The cinematic equivalent of the roman à thèse: scientific theory decked out in the trappings of fiction. The theoretical basis in this instance is a kind of biological Leftism espoused by Professor Henri Laborit, whose observations of laboratory rats have opened the door to his generalizing about human beings and …
Charlton Heston and Brian Keith hunt beaver, but have better luck with Indian squaws (please, no jokes), in some mighty pretty Wyoming country, both of them bundled up almost to the point of immobility in fur coats, buckskins, and beards, and menaced on their rounds by a ferocious Blackfoot chief …
Comedy out of the better-slob-than-snob school. But then, it hasn't much to be snobbish about. Its main boasting point is in finally giving Rodney Dangerfield a film role large enough to move around in: a nouveau-riche vulgarian who invades the inner sanctum of an exclusive country club. Bill Murray has …
Low melodrama in high school, with a gang of greasy-haired toughs, whose leader is out of the Vic Morrow school of acting, extorting bus fares and lunch money from the wimps and runts of the sophomore class, until a new prep-school transfer decides to fight back by enlisting the help …
Roger Vadim shows off his famous knowledge of What Women Want in an erotic thriller about a woman who, having been raped in her teens, is unable to consummate the sex act even with her husband of two years, until she is visited in the night by an anonymous stranger …
An anthropologist and his students attempt to track down a Bigfoot responsible for a rash of violent murders, only to uncover something even more sinister.
Cunning piece of popular entertainment, pushing the proper buttons to bring out the grievances of almost everybody toward their bosses, and particularly those of secretaries. At its laziest, it settles for illustrating dog-eared pages out of the feminist primer. Certainly, it gives up any pretense of honest observation in its …
Documentary on the Madison Square Garden fundraiser sponsored by MUSE (Musicians United for Safe Energy), with a postscript on the Battery Park freebie that followed. Interspersed throughout the concert footage are snippets of backstage informalities, brainstorming sessions, interviews, polemics, and a wonderful Army propaganda film from the Fifties. None of …
With Ed Platt dead and Barbara Feldon unable or unwilling to take part, there can have been no compelling reason to resurrect the Get Smart television show. Don Adams is his old self again, and there are pretty nearly as many laughs and wan smiles per minute as during one …
After more dilly-dallying than Hamlet (to whom explicit reference is made in the script), Chuck Norris is finally sufficiently motivated to launch a one-man attack on the Central American training compound of the secret Ninja society, whose members are described as "world-class killers" and dress themselves round the clock in …
Not so much a sequel to Oh, God as an alternate version, revolving around a little moppet in a page-boy haircut whom the Man Upstairs enlists to spread the advertising slogan, "Think God," and who is given strength in her crusade with the reminder that she is in the select …
Paul Simon in a role written by and for himself, a thin-voiced pop singer who hit his peak with Sixties protest songs and a decade later has been reduced to a mildly tolerated warm-up act for the B-52's, a singer very much like Simon himself, in fact, except for being …
Robert Redford's directorial debut, an adaptation of the Judith Guest best-seller, comes out with an emotional plea in favor of hugging. That practice, especially if done in fine cardigans, is seen as a balm to the psychological scars of a guilt-ridden teenage boy (Tim Hutton, who, like his father Jim, …