Really more a Maxie movie. Goofy, his dad, is along only for generation-gap embarrassment. And so, really more a John Hughes movie than a Disney. Except for the songs: too many of them. Directed by Kevin Lima.
In sharp contradiction of its title (translated Dead Tired), this is a frisky and reckless bit of cinephiliac fun, written and directed by, and starring, Michel Blanc. As himself. The premise sets up like so: Blanc's life and work have started to be disrupted (a middle-of-the-night rousting by the cops, …
Sophia Loren, emigrated to Wabasha, Minn., to convert Chuck's Bait Shop into Ragetti's Ristorante, joins the Grumpy group in the effort not to act one's age. In her case, it's largely a matter of cleavage -- not bad for a woman of sixty, but hasn't a woman of sixty got …
Computer-nerd wet dream of averting global disaster and foiling the corporate bad guys (most particularly the hackers' adult counterpart, the villainously bearded Fisher Stevens) during Senior Year in high school. And, for a lucky two, finding a soul mate in the bargain, namely (or nicknamely) Crash Override, formerly Zero Cool, …
Sponsored, if that's the word, or endorsed, by Jodie Foster, this French film introduces American audiences to Mathieu Kassovitz, one of the many spawn of Martin Scorsese, farther-flung than most, documenting twenty-four volatile hours in the lives of three angry young men in the housing projects outside Paris. In significant …
An ambitious, even overambitious, game of cops and robbers, fitted by rolling pin into the time-frame of Monday Night Football, a shade under three hours. Writer-director Michael Mann wants to have his opposing game players two opposite ways — as existential archetypes and as multi-dimensional humans — and the transitions …
Dispatched from the BBC with a 16mm camera and a tongue-loosening checkbook, documentarist Nick Broomfield hashes over the 1993 (and beyond) call-girl scandal in Tinsel Town, gathering conflicting testimony from central figures (Ivan Nagy, Madam Alex, Victoria Sellers, L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates) and peripheral, and finally from the erstwhile …
After an elaborate car wreck and two hours of death, a resurrected antiques dealer begins to see through the eyes of a Satanic serial killer and vice versa -- each tracking the other via geographical landmarks transmitted back and forth between retinas. Cumbersome concept, clumsily conveyed, with the special touch …
The American college campus (fictitious Columbus U., after Christopher, not the city in Ohio) as microcosmic melting pot. Or better, boiling pot, with little actual melting taking place. Racial and ethnic separatism; feminism; neo-Nazism; competitive athletics; dormitory stereo wars; date rape; sexual disorientation; etc. Those who were overhasty about exalting …
Christopher Lambert is back as the immortal French-accented Scotsman from the 16th Century. And guess what? "Great danger lies ahead, Highlander," his Japanese martial-arts master informs him. By name, the danger is one Kane (Cane? Caine?) -- not the philosophical wanderer of TV's Kung Fu, but a black Oriental warlord …
The second feature film to be directed by Jodie Foster (this time behind the camera only) is a moderately eccentric comedy about the horrors of a Thanksgiving family gathering. The material is sufficiently universal that, at some point or points, it is bound to come within tickling distance of just …
Corny costume adventure involving Austrian spies in pursuit of Italian expatriates in post-Napoleonic France, presently in the grips of a cholera epidemic. (All you need to know of the history: the Italians are the good guys, the Austrians the bad.) The casting of a vain vapid male-model type, Olivier Martinez, …
Grandma's quilting bee is sewing a "wedding quilt," and the bride-to-be is soaking up the romantic knowledge and wisdom of the various members. The episodic flashbacks (most of them populated by younger actresses difficult to match up with the rememberers) are underdeveloped individually, and the total sum seems small, though …
An American businessman abroad (Christopher Lambert, French accent and all) commits the faux pas, punishable by death, of glimpsing the unmasked face of Kinjo the Ninja, head of the Makato clan, and he finds himself in the crossfire (or under the crossed swords, rather) of a centuries-old feud. Allowing this …