D-minus. The Pee-Wee pucksters, having overcome the odds to win the local championship, are ready to take on the world and overcome steeper odds, at the Junior Goodwill Games in L.A. The villain: Iceland. Iceland? Yes, Iceland. (A bold move, inviting protests from the Icelander Anti-Defamation League and virtually writing …
Dull title. Duller movie. And that's despite a vocabulary that gravitates toward "rat-fuckin' cocksucker" and "fuckin' cunt motherfucker," and despite a Cassavetes aesthetic of raw raging emotion photographed in a closeup cinéma-verité style. Abel Ferrera, the director, would appear to be one of those eternal sophomores (or eternal Henry Millers) …
Roman Polanski comes as close here to his avowed ideal of the one-character movie as he has come since his feature debut, Knife in the Water: three characters. His third feature, Cul-de-Sac, came close also, and the isolated seaside surroundings of this one, coupled with Ben Kingsley's shaven pate (almost …
Sexual harassment in the workplace: of a man, by a woman. It eventually comes to light (a dim, glimmering light at most) that the perpetrator was motivated not by lust but by a calculated scheme to oust the victim. Which would seem to transform her into more a Mata Hari …
A suspended U.S. Marshal (Wesley Snipes) goes out on his own, and into the alien skydiving community, to avenge his brother's murder and thwart a plot to cripple the DEA. Basically boneheaded action film, spruced up with some attractive Hawksian trappings, including especially a husky-voiced heroine (Yancy Butler) and two …
A couple of low-watt bulbs on a chivalrous mission from Rhode Island to Aspen. Not just the developmentally arrested characters, but also the filmmakers ("Prodoosed by ... Durected by ..."), contrive to put even below-average viewers at their social and cultural ease. Pee-pee jokes. Poo-poo jokes. Snot jokes. Fart jokes. …
Ang Lee's tantalizing, toothsome, pungent, succulent, nutritious, well-balanced, filling (etc.) comedy about a Taiwanese widower and master chef and his three grown daughters still living at home. This is the sort of material that Yasujiro Ozu used to take to the depths of profundity, while always maintaining a bravely cheerful …
Conventional Hollywood "biopic" on an unconventional subject of study: the ignored, ridiculed, and campily canonized director of Plan 9 from Outer Space. The disrepute, or nonrepute, of the central figure liberates the film to engage in the kind of myth-making in which the "biopic" once engaged with impunity, but which …
Endless movie, too. Bruce Brown takes up his documentary camera and, in the company of representatives of a new generation of surfer dudes, resumes his search for the Perfect Wave. (Definition: "It depends on what kind of board you ride, and what kind of wave you like." Huh.) Essentially a …
Endless movie, too. Bruce Brown takes up his documentary camera and, in the company of representatives of a new generation of surfer dudes, resumes his search for the Perfect Wave. (Definition: "It depends on what kind of board you ride, and what kind of wave you like." Huh.) Essentially a …
Zhou Xiao Wen's tawdry human comedy about keeping up with, and preferably ahead of, the Joneses (or their Chinese counterparts). The hard-driving, humorless heroine, a roadside vendor of homemade twisty noodles (who refuses to negotiate with customers: "Fair price!"), is determined to obtain a bigger television set -- twenty-nine-inch screen …
The marriage of culty moviemaker Gus Van Sant and culty novelist Tom Robbins has produced the monster that Mother Nature always warned about: deformed by self-indulgence, self-consciousness, self-congratulation. The narrative revolves around one Sissy Hankshaw (there are supporting characters called Bonanza Jellybean and Delores Del Ruby: it's that kind of …
Fainthearted adaptation of Anne Rice's B&D romance novel, set on a Pleasure Island of vacationing sex slaves and masters. To this, a comical cop plot has been added, so that Rosie O'Donnell (undercover LAPD) can throw in one-liners and voice-over narration or both at once: "Let's face it, a wild …
For fans, if any, of the elliptic, cryptic style of Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (The Adjuster). Another collection of his twisted, tormented souls (foremostly a homosexual pet-shop proprietor cum exotic-bird smuggler, a patron of a tropical-themed strip club called Exotica, an exotic dancer there who doffs her schoolgirl togs to …
Eighteenth-century costume piece about a pair of symbiotic siblings, a castrato vocalist and a very minor composer: one sings what the other writes. Director Gerard Corbiau (The Music Teacher) violates what ought to be a cardinal rule of musicals: if you're going to use lip-synching, don't use closeups. (The blending …