Disney's new Dalmatians ain't the puppy chow it could have been
By Peter Rainer,
November 28, 1996
In the post-Babe era, can you make a live-action movie about animals and not have them talk to each other? For me, this is the deep philosophical... More>>
Gordon, Nolte fake their way through a clear Night
By Andy Klein,
November 28, 1996
Given his commercial success as a novelist, Kurt Vonnegut hasn't seen many of his works translated to the big screen. And, given the results with... More>>
I'm a great fan of the original Star Trek show and at least one of the films (The Wrath of Khan, of course). Kirk, Spock and McCoy may not have... More>>
Anthony Minghella believes in ghosts--and, at his best, makes believers out of viewers, too. The writer-director of Truly Madly Deeply and this... More>>
Critics normally don't spend a lot of time praising producers; in a medium that is both commerce and art, our job is to evaluate the art side of... More>>
Metalhead murder trial exhumed in documentary Paradise Lost
By M.V. Moorhead,
November 14, 1996
The astonishing documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills starts with a crime that seems unreal, apocryphal: the murder of... More>>
Animation fest smacks of TV anarchy from Saturday mornings past
By M.V. Moorhead,
November 14, 1996
For the past five years, Valley Art Theatre has been gracing our community with Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, an annual... More>>
A homeless man stumbles into a New York fish market and asks for a glass of water. The owner's wife gives it to him, and then, with a strange,... More>>
Ron Howard and Mel Gibson deliver the goods in Ransom
By M.V. Moorhead,
November 07, 1996
Thrillers that involve a threat to the nuclear family almost always have a reactionary subtext. Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle... More>>
Swingers hoists low-budget toast to "cocktail nation"
By M.V. Moorhead,
October 31, 1996
The swing in Swingers is in the music and the talk--the self-consciously hip chatter of young men cruising clubs and dancing to big bands. Yet... More>>
Romeo & Juliet and Looking for Richard rethink Shakespeare
By M.V. Moorhead,
October 31, 1996
A few weeks ago, I saw a preview for William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. A woman in the row behind me remarked, "He must be turning over in his... More>>
During the MTV Music Awards this year, Dennis Miller cracked that a band he was introducing was "so hip and alternative that Steve Buscemi tried... More>>
Neil Jordan deifies guerrilla-statesman Michael Collins--nothing revolutionary about that
By Peter Rainer,
October 24, 1996
Neil Jordan's Michael Collins opens with Collins' trusted aide Joe O'Reilly (Ian Hart) speaking of his departed leader: "He never did what anyone... More>>
The Passion of Joan of Arc scores live orchestration at Gammage "opera-oratorio"
By M.V. Moorhead,
October 17, 1996
Last year, Arizona State University's Gammage Auditorium hosted a special showing of Sergei Eisenstein's masterpiece The Battleship Potemkin,... More>>
Trying to decide whether the Million Man March was good or bad, heartening or depressing, can give you a headache. At the center of the ambiguity... More>>
Shifting tastes in cinema sex make Bound a special sort of caper movie
By M.V. Moorhead,
October 10, 1996
Corky, a parolee, gets a job fixing up a Chicago apartment next door to one occupied by Ceasar, a gangster, and Violet, his luscious moll. The... More>>
The cook and his brother dish out a feast in Big Night
By M.V. Moorhead,
October 03, 1996
All over the country, film reviewers who have just seen Big Night are frantically straining to think of a different way to say what they know... More>>
The first play by David Mamet to receive wide notice was American Buffalo, a three-hander set in a junk shop, about marginal smalltime crooks... More>>
Short Cuts meets Pulp Fiction! That, no doubt, is how the script for 2 days in the valley was sold, but it's not quite either movie. It's more... More>>
