Though it has been remade at least a half-dozen times for film and television, and at least twice for the stage, no adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1908 penny dreadful The Phantom of the Opera makes quite the same claim on the emotions as the original film of 1925. It’s a…
Watching a documentary about the lives of people of no notable accomplishment could be as entertaining as watching winter grass grow. 35 Up has watched 14 people grow for 28 years, and it is fascinating. In 1964, Great Britain’s Granada television program, World in Action, interviewed a group of 7-year-old…
The term “art film” might have been coined to describe Peter Greenaway’s movies. They embody everything, good and not so good, that is suggested by that usually unhelpful label. They play in “art house” theatres, and they are arty in their (not always unjustified) pretensions. But above all this, Greenaway’s…
If Pirandello had ever made a splatter movie, it would probably have been along the lines of Wes Craven’s New Nightmare–the title might be Five Knives in Search of a Sequel. Wes Craven, writer-director of the first (and only good) A Nightmare on Elm Street film, back in 1984, has…
Pulp Fiction is rubbish about scum. The plot is a tangled mess of collisions between hit men, drug dealers, crooked boxers, murderous junkies, perverted security guards and the like. The script is packed full of ferocious violence and sadism, and even more full of savage racial and sexual invective. It…
I Like It Like That is the movie that should have had the title Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life). This comedy is about the crazy life of Lisette (Lauren Velez), a young, black-Hispanic woman living in the Bronx. Her husband, Chino (Jon Seda), is in jail. Her son, who’s…
Robert Redford’s new film, Quiz Show–his fourth, and perhaps best, effort as a director–stars Ralph Fiennes as Charles Van Doren, the “champion” of the Fifties game show Twenty-One. The role of Van Doren, who was publicly disgraced by revelations that Twenty-One was rigged, is one which, two decades ago, would…
There’s something admirably gutsy about an independent filmmaker choosing mother-son incest as the subject of his first film, and making it on a shoestring with a cast of unknowns. No matter how good a picture it may be, a topic this disturbing and depressing is not the sort of thing…
The hero of Red Rock West–played, excellently, by Nicolas Cage–is an out-of-work ex-Marine. In the first few scenes, we are shown what a decent, standup guy he is. He refuses a buddy’s offer of a loan. And although he’s penniless and stuck in the middle of nowhere, he resists the…
In his Confessions, St. Augustine admitted that his prayer for sexual purity had often taken the form Da mihi castitatum et continentiam, sed noli modo–“Give me chastity and continency, but not yet.” Augustine’s candor puts to shame that of William Boyd, author of the comic novel A Good Man in…
In an odd coincidence, two major films of the early ’70s are being rereleased this week, both in restored “director’s cuts.” Both are worth checking out, especially if you’ve never seen them on the big screen–and if you haven’t, it’s fair in both cases to say you haven’t seen them…
If you must hate someone, if you must point a finger of blame, if you must direct the seething waves of unspeakable anger that have been washing over you since hearing the news that the Rolling Stones have canceled their Phoenix dates, then the people of Oakland, California, should be…
The first few shots in Natural Born Killers are of creatures to which the title can be applied without moral judgment. A hawk glares at the desert; a rattlesnake gazes into the camera with a dull, ill face. Then the scene shifts to a roadside diner, where the central characters–Mickey…
John Candy, who died during the filming of Wagons East!, was a great movie comedian who never quite made a great movie comedy. Sadder, even, than the failure of the mostly feeble Wagons East! to break that streak is watching Candy’s weary, joyless performance. This may be his only film…
Allison Anders’ first solo directing credit, Gas, Food, Lodging, about a single woman raising two daughters in a small Southwestern town, was overrated. It was pretty to look at, but dramatically thin and clich. Her new film, Mi Vida Loca, is even better to look at, and it has a…
Several people walked out of the Barcelona screening I attended. I could only assume they disliked the talkiness and slow pace of this mild comedy of manners, which recounts the romantic adventures of a couple of Americans living abroad in the early 80s. There’s a fine touch of irony to…
My Life’s in Turnaround, a low-budget movie by two slacker types about two slacker types trying to make a low-budget movie, is subtitled Based on a True Story. This same joke was the punch line of Mel Brooks’ most neglected film, Silent Movie. The hero (Brooks) is a director who…
Not having read the books, I can’t say if the film versions of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels have been faithful. Based on the content of the movies, I can see no evidence that unfaithfulness would constitute a crime against world literature. This was especially true of The Hunt for…
After a successful run last season at Theater Works’ small Glendale playhouse, Sweeney Todd, Stephen Sondheim’s story of the razor-wielding barber who cuts throats as his part in the meat-pie business, is now in Herberger Theater Center’s Center Stage. Director David Wo has brought some members of the original Glendale…
Out of every five people you meet, four feel that their mothers and/or fathers were wretched failures as parents. The sentiment can be kind of funny when you hear it from some stupid kid, but it isn’t funny at all when–as is often the case–it has dogged and haunted the…
After human beings, the cinema probably doesn’t have a greater visual subject, among living creatures, than the horse. I say this as no particular horse fancier in real life, but as an admirer of horses in movies, a medium far more suited to the beauties of the species than painting…
Comedy director Andrew Bergman, who broke in working on scripts for Mel Brooks, is gifted but uneven. In 1990, he wrote and directed The Freshman, a piece of glittering nuttiness built around a beautiful, career-consummating performance by Marlon Brando. The film could only have been the work of an audacious…
