Comedy about the cultural give-and-take of an American ballplayer (Yankee, for extra emphasis) on a Japanese team. And directed -- from a neutral corner -- by an Australian, Fred Schepisi. Lightweight, predictable, cautiously diplomatic -- though a lot of documentary data, or at any rate travelogue data, gets crammed into …
Also known as Buddy Young, Jr. (né Yankelman), a composite Jewish stand-up comedian remindful in many ways — many, many ways — of the silent-film clown in Carl Reiner's The Comic, albeit without the intrinsic cinematic interest. A novice in the final days of vaudeville, a warm-up act in the …
Michael Caine (in the flesh) is Scrooge. The thigh-high Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchit. Miss Piggy is wife Emily. The Great Gonzo is Charles Dickens. God save Us, Every One! Directed by Brian Henson.
Michael Caine (in the flesh) is Scrooge. The thigh-high Kermit the Frog is Bob Cratchit. Miss Piggy is wife Emily. The Great Gonzo is Charles Dickens. God save Us, Every One! Directed by Brian Henson.
Courtroom comedy about a Brooklyn ambulance chaser (who passed the bar exam six weeks earlier on his sixth attempt) on a murder case in Wazoo City, Alabama. The jokes -- mostly of the city-slicker-in-jerkwater-town variety -- can be seen coming from far enough off for boredom to set in before …
Hey, let's put on a show! -- a Disney musical about child labor, union organization, and strikebreaking in New York City at the turn of the century. And let's have it be in muted, monochromed color (for social, historical realism). And let's have a cast of thousands, hundreds, at least …
Hey, let's put on a show! -- a Disney musical about child labor, union organization, and strikebreaking in New York City at the turn of the century. And let's have it be in muted, monochromed color (for social, historical realism). And let's have a cast of thousands, hundreds, at least …
Irwin Winkler's remake of Jules Dassin's 1950 film noir (graciously "dedicated to Jules Dassin," a victim of the Hollywood blacklist that Winkler had dramatized in his Guilty by Suspicion). But that was then; this is later: so forget atmosphere, forget mood, forget suspense, and stand clear for a whirling-dervish star …
As in Jim Jarmusch's previous project, Mystery Train, the structure of this one fairly leaps out at us: five consecutive taxi rides in five different cities of the world, all after dark. It sounds like an idea for a movie, or at least like the germ of an idea for …
The transfer to screen of Michael Frayn's stage piece is in Peter Bogdanovich's more comfortable or anyhow less discomfiting mode, the frenetically pointless as opposed to the face-pullingly pretentious (Saint Jack always excepted), a theatrical farce wrapped around a sex farce (titled Nothing On) en route from Des Moines (Act …
Faithful, credulous, overtrusting account of the dated Steinbeck tearjerker, with John Malkovich (oh dear God, no! no!!) as simple-minded, heavy-petting Lennie, and Gary Sinise as selfless George, his brother's keeper. Sinise, who also directed, although in a soupier style, delivers a Depression-lean performance. But Malkovich, sporting a knitted-browed, fish-lipped expression …
In this re-do of a thirty-year-old Italian job, a large group of heavy comic actors (James Belushi, John Candy, Richard Lewis, Sean Young, Cybill Shepherd, George Hamilton) gathers together to jump up and down on a balsa-light mystery comedy. Giancarlo Giannini, as the Monte Carlo homicide inspector, gives you somebody …
Low-budget crime drama with higher-than-usual character interest. Most of that interest centers around a small-town Arkansas sheriff (Bill Paxton) who happens to police the suspected destination of three murderous fugitives from Los Angeles, a dapper and cool-headed black, a scruffy, ponytailed, psychopathic white, and the latter's coke-addicted, café-au-lait girlfriend. The …
French farceur Francis Veber at work -- correction: at hard labor -- in the American Northwest, where there aren't even subtitles to keep us occupied. Matthew Broderick, Heidi Kling, Jeffrey Jones.
A too-good cast -- Bob Hoskins, Blair Brown, Pamela Reed, Nancy Travis, Frances McDormand, Maureen Stapleton, Peter Riegert -- is assembled for what is meant to be "a fine Irish wake," but in reality is a mechanically written and drearily photographed Irish wake. And good though he may be, Hoskins …