There's this box, and if you have the box, you can have the world, and there's this bad guy who may have found the box, and he also had this boy's parents killed, and the boy's brother sent away, and so the boy has to find his brother and find …
A terrible embarrassment for anyone old enough not to be babysat. The terriblest moment: four suburban white kids improvising a blues version of the plot-so-far in front of a nightclub audience of glowering blacks. The peaks of excitement: the Crystals singing "Then He Kissed Me" at the very beginning and …
You know where it'd be cool to live? California! They do fun stuff there!
In this, as in Brazil before it, Terry Gilliam has again turned what would be a tale of wonder into a tale of wampum, and has managed at the same time to wrest maximum sympathy from the kibitzing Press. That may well be a more astounding trick than any of …
Insufferably hip piece of science fiction. The hero, an American-Japanese crossbreed, as his name would indicate, is a world-renowned neurosurgeon, part-time rock-and-roll musician, and, in his first screen adventure, explorer of the Eighth Dimension (i.e., inner space; i.e., the empty space inside solid matter). No wonder he is already celebrated …
Stand-up comic Andrew Dice Clay takes on a different identity -- that of "rock-and-roll detective" Ford Fairlane, a Sam Spade in the body of an Elvis impersonator -- but he takes along his same Brooklyn braggadocio. This gives a revitalizing new slant to the generic rudeness and smart-assiness of the …
The reputation of the Mark Twain novel is not so unimpugnable that it can afford an ally such as the Disney studio: stress on the affected folksiness and sentimentality (underscored by the Aaron Coplandisms of composer Bill Conti). With Elijah Wood, Courtney B. Vance, and Jason Robards; written and directed …
Among them, a battle with river rapids, a pinch from a crab, the defense of a chicken egg against an inquisitive hedgehog, and a ride on the back of a turtle. Milo, you understand, is a cat, Otis a dog. The biggest hardship either of them faces is a superslick …
Priscilla's just a bus; Mitzi, Felicia, and Bernadette are her passengers, two female impersonators and a transsexual (the gaunt Hugo Weaving, the muscle-bound Guy Pearce, and the grande damish Terence Stamp), who take their cabaret act out of the cosmopolitan security of Sydney and into the backward Outback. There's a …
The athleticism in this Warner Brothers swashbuckler is shown to be of a dubious character when Eugene Pallette, built like an egg, outmaneuvers Errol Flynn in a five-minute stick fight on a foot-wide plank. From that moment, it is plain that the memorized moments in the Robin Hood legend are …
Buñuel's rascally subversions and perversions seem, in a way, more precious in the period prior to when they were expected of him (him, the Sovereign Surrealist), when instead they had to be smuggled out furtively, nervily, when they came from under the counter only. And there is hardly a better …
We already knew that Jay Ward's Rocky and His Friends was the hip kids' show of the Sixties. Now we know that screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan and director Des McAnuff knew it, too. But knowing it and being it are two different things. The mumbo-jumbo that permits the three inept villains …
Philip Roth, no less, lauded mentor Saul Bellow as the first Jewish author to gain acceptance in a Christian world. He was championed by readers and peers alike as the literary voice who defined his generation. What became of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author? Long before the woke brigade loomed on …
Normal teen confusion, compounded by a mop-haired stepdad who's undergoing a sex change ("He still wants to be with my mom, so I guess that makes him a dyke"). A coming-of-age tale, circa 1983, with that special American-independent spin -- or wobble. Unreal, unfunny, uninvolving. With Adrian Grenier, Clark Gregg, …
The daydream superheroes of a bullied grade-schooler come to life, pull him out of the classroom, fly him to Planet Drool (Where Kids Rule), ride the Train of Thought to the Land of Milk and Cookies, take a Banana-Split Boat down the Steam of Consciousness, and so on. Didactic kiddie …