A remake and update of the 1945 farce, complete with commensurate inflation: where the earlier hero had to unburden himself of a million dollars in two months, if he was to collect the bigger inheritance, the current figures are thirty million in a month. The central plot problem -- how …
Not so much a remake of The Bride of Frankenstein as a continuation of it, starting out in the scientist's laboratory in the midst of a thunderstorm, and asking the question: what if they hadn't all perished that night? (And what if the scientist's latest creation had looked like Jennifer …
John Sayles, in his script contributions to things like Alligator and The Battle beyond the Stars, has shown his allegiance to grade-Z science fiction. But in this, a tale of a black extraterrestrial hiding out in Harlem from two white pursuers (one of them played by Sayles himself), his allegiance …
An old-style musical fantasy wherein people's innermost emotions blossom into song and dance, even though the plot format of a Broadway audition affords no reason why it shouldn't remain a "realistic" backstage musical. Too bad, therefore, that the songs and dances -- especially the songs -- are not very good. …
Everyone outside of Eric Roberts (his hair dyed a mustardy yellow) appears to be acting at half-speed. This histrionic cyclone represents a flag-waving, quasi-evangelistic troubleshooter for Coca-Cola, Inc., sent from the Atlanta home office to Australia, to find some unknown trouble in order that it might be fixed. ("Do not …
Science fiction, but only by the technicality of containing several characters who are said to be aliens. They could as easily have been somebody's fairy godparents or genies from a bottle or the sort of lubricious Cupids who used to get things going in Thorne Smith's fantasy novels of the …
The homosexual Austro-Hungarian intelligence officer of John Osborne's play, A Patriot for Me, is portrayed predominantly in shades of frigid blue, as if the action were viewed inside an ice cube. This may be someone's notion of "distancing." The movie takes too long to get to the interesting stuff -- …
Steven Spielberg's old-fashioned Prestige Picture, a literary adaptation of both a critical and a popular success, and one with tie-ins to both the black and feminist communities. These last connections give the director a chance finally to apply the universe-embracing ideals of Close Encounters and E.T., not just to imaginary …
Arnold Schwarzenegger, expanding himself as an actor, portrays a devoted father of a frizzy-permed moppet, tickles her ribs, treats her to ice cream, teaches her karate, allows her to hand-feed a wild fawn, takes her fishing and swimming. But not to worry. This oogum-snoogum stuff doesn't go much past the …
The leading Long Island gum surgeon, and one of its leading ladies' men, is stabbed to death in his office after hours. Adapted by Susan Isaacs from her own novel, the movie aims at being satirical and blackly comic, settles for being just bitchy and catty (if that isn't a …
No advance screeners were issues for Francis Ford Coppola’s 139 minute director’s cut of The Cotton Club. (That’s 20 minutes longer than the original cut that in 1984 the studio pressured Coppola to sign off on.) Of late, the director appears to be devoting time to potchkying with the classics; …
A Nobel Laureate biologist at a well-endowed West Coast university has, in his backyard laboratory, cultivated the cells of his dead wife for thirty years, with the ultimate intention to clone her. Plainly, this situation cinches up the traditional connection between Mad Scientist and God, and indeed it is hard …