Category: Movie Review

WORLD’S BEST COMMERCIALS: CANNES ’92 My fellow film aesthetes mostly hate TV commercials, arguing that they’re oriented toward selling products, not toward personal expression; that they’re the anonymous products of agencies; that they manipulate the viewer rather than encouraging her to think; and that by selling through “image” (read “lies”) they are truly immoral. The […]

HOUSE OF CARDS *** (A must-see) Directed and written by Michael Lessac With Kathleen Turner, Tommy Lee Jones, Asha Menina, Shiloh Strong, Esther Rolle, and Park Overall. If one of the surest signs of story-telling talent is the capacity to put across an outlandish plot, the first feature of writer-director Michael Lessac is impressive–riveting, exciting, […]

LAST ACTION HERO ** (Worth seeing) Directed by John McTiernan Written by Shane Black, David Arnott, Zak Penn, and Adam Leff With Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin O’Brien, Charles Dance, Anthony Quinn, Tom Noonan, Mercedes Ruehl, F. Murray Abraham, and Robert Prosky. The word is out: Last Action Hero is an unmitigated disaster. The sound of studio […]

Who is correct? Are we becoming better off or worse off? Where are we heading? It depends on whom you mean by “we.” –Robert B. Reich, The Work of Nations “Men never get this movie,” a woman says to her friend in Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle, referring to Leo McCarey’s 1957 An Affair to […]

CLIFFHANGER ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Renny Harlin Written by Michael France and Sylvester Stallone With Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, Michael Rooker, Janine Turner, Rex Linn, Caroline Goodall, Leon, Paul Winfield, and Ralph Waite. Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility […]

THE STORY OF QIU JU **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Zhang Yimou Written by Liu Heng With Gong Li, Lei Lao Sheng, Liu Pei Qi, Ge Zhi Jun, and Yang Liu Chun. For a comedy that takes bureaucratic negotiation as one of its overriding themes, Zhang Yimou’s The Story of Qiu Ju has negotiated quite a […]

STAR TIME *** (A must-see) Directed and written by Alexander Cassini With Michael St. Gerard, John P. Ryan, Maureen Teefy, and Thomas Newman. I doubt that any current media buzz term is more ideologically polluted than “family values.” Even its alternative, “suitable for the whole family,” doesn’t contain the same puritanical lies. The egregious false […]

POVERTIES *** (A must-see) Directed by Laurie Dunphy Years ago, when some friends and I were running a university film society, we had an office where we looked at the films we were about to show and at the films other area film societies were showing. The building janitor sometimes used the office to sleep, […]

DAVE ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Ivan Reitman Written by Gary Ross With Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn, Ving Rhames, and Ben Kingsley Is it the prime purpose of every movie we want to see to tell us comforting lies? On some level I suspect it is, and paradoxically this may be […]

MY NEW GUN * (Has redeeming facet) Directed and written by Stacy Cochran With Diane Lane, James LeGros, Tess Harper, Bruce Altman, Maddie Corman, Bill Raymond, and Stephen Collins. I finally got to feel that I had to unpack large crates by swallowing the excelsior in order to find at the bottom a few bent […]

BOILING POINT ** (Worth seeing) Directed and written by James B. Harris With Wesley Snipes, Dennis Hopper, Lolita Davidovich, Viggo Mortensen, Seymour Cassel, Jonathan Banks, Christine Elise, and Valerie Perrine BODIES, REST & MOTION ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Michael Steinberg Written by Roger Hedden With Phoebe Cates, Bridget Fonda, Tim Roth, Eric Stoltz, Alicia […]

I was several weeks late catching up with El mariachi, a fine little action picture in Spanish that’s been playing at the Water Tower (and opens this week at the Biograph and Bricktown Square). Judging from all the reviews and press stories I read beforehand, an essential part of the movie’s meaning–almost treated as if […]

FILMS BY STAN BRAKHAGE **** (Masterpiece) Stan Brakhage has been making films for more than 40 years. By now he’s made hundreds, ranging in length from a few seconds to four hours. He makes them very cheaply–because he photographs them himself, generally working without cast or crew, the main costs are film and lab bills. […]

FILMS BY MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI Jean-Luc Godard: The drama is no longer psychological, but plastic . . . Michelangelo Antonioni: It’s the same thing. –from a 1964 interview Just for my own edification, I’ve put together a list of the 12 greatest living narrative filmmakers–not so much personal favorites as individuals who, in my estimation, have […]

NIGHT AND DAY **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Chantal Akerman Written by Akerman and Pascal Bonitzer With Guilaine Londez, Thomas Langmann, Francois Negret, Nicole Colchat, Pierre Laroche, and Christian Crahay. Considering all the oppositions that inform the work of Chantal Akerman–such as painting versus narrative, France versus Belgium, being Jewish versus being French and Belgian, and […]