The Lost Generation in Paris: James Ivory has fashioned a nice companion piece to his Wild Party (the Lost Generation in Hollywood). This, adapted from the autobiographical novel by Jean Rhys, is a good deal more diffuse than the other (the most gratuitous digression, to do with a skinflint pornographer, …
The directorial debut of Jack Fisk, husband of the star, Sissy Spacek, and production designer on such things as Badlands, Carrie, Days of Heaven, and Heart Beat. An auspicious debut and a fine performance, but the achievements of director and star should not overshadow that of scriptwriter William Wittliff, who …
Overstuffed and misshapen adaptation of the E.L. Doctorow novel about the sloughing-off of Victorianism in America. A strong central plotline has been sought in the Doctorow mesh (or mess), and what has been found to that purpose throws you back to the "blaxploitation" pictures of the late Sixties, early Seventies. …
Director Steven Spielberg and executive producer/co-writer George Lucas pay homage to the cliffhanger serials of the Thirties and Forties — and they pay handsomely, pumping the project so full of money, production values, and technical razzle-dazzle that it no longer remotely resembles its grade-B models. Not intending exactly a spoof, …
Director Steven Spielberg and executive producer/co-writer George Lucas pay homage to the cliffhanger serials of the Thirties and Forties — and they pay handsomely, pumping the project so full of money, production values, and technical razzle-dazzle that it no longer remotely resembles its grade-B models. Not intending exactly a spoof, …
You do not have to be abnormally sensitive to detect irony in Warren Beatty treating the life of American communist and journalist John Reed -- or that part of his life tangled up with Louise Bryant -- on the cinematic scale of late-period David Lean: a forty-million-dollar monument to Conspicuous …
The vocabulary of this Wall Street intrigue is sufficient all by itself to kill your interest: "Euro-dollars," "currency translation," "liquidity," "stability," "short capital," "short feed stock," "bottom fishing," "cash flow," "tapped out," "down the tubes," "in the shithouse," and similar authenticities. The obfuscation brought about by this lingo almost, but …
What starts out giving every indication of being intelligent science fiction very soon settles down to being a fanciful sub-Bond spy melodrama, more on the level of television's The Avengers or The Man from U.N.C.L. E., about a network of telepathic supermen who have vague designs on world domination and …
Harder-boiled version of Laura -- hard enough, in truth, to be bounced around a handball court. The tough-guy hero, played by Burt Reynolds in his closest-cropped and most attractive toupée, also exhibits a sensitive side. In addition to falling in love at long distance with the thousand-dollar call girl under …
New Zealander version of Shoot the Moon and/or Kramer vs. Kramer, to cite the antecedents freshest in everyone's minds. The rather humdrum domestic drama has been jacked up, however, with extravagant violence or the threat thereof (rifles, car racing, hot tempers). There is less chewing over of the "issues" than …
Charles B. Griffith's virtual remake of his Eat My Dust, with a vast posse pursuing the abductor of the high-school Homecoming Queen (most amusing posse member: a Born Again football quarterback who addresses his Lord, man to Man, as "Coach"). Having already done this once, and done it to a …
Blake Edwards's splenetic attack on his own home and place of business: Hollywood. But the Hollywood of his mind is a good dozen years out of date. The characters, true to the satiric intent, are all rather interestingly unpleasant (if all also rather generalized and overdrawn), with Robert Preston having …
Determinedly lunatic comedy, often at the cost of all credibility and all charm, having to do with an unlikely coming-together of the worlds of academia, the garment industry, the Mafia, and the Italian opera. Andrew Bergman, who wrote the script of The In-Laws, gets to direct his own script here, …
Walter Hill hasn't forgotten entirely how to string shots together, as evidenced by the climactic hide-and-seek game intricately choreographed in a backwater Cajun village, though it is necessary there to overlook the corny travelogue notion of a rustic sanctuary insulated like Brigadoon from the encroachment of modernity: any time you …
A lady Egyptologist with a punk haircut visits the land of her specialization (from the touristy way she cavorts around the pyramids, it is plainly her first time), and, while delving into the little-known life story of King Tut's royal architect, stumbles into a melee of smugglers, assassins, shady characters. …