A vision of England amidst a massive breakdown, or in other words amidst the Margaret Thatcher regime. The range of targets is broad, and the shot-pattern uneven. There is an interracial married couple, an interracial lesbian couple, a socially conscious American photographer, a middle-class suburban widow, an unemployed black man, …
Yuppie daydream based on the premise -- more believed, no doubt, than actually believable -- that four years of college qualify a young man to step into an executive position in a multinational corporation and save it from hostile takeover. If only, that is, they would let him out of …
A movie by, but not with, Woody Allen. (Mia Farrow? Here. Sam Waterston? Here. Dianne Wiest? Here.) The next most essential thing to say about it is that this is his turn again to be Bergman-esque instead of Fellini-esque. An evenly coeducational sextet of friends, relatives, lovers, and would-be lovers …
To complete her series on Family Trees for Cosmo magazine ("Roots for honkies," as her teenage daughter puts it), a New York writer journeys deep into the Louisiana bayou to track down her most distant relatives. In that habitat, Jill Clayburgh's carry-along sophistications and tensions, not to mention her jangling …
Michael Cimino may be the only movie director in the history of the globe to have achieved the status of a household joke: that was round about the time of Heaven's Gate, if you will remember. (How many households by comparison could have named the director of Howard the Duck?) …
The first feature-length film of music-video veteran Mary Lambert, but only by grace of her earlier dismissal -- for "artistic differences," one supposes -- from Prince's Under the Cherry Moon. If nothing else, this movie will stand as a monument to Prince's artistic good sense. There is surely very little …
As if he didn't have enough trouble already with his boss and his landlady and his ex-wife, a quasi-underground cartoonist in present-day L.A. is menaced out of the blue by a stranger in shades: "Where is it, Mr. Drood?" Where's what? "He gave you something." He who? But this isn't …
Underbearing preachment on the social pressures in high school, and the importance of resisting these and just being yourself -- especially if you are lucky enough to be one of the favored principals of a John Hughes production. (Hughes, besides producing, wrote the script; Howard Deutch directed; and together they're …
Star witness under police protection, set to the pertinent tune of Gershwin, and in his own town too. The pivotal policeman, the one on the night shift that is, when a shoulder is most apt to be needed to nest on, is Just Your Average Joe ("Fuckin' A!") and the …
Mel Brooks does to space opera what he did in Blazing Saddles to horse opera, only a great deal worse. You can try to find sophistication in his self-conscious gags about the film itself, about the potential sequel to it, about the videocassette of it, about the merchandising of it; …
Virtually a steal from Richard Quine's Pushover, an unjustly neglected film noir of the Fifties (especially neglected as a voyeuristic companion piece to, and from the same year as, Rear Window), about a police detective who falls for the gangster's girlfriend under his surveillance. Or anyway, that much of the …
Psychological thriller, whose thrills are unburdened by any actual psychology. Only the sullen teenage daughter suspects there is something funny about her beaming new stepfather: "It's like getting Ward Cleaver for a dad." And indeed the man actually watches TV re-runs of "Mr. Ed", and not just watches but laughs …
Absurdist Western -- well, absurd, anyway -- in the (thankfully very limited) tradition of Lonesome Cowboys and Lust in the Dust: the sort of thing that will be found funny only by close personal friends (and sycophants) of the people who made it. Home movies, and almost no other movies, …
The screenplay by David Freeman throws out an irresistible plot hook -- more than a hook, really, a wide and finely woven net, the tuna-sized holes in which won't be found right off. A reporter for a magazine very much like New York, having fallen out of the good graces …
Policewoman goes undercover, and uncovered, to catch the murderer of topless dancers. An exploitable premise, exploited only a little. (The director is a woman.) The dancers do get plenty of coverage (in every sense), but their acts are far too classy for a pit like the Rock Bottom. The crime …