Damn, this is embarrassing. As much as I hate to admit it, this is the third week in a row I’ve actually liked a movie I have to review. And not just some elitist French film where everybody sits around talking about their affairs and listening to classical music and…
As John Lennon and Paul McCartney once wrote: “I should’ve known better.” Rock and roll has always worked best as anthems of youthful power and rebellion, so something had to be rotten in the state of Broadway when the majority of the critics and theater audiences so readily accepted and…
Let’s not mince words. Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas is the most visionary, creepy, macabre, funny, peculiar stop-motion holiday-fable/ghost-story/romantic-comedy/musical ever. Of course, it may well be the only creepy, macabre, funny, peculiar stop-motion holiday-fable/ghost-story/romantic-comedy/musical, but that’s part of its appeal. It is, quite simply, like nothing you’ve ever seen…
Looks like it’s official: Repression is this year’s Big Theme. The Age of Innocence, based on Edith Wharton’s novel, was great stuff if you’re into movies that revel in period detail, subtle wordplay, unconsummated passion, and meticulous manners. But that film’s leading man, torn between his affection for a proper…
On January 26, 1988 at the Majestic Theatre in New York, I was privileged to attend the opening of one of the greatest theatrical spectacles ever to grace a stage, a show that featured thrilling and innovative music wedded to a delicately woven romantic plot. Putting aside my own elitist…
I recently phoned a publicist friend of mine who moved here from Los Angeles about the same time I moved from New York — in 1989 — and told her I was reviewing Lionel Bart’s zippy 1960s musical Oliver! at the Actors’ Playhouse. Her immediate reaction was: “What? I haven’t…
Little Casey is late for school. As kids in a hurry are wont to do, he bolts into the street without looking, directly into the path of an oncoming car being driven by Doreen, a waitress at a local hash house. Doreen slams on the brakes — too late! Casey…
Manic-depression. One minute you’re irrepressible, irresponsible, and irresistible. The next minute you’re slipping into a pit of deep despair, depression, and despondency. If you’re like Mr. Jones, the lead character in the new film of the same name who suffers from the condition also known as bipolar affective disorder, there…
It’s an ironic title: There’s not much joy in The Joy Luck Club, and the characters’ luck is almost always bad. The Joy Luck club is not really a club at all, but a mahjong circle comprising four middle-age Chinese women living in San Francisco. The circle’s founder, Suyuan, has…
Without a doubt, fate led me to see in the same week the New Theatre’s rendition of Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit and playwright William Inge’s Natural Affection, produced by the Miami Actor’s Studio. Though Sartre penned his work in 1944 and Inge in 1963, they share an almost uncanny…
If Malice is a good example of Hollywood’s idea of suspense — tracking down a mysterious psychopath — Un coeur en hiver aspires to a higher order of thriller that the best art explores: unraveling the mysteries of the human heart. That is the puzzle presented by Stephane, a violin…
Malice, Harold Becker’s high-profile career gaffe, is one of the strangest films I’ve seen in a long time. Or maybe I should say two of the strangest films, because there’s so little connection between the first 45 minutes and the balance of the film that they should have been separate…
When people in the South Florida theater community protest that the area is mainly interested in developing new plays instead of producing tired old revivals, I listen politely but with cynicism. During the two years I’ve done this job, I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard this…
When the long-awaited revival of Hair, the quintessential Sixties musical, opened in London two weeks ago, the critics unanimously agreed on one thing: not all plays wear well. Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph summed up the expensive mistake succinctly: “It would have been far kinder to have let Hair…
Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro. As a team they’ve been responsible for three of the finest movies of the past quarter-century: Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull. Even their near-misses have made for compelling filmmaking; it’s hard to imagine a director-actor tandem alive that wouldn’t be proud to…
Seems like only yesterday the prevailing view was that the advent of pay-per-view movies, videotape rentals, and laser-disc technology would combine to spell doom for the nation’s movie theaters. The summer of 1993 proves just how little the pundits actually know. From the last week of May through the first…
There’s a lot of Travis Bickle in Clarence Worley, and there’s a lot of Taxi Driver in True Romance. Clarence and Travis are both lonely guys. Misfits. Taxi Driver’s Travis is an insomniac who frequents Times Square porno palaces late at night, in part because they’re the only movie theaters…
All plays are not created equal. Apart from the obviously weak entries, there exist some works of “light” dramatic art suitable for a wide range of acting companies, from the competent troupe to the spectacular. Neil Simon froth, English drawing room comedies, and large-cast mysteries fit under this umbrella. Appropriately,…
If the boys and girls of summer tend to get overlooked come Oscar time, the opposite is true of their fall and winter counterparts. In November and December Hollywood traditionally rolls out the heavy artillery, both to take advantage of holiday moviegoers and to ensure that the big star vehicles…
The great Noel Coward once heard that a particularly dimwitted producer had blown his brains out. “Must have been rather a good shot,” Coward marveled. As a rule those who produce theater are regularly and soundly ridiculed by those who create theater. Often viewed as starry-eyed prep school graduates with…
For those of you who only read the first sentence of a movie review to find out whether the critic liked a film or not: RUN DON’T WALK TO SEE SON OF THE PINK PANTHER, THE LAFF RIOT OF THE SUMMER! For the rest of you: stay away at all…
Derivative, contrived, and predictable — Tim Metcalfe’s screenplay for Kalifornia hits the big trifecta. How’s this for a far-fetched plot: Brian Kessler is a struggling writer whose girlfriend, Carrie, is a photographer. He received an advance to do a book on serial killers, but when the movie opens he’s already…
