Comedy from Christopher Morris (Four Lions) about a preacher turned into criminal after his sponsor works for the FBI fuels his madcap revolutionary dreams.
Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, in his second feature, paints a portrait of an indolent, amoral, apathetic lady-killer and his poisonous milieu, ca. 1960. Wong's camera is both very close and very mobile: overfamiliar, nosy, nuzzling, liberty-taking. And although the focus tends to be extremely shallow, the impression is of …
Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, in his second feature, paints a portrait of an indolent, amoral, apathetic lady-killer and his poisonous milieu, ca. 1960. Wong's camera is both very close and very mobile: overfamiliar, nosy, nuzzling, liberty-taking. And although the focus tends to be extremely shallow, the impression is of …
Filmmaker Rachid Bouchareb, of Algerian descent, has a point to make about the debt of the French to the North African volunteers who, despite second-class treatment, helped liberate their "motherland" from Nazi occupation, a debt ignored at the time and still today. He makes the point frequently and clearly ("We're …
If the Time-Life publishers commissioned a picture book on the Great American Bread Basket, ca. World War I, they'd probably want it to look like this -- a thing you could be proud to place on your coffee table. You never know for sure what the picturesque Thomas Hart Benton …
It may indeed be Top Gun on the ground, or Top Gun without wings, or Top Gun without guns. But it is also a Crowd Roars or -- closer in every respect -- a Red Line 700 for 1990, just as Top Gun was a Dawn Patrol or a Ceiling …
Porky Pig and Daffy Duck venture to the big screen as unlikely heroes and Earth’s only hope when their antics at the local bubble gum factory uncover a secret alien mind control plot. Faced with cosmic odds, the two are determined to save their town (and the world!)... that is …
The 1951 s-f classic refashioned into a tolerable time-passer on a fast track to oblivion. The urgent mobilization of an ad hoc team of scientists and the descent of a UFO on Central Park get the movie off to a gripping start, once past the prolonged opening credits and 1928 …
Science fiction with a United Nations message. The stuffiness of that aside, there is plenty of low-key suspense built up around a tall and finely chiselled extraterrestrial (Michael Rennie) who maintains a low profile in a Washington, D.C. boarding house while satisfying his curiosity about the American Way of Life. …
In February 1972, Yoko Ono and John Lennon had the brilliant idea to turn Mike Douglas' mainstream, daytime talk show into a five-part conceptual art happening that presented the cutting edge of political, musical counterculture.
A pleasant outing in a Buick station wagon, comfortably seating five: Mom, Dad, Sis and her boyfriend, and the suspicious wife who, on the day after Thanksgiving, has discovered a cryptic note to her husband, quoting an Andrew Marvell love poem and signed "Sandy." What is the meaning of this? …
A pleasant outing in a Buick station wagon, comfortably seating five: Mom, Dad, Sis and her boyfriend, and the suspicious wife who, on the day after Thanksgiving, has discovered a cryptic note to her husband, quoting an Andrew Marvell love poem and signed "Sandy." What is the meaning of this? …
Grade-school-level sociology lesson disguised, ever so slightly, as satirical science fiction: a mysterious "wall of fog" closes off California from the outside world and inexplicably causes the disappearance of all residents of Hispanic origin, all the way, apparently, to the Spanish-born tenor, Plácido Domingo. This in turn causes Californians to …
Richard Linklater, maker of Slacker, drifts into the mainstream with a multi-character comedy about the last day of school, 1976, and the long night of celebration: beer, weed, bad music, bad hair, bad pants, etc. The writer-director maintains his air of detachment, and even of universal disdain, but he has …