It’s “the last decade of the Cold War” (as the opening titles inform us) in post-Franco Spain. Anti-U.S. sentiment is sky-high. Fred, the gung-ho advance man for the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet, has just arrived in Barcelona, showing up unannounced at the apartment of his less-than-thrilled cousin Ted, a sales…
I wondered where Tom Clancy, the inexplicably popular flag-waving hack author of The Hunt for Red October and Patriot Games, was going to turn for source material now that the Cold War has ended. As Gomer Pyle, a U.S. Marine with an understanding of the complexities of international politics about…
The Lone Rangers, a struggling L.A. rock and roll power trio, can’t even come up with a name that makes sense; as several characters in the film Airheads point out, you can’t be a lone ranger if there’s more than one of you. But, like most unsigned bands, they believe…
I’m guessing I’m not the only Floridian who’s ever played the “What would I do if I won Lotto?” game. You know the drill: It’s Saturday night. 10:55 p.m. In two minutes the six numbered Ping-Pong balls that will change your life forever will be drawn. You sit in front…
Trivia question: What do eight of the twelve top-grossing films of all time have in common? Answer: Special effects by Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the production studio founded by George Lucas in 1975. In less than two decades ILM has garnered thirteen Academy Awards for its handiwork. E.T.: The…
Here is what I look for in a thriller: a plot that turns on logic, not one that defies it. Characters whose behavior arises from believable motivations and whose actions do not feel arbitrary. Good guys who are not invulnerable, and bad guys who shoot accurately. An opening that grabs…
Good morning, class. Today we’ll be studying the laws of probability. Let’s begin our lesson with a word problem that will help you understand the basic concept. Pretend we’re making a movie. We want to calculate the likelihood that our movie will be a dog. Here’s our picture’s premise: A…
In Poland they have a saying that has become particularly popular in the wake of communism’s fall: “Everyone wants to be more equal than everyone else.” White is the second installment in masterful Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s film trilogy based on the trinity of precepts that guided the French Revolution…
It’s a pretty widespread practice in professional sports to retire the number of a player who has excelled at a given position. Hollywood ought to try something along the same lines. Oh sure, they’ve got the sidewalk stars along Hollywood Boulevard and the hand- and footprints in front of Mann’s…
Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest ones. And sometimes they’re so simple that you wonder why no one thought of them before. For example: Miami has been extremely receptive to quality Spanish-language cinema over the past few years. This should come as no surprise; it’s no secret that many…
“You have the most amazing weather here,” she says. “A minute ago it was raining. Now it’s clear.” More blinding than clear, actually. The sun is bouncing diamonds of light off the hood of my powder-blue Mustang. We’ve got the windows open. Radio blaring. Can’t put the top down, though…
Andrew Birkin’s The Cement Garden is not an easy film in any sense of the word. The cinematic treatment of Ian McEwan’s acclaimed but downbeat novel was not the kind of project Hollywood moneymen clamor for (it took the better part of a decade and an agreement to direct an…
Blown Away starts out auspiciously enough. As the credits roll and the ethereal, melancholy music moans, the camera skips over a rough sea. Murky green waves fill the screen. The water looks cold and deep. The mood is hypnotic, foreboding. Every now and again you hear a muffled roar off…
Americans are obsessed with mobility. Traveling from point A to point B, whether those destinations are geographical, spiritual, financial, or whatever, governs our lives. Success simply means getting where you want to go. And we’re all going somewhere, whether we realize it or not. We are bodies in motion trying…
I know, I know. The easiest and most PC thing to do here is to label Rose Troche’s lesbian love story Go Fish a delightful crossover film that will appeal to gay and straight audiences alike and be done with it. The film is, after all, sassy and salty and…
“Everything the light touches is your kingdom,” explains reigning king of the jungle Mufasa to Simba, his eager little cub, at the beginning of Disney’s dazzling new adventure The Lion King. There are a hundred reasons to praise The Lion King, from the bracing yet familiar screenplay to the spellbinding…
Here’s something you don’t see every day: black artists exploiting white culture for financial gain. I suppose you could make a case that talk shows were a predominantly white domain until Oprah and Arsenio marched on Phil and Johnny, and after a couple of joints you might be able to…
While you might not guess that a hip-hop mockumentary and a musical about AIDS have a lot in common, there are several parallels between Rusty Cundieff’s Fear of a Black Hat and John Greyson’s Zero Patience. For starters, both films are the work of young, nonmainstream auteurs, each of whom…
The flacks should have a field day with a high-concept action flick like Speed. You can almost predict the blurbs before you’ve even seen the movie: It’s a rush! The thrill ride of the summer! Speed is the ticket! My heart wouldn’t stop pounding! Pedal-to-the-metal action! Speed kills! Race to…
A disproportionate number of sociopaths and sexual miscreants have found careers as rock and rollers. Sid Vicious. Wendy O. Williams. Keith Moon. Patti Smith. Barry Manilow. As sick fucks go, however, GG Allin was probably the sickest. Whether you think Allin was as demented as advertised or just another pathetic,…
The release of Penny Marshall’s latest film, Renaissance Man, featuring Danny DeVito and Marky Mark, raises several burning questions. Can Marshall, whose picture hits theaters barely two months after Ron Howard’s The Paper and whose acting and directing career has eerily paralleled Howard’s, outschmaltz her freckle-faced colleague’s paper-thin tabloid opus?…
I lived in L.A. for two years in the late Seventies but I wasn’t much of a surfer. I tried it exactly once, sleeping on the beach at San Clemente for a long weekend with a couple of other bums I met playing hoops on Venice Beach. The waves sucked,…
