A nice subject, the tensions between the natives and the university students in the industrial town of Bloomington, Indiana. The acute class-consciousness of the treatment, however, seems somewhat Europeanized or Medievalized, owing presumably to the origins of the British director, Peter Yates, and the Yugoslav scriptwriter, Steve Tesich. Those two …
If you are reading this, it means that Scott Marks has yet to return home from the Friday matinee presentation at Grossmont. Either that, or the film killed him.
Major disappointment. Past fans of director Bill Forsyth (Local Hero, Comfort and Joy, Housekeeping), and not of writer and usually director John Sayles, will have the option of attempting to lay the blame on the latter. (Past fans of both of them seem to have no other option than to …
One hundred and fifty-nine minutes are a very long sit when it takes only one or two to turn against a movie. The floating, bobbing, yawing camera, intermittently going woozily out of focus, is as immediately irritating as the one in Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives. And the mud-in-your-eye monochrome …
The Bad News Bears sequel isn't so much a follow-up as it is an Instant Replay -- the same ground is gone over in order to get the same laughs, and these kids come off as disturbingly slow learners. The grim prospect at the fadeout is yet a third installment, …
An appeal to ethnic pride and to very little else -- especially to anything much in the aesthetic realm. The fact-based story of Pedro J. Gonzalez, Mexican-born balladeer on L.A. radio in the Thirties, who began to use his platform to flex some political muscle and was promptly framed for …
To provide a big finish, the villain steps in the path of an airplane propeller and bursts apart like a firecracker. This startler, which must certainly look foolish in slow motion, arouses a general desire for Instant Replay and sends the audience home buzzing. But it doesn't redeem a prison …
After he drowns in a lake, Chrissy Metz prays that her son will come back from the dead. By golly, he does!
Battle-of-the-sexes romantic comedy accurately hits numerous notes of stridency, nastiness, pain, and so on, and next to none of laughter. More of an unromantic uncomedy. (The screenwriters, Jeremy Garelick and Jay Lavender, and the director, Peyton Reed, are all male, so no equal representation.) Vince Vaughn, Mr. Glib, comes across …
A guy with a band meets a girl with a voice, and they set out to make beautiful music together.
If moviegoers were to vote on the one genre that best embodies the classification of seen-one-seen-’em-all, surfing films would sweep the election. For every Big Wednesday and Riding Giants, there are literally hundreds of vanity docs, the sole fixation of which is to track the perfect wave. Say hello to …