No one has exploited the historical-epic form better than David Lean. At his peak he used its spaciousness and breadth to develop characters with conflicting points of view, so that audiences could feel viscerally swept away, emotionally engaged, and mentally sharpened, all at once. With the help of inspired actors…
John Woo has often cited the films of Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973) as among his greatest influences — particularly 1967’s Le Samourai — and it’s easy to see the connection. Even in France, Melville spent most of his career as a cult director: His series of gangster films, starting in 1956…
Volcano is set in Los Angeles, and for L.A. haters, it could prove a peak experience. You don’t even have to hate L.A. to enjoy it — love/hate will do. That’s why the film closes with Randy Newman’s mock-anthem “I Love L.A.” (which, of course, makes it L.A.’s true anthem)…
Kevin Smith is an impassioned jokester. The young writer-director double-whammies the audience by filling in his stick figures with thick brushstrokes. His first film, Clerks, was a no-budget goof featuring an entire miniature universe of slacker goons, but its main protagonist was a sweetly jerky lovelorn convenience store employee who…
Remember this joke? Question: Want to lose ten pounds of ugly fat? Answer: Cut off your head. Well, according to the press kit for 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, the average human head — dead and drained of blood — weighs 4.4 pounds. I can’t imagine that the heads…
There are way too many movies about hit men, but that shouldn’t dissuade you from seeing Grosse Pointe Blank. It’s not quite like any other movie, let alone one about a hit man. That may be because it’s a hit-man movie crossed with a high-school-reunion comedy, and the two genres…
Film actors are generally said to have good chemistry or no chemistry. But bad chemistry in movies does exist, and a sleep inducer called Inventing the Abbotts is a case in point. In ascending order of age, Liv Tyler, Jennifer Connelly, and Joanna Going play Pamela, Eleanor, and Alice Abbott,…
When Val Kilmer walked away from the Batman franchise, it was only a matter of time before he offered up his own competing brand. The Saint isn’t just his answer to Batman — it’s a full-length commercial for all the Saint movies to come. There’s a breezy effrontery in the…
In The Devil’s Own Brad Pitt plays Frankie McGuire, an Irish Republican Army gunman with 24 kills to his credit — 13 British soldiers and 11 police officers. After a bloody firefight in Belfast, he escapes to New York, where, helped by a pro-IRA judge (George Hearn), he is placed…
Nobody is seriously going to accuse writer-director Alexander Payne of being chickenshit. For his first feature, the hilarious Citizen Ruth, he has not only chosen the number-one issue a filmmaker is likely to get killed over — abortion and a woman’s right to make a personal decision on the subject…
Cult auteur David Cronenberg crashes and burns — his talent, that is — in Crash, a vain attempt at a techno-age Persona. It follows a demented explorer named Vaughan (Elias Koteas) into an insane new world where twisted metal, curvy skin, automotive oil, and bodily fluids merge in an explosive…
When Paramount Pictures releases The Godfather tomorrow, it will be both honoring itself and perpetrating a crime. The honor is that one of the greatest and most influential films ever made is being re-released on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. The crime is that Paramount, according to a studio…
In the last chapter of the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi Special Edition, an intergalactic window display of creepy and cuddly critters upstages the human characters. All the conflicts are resolved between the virtuous Rebels — Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and Princess Leia (Carrie…
City of Industry starts out promisingly and then turns into the kind of crime thriller only a pointy-headed postmodernist could love. Since a lot of critics these days have pointy heads, you might just want to brace yourself for a lot of steaming compost in the press about how “existential”…
Waiting for Guffman is such a funny mess that it keeps you laughing even when you realize it’s not much better directed than a cable-access talk show. Christopher Guest’s is-this-where-I-point-the-camera? auteurism, last seen in The Big Picture, is redeemed by the performers — himself most of all — and the…
During the first few minutes of Howard Stern’s romp through his inexplicable life, he spells out his mission: Private Parts will both convert the nonbelievers and entertain the cult. Stern wants to give you plenty of hot lesbian action (and freed from FCC restrictions, he takes real pleasure in saying…
Marvin’s Room, starring Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep as estranged sisters, is one of those movies about people who confront the choices they’ve made and become better people for it. Adapted by the late Scott McPherson from his popular 1992 play and directed by Broadway veteran Jerry Zaks, the film…
The ingredients are familiar: Donnie Brasco stars Al Pacino as a Mafia soldier and Johnny Depp as an FBI undercover agent who infiltrates the mob. But there’s a twist. Based on a true story, the film is a grunt’s-eye view of the Mafia, and it’s not remotely “operatic” or Scorsese-ish…
In the two decades since Eraserhead, David Lynch has established himself as American cinema’s premier surrealist, our own Wizard of Weird. Although his first two Hollywood projects — The Elephant Man (1980) and Dune (1984) — had room only around the edges for the sort of spooky shit at which…
Like a black Jay Gatsby with a bulging build, Muhammad Ali possessed a special radiance in his championship years that came from his ability to realize his wildest dreams. Nobody expected that his attention-grabbing line “I am the greatest” would prove to be the expression of a pride so enormous…
Irvin Kershner’s The Empire Strikes Back, the continuation of George Lucas’s Star Wars, is a classic fantasy in its own right, and I vastly prefer it to the first film. Its textures are richer, its emotions deeper, and it’s an honest-to-Jedi movie — not a dozen jammed-together entries of a…
In Absolute Power, Clint Eastwood plays Luther Whitney, a master thief who burgles on little cat feet. He’s as stealthy as the Pink Panther pilferer, though not nearly as amusing. Luther, you see, is presented to us as an artist. We first see him at the National Gallery, dutifully copying…
