Out of a desire to be definitive, this lavish Superman adventure allows itself to become bogged in biography. It presumes a familiarity with Superman mythology, and often plays on that familiarity, but it is still willing to bore the audience with elementary information about life on Krypton (where the culture …
A reversion to the 1950s invasion genre, modernized somewhat with a plug for sunflower seeds and a caution against pesticides, and beefed up needlessly with an "all-star" cast. The invasion, this time around, is by a dark cloud of African bees whose sting is described as "even more virulent than …
Originally named Dandy, the All-American Girl. Neither its original nor its present title provides much of a clue to what this eccentric movie is about. Dandy -- one of the androgynous heroine's several aliases -- is an adult delinquent, a specialist in car thievery, who holes up like a mouse …
The truest movie translation, to date, of a Patricia Highsmith thriller -- a category that includes the likes of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train, René Clement's Purple Noon, and Wim Wenders's The American Friend. Despite the offbeat casting of Gerard Depardieu and Miou-Miou (neither of whom has ever been …
The appeal of this vision of Lombardy life, at the turn of the century, is rooted in its proximity to "real life," which is forever and always the middlebrow's most unshakable criterion of artistic excellence. Actually, the vision is not close to all of real life, but only to that …
More a diagrammatic than a dramatic account of a woman on the rebound, this movie is like a profusely illustrated version of one of those self-help, consciousness-raising manuals that traipse unendingly through the nonfiction best-seller charts. It's overly balanced, systematic, and universalized, but at the very least it makes a …
Cheech and Chong's marijuana puff piece is simply a stinker (a pot stinker? a stinkpot?). Gas masks are advised. With Stacy Keach and Tom Skerritt; directed by Lou Adler.
Claude Chabrol's reopening of a famous and infamous case of parricide in Paris of the 1930s -- a tantalizing blend of tabloid sensationalism, discreet social consciousness, mordant wit, and a kind of glamour that is within both the imagination and the budget of the average shopgirl. Chabrol's insights into the …
The decently drawn cartoon version of Richard Adams's best-seller recalls Walt Disney's early features in its meticulous mimicking of real-life animal models. It always stays stricter to naturalism than Disney ever did, but if it doesn't venture far beyond naked-eye observation into mind's-eye imagination, it also doesn't descend very deep …
There's a sort of protoplasmic scum over the image that makes everything appear somewhat blunted or blurred, symbolic perhaps of the altered state of consciousness you would need to be in to enjoy this broad burlesque of the marriage rite. Watching this movie is like being stone-cold at a party …
Fluffy ham-and-cheese omelette. Robert Morley spouts nothing but gag lines, George Segal mugs like a monkey, and Jacqueline Bisset comports herself with the same degree of self-preservation and self-pacing practiced by the Venus de Milo (in other words, she is a stiff). The high point is the Sears Catalog-style display …
This drug-smuggling caper is on the glib and pretentious side. The war in Vietnam, the cowardice of the intelligentsia, the crookedness of crime fighters, the mush-headed escapism of drug users, and the general climate of paranoia -- these things are all advanced as basic truths about the American Way and …
A gaggle of middle-aged Englishmen cheerfully throw up their mean and degrading civilian lives for the chance to get back into khakis and form a mercenary squad to rescue a kidnapped African messiah named Limbani (pronounced like the pro football player, Lem Barney). Hundreds die in the course of this …
Political comic strip dedicated to the idea that a Joe Kennedy-type patriarch would have been behind the assassination of a Jack Kennedy-type President. Head-scratchingly plotted, but hair-raisingly resolved, and always dazzlingly photographed (courtesy of Vilmos Zsigmond). A movie much troubled in production and again in distribution; its misfortunes were a …
Broadway's blackface version of The Wizard of Oz. Ugly in design, dreary in lighting, chaotic in dance, insipid in song -- what less could you ask? The major area of fascination is in scrutinizing, up close, the monster-ish makeup on the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion. With …