Andrew Dice Clay in concert: one of the soon-forgotten controversies of 1990. Some thought that his Brooklyn-bred, leather-jacketed, pompadour-coiffed, filthy-mouthed persona is vile enough to be spoken of in terms of an organized boycott. Others, or at least he himself, thought the vileness is all right because it's just a …
California-bound cosmetic surgeon gets stalled in Grady, Georgia -- "Squash Capital of the South." A small-town panegyric that hinges to an extreme degree on the town's unlikeliest citizen: a tangle-haired vegetarian divorcée who skinny-dips in the lake, pees in the forest to scare the deer away from hunters, and repeatedly …
Becomes a patient. Becomes a better doctor because of it. (Starts combing his hair in a less severe, softer style too.) William I.M. Hurt is not terribly persuasive as either the cool, carefree doctor at the beginning or the warm and caring doctor at the end, but he does pretty …
Nancy Savoca, whose first film was True Love, resumes her theme of miscommunication or noncommunication between the sexes: a foursome of U.S. Marines, ca. 1963, have made a habit and a formalized competition of trying to round up the ugliest dates for a kind of upside-down beauty pageant, with a …
And Mom's away in Australia for two months! A growing experience for the five kids; a shrinking experience for the spectator. The color alone, a salad tossed by garbage truck, is enough to make you cover your head. Christina Applegate, Keith Coogan, Joanna Cassidy; directed by Stephen Herek.
And Jim Morrison. Oliver Stone's conventional, chronological biography bashes along at a breakneck pace, barely touching ground, barreling right into the middle of events, forgoing the surrounding context and grabbing at the harried TV director's daily lifesaver: the constant closeup. There may be some justification for this device in the …
There are two van Dammes on screen: one a Hong Kong hard case who slicks down his hair and chomps on stogies, the other a Beverly Hills exercise instructor who wears trendy togs and tries to be pleasant, both of them on the same side in a separated-at-birth revenge tale. …
Krzysztof Kieslowski weighs in with some whole-cloth testimony on behalf of the science of physiognomy. Two identical women are born on the same day in different countries. As adults, they both wear their hair alike; they both are classical singers (with the voice emanating from nowhere near the mouth); they …
An imaginary playmate, imprisoned as a jack-in-a-box for twenty years, is let loose when his old friend returns home after a separation from her husband. Only he's not really imaginary, just invisible to all but his playmate, and completely uncontrollable. And, with his shit-snot-puke predilections and his British music-hall costume …
Better-slob-than-snob comedy about a blue-collar Joe who squires home his divorced girlfriend's blue-blooded son for Thanksgiving. The final destination is predictable, as is every step of the way. But then, John Hughes (only screenwriter, not director) was doing the navigating. With Ed O'Neill, Ethan Randall, JoBeth Williams; directed by Peter …
And dying pretty -- first in a posh palace on Nob Hill, then in a two-story treasure of Victoriana on a Mendocino cliff, and in the company of a private nurse with a ton of hair, miles of legs, and an acre of lip (Julia Roberts). And dying, if need …
Punny title: the destructive android, a miniskirted nuclear bomb, is called Eve-8. (And naturally there will be talk of "playing God.") Fashioned in her creator's image, and programmed with her creator's memories, Eve gets switched into "battlefield mode" whenever anyone calls her a "bitch," which happens with regularity. The bias …
Charles Shyer's remake of the Vincente Minnelli comedy, but broadened as though by rolling pin, and out of concern that anyone seeing the 1950 original might not be able to recognize it as a comedy. ("Welcome to the Nineties," says the swishy, adenoidal, German-accented wedding co-ordinator.) Steve Martin falling into …
Terry Gilliam makes big messes. Time Bandits. Brazil. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. Each one more unmanageably ambitious than the debacle before it. The Fisher King, next in line, looks like a hard one to top. You always come out of any Gilliam movie feeling vaguely a need to be …
Fictitious black chart-busters of the 1960s, in the mold of the Temptations and the Four Tops. Lovingly re-created vocal styles and dance steps; drudgingly cooked-up "personal drama." Robert Townsend, Michael Wright, Chuck Patterson, Diahann Carroll; directed by Townsend.