The buzz on Heaven’s Prisoners, the screen adaptation of James Lee Burke’s novel, has been so miserable for such a long time that its release date has been changed more than Hillary Clinton’s hair style. (Not surprisingly, it’s been sitting on the shelf since roughly the Bush Administration.) I tend…
Today’s lesson is on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. No matter how many times I’ve talked about this flick before, you guys still expect me to take time out from serious drive-in reviewing to go rehash all the Saw trivia just because you missed it the first time. So now I’m…
In 1975, Ellen Burstyn–who’d won the Academy Award for best actress the previous year–caused a stir when she publicly decried the lack of good female roles in movies, and encouraged her sisters in cinema to boycott the Oscars by refusing to nominate, vote for, or participate in the actress and…
Although they happen almost 60 years apart, a pair of funerals climax writer-director Ken Loach’s mournful Land and Freedom. The film opens with the death of one of these individuals: An English gentleman in his ’80s is found slumped on his couch by paramedics. We discover as his granddaughter discovers,…
The scariest thing you’ll ever find in a flick is not a goo-faced, bug-eyed monster and it’s not Freddy Krueger or Jason or Leatherface and it’s not a bunch of skinheads with razor blades. The scariest thing you’ll find in a movie is the Psycho Hag. The Psycho Hag is…
Since his death in 1990, the late British author Roald Dahl has only strengthened his relationship with international cinema. Dahl, perhaps most famous in America as the husband who nursed Patricia Neal through crippling strokes and promptly left her, wrote about the world of adults with the same acrid wit…
Here’s news that could presage a disturbing trend at the movies: Two films opening in Dallas within days of each other both deal with nebbish murderers whose decisions to poison family members, friends, and enemies alike form the basis of comedy. But The Last Supper is merely a peculiarly unfunny…
Mardis Note: The 26th Annual USA Film Festival runs Thursday, April 18 through Thursday, April 25. All screenings are at the AMC Glen Lakes Theatre, 9450 North Central Expressway at Walnut Hill Lane. All tickets, available exclusively through Ticketmaster, are $6.50, except for opening-night tickets to The Grass Harp, which…
There is fact, and there is cinema. If the two happen to meet, you’d damned sure better guarantee the filmmaker understands the emotional essence of the story. That way, the documented events will be portrayed with an effective urgency. Stonewall purports to take the events of June 1969 and personalize…
Film history is strewn with the corpses of underappreciated artists and overappreciated craftsmen. This is not a point over which to become sanguine; rather, it is a simple fact of cinematic life, predictable as the tides. What is less predictable, however, is which directors will fall into which category–and when…
Before the USA Film Festival’s arrival last year–its Silver Anniversary–the pre-festival buzz was a mix of hype, anticipation, and dread. Its young, newly anointed artistic director, Alonso Duralde, had held the post for only four months, didn’t have a shred of experience, and was forced to start from scratch in…
This year, the USA Film Festival introduces a new series called “Cinema on Film” that peeks at the glistening guts of filmmaking as the medium turns 100. But unfortunately, ticket buyers can’t savor the two best documentaries in this series–profiles that scrape away the paunchy, narcissistic hide of two filmmakers…
Nightjohn, the new film by acclaimed director Charles Burnett, recounts the mythical journeys of an escaped slave named John (Carl Lumbly) who returns to bondage after having learned to read. With his intellect freed by literacy, he undertakes a mission–to liberate others from the bondage of ignorance. He envisions that…
The standard definition of “documentary” seems inadequate to describe Mark Rappaport’s intriguing new nonfiction film, From the Journals of Jean Seberg. It doesn’t subscribe to the usual documentary conventions, coming closer in style and structure to performance art. Although it features clips from Seberg’s films, it also has plenty of…
In Rebel Without a Cause, James Dean, when asked by an adult what he’s rebelling against, spits back, “Whaddaya got?” And with those words, Dean became a voice for his day’s youth culture, an aimless teen looking for some tangible image to which he could cling to justify the emotions…
There are certain names on a video box that just cry out: “Rent me! Rent me! Rent me!” I guess for some people it’s Mira “Thank You, Daddy” Sorvino, but for me there’s nothing like a good Brigitte Nielsen video. Will she have hair? What color will it be? Will…
When a Los Angeles publicist for a major Hollywood studio asks, “Which Kid do you want to interview?” the choice is tough. Two days apart, two different staffers in Paramount’s L.A. publicity office called with offers to chat with any of the five Kids in the Hall about the feature…
The original screen version of Jane Eyre, released in 1944–with Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles, both at the height of their powers–is one of the minor masterpieces of the studio system’s Golden Age. Like all the best Victorian pictures of the time (The Heiress, Gaslight, and others) the entire production…
Have you noticed how there’s been a backlash against the use of stunt breasts? Guys are deciding that they’re not that crazy about artificial breastskis anymore. There are only so many Silicone Sacs you can look at before you go: “You know what? I knew this girl who had breasts…
On an uncharacteristically chilly morning in March, writer-director David O. Russell looks every bit the brooding auteur: uncombed black hair stands up in patches all over his head; flinty brown eyes manage to penetrate and deflect every bold question. Russell doesn’t take his image seriously, but he’s earned it in…
Most domestic dramas fall into two types: The profound kind tends to be confrontational and even loud, where the true characters of the participants are forged in an intense furnace of conflict, and big emotions get played out for everyone to see. The gentle kind has conflict, too, but the…
First came topless dancing. Then came table dancing. (This doesn’t mean the tables dance, it means the girls dance on your table or at your table, even though sometimes the table is more attractive than the girl.) Then came couch dancing. And couch dancing begat lap dancing. I think the…
