Any gangster film that can dredge up something so old as to appear almost new again -- namely, cement footwear for swimming -- has done enough to justify itself. A craftsmanly run-through of the most elementary and elemental material, this one (adapted from the E.L. Doctorow novel) homes in especially …
A dog and his boy, separated when the latter's father, a barefooted placekicker, gets traded from Denver to Green Bay. Matthew Robbins wants to make a kiddie movie and be hip at the same time: ham acting, cute canine, impossible feats, but also suburban satire, sick jokes, sexual innuendo, and …
Bruce Beresford's rendition of a Brian Moore novel about a French Jesuit with a touch of a martyr complex ("Death is almost certain") on a mission among Canadian Indians in the early Seventeenth Century. The subject and setting might provoke a wish that the spirit of Willa Cather -- the …
Hip, flip, cool, modern film noir keeps pulling up lame. He: "Could you help me please?" She: "Actually I was trying to kill myself." (Ta-tum.) He: "Could you put it off?" (Ta-tum-tum.) Or this one: "I've had my share of problems with men, and the last one made the Marquis …
It's The Hands of Orlac once again -- the transplanted appendages with minds of their own -- only it's extended to whole arms, legs, finally head. As in his script for The Hitcher, writer-director Eric Red has material suitable for a half-hour Twilight Zone and then stretches it out very, …
Two more cents' worth of testimony, and not another penny, on coming-of-age in the 1950s, taken from a novel by William Kotzwinkle. Its trustworthiness is pretty well indicated by the recurrent use of a musical theme from Sergio Leone's spaghetti Westerns of a decade later. With Chris Young, Keith Coogan, …
Peace entreaty for a gang-ridden L.A. ghetto, made by twenty-three-year-old writer-director John Singleton -- his first feature. Very simple and direct in style (to match the intentions), and almost unformed as a narrative. Larry Fishburne is imposing, though limited, as a Positive Role Model, and the movie feels more comfortable, …
The coming-of-age rite with a distinct literary flavor: Richard Ford has pieced together the screenplay from a couple of his own short stories, and the resulting creation has an unorganic quality, a lurching, Frankenstein's-monster quality. Lili Taylor, as a young woman of dubious character who is on a mission to …
Siegel, that is -- the vain gangster, the "visionary" gangster, the lovesick gangster, the henpecked gangster, the moonstruck, the loony, the buggy gangster. He makes a wide-ranging acting portfolio for the narrowly talented Warren Beatty, but he never really comes into focus as a character. And the movie on the …
If you can accept Demi Moore as a blonde, maybe you can accept her also as a barefooted Carolinian clairvoyant (and meddling matchmaker) transplanted in Greenwich Village. Or maybe not. Her accent is all over the map; and with her new hair, new face, new chest (makeup? plastic surgery? what …
Mexican-made historical re-enactment of the adventures of a shipwrecked conquistador among American Indians in the 16th Century, his separation from his fellow Spaniards, his apprenticeship to a native medicine man, his independent career as an itinerant miracle worker. The account of any such conversion and assimilation is bound to be …
Martin Scorsese's remake of a thing that was made well enough the first time, 1962. The director's appreciation of Hollywood Past can still be caught here in glimmers — mainly in the use of the stars of the original, Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum (along with supporting player Martin Balsam), …
The town liar and the town tease (representing the two halves of writer John Hughes's artistic temperament) spend the night locked inside a Target discount store: they "open up" to one another, roller-skate through the aisles, confront burglars. The setting gives Hughes something besides his audience to feel superior to. …
A look into the urban snake pit. What writer and director John Sayles (also editor, also bit-player) sees down there is a lot of writhing and slithering, or at any rate a lot of intertwined storylines and mobile, long-take camerawork. The latter puts a long leash on the actors, including …
Passable showcase for one of America's consistently funniest actors, Jack Palance. His role here is the rare intentionally funny one, as distinct from the gunslinger in Shane, let's say, or Castro in Che: a hard-bitten trail boss and honest-to-God Marlboro Man (striking a match for his ever-present cigarette across his …