Category: Movie Review

THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK *** (A must-see) Directed by George Miller Written by Michael Cristofer With Jack Nicholson, Susan Sarandon, Cher, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Veronica Cartwright. The pairing of author John Updike and director George Miller at first seems a strange proposition. Updike, of course, is the quintessential man of letters, a critic as well […]

BEVERLY HILLS COP II ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Tony Scott Written by Larry Ferguson and Warren Skaaren With Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold, John Ashton, and Brigitte Nielsen. Beverly Hills Cop II opens in a blind panic and never calms down. The film’s style is that of a magician who keeps dazzling you with his […]

GARDENS OF STONE ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Francis Coppola Written by Ronald Bass With James Caan, D.B. Sweeney, James Earl Jones, Anjelica Huston, and Dean Stockwell. Remember when nobody wanted to talk about Vietnam? Seems like a long time ago, but right after the withdrawal of U.S. armed forces, no one seemed to have […]

PRICK UP YOUR EARS *** (A must-see) Directed by Steven Frears Written by Alan Bennett With Gary Oldman, Alfred Molina, Vanessa Redgrave, and Wallace Shawn. Joe Orton was the pet bad boy of English theater in the 60s, a one-man assault on conventional British morality. Unabashedly homosexual when that was still a crime punishable by […]

WAITING FOR THE MOON * (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Jill Godmilow Written by Godmilow and Mark Magill With Linda Hunt, Linda Bassett, Jacques Boudet, and Bruce McGill. Why bother producing a film about literary lioness Gertrude Stein and her faithful sidekick Alice B. Toklas that not only portrays them disingenuously as “just good friends” […]

BROKEN MIRRORS ** (Worth seeing) Directed and written by Marleen Gorris With Lineke Rijxman and Henrietta Tol. Suppose you go to a movie with a friend of the opposite sex. Soon your friend is laughing in the most unseemly fashion at humor that leaves you cold, and that furthermore seems calculated to insult anyone of […]

SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA *** (A must-see) Written by Spalding Gray Directed by Jonathan Demme With Spalding Gray. In Plato’s republic Spalding Gray would be among the first asked to pack his bags. The old Greek could not abide poets, whose art he saw as an imitation of a reality that was already a faint shadow […]

MAKING MR. RIGHT *** (A must-see) Directed by Susan Seidelman Written by Floyd Byars and Laurie Frank With Ann Magnuson, John Malkovich, Ben Masters, Laurie Metcalf, and Polly Bergen. Can a liberated businesswoman with an aching heart find a warmhearted, loving male in this modern world? Mmmmm, could be, according to Susan Seidelman’s Making Mr. […]

WILD THING * (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Max Reid Written by John Sayles With Rob Knepper, Kathleen Quinlan, Robert Davi, and Betty Buckley. History, Herr Karl Marx sniffed somewhere or other in his collected works, repeats itself as farce. In cinema, however, this is no bad thing, at least not always. There’s nothing wrong […]

BLIND DATE **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Blake Edwards Written by Dale Launer Starring Bruce Willis, Kim Basinger, John Larroquette, William Daniels, George Coe, Mark Blum, Phil Hartman, Stephanie Faracy, and Graham Stark. Blake Edwards’s last few films — The Man Who Loved Women (1983), Micki and Maude (1984), A Fine Mess, and That’s Life! (both […]

WORKING GIRLS *** (A must-see) Directed by Lizzie Borden Written by Borden and Sandra Kay With Louise Smith, Ellen McElduff, and Amanda Goodwin. In the history of houses that ain’t exactly homes, Sydney Biddle Barrows, the upper-crust “Mayflower Madam” busted late last year, hardly will rank among the more colorful housekeepers. But the intriguing feature […]

RAISING ARIZONA ** (Worth seeing) Directed by Joel Coen Written by Joel and Ethan Coen With Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Trey Wilson, Randall “Tex” Cobb, and Sam McMurray. Formal mastery without feeling makes people uneasy. Perhaps Joel and Ethan Coen sensed this in the wake of (and despite) the resounding critical […]

THE SATIN SLIPPER **** (Masterpiece) Directed and written by Manoel de Oliveira With Luis-Miguel Cintra, Anne Configny, and Patricia Barzyk Cinema has given us many kinds of masterworks. The Satin Slipper (Le soulier de satin) is clearly not a film for everyone. A viewer expecting the ready emotional charge provided by a well-crafted Hollywood production […]

ATHENS, GA.–INSIDE/OUT ** (Worth seeing) Directed and written by Anthony Gayton With R.E.M., the B-52’s, Dreams So Real, and Love Tractor. Athens, Georgia — 60 miles from Atlanta — is home to 45,000 people, the University of Georgia, and one of the most critically acclaimed rock ‘n’ roll scenes of recent years. The B-52’s and […]