It’s impossible to capture on the printed page the anticipatory thrill of watching Sylvester Stallone handle rapid-fire dialogue: the rumbling basso voice, the twisted mouth valiantly trying to wrap itself around a stream of words, the consonants and vowels hurling forward like a toppled barrel of oranges. Will any of…
The stodgy works of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, makers of Howard’s End and Jefferson in Paris, have encouraged the sad notion that costume dramas must be leaden and respectable. Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility helped rehabilitate the form; and now Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule ventilates the stifled form with yet…
Have you seen these shows on ESPN 2 where some guy rides a tricycle off a cliff, does a triple-reverse upside-down back flip, free falls toward a raging white-water river, opens his parachute, grabs a tree limb on the way down, hooks his ankles into a bungee cord, dunks his…
Anthony Minghella believes in ghosts–and, at his best, makes believers out of viewers, too. The writer-director of Truly Madly Deeply and this heartfelt, eye-filling adaptation of the Booker Prize-winning novel The English Patient scatters his movies with passionate specters. In Truly Madly Deeply the main ghost was a musician who…
In the post-Babe era, can you make a live-action movie about animals and not have them talk to each other? For me, this is the deep philosophical question raised by Disney’s new 101 Dalmatians, a live-action remake of the studio’s 1961 animated feature–in which, by the way, the animals did…
So I was checking into this motel room in Galveston with Vida Stegall–don’t even ask, I don’t wanna go into it–and as soon as I flipped on the light switch, she starts complaining about how everything is “not right.” “This room is not right,” she says. And I’m looking at…
In The Mirror Has Two Faces, Barbra Streisand plays Rose Morgan, a Columbia University Romantic literature professor who endures a drab, romanceless life. She lives with her imperious, fault-finding mother, Hannah (Lauren Bacall)–a beautician, no less–and wards off the attentions of a nebbishy suitor (Austin Pendleton) while pining for the…
It’s Thanksgiving 1972, and a year after returning to his upper-middle-class Texas home, Vietnam vet Jeremy Collier (Emilio Estevez) is still reeling from his war experiences. Living at home and listlessly taking a few community college courses, he has grown only more alienated from normal society. His mother, Maurine (Kathy…
When we first see the character of middle-aged Australian David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) in Shine, he’s standing in the driving rain and tapping at the window of a wine bar after closing time. Let inside by a sympathetic waitress, he keeps up a nonstop nonsensical patter that makes him sound…
Did you see where the Canadians blew up a decommissioned warship so that it would settle at exactly the right place on the bottom of the ocean? They wanted it to be right next to the other ships they’ve already sunk in the waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland…
As Palookaville begins, three wayward city boys–Jerry (Adam Trese), Sid (William Forsythe), and Russell (Vincent Gallo)–chisel their way through the outer wall of what they believe to be a jewelry store, only to find out that they’ve actually broken into the bakery next door. While Sid stands guard, Russell steals…
I’ve been watching a bunch of hippie movies from around 1968 to 1973, and I’ve noticed that almost all of them have at least one scene of longhaired, bell-bottomed Disaffected Youths yelling like idiots at a public meeting. It could be a meeting of Army generals or a city council…
Although the hot movie topic for the past year has been Jane Austen, it really should have been William Shakespeare. True, four of Austen’s novels have recently been adapted to the screen, but she hasn’t been nearly as omnipresent as the Bard of Avon nor, Clueless aside, quite so contemporary…
Have you noticed how closing times at bars get earlier and earlier? What’s going on here? Certain cities and states now have bars that close at midnight, just like in Communist countries like Sweden. Didn’t we already find out in the 1920s what happens when you monkey with a man’s…
Film critics are put in a difficult position when they see a movie that’s well-made but features characters so unbelievably odious you wouldn’t want to spend two minutes with them in real life. Of course, directors including Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese have built legendary careers out of one scumbag…
There’s a great line delivered by the Scottish protagonist in Trainspotting: “A lot of people hate the English, but I don’t. The English are just wankers, but what are we? We were colonized by wankers! We can’t even pick a decent culture to be colonized by.” That may be the…
Storytellers long ago recognized the fertile ground for plots available at the average neighborhood saloon. A bar can be so many things to different people: a hangout; a pit stop; a place to meet friends, strangers, and lovers, known and unknown. It can be a happy place, or a miserable…
While it’s true that most filmmakers still keep on-screen gay romance in the hand-holding stage, the viewer who yearns to savor a little bit of tenderness between same-sex lovers may have been startled to find a wealth of sweet moments in the most unexpected places recently. Spike Lee, traditionally no…
What used to be the two most boring words in the history of the English language? “Mutual funds,” right? What does everybody wanna talk about at parties in the ’90s? Mutual funds, right? Everybody’s buying mutual funds. People who can’t divide nine by three are buying mutual funds. People who…
Melodramas often take a bad rap in the critical press, as if there’s something wrong with enjoying schmaltzy love stories or torrid, overblown gangster epics. Granted, they aren’t exactly known for their original plots, but there’s a reason they have staying power. After all, cliches only gain currency as cliches…
In the opening scene of Surviving Picasso, set in Paris at the height of World War II, the great Spanish artist is showing his haphazard collection of paintings–his own as well as those of his friends, the Fauvist genius Henri Matisse and fellow cubist Georges Braque–to a pair of dimwitted…
For most of his 12-year career, director Spike Lee has shouldered a unique burden among young, contemporary black filmmakers. John Singleton, Albert and Allen Hughes, and Matty Rich earned their reputations with debut features that vividly explored inner-city crime. Spike Lee–whose earlier mainstream success arguably opened doors in lily-white Hollywood…
