Julia Roberts as a battered wife. That doesn't account for the fat lips. (Collagen, one imagines.) And neither does it account for much else. Roberts, a shallow shimmering brook, shows little sign of psychological sediment, as she stages a daring escape from her Cape Cod ice palace, heads for the …
The comic foundations look solid: the similarity of TV soap-opera actors to TV soap-opera characters (greed, jealousy, treachery, etc.) and the vanity, the theatricality, the remoteness from real life of all actors whatsoever, regardless of the level on which they're employed. Though you might chuckle in anticipation, a consistent style …
The announced farewell voyage -- and the faithful follower of the series can best show his loyalty by praying the creators stick to their word and desist. The opening, notwithstanding the outer-space explosion and its emanating shock wave (looking a bit like a well-blown smoke ring), is not quite the …
Unassuming little musical, well-proportioned and well-crafted, about a tacky tap class that gets invited to take part in a big fundraiser for Save the Children. In essence: "Let's put on a show!" The bonus production number at the curtain was a gross mistake; and it was a mistake of some …
Brian Bosworth, the beetle-browed and injury-prone professional linebacker (Seattle Seahawks), moves up from deodorant ads (Right Guard) to a tailor-made role as an undercover cop who infiltrates a biker gang. The motorcycle menace has been hyperbolized to a point (open season on clergymen and judges) that makes the Hell's Angels …
The premise is an engagement banquet put on by the family of the bride-to-be for the sake of the considerably smaller family of the groom-to-be. There are wide social as well as geographical differences between the two families. And the setting -- Italy, 1936 -- musters up a supplementary shadow. …
Black despair in a Red Hook tenement, as articulated on a minuscule budget by a nineteen-year-old tyro, Matty Rich. It's amazing that it got made at all. It's not amazing that it didn't get made better. The story behind the movie outshines the one inside it. With Lawrence Gilliard, Jr., …
Ye Olde Yellow School Bus breaks down while conveying a bevy of seven elderly female tourists on an impromptu detour in the middle of nowhere, more specifically the middle of provincial Quebec. They find refuge in an abandoned two-story tumbledown cabin. (One of their number actually mouths the famous Bette …
Bull-in-a-china-shop maraudings of an "alien Rambo" (Hulk Hogan) on vacation on Earth. For example: helping a sidewalk mime break out of a "force field" -- a gag that may sound funnier in description than it actually plays. On that principle, it's prudent to describe no others. Christopher Lloyd, Shelley Duvall; …
In the afterglow of 1996's Rumble in the Bronx comes a hastily dusted-off Jackie Chan vehicle, freshly outfitted with a rap soundtrack and English dubbing. (The dubbing contributes an element of charm to a movie that can ill afford to refuse any assistance.) Like the earlier -- or rather, later …
Chuck Workman, who put together the Directors Guild Golden Anniversary short Precious Images, applies his rapid-fire montage technique to the life of an artist who, as a filmmaker, was Workman's opposite: the doyen of the languid long-take ("The camera has a motor, and you just turn it on and walk …
Behind the colored smoke screen of a simulated toxic spill, a criminal mastermind evacuates Beverly Hills and attempts to empty the coffers of Rodeo Drive. One trouble: a resident pro quarterback (Ken Wahl) is running loose behind the line, dodging machine-gun bullets instead of linebackers, lobbing Molotov cocktails instead of …
1990's surprise hit inspires 1991's unsurprising sequel. Of interest for anyone who wants to know if Paige Turco can have any more vim as TV newswoman April O'Neil than she has on her afternoon soap opera, All My Children. The uninteresting answer: no. David Warner, Ernie Reyes, Jr.; directed by …
Notwithstanding the nuclear holocaust of 1997 and the three billion body count, it is hard to think of anything else when watching this movie than money: money spent, and, more constantly, money craved. And this, from a purely fictional standpoint, is a distraction. The problem with the money spent is …