Leon Gast brings a routine documentary technique to an extraordinary event: "The Rumble in the Jungle," Ali vs. Foreman, 1974. Behind-the-scenes footage, archive footage, interview footage — the standard salad. Originally, Gast's area of concentration was to be the accompanying music festival (James Brown, B.B. King, the Spinners, the Crusaders) …
An enjoyable new course in the Disney educational curriculum (Dead Poets Society, Renaissance Man, Dangerous Minds, Mr. Holland's Opus, etc. ), an old-fashioned boys-made-men adventure story, based on factual accounts of the 1960 voyage of the Albatross, a nautical classroom that set sail in the Caribbean with a crew of …
Vincent D'Onofrio, in a meatier role than he is accustomed to, sketches a vivid portrait of the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Robert E. Howard, a strapping, shambling, small-town Texas misfit, pounding out half-a-cent-per-word pulp stories in mid-Depression, and nursing a serious mother complex. His relationship with a sympathetic schoolmarm …
Sam and Wing get together after falling in love, only to be followed by other love related complications. Directed by Peter Ho-Sun Chan.
An ordinary documentary on an extraordinary subject, William A. Wellman. The ordinary part, ascribable to writer-director Todd Robinson, is the methodical bead-stringing of still photos, home movies, a kinescope of a 1954 episode of Ralph Edwards's This Is Your Life (James Cagney, John Wayne, among the surprise guests), videotaped reminiscences …
Life on a farm in the south of France, with a brood of free-labor bastards, a caring mother, a domineering come-and-go father. Very detailed about the daily routine, the tasks, the little diversions; very slow, steady, calm, quiet (no background music); very pallidly photographed; very understated dramatically, maybe too much …
R-rated cartoon from Japan, a comic-book-in-motion about a mop-haired, saucer-eyed, slot-mouthed, nubbin-nosed, isosceles-faced Tokyo teenager of indeterminate race, who has the power to affect the outcome of the Final Battle for the Fate of the Earth. Despite (or because of) the gore, the cheesecake, and the dreamy, druggy, wiggy mentality, …