Many actors–hell, maybe even all actors–can easily outdistance Christian Slater for on-screen magnetism. He’s gotten away with that bargain-basement Nicholson ripoff since Heathers, but he’s never been able to equal Nicholson’s evil energy–the devilish charm that makes Nicholson captivating in almost any part. When the story doesn’t demand of him…
“I’ll tell you something,” Bob Musgrave whispers while standing in Goff’s Hamburgers, a curiously highbrow dive off the Tollway. “Back in the ’70s, the owner, Harvey Goff, used to keep this side door to the restaurant open, and every once in a while, he’d shoot a .38 slug into a…
Here we are again. It’s time for the 1996 Drive-In Academy Award nominees. I know you’re thrilled. The coveted Hubbie will be awarded in early April, and once again there are no duplications between the Hubbies and those other Academy Awards that they give out at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion…
Anthony has spent the last few weeks in a mental hospital. Dignan, Anthony’s best friend, wants to get him out, and has planned an elaborate escape: Anthony ties his bed sheets together, shimmies out the window to his pal waiting below, and together they make a daring, daylight break for…
Every actor wants to be a drunk, and every actress wants to be a hooker. I don’t know why exactly, but I know you can take the straightest white-bread suburban nerd out of an acting class and say, “Hey, how would you like to play a crack-addicted serial killer?” and…
When the new Ridley Scott film, White Squall, really gets rolling, it lives up to the energetic image of its title. The sea rages on like some great, angry ogre of wind and water as a schooner–a floating Outward Bound high school called the Albatross–is mercilessly batted about by a…
“Oscar-caliber” is the kind of backhanded cliche that film critics dole out at year’s end like gruel at a soup kitchen. (Critics hope to guilt Academy voters into seeing things their way or suffering the consequences–whatever those might be.) The plaudit, so overused to begin with, is faint praise at…
If Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino aren’t careful, they’ll risk overstaying their critical welcome even before they’ve had a chance to get really cozy. Both directors’ careers have followed arcs that quickly intersected: Each directed independent, critically lauded feature debuts (Rodriguez, his $8,000 miracle El Mariachi; Tarantino, the festival-circuit hit…
Ever since Queen of Venus, there’s been something about outer-space women wearing pointy hardware on their chests that just brings out the appreciation of cinema in its purest form. But in Caged Heat 3000, the finest futuristic women-in-cages exploitation movie ever made in Tijuana, Cassandra Leigh does more than just…
The surprisingly strong, sensitively handled feminist themes that run through the films of Chinese director Zhang Yimou have earned him praise around the world and vilification at home. In Ju Dou, a Double Indemnity-style drama set during the 1920s, he told the story of a peasant girl who dared to…
There are many ways to get nookie at a drive-in, and some of them are legal. But the best way to execute the art of autoerotic suggestion is to pay good money for a flick that has proven to be so irresistible to women that sometimes just the title alone…
There is a moment in the controversial new film, Georgia, which will pretty much decide what you think of the movie and its star, the ever courageous, enigmatic Jennifer Jason Leigh. Actually, there are nine of them. Legendary “actor’s director” Ulu Grosbard (The Subject Was Roses, Straight Time) lets the…
When critics talk about the great actors of American cinema, their opinions are often based on not upsetting the critical status quo–De Niro is a chameleon, Pacino a sizzling stick of dynamite, yadda yadda yadda. Forget what you’ve been told–compared to Sean Penn, De Niro is an anemic bore who’s…
For a few minutes at the beginning of Mr. Holland’s Opus, it might occur to you that if George Bailey, the Joblike hero played by Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life, were a teacher rather than an S&L owner, this film might have been moot. Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss)…
Am I the only person on the planet who’s watched all four Body Chemistry movies, including the one where Morton Downey Jr. has sex while making animal noises? Naw, let’s assume there’s two of us–me, and a paraplegic channel surfer in Boise. You guys can call him if any of…
Jimmy Fowler In alphabetical order: Chicken Hawk. One of the much-lamented Major Theatre’s last screenings was this controversial documentary about NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association. A must-see for anyone who believes he or she understands the boundaries of contemporary American morality. Dead Man Walking. Released selectively in…
I enjoy movies. You might be surprised how often I have to prove the truth of that simple declarative statement. “Critics are too…critical,” people often gripe. “We go to the movies for escapism, not for art. You never like anything.” Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Oh, most…
If you’re watchin’ a movie and you see a guy droolin’ over a porno magazine, you already know the guy’s complete character description, right? He’s a serial killer who hates beautiful women. Or if you see a guy hangin’ out at a topless bar in a movie, he’s automatically a…
Alan Paton’s classic 1948 novel Cry, The Beloved Country managed to be both political and literary in a century of world literature that often tried to achieve greatness through its politics alone. The French had their existentialists, the Germans their realists, but South Africa had scarcely registered as more than…
In an age when the British Royal Family is more of a sick joke than it is a necessary monarchical body, it would seem to follow that many of Shakespeare’s regal tragedies (Henry IV, Richard II, etc.) become noteworthy for their historical significance even as they lose their obvious relevance…
It’s comforting to think of leadership as an innate ability among certain men and women, a talent much like any other, such as playing the harpsichord or doing long division in your head. “A born leader,” you often hear, as if no training were involved to demonstrate proficiency at it…
There is a scene from the long-awaited film version of Waiting to Exhale, tenderly crafted by director Forest Whitaker, that will take your breath away. Sitting in a hotel bar after being trounced by her soon-to-be ex-husband in preliminary divorce proceedings, Bernadine (Angela Bassett) is captivated by a man’s love–for…
