Going immediately to No. 1 on my Best of ’86 List was David Cronenberg’s drive-in masterpiece remake of The Fly, which was even better than the one Dave had already clocked in the Drive-In Hall of Fame, The Brood. What we got here is the same story as the 1958…
When filmmakers who already possess morbid, vibrant mentalities discover the topic of food obsession, duck. Audiences are likely to be splattered with all manner of deeply personal opinions about the human condition. Trouble is, our most neurotic talents in contemporary cinema know that a ritual so intimate as eating is…
Bill Watterston, the cartoonist who created Calvin & Hobbes, was so devoted to the concept of his strip–that a little boy’s toy tiger might actually come to life, but only he could see it–that he refused to merchandise the characters. It was as if making Hobbes a real stuffed animal…
Lately quite a few people have been calling me a “greasy yahoo redneck” or a “greasy redneck yahoo” or, for those who didn’t graduate eighth grade, a “jerk.” It feels good. I thought I’d lost the touch. It’s been years since I’ve gotten good, solid American hate mail, which always…
There were several reasons I had not anticipated reviewing The Island of Dr. Moreau. Not the least of these was that early word on the film wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm. Val Kilmer reportedly was so difficult to work with that he had the first director fired, and Marlon Brando,…
The Brady Bunch Movie was a sleeper success last year, but the film itself wasn’t quite as good as the screenplay’s primary idea: setting the film in the ’90s, yet keeping the Bradys forever in the ’70s. (The Bradys aren’t too out of it; they have their own home page.)…
Has this ever happened to you? You’re watching one of the 347 cable boxing matches of the week. Let’s say it’s a match between Louie “Hammerhead” Santini and Frankie “Frank” Franklin. The announcer says: “Santini is wearing the diamond-checked trunks with gold trim and black piping. Franklin is wearing the…
Jean-Michel Basquiat was a middle-class kid from the suburbs when he first started living in a cardboard box in a New York City park in 1979. Jean wasn’t homeless as a result of financial necessity, nor was he mentally unstable. He was, instead, an artist. Using the signature “Samo,” he…
It’s hard to decide which we hear more often: that there are no good roles for women in commercial American cinema, or that this–fill in current calendar year–is The Year of the Woman in film. Whatever the case, there’s usually a self-serving public-relations motive lurking behind these proclamations. The women…
Today’s topic is The Phantom Boyfriend. I didn’t wanna talk about this. I really didn’t. But modern feminist propaganda has driven me to defend the male species. What’s the No. 1 complaint of women in the ’90s? “All men are liars.” How many times have we heard this in, like,…
As you watch The Spitfire Grill flicker by on the screen, it’s difficult not to ask yourself whether the writer-director, Lee David Zlotoff, honestly thought the movie he was making was a grand tragedy rather than a mere melodrama. Sure enough, as Zlotoff cautiously unfolds his sentimental tale–about a dreamy…
During a summer movie season dominated by a 300-pound celluloid gorilla named Independence Day, The USA Film Festival has offered a smashing August menu of sci-fi classics to remind moviegoers that once, not so long ago, the genre provided greater opportunities for audience involvement than thrills and chills. This is…
This is the time of year when Heifer Women insist on wearing white shorts that look like they were designed for Sumo wrestlers. What’s going on with this? Entire Wal-Marts are filled with human beanbag chairs stuffed into the kind of sportswear that only looks good on Gabriela Sabatini. In…
John Carpenter had big-studio backing after the sleeper success of his independent thriller, Halloween, yet his follow-up film, Escape from New York, had the same cheap, low-budget look of some cheesy B-movie made by a film-school geek–which, essentially, it was. The movie was pure silliness: Could any audience in 1981…
Although my father has hidden it well, his greatest parenting disappointment probably has been that a jock like him produced an offspring as indifferent to sports as his only son. Sure, the Olympics are great, rah-rah-rah for the college team and all that, but I must be missing something more…
Here’s a dirty little secret about film critics that won’t make an amusing bon mot at the next National Society of Film Critics dinner, unless you want Pauline Kael to introduce her cane to your head: Critics are herd animals by instinct. There are disagreements, to be sure; the next…
What are the seven most dreaded words in the history of civilization? Of course, you know what I’m talking about. “I need to talk about the relationship.” Wanda Bodine was on me about this last week. She left it on the answering machine. After a three-day drunk in Mexico, I…
The season began unspectacularly, with no sign of questionable new trends. Then slowly but surely, this summer’s insidious onslaught made itself known. First, Eddie Murphy’s Nutty Professor, an obese research scientist, discovers a “secret formula” through which he can re-create himself by transforming his own DNA. Next, in Multiplicity, Michael…
I don’t know what I expected Douglas McGrath to look and sound like after I had been told the writer-director of Miramax’s sterling new version of Emma was born and raised in Midland, Texas. But the last thing I imagined was the polite, dapper, dandyish man with the glittering eyes…
Have you noticed that the only people who know how to do anything are from other countries? These two Armenian brothers are the only guys I’ll let work on my car. I can never pronounce their names, so I refer to ’em as the Skinny Goofy One and the Stocky…
The era of the mom-and-pop video store has pretty much died in Dallas, with the thrilling exception of four stalwart independents: Tapelenders on Cedar Springs; Premiere Video at Mockingbird and Central; and Forbidden Books and Alternative Videos in Exposition Park. Genre is the operative word at each of these valuable…
Everyone thinks he was the first to adore Louise Fitzhugh’s remarkably sophisticated 1964 short novel, Harriet the Spy. As with sex or illicit drugs, your average adolescent must be turned on to Fitzhugh’s smart-aleck exploration of a lonely girl’s traumatic introduction to the consequences of honesty. I had a whip-smart,…
