In light of the fact that it was made by a director of at least moderate stature -- Lawrence Kasdan of Body Heat, The Accidental Tourist, Mumford, etc. -- this might have raised higher anticipation than most Stephen King adaptations, till you remind yourself of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Like …
Mrs. Alice Hargreaves, née Alice Liddell, the "real" Alice in Wonderland, is brought to America at age eighty to receive an honorary degree from Columbia University on the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth -- a promising germ of an idea, that promises more than it delivers. It does deliver some …
You may have seen this sports story done several times before, set in the world of boxing, bullfighting, rodeo, roller derby, or where-have-you. You may have figured that the low-priority slowness with which Hollywood has gotten around to the world of bowling is a fair indication of its worthiness as …
The writing and directing debut of the mere co-writer on Coach Carter, John Gatins, is one of the endless supply of inspirational true sports stories to come to the screen, this one the horsetrack story, and only fractionally true, of a filly called Soñador (Spanish for Dreamer, but Mariah's Storm …
Lumpy potage of Sixties politics, "revolutionary" sex, and ravenous cinephilia, whipped up by Bernardo Bertolucci. Last Tango in Paris would seem to be the career milestone -- or is it millstone? -- to which the filmmaker here reverts: same city, same era, same revolution. Yet the recipe's main ingredient turns …
Broadway backstage musical -- not, that is to say, backstage on Broadway but backstage in Motown -- charting the breakthrough of R&B; into the pop mainstream in the Sixties, more specifically the rise of a girl group called the Dreams (rhymes with Supremes), and attendant heartbreaks, breakups, downfalls, and assorted …
Title aside, this is a scruffily realistic French film about the friendship of a pair of assembly-line seamstresses (a friendship founded, so far as we can tell, on mutual disdain for combed hair), two of society's outsiders, one of whom secretly wants "in." These two form a friendship in turn …
Oversolemn psychological thriller, by Alan J. Pakula. Kristy McNichol is still very much Daddy's Little Girl despite her maturity as a flutist. ("You have the great gift for improvisation," her teacher tells her. "How would you like to turn my trio into a quartet?") She also happens to be "one …
Jules Dassin takes another stab at modernizing an ancient Greek legend, maybe in hopes of rectifying the earlier attempt that resulted in arguably his biggest debacle, Phaedra. Here, a glamorous international star of stage and screen (Melina Mercouri), who looks like Catherine Deneuve from the back of her luxurious blonde …
Attractive and provocative sci-fi about dream research in which gifted psychics are able to project themselves into other people's dreams, either as passive observers or as active participants, with possible curative effect (or, as we soon see, possible destructive effect, too). Not an original idea, but not as yet an …
Four mental patients get a pass to the ballgame. Translation: Michael Keaton, Christopher Lloyd, Peter Boyle, and Stephen Furst get a pass to bad acting. With Lorraine Bracco; directed by Howard Zieff.
Aimless doodle to do with the tightening bond and shared adventures (nude bowling with hookers, etc.) between a suicidal voyeur and the terminally ill boyfriend of the voyeur's favorite target. There are lessons to be learned and surprises to be sprung, but without a whiff of belief. The jeans-ad color …
Miserably paced thriller, not just because of the slowness and distension of every individual scene, but also because of the rhythm-and-rhymeless placement of the dramatic climaxes. The movie gets off on the wrong foot with a Dial Soap wet dream (Angie Dickinson steaming up the shower by fondling a body …
The period of the Second World War, with its consequent boost to the spirit of The Show Must Go On, recalls Truffaut's The Last Metro and (an even closer contemporary) the remake of To Be or Not To Be. But lacking the specificness of either of those, this one, about …
Homeless army deserter answers a want ad to bodyguard a fat kid, skinny kid, and shrimpy kid from the high-school bully. The jokes arrive predictably, the laughs lag badly. With Owen Wilson, Nate Hartley, Troy Gentile, David Dorfman, Alex Frost, and Leslie Mann; directed by Steven Brill.