Boot-camp comedy, through which Neil Simon glides and dances, landing the occasional light jab of self-pitying wit ("It was hard to believe that these guys had mothers and fathers who were worried about them"). The script, adapted by Simon from his original stage play, is purportedly autobiographical, though it hardly …
A strange Bird indeed: two and a half hours of total commercial hopelessness, commercial suicide even, commercial self-sacrifice (to put the noblest face on it), directed, but not appeared in, by perhaps the single biggest box-office star of the prior two decades. Clint Eastwood, co-opted by the country-western crowd for …
With tentacles, and an accusatory finger pointed at the U.S. government. The remake, thirty years after the nugatory original, has grislier ways for the blob to kill people, but at the same time obscurer physical laws for it to obey. Where are those tentacles whenever the teenage hero and heroine …
Scare story about white-collar drug abuse -- and in fact moderately scary, for all its somber predictability. James Woods, who worked so memorably with this same director in The Onion Field, is tuned naturally to the proper idling speed and barely has to touch the gas pedal. Sean Young, Steven …
This, the sixth in Eric Rohmer's series of "Comedies and Proverbs," continues to minister to the Rohmer faithful and does nothing to attract new converts. A sense of déjà vu will start to materialize almost immediately. Everyone is young, slim, attractive, wears bright colors, and talks prosaically and incessantly. Everything …
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 …
A movie completely absorbed by a man completely absorbed by himself -- fringed with some so-what details about the dragging-down drug scene, the death of a parent, a broken love bond, and life at a New Yorker-ish magazine pseudonymously called Gotham. In the last-named arena, Jason Robards salvages a few …
A baseball comedy about life in the lowly Carolina League. Some of the sidelong glances at ballpark ambience are perhaps (just about) enough to get on the good side of any fan of the sport. But scriptwriter and first-time director Ron Shelton doesn't do much to flesh out the various …
Gary Busey, who looks to be a credible enough roughneck, is asked instead to be another boringly invincible One Man Army. (He keeps a Mason jar of bullets he's dug out of his own flesh: thirty-nine by actual count.) The supporting cast has been assembled with a certain regard for …
A Labour Party pamphlet come to life (or partway thereto), concerning a case of sexual harassment in a Liverpool boutique, and the lengthy aftermath. Pretty believable, but pretty dreary, too, and not all the fault of Mrs. Thatcher. With Glenda Jackson, John Thaw, and Cathy Tyson; written and directed by …
Isabelle Adjani at the edge of madness again (edge of petulance for a long time before that). A feminist lesson in art history, giving us to understand that the gifted protégée and mistress of Auguste Rodin would have been recognized as a greater sculptor than he if only she had …
The presence of a woman director (Genevieve Robert) and two women scriptwriters (Wendy Goldman, Judy Toll) promises half of the audience a chance to learn what the other half thinks on the subject, and promises that other half an uncommon cinematic mouthpiece. That's too much to promise, of course, and …
The old malevolent-doll routine, this time a knee-high scamp named Chuckie, with a freckled nose, blue eyes, thatch of red hair (combed in a vaguely Bobby Goldsboro "do"), a more legitimate monstrosity than monster. Stick with Devil Doll or Dead of Night or Trilogy of Terror or...or...or.... With Chris Sarandon …
The old malevolent-doll routine, this time a knee-high scamp named Chuckie, with a freckled nose, blue eyes, thatch of red hair (combed in a vaguely Bobby Goldsboro "do"), a more legitimate monstrosity than monster. Stick with Devil Doll or Dead of Night or Trilogy of Terror or...or...or.... With Chris Sarandon …
The traditional French semi-autobiographical first film, set untraditionally in colonial Africa (Cameroon). Claire Denis, the debuting director, had worked as an assistant to Wim Wenders (and received here some support from his production company), and she has something of his placidness and detachment. She also has something of his effortless …