The opening credits of Charlie’s Angels hint at a movie that never appears in the film’s expurgated 94 minutes; the tease is too soon rendered a disappointment. A Mission: Impossible-style prelude suggests a live-action cartoon as directed by Robert Altman; a camera stalks the aisles of a jumbo jet, capturing…
Gopher. Explosives. Gopher… explosives. Gopher! Explosives! There. Now you know exactly what was running through this critic’s mind during The Legend of Bagger Vance, the impeccably aimed new tranquilizer dart from Hollywood’s Mr. Honeydrip, Robert Redford. Of course, it’s really not fair to compare this meditative drama to that other…
If you need proof that The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name has turned into The Love That Won’t Shut Up, look no further than Outtakes Dallas 2000. The gay, lesbian, bisexual, and try-sexual (those enterprising folks who’ll try anything once) filmmakers whose features, documentaries, and shorts are scheduled…
Fascinating and engrossing on every conceivable level, this beautifully constructed feature-length documentary opens with the mournful sound of a train and images of toys and books that sit untouched in what was once a child’s bedroom. As the credit sequence ends, an elderly woman addresses an unseen interviewer, recalling the…
Canadian filmmaker Denys Arcand (Jesus of Montréal) isn’t the first guy to skewer what Tennessee Williams called “the bitch-goddess of success.” Or to lay bare the absurdity of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame. Or to otherwise annihilate celebrity worship. But in his observant, swiftly paced Stardom, Arcand does it…
The indefatigable Cora Cardona, artistic director of Teatro Dallas, has threatened on occasions when the itinerant troupe cannot find a stage to pitch a tent in a parking lot and perform there. OK, so it’s not a parking lot for the 2000 edition of their annual Dia de los Muertos…
In the summer of 1946, while on holiday along the French Riviera, Pablo Picasso wandered to the nearby village of Vallauris, a Provençal town where artists and craftsmen had been turning out pottery since at least Roman times. Picasso was 65 years young, and somewhat at loose ends. Though he…
“Moshing” wasn’t a word in 1969, let alone an outdated exercise, yet the Rolling Stones hosted a more violent show at Altamont Speedway 30 years ago than the the infamous Limp Bizkit performance at Woodstock ’99. The presence of the Hell’s Angels with lead-weighted pool cues acting as out-of-control security…
So, more people are watching network TV this season than last; either their cable’s gone out or they’re hypnotized by the sheer awfulness of the new season, unable to turn away from that grisly Geena Davis-Bette Midler-Michael Richards pileup out on the interstate. As it turns out, the best new…
Standing on a lacquered wooden bench near a corner in the Cowboys locker room, he held court after a convincing win, playing lord of the manor as reporters shoved microphones and cameras in his face. It’s a character that fits him, the king–the man who carries a small, leather-covered ball…
Before others could reject him, Michael Chabon had convinced himself no one wanted to read an epic novel about comic-book creators, mythical Jewish monsters called golems, New York in the 1930s, daring escapes from Lithuania, Nazis, and the Empire State Building’s elevator system. He wanted to write the book–desperately, one…
Although it must have been a no-brainer to make a sequel to The Blair Witch Project, it was hard to imagine an intelligent follow-up to a film that culminated in the apparent death of all the principals. Romeo and Juliet 2, anyone? Hamlet Returns? But given the inevitability of Book…
Any moviemaker who ventures into the sewers of New York City corruption will find Sidney Lumet’s wet footprints. In films such as The Pawnbroker, Serpico, and Q&A, this streetwise director has explored, among other things, individual morality in the face of big-city vice, and individual transcendence of ethnic conflict. Other…
The stark simplicity of A Time for Drunken Horses, one of the few films that have slipped out of post-revolutionary Iran to the West, does nothing to obscure its emotional power or the complexity of the geopolitical issues underlying it. Filmed on location in wintry Kurdistan, it is the heartbreaking…
Early in Spanish director Carlos Saura’s stunning new film, the 82-year-old protagonist, the great 19th-century painter Francisco de Goya, awakens from a disturbing dream and rises to see an apparition of his lost love, the Duchess of Alba. Following her down a surrealistically white hallway, he suddenly finds himself outdoors…
School’s OutGoodbye, farewell, adiós, Freaks and Geeks; we shall lament your departure no more and content ourselves instead with Tuesday-night reruns on the Fox Family Channel, where the occasional unaired episode still pops up like a Christmas present on December 26. But I will forever lament the demise of the…
Italian-Americans might be glad to note that Two Family House, which focuses on the Italian community on Staten Island, features not a single gangster, gun, or ring to be kissed. They might be even happier if the film had also chosen not to depict them as fat, pasta-eating, quick-tempered racists…
British playwright Shelagh Stephenson worked extensively creating monologues for radio and television broadcasts on the BBC until one of her pieces–the harrowing Find Kinds of Silence, about a sadistic husband and father whose daughters murder him after a lifetime of abuse–earned so much acclaim, folks made the connection that language…
I thoroughly enjoyed Pegasus’ Southwest premiere of Sound-Biting, not for original thoughts on the contemporary, poll-driven political process but because of enough verisimilitude to get a clean, close shave. Eric Coble’s script, here under the direction of Pegasus founder and artistic director Kurt Kleinmann, climaxes with a debate between two…
Tinkerbell, or one of her ilk, has been to Plush, Randall Garrett’s new alternative art gallery on South Akard Street that’s attracting all sorts of people, real and imaginary, including fairies. She’s left a trail of pixie dust and two empty Heineken bottles on the seedy sidewalk in the rundown,…
A Cut AboveThe wide-eyed, hyper-alert, sweaty-palm appeal of horror has not been mine to enjoy. A haunted house named Brigantine Castle on the New Jersey shore took that away from me. I walked in tall–a strutting 6-year-old–but I walked out a whimpering, shivering shell of a boy. More than two…
It has often been written of Chris Guest–or, if you prefer, Fifth Baron Christopher Haden-Guest, son of diplomat Peter Haden-Guest, who could once vote in Parliament–that he has the demeanor of cold stone and the temperament of the dead. He possesses, one often hears, an impenetrable façade, that of the…
