"I don't take sides; I take pictures." So says the self-interested photojournalist on assignment in Nicaragua in 1979. And he is true to his word, too, at least until he changes his mind: "I think I finally saw one too many bodies." And then, in the face of countless black …
Oliver Stone makes a stomach-lurching return to his worst Natural Born Killers style. Provided, that is, "style" can describe an indiscriminate hodgepodge of manic mannerisms from music videos, half-minute commercial spots (soft drinks, jeans), and "reality"-based TV shows (NYPD Blue, ER, et al.). Nowhere in his repertoire of cinematic hiccups, …
What do bros (in this case, Robert Redford) do once they get old? In A Walk in the Woods, they get sick of attending funerals, decide to out-hike Death on the Appalachian Trail, and tell the old lady (Emma Thompson) where she can stick her objections to stupidly risking one's …
A generic story about two brothers on opposite sides of an elimination-style mixed martial arts competition. What makes Warrior interesting is that all the machismo is used to generate a theme: forgiveness. The arena for this is the tableau of family ruin between the two brothers and their ex-alcoholic, ex-abusive …
An Optimists' Club movie about a San Quentin lifer who discovers the world of literature at the prison library ("Give me a thick book, I don't care what it's about" -- Tolstoi, Nietzsche, Genet, Dostoevski, Camus, Jacqueline Susann), writes his own play and forms his own theater troupe, is discovered …
This drug-smuggling caper is on the glib and pretentious side. The war in Vietnam, the cowardice of the intelligentsia, the crookedness of crime fighters, the mush-headed escapism of drug users, and the general climate of paranoia -- these things are all advanced as basic truths about the American Way and …
Just another megabudgeted plunder of an innocent inoffensive little TV series. The series, dating from the late Sixties when spy spoofs and Westerns were both thick on the ground, seemed a sensible and even slightly ingenious hybrid. The movie, on the other hand, comes in the midst of a long …