Not since the death of Diana has there been a pop phenomenon as cataclysmic as the demise of Seinfeld. The surrounding hoopla has reached such, well, titanic proportions that it has turned the series’ saturnine co-creator–balding, bespectacled Larry David–into a cult celebrity. The press has presented David as a mysterious…
It’s the tail end of the 1996 California primary election, and incumbent Democratic Sen. Jay Bulworth (Warren Beatty) is having a nervous breakdown. Sleepless for days, famished, he channel-surfs aimlessly in the darkness of his office where, in a rare moment of lucidity, he has an inspiration: He arranges to…
In Barbara Kopple’s new documentary Wild Man Blues, we follow Woody Allen around Europe on a whirlwind concert tour with his New Orleans jazz band. He’s kvetching from the get-go. “I would rather be bitten by a dog than fly to Paris,” he announces mid-air, then mellows on the Champs-Elysees…
Most disaster movies would be a lot better with more disaster and less “human drama.” In Deep Impact, the impending obliteration of much of earth by a pair of comets is merely the sideshow. The main event is all that goopy human-interest stuff–the daughter who reunites with her estranged father,…
One of the few seemingly spontaneous bursts of energy at this year’s Oscar ceremony was provided by motor-mouthing Dutch director Mike van Diem, who seemed genuinely surprised to have won the award for Best Foreign Film for his debut feature, Character. If the commercial popularity and Oscar sweep for Titanic…
Since the ballyhooed independent filmmaking movement birthed an instant sub-genre of movies about hip, angst-filled young people pontificating on some major–or worse, minor–turning point in their lives, it seemed perfectly reasonable to fear Dancer, Texas Pop. 81. Never mind the critical murmuring seeping out of its premiere at the South…
Dancer, Texas Pop. 81 is a nice little movie. That probably sounds like an insult, but it’s not meant to be. It’s a genuine sentiment, one not often given–or even fished for–with movies these days, where if it can’t be bigger, it had best be weirder than anything that’s come…
In the production notes for Spike Lee’s new movie, He Got Game, the filmmaker is quoted as saying, “I don’t think I’ve ever done a film that is just about one thing….” That’s true: usually he’s able to cram in two or three things. In his new He Got Game,…
Chinese Box arrives with one of the weirdest hybrid pedigrees in living memory. The writing credits include–in addition to the film’s director, Wayne Wang–Jean-Claude Carriere, who worked on most of the best films of Luis Bunuel’s late period (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Phantom of Liberty, Belle de Jour); classy…
Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel Les Miserables, which he began in 1845, runs in most editions to around 1,500 pages. The latest film version–there have been five other adaptations for movies or television–runs a bit under two and a half hours. It’s an expert piece of pruning–entire continents of plot and…
Hong Kong director Kirk Wong (credited here as Che-Kirk Wong) is the latest defector from the troubled H.K. film industry. Until now, he has been best known in the United States for his Jackie Chan film Crime Story, which played art houses before being picked up for wider release by…
Gwyneth Paltrow gets another chance to show off her letter-perfect English accent in Sliding Doors, an engaging romantic comedy that employs a rather novel narrative device: After introducing the main characters and setting up the basic story, the film splits into two separate but parallel plot lines. It’s a twist…
Is the opposite of offhand, onhand? If so, The Spanish Prisoner is the most onhand movie since Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Writer-director David Mamet delights in his own supposed cleverness; he wants you to scratch your head while he manipulates your brain. Campbell Scott plays a researcher in some…
In writer-director James Toback’s quicksilver sex comedy Two Girls and a Guy, Robert Downey Jr. plays Blake Allen, a struggling New York actor who lives in a spacious loft in SoHo he probably can’t afford. He’s a pampered prince who has worked out for himself a cozy romantic subterfuge: He…
With I Love You…Don’t Touch Me!, first-time filmmaker Julie Davis has made a low-budget movie about love and abstinence among under-30s that looks less to the films of her generational peers–Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming or Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy for instance–than to Woody Allen’s quirky romances of the ’70s…
From its very first frame, Neil Jordan’s The Butcher Boy whooshes us inside the rollicking, deranged world of 12-year-old Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens). Francie is a red-headed roustabout who lives with his alcoholic “Da” (Stephen Rea) and screw-loose mother (Aisling O’Sullivan) in a small town in northern Ireland in the…
Rapper Ice Cube’s debut as a director-screenwriter is a big step backward in terms of the representation of African-Americans and women in film. The Players Club features a group of up-and-coming black male actors who portray hardly anything other than rogue hustlers, abusive hip-hoppers, and capricious rapists. The film’s women…
If nothing else, the current edition of Michael Moore’s continuing self-love fest does have a great subject: the desperation hidden inside a “thriving” U.S. economy. While politicians and financial wizards point to unemployment on the wane and profits on the rise, Moore notes that the largest employer in the country…
The flimsiest hustle in movie promotion today–one perpetrated by film festivals and their camp followers–is that independent movies are starved for mainstream attention. The truth is, they often have an open field in big-city media. Major studios are usually unable to deliver a finished print of a would-be blockbuster until…
What follows are brief reviews of some highlights from the USA Film Festival, arranged chronologically. The festival runs Thursday, April 16, through Thursday, April 23. All events take place at the AMC Glen Lakes, 9450 N. Central Expressway, except for the Master Screen Artist Tribute to Christopher Walken, which will…
Barney the Dinosaur’s broad purple hide has sustained quite a few scars since Barney and Friends debuted on PBS in spring 1992. Bob Dole denounced him on the floor of the Senate as part of a public television scam. Rogue computer programmers made him the target of automatic weapons fire…
When you think about how some of the smartest, most surprising films about women have been made by men–and how, when a woman filmmaker manages to score a decent budget for her project, she does the same for stories about men–you start to realize: Directors should dare to speak for…
