The ace air-traffic controller of the Newark-JFK-LaGuardia triangle goes into a tailspin after the arrival of the "interesting" new guy from Arizona, half-Indian and half-cowboy -- not to mention the new guy's very young wife, a full-lipped, full-bosomed, tattooed lush. Some well-turned gags, and some pointed scrutiny of masculine rivalry, …
Hokey gothic fun. John Cusack is darkly brooding and boldly dying as writer Edgar Allan Poe. In foggy Baltimore he sleuths a serial killer, a creep “inspired” by his stories. It’s Theatre of Blood, if not quite so campy: breathless ambushes, underground passages, ravens, and an absurdly plot-driven story. Director …
A timely subject of satire -- diets, aerobics, colonics, the entire health racket -- but set at the turn of the century so as to broaden the targets. And at the same time inoffensively isolate them. Alan Parker, working from a novel by T. Coraghessan Boyle, lends his always heavy …
Courtroom hokum to do with the high-tech tactics to rig the jury in a civil suit against a gun manufacturer. The plot just keeps digging a deeper hole for itself, and the busy, frantic directorial manner of Gary Fleder cannot cover it up. From a John Grisham novel; with Gene …
Young love and true -- like, totally and completely. The sentiment is somewhat undermined by the casting of John Cusack, who either is the world's most insincere person or else had the misfortune to be born with the world's most traitorous eyebrows. (His too-advanced age is no help, either.) And …
Unbothersome fluff to do with romance and destiny and the One Right Person. Jonathan and Sara, meeting cute at a glove rack during Christmas rush (he shopping for his current girlfriend, she for her boyfriend), spend several magical hours together, and then separate without knowing the other's name: he writes …
Woody Allen doing a takeoff on F.W. Murnau and the German Expressionists in general, with shades of the "white" horror of Dreyer's Vampyr, plus his more customary dashes of Bergman (a travelling circus with a Swedish-accented magician). The black-and-white photography by Carlo di Palma is highly (if also drily, academically, …
Only a poster of This Is Spinal Tap on the dormitory walls will remind anyone that this movie and that one were directed by the same man, Rob Reiner. That other movie must indeed have been a very special match-up of people and idea. This, on the other hand, is …
Terrence Malick's adaptation of James Jones's WWII novel also marks his return to the director's chair after a vacation of twenty years: too heavy a weight for any movie, or moviemaker, to carry. One of the problems with Malick's earlier works -- the crutch of voice-over narration -- is here …
A self-described "lonely history teacher in Aurora, Illinois" heads to Ireland with his troubled teenage nephew to trace his roots. The resulting flashback, which doesn't get underway until somewhere after twenty minutes, is an affectionate, indulgent dawdle through Emerald Isle scenery, Catholic oppression (the fire-and-brimstone sermon from Stephen Rea as …
Topical satire on privatized warfare in the Middle East, “satire” being defined as a fictional form that depends on your political sympathies overriding your aesthetic standards. Even if your sympathies are in perfect alignment, however, this one seems a complete misfire, resorting to fisheye lenses for comic emphasis, mock-Morricone spaghetti-Western …