences by name recognition alone — Demi Moore, Meg Ryan, and Julia Roberts. Moore is by far the worst of the three, a relentless publicity machine whose presence in wretched box-office triumphs such as Disclosure proves that moviegoers…
As everyone knows by now, Waterworld is the most expensive movie ever made. Fierce Pacific thunderstorms, logistical nightmares, a nasty feud between director and star, the star’s insistence that scenes be re-shot because he didn’t like the way his hair looked — such were the problems that ran the tab…
If American adults are still capable of being shocked by the behavior of teenagers, then Larry Clark’s Kids is the movie that will shock them. The New York City teens we meet here for one harrowing 24-hour period talk dirty. They pursue sex and drugs with casual single-mindedness. They lie…
With a pitch-perfect performance from precocious eighteen-year-old music video starlet Alicia Silverstone and a sharp, sassy, knowing script from writer-director Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Clueless steps right to the head of the class of high school comedies, surpassing even Heckerling’s own previous foray into that perilous territory…
Who would argue against Luis Bu*uel’s deserving a place in the filmmaking pantheon? Not only have many of his works become roundly considered classics, but the man produced great art for nearly half a century. Bunuel displayed a talent for using vivid imagery to jolt audiences from the first scene…
Man, we’ve seen some scary faces staring out at us from magazine covers in the past two weeks. First Newsweek ran that infamous sketch of the Unabomber. Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the uncanny resemblance to Weird Al Yankovic? Has the FBI explored the correlation between…
A ten-year-old boy named Omri gets an antique cupboard for his birthday. The cupboard looks commonplace but Omri soon discovers it has magical powers. Put a toy figurine inside, close the door, turn the key, and presto! When you unlock the cupboard, a tiny living, breathing, flesh-and-blood creature stands in…
First Knight, a new effort from Ghost director Jerry Zucker, purports to tell the tale of King Arthur’s ill-fated marriage to Lady Guinevere — a young English noblewoman who fell madly in love with the aging king’s most trusted knight, the virile, reckless Lancelot. The film makes hash of the…
Sometimes small movies are just that. Not artsy. Not gritty. Not cutting-edge. Not chancy. Not distinctive. Not great. Not terrible. Just small. The Crude Oasis is small by design. Small in scope, small in budget, small in emotional impact. Writer-director-producer Alex Graves apparently figured he’d avert risk by keeping everything…
“Astonishing.” “Haunting.” “Riveting.” “Darkly funny.” “Remarkable.” Those are some of the words critics at other newspapers around the country have been using to describe the extraordinary documentary Crumb, director Terry Zwigoff’s painfully candid portrait of his friend, legendary underground cartoonist and world-class misanthrope Robert (better known as “R.”) Crumb. To…
Last week I fretted that a nice, small film such as A Pure Formality would get lost in the stampede of ticket buyers in the throes of Batfever. I was half-right. Over the weekend of June 23-25, A Pure Formality registered as a mere blip on the winged rodent’s radar…
Amazing, really, the similarities between the brooding superhero of Batman Forever and the Priscilla-meets-Woodstock inhabitants of the documentary Wigstock: The Movie. Start with the obvious parallel: Batman patrols the mean streets of Gotham City in a tight batsuit that exaggerates his padded muscles; Wigstock’s drag queens strut their stuff in…
Well, Batman did it again. Swooped down just in time to save the day. An aura of resignation had started to permeate the superhero’s stomping grounds. (Gotham City? Get real. We’re talkin’ Hollywood, babe.) Just as surely as he dispatched nefarious supervillains Two-Face and the Riddler, the Caped Crusader laid…
What summer movie season would be complete without at least one film based on a Michael Crichton novel? Welcome to Congo, a shamelessly derivative jungle adventure that attempts to cross Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark with King Kong but ultimately feels more like a bad Tarzan movie…
The South Beach Film Festival presents a juried showcase for small independent films (made-in-the-U.S.A. offerings predominate) that would not otherwise see the light of a projector in South Florida. Last year’s inaugural SoBe Fest included two outstanding features — Spare Me and The Making of “…And God Spoke” — and…
A handsome man in a snappy gray suit lies crumpled A unconscious? dead? A on a cobblestone street. A mysterious woman in black carrying a bright red purse to match her flaming crimson lipstick rounds the corner and cautiously approaches the body. She jostles the man with her foot. He…
I know a lot of women who proclaim loudly and often that men are dogs, but this is the first time I can recall seeing a film that takes the accusation literally. The main character in Carlo Carlei’s Fluke is a family man who dies in a car crash as…
I’m writing a screenplay. The first and second acts are finished, but I’m not sure how to end it yet. Help me out. FADE IN INTERIOR — MOVIE PRODUCER’S OFFICE — DAY A fat, cigar-chomping MOVIE PRODUCER sits behind an opulent desk. He rises to greet MEL GIBSON as the…
The topic of political asylum has generated much heated debate in recent weeks. When should you grant it? When should you say no? Politicians will ultimately decide the issue when, if you ask me, the job would be better left to experienced professionals. I’m thinking, of course, of those masters…
“We’ll always have Paris.” Those immortal words, uttered by Humphrey Bogart to Ingrid Bergman in the suspense-filled final moments of Casablanca, endure to this day as one of the most unabashedly romantic farewells of all time. Director Billy Crystal’s Forget Paris, as its title — a riff on the classic…
It’s hard to imagine Pulp Fiction without the key performances of Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson. Yet the two actors never actually played a scene together (although their respective characters briefly crossed paths). Willis and Jackson more than make up for that oversight in the mildly disappointing actioner Die…
Nothing in writer-director Christopher Monger’s filmography provides a clue that he was capable of spinning a yarn as enchanting as The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill but Came Down a Mountain. Prior to this release, the high point of Monger’s career was 1990’s diffuse comedy Waiting for the Light,…
