Email Author Michael Sragow

1997 Stories by Michael Sragow

• Tums of Endearment

  published December 25, 1997

  The ad line for As Good As It Gets is "a comedy from the heart that goes for the throat." Isn't this simply another way of saying, "You'll laugh,... More >>

• Cause and FX

  published December 4, 1997

  George Lucas ignited the modern cinematic special-effects explosion with his Star Wars movies; his trailblazing Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) in... More >>

• Curious Georgia

  published November 27, 1997

  In John Berendt's beguiling travel-cum-true-crime book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the people of Savannah, Georgia, (in Berendt's... More >>

• Open Bar

  published November 20, 1997

  John Grisham's The Rainmaker lulls you into the mindset you get while reading a best seller at the beach. What a sad thing to say about a Francis... More >>

• For Love or Money

  published November 13, 1997

  Put brutally, the marvelous The Wings of the Dove is the story of a romantic frame-up that backfires. Thankfully, nothing is put brutally in this... More >>

• Getting Even

  published November 6, 1997

  Mad City, a descendant of Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole, may irritate orthodox movie buffs. In the Wilder classic, Kirk Douglas' supremely... More >>

• Chinese Watcher Torture

  published October 30, 1997

  Despite Red Corner's muckraking pretensions, it is a rickety throwback to escapist adventures that featured beautiful foreign idealists spouting... More >>

• Send Out the Clowns

  published September 4, 1997

  When Time magazine columnist Walter Shapiro referred to himself last month as part of a generation that still believes "A Thousand Clowns holds... More >>

• Bug Tussle

  published August 21, 1997

  When the beautiful entomologist rips open the chest cavity of a huge, bloodthirsty insect in the sci-fi nightmare Mimic, it turns into Thoraxic... More >>

• Midnight Caballero

  published August 14, 1997

  In the not-so-brave new world of independent filmmaking, low-budget movies premiere at Sundance or Cannes and win plaudits from overpsyched... More >>

• Crack Plot

  published August 7, 1997

  Jerry Fletcher, the hero of Conspiracy Theory, is a comic, glamorous variation on Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Like Travis, he's a New York cabby... More >>

• The Widow's Friend

  published August 7, 1997

  Mrs. Brown (a Cannes hit and Miramax release) is dignified to the dead max--brownish-gray in mood and look and spirit. It's based on the true... More >>

• Bee Minus

  published June 26, 1997

  To get into a good-lovin' mood before each date, a college housemate of mine croaked along to Van Morrison's "Tupelo Honey" while blasting it... More >>

• On Golden Wand

  published June 12, 1997

  In a season of lumbering, big-screen circuses, Rough Magic provides a rowdy, creative side show. It's the kind of haywire high-wire act that... More >>

• Lust for Lifeless

  published May 15, 1997

  On the festival tour that helped the necrophiliac Kissed net prerelease praise everywhere from the Atlantic Monthly to Newsweek, writer-director... More >>

• Three and a Half Hours Under the Sea

  published April 17, 1997

  Das Boot, the 1981 German nautical spectacular, is now being rereleased as an extended three-and-a-half-hour director's cut. With an hour of new... More >>

• Junior Mince

  published April 3, 1997

  Film actors are generally said to have good chemistry or no chemistry. But bad chemistry in movies does exist, and a sleep-inducer called... More >>

• Auto Eroticism

  published March 20, 1997

  Cult auteur David Cronenberg crashes and burns--his talent, that is--in Crash, a vain attempt at a techno-age Persona. It follows a demented... More >>

• Life, in Stereo

  published March 20, 1997

  I spent the 68th anniversary of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre watching The Godfather with the new soundtrack prepared for its 25th... More >>

• Ewok Don't Run

  published March 13, 1997

  In the last chapter of this Star Wars trilogy, an intergalactic window display of creepy and cuddly critters upstages the human characters. All... More >>

• Darth Victory

  published February 20, 1997

  Irvin Kershner's The Empire Strikes Back, the continuation of George Lucas' Star Wars, is a classic fantasy in its own right. I vastly prefer it... More >>

• Irony-Poor Blood

  published February 13, 1997

  Elmore Leonard's Touch is identified on the paperback as a mystery and carried in stores next to Leonard's celebrated crime novels (like Get... More >>

• Isn't That Spacial?

  published February 6, 1997

  At a 20-year remove, George Lucas' Star Wars comes off less as the work of a wizard than as the weird obsessional by-product of an eccentric... More >>

• Remembrances of Things Pastoral

  published January 16, 1997

  For people who grow up loving movies, returning to old favorites can be as jarring and illuminating as blowing the dust off a family photo album.... More >>

• Home, James

  published January 16, 1997

  When an incredulous Jane Campion fan asked what I hated about her version of Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady, I immediately responded,... More >>