Film critics are put in a difficult position when they see a movie that’s well-made but features characters so unbelievably odious you wouldn’t want to spend two minutes with them in real life. Of course, directors including Sam Peckinpah and Martin Scorsese have built legendary careers out of one scumbag…
There’s a great line delivered by the Scottish protagonist in Trainspotting: “A lot of people hate the English, but I don’t. The English are just wankers, but what are we? We were colonized by wankers! We can’t even pick a decent culture to be colonized by.” That may be the…
Storytellers long ago recognized the fertile ground for plots available at the average neighborhood saloon. A bar can be so many things to different people: a hangout; a pit stop; a place to meet friends, strangers, and lovers, known and unknown. It can be a happy place, or a miserable…
While it’s true that most filmmakers still keep on-screen gay romance in the hand-holding stage, the viewer who yearns to savor a little bit of tenderness between same-sex lovers may have been startled to find a wealth of sweet moments in the most unexpected places recently. Spike Lee, traditionally no…
What used to be the two most boring words in the history of the English language? “Mutual funds,” right? What does everybody wanna talk about at parties in the ’90s? Mutual funds, right? Everybody’s buying mutual funds. People who can’t divide nine by three are buying mutual funds. People who…
Melodramas often take a bad rap in the critical press, as if there’s something wrong with enjoying schmaltzy love stories or torrid, overblown gangster epics. Granted, they aren’t exactly known for their original plots, but there’s a reason they have staying power. After all, cliches only gain currency as cliches…
In the opening scene of Surviving Picasso, set in Paris at the height of World War II, the great Spanish artist is showing his haphazard collection of paintings–his own as well as those of his friends, the Fauvist genius Henri Matisse and fellow cubist Georges Braque–to a pair of dimwitted…
For most of his 12-year career, director Spike Lee has shouldered a unique burden among young, contemporary black filmmakers. John Singleton, Albert and Allen Hughes, and Matty Rich earned their reputations with debut features that vividly explored inner-city crime. Spike Lee–whose earlier mainstream success arguably opened doors in lily-white Hollywood…
This First Wives Club stuff is gettin’ scary, isn’t it? What’s the rallying cry of First Wives Club? “Don’t get even–get everything!” Right? Every married man’s worst fear. What we’ve been saying all these years. It’s a money thing, isn’t it? Every ex-wife turns into George C. Scott in the…
Some of us remember that there are really two Tom Hankses–Saint Tom and his Evil Twin. Saint Tom won back-to-back Oscars for his charming, bloodless performances in Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. He helped make Apollo 13 one of the most effortless entertainments of 1995, although he couldn’t quite smother the…
For a few years now, I’ve been praying to the talent gods to give me the strength to keep liking James Foley movies. When Foley first began directing 12 years ago, his films ran the range from pompous and dull morality plays (At Close Range, Reckless) to the mind-bendingly idiotic…
All right, girls, either be lesbos or don’t be lesbos, but make up your goldurn minds. You know what I’m talking about? I must know 30 women out there who go back and forth–homo and hetero. One week they’re making the Sign of the Twelve-Humped Anaconda with a Wal-Mart stock…
Throughout the ’60s in England and the ’70s in America, the development of film as a form of popular entertainment began to explore areas of realism previously thought to lack a minimum level of escapism. Until then, conventional wisdom held that viewers might willingly pay to be moved by tender…
How come any time you meet a new gal who might be willing to have sex with you, every other woman you know can smell that she’s in town? They don’t know her name. They don’t know where she came from. They just suddenly know that there’s a possibility you…
Los Angeles is an elastic city, the kind that people who have never been to feel comfortable projecting attributes on, usually based on nothing more than rumor, supposition, or a willingness to buy into popular cliches. Especially in the movies, it has the capacity to be all things for all…
Heterosexual Anglo moviegoers often find it difficult to understand why America’s various minority groups kick up a ruckus every now and then about the way they’re portrayed on movie screens. From Jesse Jackson’s protest outside this year’s Academy Awards ceremony to the recent condemnation of the action comedy Bulletproof from…
I was asking my buddy Rhett Beavers which was better–to kick your girlfriend out of the trailer house, or to get kicked out of the trailer house. I say, “Get kicked.” Much cleaner. You’re on the road five minutes later. If she ever sues you, you’re the victim. And, most…
Whenever food acts as a central component in a movie, it occupies a peculiar role–probably because, since eating is something everyone can relate to, it’s a reliable way to establish common ground with the audience even though everyone’s experience with it differs. Movie food delivers gratification without calories, even when…
I almost never react to situations the same way that people in movies do. Maybe I’m just too short-tempered and confrontational, but I always sense that if the hero isn’t as adept at defending himself against unwelcome verbal attacks as I imagine myself to be, then he’s not much of…
Last week I decided it was time to update my personal ad. I think it had something to do with Wanda Bodine telling me that I was “the kind of scumball that no sane woman would ever date.” First I tried my usual flat-out lies: “Michael Bolton-lover likes trips to…
No two films should be more dissimilar than Girls Town and The First Wives Club, which open this weekend in Dallas movie theaters. Girls Town spent most of 1996 as a hot indie flick on the festival circuit, its story of a trio of New Jersey high-school seniors who strike…
American Buffalo, with Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz parrying with playwright David Mamet’s razor-sharp dialogue, promised to be the sleeper tour de force of the season. The opportunity to see Mamet’s sharply honed lines bandied about by actors with an innate understanding of the rhythm of words should have been…
