Throwback screwball comedy, set in the screwball heyday (1939), with corpses piling up backstage (subgenre of Murder at the Vanities and Lady of Burlesque) during the premiere of a new radio network, WBN. Fast-talking, fast-cutting, and fast-tiring. Any show of affection for an antiquated art form is trampled in the …
A bicycle-motocrosser (Bill Allen) tries to enter a corrupt promoter's nationally televised cash-prize race in Hal Needham's cult-BMX-classic.
Retired porn star Sunny Leone attempts to straddle mainstream cinema with her role in this Hindi crime thriller.
Blacksta (Neville Misati) assures his friend Kena (Samantha Mugatsia) that she will make a good wife. But if the manner in which she eyeballs Ziki (Sheila Munyiva) dancing across the street is any indication, heterosexual marriage is the furthest thing from Kena’s mind. Kena and Ziki are the daughters of …
Exuberant throwback to the Golden Age of "blaxploitation" (i.e., a literary adaptation from the series of Chester Himes detective novels that gave us Cotton Comes to Harlem in 1970 and Come Back, Charleston Blue two years later), but with less attention to the detectives and more emphasis on "relationships": in …
The directorial debut of Jack Fisk, husband of the star, Sissy Spacek, and production designer on such things as Badlands, Carrie, Days of Heaven, and Heart Beat. An auspicious debut and a fine performance, but the achievements of director and star should not overshadow that of scriptwriter William Wittliff, who …
A lunkhead of a movie about an apparent lunkhead of a man, former middleweight boxing champion Jake La Motta. Despite a number of Expressionistic and lyrical outbursts, a dull-minded realism rules this movie. And even the lyricism is dull-minded: the use of slow-motion to heighten the impact of the pulverizing …
Overstuffed and misshapen adaptation of the E.L. Doctorow novel about the sloughing-off of Victorianism in America. A strong central plotline has been sought in the Doctorow mesh (or mess), and what has been found to that purpose throws you back to the "blaxploitation" pictures of the late Sixties, early Seventies. …
Pit anywhere from 5 to 15 thugs against one lone tough and instead of a dogpile, the bad guys line up like they’re in a bakery waiting for their numbers to be called. (Don’t any of these maroons pack a firearm, and more importantly, haven’t they seen Billy Jack?) This …
Director Steven Spielberg and executive producer/co-writer George Lucas pay homage to the cliffhanger serials of the Thirties and Forties — and they pay handsomely, pumping the project so full of money, production values, and technical razzle-dazzle that it no longer remotely resembles its grade-B models. Not intending exactly a spoof, …
Director Steven Spielberg and executive producer/co-writer George Lucas pay homage to the cliffhanger serials of the Thirties and Forties — and they pay handsomely, pumping the project so full of money, production values, and technical razzle-dazzle that it no longer remotely resembles its grade-B models. Not intending exactly a spoof, …