Very highly contrived amnesia thriller. Higher even than the average amnesia thriller. And much higher than it strictly needed to be, due to the audacious device (the anti-cinematic device) of casting two actors of different races as supposedly look-alike brothers. It's as though the image were filtered through the distorted …
Inside Hollywood, from the vantage of a lowly, trampled assistant to a megalomaniacal production executive known to Time magazine as "the king of wham-bam action" (Kevin Spacey, cold-blooded creep nonpareil). A useful supplement to The Player and Mistress: knowing, sour, snappish. A small dog with a persistent yip. The jumping-off …
Terminal volume, too. Terminal explosives. Terminal stunts. Terminal wisecracks. Terminal lots of things, in this sub-sub-neo-neo-Hitchcock thriller concerning a daredevil skydiver battling with agents of the "KG-used-to-B" to avert a renewed Cold War. Charlie Sheen, Nastassja Kinski; directed by Deran Sarafian.
The fourth compilation (counting That's Dancing) of clips from MGM musicals. The pickings, including outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage, are naturally slimmer. But as the Golden Age of the screen musical grows ever dimmer and more remote, even the slimmest pickings become more precious. Some nuggets: Gene Kelly dancing with a …
Comic-book fantasy about a nebbishy bank clerk who fishes a 4th- or 5th-century Scandinavian mask out of the bay, and is transformed by it into the pea-headed embodiment -- pea-like in color, that is, not size, and canned not frozen -- of his wildest dreams. There's no stinting on the …
Undergraduate roomies, two guys and a girl (the oldish-looking Lara Flynn Boyle, Stephen Baldwin, Josh Charles). One of the guys (wears a backwards baseball cap) is attracted to the girl (reads J.D. Salinger), but the girl is attracted to the other guy (attends a French Cinema class), but the other …
Someone-for-everyone love story about a curvy young maiden no bigger than your thumb (no bigger than your thumbnail when she rides on the back of a bumblebee) who finds a suitable beau in a flittering, tights-wearing fairy (as in sprite, pixie, little person). Animator Don Bluth again offers a supplement, …
Time-travel convolutions, tangled and strangled in illogicalities. Of course, mere martial-arts fans (Jean-Claude van Damme Chapter) won't be bothered by those, and serious science-fiction fans will unprotestingly yield. With Ron Silver and Mia Sara; directed (and photographed) by Peter Hyams.
Another decades-spanning epic from Mainland China about the effects of the Communist Movement (the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution) on the indigenous Little Man. This one is less political and more soap operatic than either Farewell My Concubine or The Blue Kite, and that's to its advantage as an …
Gleamingly photographed (by Jack Green), but dismally written and directed (by George Gallo), Christmas comedy about sibling bank robbers (one genuine comic actor, Nicolas Cage, and two "funny voices," Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey) who receive repeated kindnesses from their victims, throughout their wheel-spinning getaway. The Spirit of Christmas ultimately …
Incredible (not an accolade) damsel-in-distress thriller centered around a dutiful juror who, menaced by a mobster's minions, turns femme fatale to protect herself. Joanne Whalley-Kilmer, who knows how to purr but not much else, hasn't a clue how to play this part -- and who can blame her? With Gabriel …
It is fitting that James Cameron would get around (sooner than later) to doing a James Bond spoof, since the creative corner into which he had painted himself is the same as that of the Bond films: the self-imposed obligation, the necessity, the pressure of "topping" whatever has come before. …
Unassuming little independent film (with a surprising number of well-known faces in it) that follows the path of a twenty-dollar bill as it changes hands from ATM to street person to skateboarder to baker to father of the bride, etc. Not much interest is permitted to develop at any particular …
Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, as adapted by David Mamet, as staged by Andre Gregory, as filmed by Louis Malle. The key features of the theatrical production, along with the complete cast minus the late Ruth Nelson, are preserved on screen: no artifices of costume and décor, just ordinary modern-day dress and …
Pioneers in reverse, from Prosperity, N.M., to St. Louis, Mo., tails tucked between legs. Lumbering Western comedy bears the added burden of being John Candy's last film ("Dedicated to the Memory of ..."). Ellen Greene and Charles Rocket stand out, lonesomely. With Richard Lewis, William Sanderson, Ed Lauter; directed by …