Steven Martin's screenplay was "suggested by" the Victorian cornerstone, Silas Marner: surely not what George Eliot had quite meant to suggest, especially the Kodak Moments of the joys of parenting (the red-ribbon tether, the anti-gravity weather balloon, the two-strike home run). The role he has devised for himself is that …
A revival of the ever-popular sport of cheek-tweaking the uptight Brits, or uptight anybodies. The playing field this time is wild, savage, lusty Australia of the 1930s, where a "progressive" Oxford clergyman (Hugh Grant, a good sport indeed) has been dispatched in hopes of prevailing upon painter Norman Lindsay -- …
Love triangle in the form of an hour-and-a-half beer ad: attractive young Angelenos being cool and casual and clever and self-conscious and completely uninteresting. Occasional title cards (e.g., "Nothing happened for a few weeks") punctuate the tedium. With Eric Stoltz, Meg Tilly, and Craig Sheffer; directed and co-written (with five …
The eldest daughter in an Irish family of eight has got herself preggers, and the whole town's talking. The hippity-hoppity comic writing (Roddy Doyle) can't stand up to the ratty realism -- nor the ratty production. Made for British TV, it has the surplus of closeups to prove it. Grainy …
Offbeat, or if you prefer, beat-off (syn. for spank-the-monkey) comedy about a severely dysfunctional suburban family: the depressive vodka-swilling mother immobilized by a broken leg; the travelling-salesman father, on the road with his nightly hookers while bemoaning his inability to continue to fund his son's education; and the self-abusing (until …
Lazy daydream by, or for, a subscriber to Soldier of Fortune magazine: an ex-CIA demolitions mercenary (personal code: no innocent bystanders hurt) hired by a fatal lady nursing a twenty-year vendetta against the Miami mob. Brief interruption by, or for, a reader of Playboy: a literally steamy wrestling match in …
Michael Keaton and Geena Davis as a couple of insomniac speechwriters for opposite political parties, who meet-cute over the last Nytol bottle in the hotel gift shop, and who carry on ever more cutely from there. We are told that they are not modelled on real-life sweethearts James Carville (Clinton …
Die Hard on wheels, Under Siege on land, Passenger 57 on the ground. It must have been an easy "pitch," belt-high fastball, down the middle of the plate, "hit" written all over it. The twenty-minute prelude is actually pretty gripping. In fact the opening credits sequence alone is gripping: a …
The first movie to feature the cast of the spinoff TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, plus a brief hello and brief farewell to William Shatner's Capt. Kirk at the beginning and the end. One major difference between the original Star Trek movie and this seventh one, however, is …
Chinese filmmaker Yin Li lays out a romantic triangle and makes perfectly plain how to apportion sympathies: none for the venal, brutal, sterile, baby-demanding husband; plenty for the sensitive, tree-planting lover; most for the woman in the middle. A highly professional job, but highly routine, too. With Jiang Wenli.
An inside look at homosexuality in Cuba, but so deep in the past (1979) as to imply that the disagreeable conditions depicted are no longer in force. However that may be, the results are unexpectedly enjoyable. The unfolding relationship between a heterosexual male (Vladimir Cruz, projecting callow wariness) and a …
Jokey and juvenile hero worship. Col. Blue Beret and his motley commandos take on the Storm Trooper warlord of mythical Shadaloo. Adapted from a video game (Street Fighter II), with no gain in three-dimensional reality, and no benefit of a suitable visual style either: no Pop crackle and snap. Jean-Claude …
Drug lord wants out. "I'm consumed by chaos, consumed by guilt, consumed by grief," he confides to us in voice-over. A sensitive, pensive drug lord, not your normal one. And not your normal movie about one. Mopey when it wants to be brooding; maudlin when it wants to be deeply …
Chummy father-son relationship, idealized beyond the boundary of mendacity. Chummy character-spectator relationship also, fostered through direct address to the camera: "He's very wrought-up" and "It's true Grandma was a dyke -- well, a lesbian" and so on. (This device is maintained even after the stroke that prevents the father from …