Email Author Andy Klein

1998 Stories by Andy Klein

• A slightly dirty dozen

  published December 31, 1998

  The past year has been filled with good films...interesting films...worthwhile films. In fact there were many that I think of as being wonderful... More >>

• Crossed wires

  published December 17, 1998

  Old-fashioned romantic comedies are an endangered species, and in these generally unromantic days it's always a pleasant surprise to find a decent... More >>

• House of mirrors

  published December 3, 1998

  According to the sparse information available in standard reference books, Chilean expatriate director Raśl Ruiz, still only in his late 50s, ha... More >>

• Starr chamber

  published November 19, 1998

  Here we go again. Enemy of the State is Fascism in America 1998, Chapter Four...or Five...or whatever we're up to. It readily invites comparison... More >>

• Who cares what you did last summer?

  published November 12, 1998

  First, a disclaimer: Having missed last year's I Know What You Did Last Summer, I deliberately put off seeing it until after viewing its sequel, I... More >>

• Transition

  published November 12, 1998

  Postwar Italy's most heralded contribution to world cinema may have been neorealism, but its most distinctive and beloved filmmaker was Federico... More >>

• Don't know much about history

  published November 12, 1998

  American History X, a hard-edged look at American neo-Nazis, arrives in theaters with a lot of behind-the-scenes baggage: First-time director Tony... More >>

• Final jeopardy

  published November 5, 1998

  Fascism is in the air...well, at least it's on movie screens. In a two-week stretch we've seen old Nazis (Life Is Beautiful), neo-Nazis (American... More >>

• Room without a view

  published October 29, 1998

  It must be math season in the film world. Recently, Darren Aronofsky's Pi hit Dallas' screens, and now we get Vincenzo Natali's Cube. The... More >>

• Two if by sea!

  published October 1, 1998

  As a professional lamenter of how "they just don't make 'em like they used to," I am always thrilled on those rare occasions when someone even... More >>

• Camera-ready, willing,and able

  published September 24, 1998

  Back in the early '70s, when John Waters made his first splash with such low-budget gross-outs as Pink Flamingos and Multiple Maniacs, who would... More >>

• Chan's still the man

  published September 17, 1998

  Jackie Chan's American fans--and I include myself among them--have suffered through a nervous 1998 so far. The momentum the star earned with the... More >>

• Blood sucker

  published August 20, 1998

  After a summer filled with third-rate pulp, Blade arrives with a pedigree that suggests first-rate pulp: characters and situations from Marvel... More >>

• Mad Max

  published August 13, 1998

  Darren Aronofsky's debut feature, Pi, won the Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance this year, and it's easy to imagine why: Whatever its... More >>

• Second time as farce

  published July 30, 1998

  Thanks to the hungry maw of cable TV, nearly every movie production is now accompanied by a documentary crew, assigned with getting enough footage... More >>

• Of human feelings

  published July 2, 1998

  When Quentin Tarantino started up his boutique releasing company, Rolling Thunder, last year, his first release was, unsurprisingly, a Hong Kong... More >>

• Tone deaf

  published June 25, 1998

  There will always be a Britain; and that means there will always be movies about the pluck and sacrifice, during World War II, of the little... More >>

• The Why? movie

  published June 18, 1998

  The X-Files is a movie that answers questions...No, wait a minute. The X-Files is a movie that asks questions...Hmmm. OK. The X-Files is a movie... More >>

• Pretty vacant

  published May 28, 1998

  Only a week after lizards came crawling across the nation's screens in both Godzilla and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hope Floats comes... More >>

• Lame horse

  published May 14, 1998

  The Horse Whisperer, the latest film from Robert Redford--and the first of his directorial efforts in which he also stars--could almost serve as a... More >>

• Old school

  published May 7, 1998

  One of the few seemingly spontaneous bursts of energy at this year's Oscar ceremony was provided by motor-mouthing Dutch director Mike van Diem,... More >>

• Colonialism and its discontents

  published April 30, 1998

  Chinese Box arrives with one of the weirdest hybrid pedigrees in living memory. The writing credits include--in addition to the film's director,... More >>

• Painfully bleak

  published April 23, 1998

  Hong Kong director Kirk Wong (credited here as Che-Kirk Wong) is the latest defector from the troubled H.K. film industry. Until now, he has been... More >>

• Acrobatic action

  published March 19, 1998

  The American reissues of Jackie Chan films have met with declining box-office success since Chan burst onto the scene in 1996 with Rumble in the... More >>

• Thanks for the memories

  published February 26, 1998

  The science-fiction works of the late, great Philip K. Dick haven't been served particularly well on screen. The most recent adaptation,... More >>