Ill-fitting vehicle for Schwarzenegger (in the role of a U.S. Marshal on the witness-protection beat), but really more a vehicle for the FX and stunt boys: a routinely overinflated action extravaganza revolving around a science-fictional made-in-America "pulse weapon" which, if loosed on the international market, would apocalyptically tip the scales …
An uncommonly long-delayed sequel, and a medium-volume hoot. It is now A.D. 2013, or anyway it will be as soon as we pass through a preamble that explains how the Big One of the year 2000 created the Island of Los Angeles, thereafter converted into a prison colony of undesirables …
The rare screen sequel that doesn't announce the fact in its title. Keeping the name of the Larry McMurtry novel on which it is based, it brings back the highly colored characters of Terms of Endearment, plus some new ones (or just grown-up ones), and submits them to the crayon …
Woody Allen's excavation of the musical genre -- not the backstage variety, which is still extant and needs no excavation, but the average-people variety. He does not take naturally to the conventions of the genre. He takes academically to them. Philosophically to them. Archaeologically to them. And the butterscotch candy …
An unassuming, undemanding, and utterly unconvincing disaster thriller, or pending-disaster thriller, to be more exact. We hadn't had an entry in the Airport series since 1979, or significantly ever since the advent of the Airplane! series. This, braving the possible raspberry, serves as a revival. It distinguishes itself from the …
Medical detective problem in the pursuit of which an ER doctor uncovers an improbable experimental program dependent on homeless human guinea pigs (stopping short of uncovering the source of the funding). Michael Apted engineers a couple of grindingly effective suspense sequences -- in the subway, in an elevator -- and …
Tales of A Mother's Vengeance, preferably Based On Fact, are mere grist for the TV-movie-of-the-week mill. What lifts this one a head -- not shoulders, too -- above the general run is the time it takes with, and genuine concern it shows for, the characters' feelings. But then John Schlesinger, …
Chatty hitman in polemical discussion with his intended target, his client, and (by phone) his analyst. Contrived and tedious talkfest adapted from his own stage play by Chazz Palminteri, who also plays the hitman, and "opened up" with redundantly illustrative flashbacks. Cher, Ryan O'Neal, Paul Mazursky; directed by Mazursky.
A letter from beyond the grave informs an old Arkansas yokel (off whose tongue, "nigger" rolls easily) that his departed mother was not his biological mother, that he in fact is half black, and it dispatches him on a solemn odyssey to Chicago to look up his fully black half-brother. …
Rancidly cheesy psychological thriller whose title character is a philosophizing baseball nut (his motto: "Perfection and principles") fixated on the San Francisco Giants' new $40 million outfielder with a .310 lifetime average. But "psychological" is a very loose collar on this thriller; "ornamental" would be snugger. Director Tony Scott (Top …
Above and beyond all else, around and through all else, the Coen brothers have assembled here a timeless document on their native state, Minnesota. On its notorious winters. On its snow shovels and its ice scrapers (implement of an uproarious temper tantrum). On its parkas and mittens and gloves and …
Elemental protecting-the-nest melodrama about an innocent chick who brings home a bad egg. The family tensions are believably drawn and ably acted (William Petersen, Amy Brenneman, Reese Witherspoon), and Mark Wahlberg frowns fiercely and sweet-talks dulcetly as the two-faced psychotic. The finale aspires to something on the scale of Straw …
Fleeing Minnesota, more like it, but getting nowhere fast. The coerced bride of a mob bookkeeper dispenses sexual favors to entice her brother-in-law, a small-time stickup man, to run away to Vegas. Steven Baigelman's filmmaking debut intends to be shaggily eccentric, but the intention drowns in a brownish mush of …
Two neglected wives under the same family roof find comfort in one another's arms and beds. The setting of present-day New Delhi (pallidly photographed, but with gritty details of daily life not found in Indian-made films: this one was produced in Canada) is insufficient to breathe life into the axe-grinding …