I wasn’t much of a fan of Sean Penn’s first effort as a writer-director, The Indian Runner. The film, a mood piece about a man’s return from Vietnam and his big brother’s attempts to understand him, had the kind of problems you’d expect from many freshman efforts; it was long…
I have a question about singers: How come they use a microphone when they’re singin’ in a place the size of a Salvation Army bathroom? I mean, you’re sittin’ about four feet from this chantoose and she starts wailing away into about 70 tons of sound equipment until the little…
Although ostensibly a film, Carrington, about painter Dora Carrington (Emma Thompson) and her decades-long platonic love affair with writer Lytton Strachey (Jonathan Pryce), is pregnant with literary conceits: the nature of true love as spiritual, not physical; the interdependence of strong creative personalities; the anti-Victorian ethic of early bohemianism. The…
Nick of Time begins with the type of set-up that should be the makings of high drama: The young daughter of drab businessman Gene Watson (Johnny Depp) is kidnaped, and will be killed unless he assassinates the governor (Marsha Mason). The difference from any other movie is that this one…
Remember last year when Time and Newsweek both decided to put Marriage on the cover? Marriage Is Back! Marriage Is Groovy! People are Getting Married! And then you read through these articles to try to figure out what the heck they were talkin’ about, and they said things like, “Lewis…
For a film critic to react negatively to the beloved renaissance of Walt Disney animation is something akin to a Catholic priest criticizing Jesus’ personal hygiene–it just ain’t done. Indeed, it’s almost a waste of time (and since we all may be working for that corporate juggernaut in the next…
What can you say about James Bond that hasn’t already been said about Ted Bundy? He’s charming and reckless, well-traveled and intelligent, but half the women he sleeps with end up dead. Sure, Bundy doesn’t have the same beach-boy good looks, but a fast car and $3,000 tux tend to…
In Milton’s Paradise Lost, as God casts him out of paradise, Lucifer declares, “Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n,” a sentiment not unlike ones expressed by the vicious lowlifes that infest Martin Scorsese’s brilliant new film, Casino. The idea of going legitimate–at least the way normal people…
The 41-year-old Taiwanese-born director Ang Lee has been granted a rare international honor–unanimous box-office approval from audiences who don’t often mix. His second feature, 1993’s The Wedding Banquet, became one of the highest-grossing indie films ever made, and also became a beloved cult treasure that crossed gender, sexual, and ethnic…
The first time I saw Annette Bening was in Valmont, Milos Forman’s adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. She played Madame de Merteuil, a part portrayed the previous year by Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons. Both actresses gave terrific performances, although they couldn’t have interpreted the role more differently: where Close’s…
How do you spot the people in the office who are indulging in Happy-Hour Nookie? Of course, we all know the answer to that one: The ones who never speak to each other in the office. The reason you can’t talk in the office if you’re in the middle of…
If you aren’t already familiar with the sound a Theremin makes, I’m not sure I can describe it to you. The Theremin was the first electronic musical instrument, and its eerie, plaintive squeal approximates a tone somewhere between a violin, a kazoo, and controlled microphone feedback. Because it has one…
The voice that comes across the phone line from New York City is fearlessly confident and authoritative–except when it becomes agitated or passionate about a certain point. At that moment, Agnieszka Holland’s language begins to speed up and she’s wont to stutter or repeat herself. Either way, her elegant Eastern…
Is it my imagination, or are there a whole lot of little kids gettin’ medicated every day? I hear about this drug Ritalin all the time. “Yeah, my kid’s on Ritalin. He was so hyperactive we had to give it to him to calm him down.” And you go: “Wow!…
While you’re watching Jodie Foster’s second directorial effort (she hit notes both gorgeous and discordant with Little Man Tate, her 1991 debut as a filmmaker), you might find yourself wondering exactly when you’ve seen a comedy-drama paced like this one before. Certainly, most people expect the laughs and the pathos…
I have a question. Whatever happened to the 40-hour work week? Didn’t we fight for, like, a hundred years to force all the greedy capitalists to give us a 40-hour work week so we could have all this hammock time we needed? I don’t know anybody who works 40 hours…
In the 1980 Woody Allen film Stardust Memories, a Martian descends upon the troubled hero Sandy Bates. Sandy is a movie director in crisis, full of doubts about everything from his creative output to the existence of God to the meaning of life. “If nothing lasts,” he asks in frustration,…
As Feast of July opens, we are introduced to a young woman named Bella (Embeth Davidtz) as she hikes across the rugged hillside of southern England. Obviously exhausted, she makes her way with great difficulty to a shelter where she begins crying out in agony. Soon the camera shows what…
You ever go to one of these groovy tourist towns like Santa Fe, N.M., or Sedona, Ariz., or Eureka Springs, Ark., where they sell genuine folk-art paintings of cows wading through a stream and necklaces with turquoise roosters painted on ’em? Wouldn’t you expect some 85-year-old Ozarks lady with wrinkly…
If you had any doubts that the Hollywood script factory has run out of things to say about serial killers, Copycat stumbles into theaters like a badly miscalculated pratfall. Indeed, everything about this unimaginatively directed, awkwardly structured, but expertly performed thriller suggests filmmaking by committee, too many hands converging to…
How’s this for a movie plot: two unlikely friends – one a responsible, buttoned-down dud, the other a bewildered, manic slacker – experience relationship dilemmas, take refuge in a sea of commercialism, and neatly resolve all their problems (ranging from the unexpected death of an acquaintance to run-ins with the…
Editor’s note: With this issue, Arnold Wayne Jones, a Dallas attorney and writer, joins the Observer as a regular contributor and film critic. There’s a joke about the movie business that gets revived occasionally in one form or another, usually following the latest success of Benji, or Lassie, or Mr…
