Werner Herzog's Radical Left slanting of an old-fashioned Lost Patrol adventure yarn. The anti-imperialist, anti-militarist storyline concerns a splinter group of Pizarro's conquistadors searching in vain for El Dorado and mown down a man at a time by invisible Peruvian cannibals. What gives this inevitable, countdown plot (18 dead, 6 …
Steven Spielberg's futuristic tale (a project taken over from the late Stanley Kubrick) of the first robot programmed to love. Not, let's be clear, one of those old-hat technological advances on the porn-shop inflatable love-doll, equipped with "sensuality simulators" and such. But rather, a "mecha-child" (short for mechanical child), placed …
Whatever its intrinsic interest, Nick Broomfield's (and Joan Churchill's) post-execution addendum to his 1992 documentary, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, gets a boost from its close proximity to the docudrama on the same subject, Monster. It allows you to study at length and at close range the …
Wild and crazy guys flying drugs (among other things) for the CIA in what the opening title specifies is "Laos, Southest Asia, 1969" -- so as not to be confused, presumably, with Laos, New Mexico. Plotting and characterization are no less overexplicit, even amidst a visual style that's like sweeping …
Some above-average pet tricks, involving a golden retriever and a basketball, buried deep in Disney clichés of athletic underdoggism and triumph. More half-hearted than usual (which is maybe to say quarter-hearted), and the slapstick is torture. With Michael Jeter, Kevin Zegers, Wendy Makkena; directed by Charles Martin Smith.
The President's plane is hijacked by reactionary Communists out of Kazakhstan, and only one man can stop them: the President himself. As a valorous Vietnam vet and a Medal of Honor winner ("He knows how to fight!" effuses his former commanding officer), he stands roughly the same chance of beating …
Wanna-be Dog Day Afternoon, only a (wanna-be) comedy, about a wanna-be rock band who take over an L.A. radio station with water guns, precipitating a standoff with police. (To maintain topicality, the cry of "Attica!" gets replaced by "Rodney King!") Good physical humor from Michael Richards; unrivalled by any other …
A takeoff (peculiarly appropriate term in this context, although the implication of getting off the ground makes it a misnomer after all) on the Airport series of disaster films. Several flashbacks allow it to take off on other tacks as well, and indeed it seems constitutionally unable to remain on …
People who enjoyed the predecessor seem to be disappointed in the sequel. People who did not enjoy the predecessor will have difficulty telling much difference. But because fidelity, not originality, is the goal this time (a new writer and director, Ken Finkleman, has taken over for the Kentucky Fried Theater …
This movie begins in the realm of the ridiculous (the airborne pleasure palace borrows several ideas in first-class travel accommodations from The Big Bus, and the audience is expected to go ga-ga over them), and it follows a course even sillier than the forerunners in the Airport series (the attempted …
Fast-talking basketball scout travels to deepest Africa to recruit a blue-chip beanpole, gets involved in local politics, precipitates a basketball war, grows as a human being, triumphs as a sportsman, gets his man, gets promoted -- the feel-good prescription. With Kevin Bacon and Charles Gitonga Maina; directed by Paul Michael …
Set in the roiling melting pot of Jaffa, the writing and directing collaboration of Jewish and Palestinian Israelis, Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti, is a push-and-pull of contradictions: a balanced and even-handed treatment of tremulous sensationalized subject matter (a mafia-like blood feud, drug traffic, forbidden love, illegal immigration, hate crime, …
An eleven-year-old black girl (the appealing Keke Palmer) in the South L.A. ghetto braves the taunts of "freak" and "brainiac" to enter the Scripps National Spelling Bee and, on her first try, go clear through to the televised finals in Washington, D.C., where it all comes down to "logorrhea" and …
Eight re-creations of the Japanese director's unconscious dreams. All are so limpid, so economical, so tidy -- so much so as to cast doubts on the authenticity of their origins or the accuracy of their re-creations -- that the viewer is able to feel like Freud's brightest disciple. Death would …
Disney's animated Arabian Nights tale, with politically enlightened Mediterranean noses and tawny complexions as well as a feministically flattered heroine. The obligatory songs sound even more dashed-off than the ones in the preceding year's Beauty and the Beast ("Riffraff! Street rat! I don't buy that!/ If only they'd look closer …