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 planning to rob a coin collection. After an Obie-winning off-Broadway run, it hit Broadway in 1977, with Robert Duvall, Kenneth McMillan and John Savage, and it…
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 engaging than the former, less imaginative and intelligent than the latter, and a good deal more sentimental than either. This comedy-thriller sets…
In a kitschy, sappy way, Grace of My Heart is a likable movie. It has a lively period flavor, some terrific music and an excellent lead performance. Now and then, for a scene or two at a time, it’s even touching. But it’s still a show-biz soaper, and it’s not…
In 1994, PBS ran the 90-minute documentary Before Stonewall about events leading up to the 1969 riot outside the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village, an incident regarded by some as the beginning of the modern Gay Pride movement in America. The late filmmaker Nigel Finch has taken another…
Score one for the character actors. Paul Newman’s chubby, dim sidekick in Nobody’s Fool, which was set in a small town in upstate New York, was played endearingly by Pruitt Taylor Vince–one of many times that Vince has shown his reliability in supporting roles. Beautiful Girls, JFK, Natural Born Killers,…
The names of the three main characters in The Spitfire Grill are Hannah, Shelby and Percy. That last name, the heroine’s, is short for–get this–“Perchance.” Still haven’t heard enough? Okay, here’s writer/director Lee David Zlotoff holding forth, in the production notes, on the theme of his film: “This film is…
The documentary A Perfect Candidate is like Al Gore doing the macarena at the Democratic National Convention–proof that political satire has become impossible. Under the opening titles, we see a combo called the Angry Young Pachyderms at the Virginia Republican Convention, performing a ditty called Don’t You Know It’s Your…
Part of Andy Warhol’s genius was his witty skill at daring us not to think he was a genius. Plenty of people took this dare, and it was no skin off his pasty nose–he may well have agreed with them. But if the art world was sufficiently gullible, or frightened…
Not far into The Trigger Effect, we see a street sign which reads “Maple Ct.” This is probably a nod by writer/director David Koepp to “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” a 1959 episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. If it isn’t, it ought to be. “Maple Street”…
H.G. Wells’ brusquely brief novel The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of the kinkiest of all classic horror tales. The likably flawed narrator/hero, Edward Prendick, finds himself stranded on the title island, where he is the guest of Moreau, a researcher, and his tippling associate Montgomery, a disgraced medical…
Those of us who were children during the late ’60s and early ’70s remember the kiddy movies of the time as a sorry, syrupy lot–as, I suspect, our parents do even more acutely. 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory has much of the same saccharine quality around the edges,…
The Fan marks Robert De Niro’s fourth stalker. He’s Gil Renard, a San Francisco knife salesman whose avocation is his twisted, fanatical enthusiasm for the Giants. Gil is especially fixed on a new addition to the team’s roster, a power hitter named Bobby Rayburn who has recently led the Braves…
After the focused ugliness of Short Cuts, the casual, audience-contemptuous sloppiness of Robert Altman’s Ready to Wear (Pret-a-Porter) was a relief. It wasn’t a very good film, but at least Altman hadn’t stooped to indicting the fashion game–it was possible to enjoy his enjoyment of the subject’s naked absurdity, its…
Regarding last week’s announcement that Meteorite ALH84001 may have been crawling with Martian germs: What’s the big deal? Science may consider this the first sign of Martian life, but we moviegoers have always known that Mars was a jumpin’ place, teeming with everything from snarling monsters to Ruritanian civilizations of…
A perky little armadillo bustles around under the titles of Ron Shelton’s Tin Cup, snout out, tail high. After a while, it becomes clear that this creature is supposed to represent Kevin Costner’s character, Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy. Of the two, it’s the armadillo who’d have grounds to take offense…
In Maybe . . . Maybe Not, a character mentions that he’s going to a Men’s Movement discussion group. “Oh, that’s so ’70s,” says another, and while the first guy concurs, he observes that such things are coming back into vogue. Apparently, a number of other things from the ’70s…
With the exception of Mansfield Park and a few minor or unfinished works, all of Jane Austen’s fiction has been adapted either for movies or for television within the past two years or so. Though almost two centuries have passed since she’s written anything new, Austen’s novel-to-film ratio is right…
Who saw Old Yeller? Who cried when Old Yeller got shot at the end? Nobody cried when Old Yeller got shot? I’m sure! I cried my eyes out . . . –Bill Murray, Stripes The title canine of Disney’s Old Yeller saves young Tommy Kirk from wild pigs, and catches…
“Breathtaking” is one of the most overworked words in the critical lexicon, but make no mistake–the Jackie Chan vehicle Supercop is breathtaking. A dubbed and very slightly reedited version of a film I saw three years ago under the title Supercop (Police Story 3), this light-footed action comedy from Hong…
Cape Fear–De Niro poisons pooch Cujo–St. Bernard catches rabies, terrorizes people, dies gruesomely Dances With Wolves–Dog killed by evil Pawnee; wolf Two Socks killed by evil white soldiers Desperate Living–Dog run over by lesbians on crime spree Eye for an Eye–Dog doused with hot coffee by Kiefer Sutherland A Fish…
Movies about junkies certainly don’t exact the same toll from their audiences that actual junkies do from the people who care about them, but their techniques are often the same. Junkies can frequently be charming; so can junkie movies. Junkies elicit one’s pity, sometimes calculatingly; so do junkie movies. Junkies…
Farce often operates best with the sword of horror hanging over its head, and horror can chill more deeply when spiked generously with humor. Martin and Lewis and Hope and Crosby and the Dead End Kids all braved haunted houses; half of the monsters on the Universal lot played straight…
