A concert movie and nothing more, and as narrowly focussed a one as ever was: little of the live audience, nothing of the backstage, only the on-stage. In fairness, the movie (directed by Jonathan Demme) is probably better to look at than most concert movies, and the concert (staged by …
Directorial debut of Stephen Gaghan, "Oscar-winning" screenwriter of Traffic. An unmoored, becalmed suspense film about a missing-person case on a college campus. Every now and then he does a scene, or a shot, in blue or gold (more often blue), and every now and then he jiggles the camera -- …
Gaudily, cheesily baroque Vincent Price vehicle, with some woozily far-fetched assassination schemes. Directed by Robert Fuest.
A conscience-free cad (e.g., inventing a two-year-old son so as to cruise a single-parents support group for dates) is rescued from his self-absorption by a twelve-year-old misfit with a dotty mother. Conventional in form and sentiment, despite such a dark-comic bit as the dead duck in the park (slain by …
Based on the David Mamet play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, adapted by Tim Kazurinsky and Denise DeClue, and directed by first-timer Edward Zwick. The movie, wherever it gets it from, and however deeply buried beneath slickness, cuteness, soupiness, pop songs, montages, and assorted froufrou, has something a little special about …
Alexander Payne's late-life-crisis comedy about a retired Omaha insurance executive who now begins to wonder what it was all about. Jack Nicholson may be too big a star, or too hip a one, in relation to his surrounding cast (chosen with care down to the smallest role), but you cannot …
Introducing (drum-roll, please) new movie tough guy Steven Seagal (cymbal-crash!): "You guys think you're above the law. Well, you ain't above mine." If the tango dancer's hairstyle and gigolo's gentle purr don't quite convince you, the "ain't" should allay all doubts. His most unique contribution to the action-hero pantheon: a …
A jump-ball for the soul of a high-school hoopster: bright prospects on one side, dark influences on the other. Stupefyingly unimaginative and amateurishly directed (Jeff Pollack), but Leon -- just Leon, no last name -- makes a good impression as the Strong Silent Type. With Duane Martin, Tupac Shakur, Marlon …
Heavy entertainment from Sydney Pollack. It spends so much time lining up its journalistic-ethics issues that it is stymied as a romantic thriller, and at the same time, or at a different time, its romantic-thriller obligations sidetrack and dilute the issues. The basic situation here is not hard to imagine …
I remember that wonderful summer when the teenage miracle reached full bloom -- it was 1958, in London, and for the first time in history, according to the original novel by Colin MacInnes, "kids" had become "teenagers." The vehicle for this slice of sociology is a triple-scoop youth musical, with …
After The Bridges of Madison County, after A Perfect World, after Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood the director opts to relax a little. But not right off the bat. The first half-hour or so (of a characteristically unhurried two hours) is as focussed and concentrated an opening stretch as anything this side …
For much of the distance, tolerably -- but true to the fashion of the times, overaggressively -- entertaining. Very fast out of the starting blocks (very fast at sinking a U.S. nuclear sub to the bottom of the Caribbean), and quite exhausting in the rate at which one problem follows …
A seven-time college reject (Justin Long) creates his own fictitious college -- South Harmon Institute of Technology, or SHIT for short -- to appease his parents and to accommodate fellow rejects. "A bad idea from the get-go," counsels a close friend -- a movie review within the movie. A couple …