A British secret agent, marooned behind the Iron Curtain with no way out, taps into a computer at the Manhattan First National Bank in search of help. Fortunately for him, but not always for us, the operator of that other computer is Whoopi Goldberg. Much of the action requires her …
A sitcom striving to be a soap opera: two women become friends before they find out that one of them is the mistress of the other one's husband. Certainly the scene of outright farce when the members of the romantic triangle first come together in one spot, with consequent stumbles …
The resemblance of Part I to the original Rocky is sharpened by there being a Part II. (And this time, John G. Avildsen gets to direct the sequel himself, instead of being replaced by, say, Ralph Macchio or Pat Morita as he was by Sylvester Stallone.) The most attractive parts …
In outline, it sounds like a children's story an adult could endorse and enjoy. But "in detail" is another matter. A self-absorbed teenager, put out at having to babysit her little brother, invokes the goblins to take him away (she has been rehearsing a play coincidentally called The Labyrinth, about …
In outline, it sounds like a children's story an adult could endorse and enjoy. But "in detail" is another matter. A self-absorbed teenager, put out at having to babysit her little brother, invokes the goblins to take him away (she has been rehearsing a play coincidentally called The Labyrinth, about …
A Chicago furniture salesman books a family vacation in what turns out to be a tropical sex club. The place is run by a lot of Frenchmen whose English fails them whenever convenient; and there are armed guerrillas lurking in the jungle outside barbed-wire barriers. Bravely anachronistic comedy, with Charles …
Romantic comedy-thriller of the type populated (and lorded over) by Nick and Nora Charles. And a perfectly acceptable example of the type for anyone who remembers the Thin Man series as something less than sacrosanct classics (who remembers them, in other words, clearly). The one who makes the difference here …
Wagnerian comic book: a primeval forest (with Maxfield Parrish-ish atmospherics), a pair of unicorns, pointy-eared elves, pointy-nosed agents of darkness, and naturally "a champion, bold of heart and pure in spirit." It's a thing to delight the very very innocent and a thing to depress the even very slightly sophisticated. …
Two Russian sailors on leave in Liverpool, sort of like Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly in Anchors Aweigh (sort of, but not a lot). They get lucky with a couple of working-class lasses on the prowl. The hairy one named Sergei makes love all night, but the pink-faced one named …
Privileged moments with the multiple-personalitied comedienne, on stage and off it, over the twenty months in preparation for the Broadway opening of The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe. But rather random moments when all's said and done, amounting to little more than an advertisement, or appetizer, …
It originated in a 1960 Roger Corman shoestringer primarily remembered for a brief appearance by the very young Jack Nicholson as a pain-loving dental patient, and only secondarily for the blood-drinking plant with a small but useful vocabulary ("Feed me!"). Since then it was reincarnated circa 1982 as a stage …
It originated in a 1960 Roger Corman shoestringer primarily remembered for a brief appearance by the very young Jack Nicholson as a pain-loving dental patient, and only secondarily for the blood-drinking plant with a small but useful vocabulary ("Feed me!"). Since then it was reincarnated circa 1982 as a stage …
The initial situation is quite fertile, grounded as it is in something so nearly universal as the Pygmalion impulse. A fourteen-year-old misfit -- academically "accelerated," a devotee of classical music, a connoisseur but not a collector of insects -- is the first person to lay eyes on the new girl …
Homoerotic hankerings on skid row. Gus Van Sant's very independent (and very indigent) directorial debut, in murky black-and-white. It's a hard movie to see, even when it's right in front of you. The poverty of the production might be thought to suit the subject, but it is quite literally unilluminating …
Australian heist comedy, with a severely split personality. The characters have their feet rooted in working-class reality: Colin Friels, who looks like a cross between Sam Neill and young Alan Bates, is perhaps a bit precious as a social simpleton and technological genius, but John Hargreaves is simultaneously dangerous, pathetic, …