The Norman Rockwell paintings displayed behind the credits may be seen as a bad omen; and the ensuing storyline, sure enough, proves to be Preston Sturges's Hail the Conquering Hero played with a solemnly straight face. Jan-Michael Vincent, a St. Loo rube with a head tapered like a brontosaurus, is …
Writer-director John Singleton grabs the young African-American man by the shirtfront, and gives him a good shake: Grow up! Take responsibility! Be a man! The case-in-point narrative is short on development, long on naturalistic detail -- long on invective and expletive -- long on attitude and brutality -- just plain …
John Sayles has done the inevitable and has upped his standards of professionalism. This accomplishes nothing so much as to make his movie look more ordinary -- less needy, in other words, of the critical charity that so benefited The Return of the Secaucus Seven and (less so) Lianna. The …
Futuristic thriller wherein a world-weary mercenary escorts an angelic nymph of indeterminate powers, and for unknown purposes, from a Mongolian convent to New York City. The hyperkinetic camera and overinflated action create the wrong climate for the apocalyptic solemnity. With Vin Diesel, Melanie Thierry, Michelle Yeoh, Gerard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling, …
SNL alumnae Tina Fey and Amy Poehler form a babymaking pact across the class divide, the barren career woman and the fertile prole. Broad, predictable, and pallidly photographed, yet an agile and energetic playing of the angles. Strong supporting part for Steve Martin, plus ponytail, as a self-mythologizing health-food tycoon: …
If Home Alone, or more relevantly Home Alone 2, was a riot, wouldn't it be twice as riotous with a smaller fry? (And three stooges instead of two?) A big if. And the smaller fry — a crawler fry — adds mainly impossibility. Joe Mantegna, Lara Flynn Boyle, Joe Pantoliano; …
Young wholesome clean-cut American couple competes with old depraved whiskered Britisher for the Scientific Find Of The Century: a brontosaurus family (papa, mama, and little baby) in Darkest Africa. The creatures — as light on their feet as marionettes, but as lubberly in movement as if they all slept wrong …
Wholesome, otherwise known as insipid, comedy about a septet of barely or nearly pubescent girls who, between school years, expand their baby-sitting service into a full-scale day-care center. Conflict is padded-gloved: one of the girls needs to pass a make-up exam in order to continue her membership in the club; …
Remake and update of Buster Keaton's Seven Chances (1925), an extreme example of how the addition of sound can be a subtraction, how more reality can be less believable. Renée Zellweger, who has shown she can hold her own against Meryl Streep (One True Thing) as well as carry a …
Beatle lore for the devotee, centered around the original fifth member of the band, Stuart Sutcliffe, whose first love was painting and whose head was easily turned by a pretty German photographer during a gig at a Hamburg strip club. The nondevotee will find the dramatic issues ("All he does …
Some gorgeous images of fire, swirling and undulating with almost a shifting-sand, simmering-pot sort of subtlety. Also some standard fireball images of the kind you get when any One-Man Army launches a bazooka rocket into the opposition's ammo dump. And while the finale socks you with spectacular sights at approximately …
Pleasant enough, if rather pat, romantic comedy about two Alabama losers, a twenty-dollar prostitute and an out-of-trim palooka, hooking up and heading toward California with nothing but dreams in their pockets. Sally Field is something of a problem, tending, whenever she attempts to be comical, to exhibit behavior that has …
Rodney Dangerfield, with a fluffier and less funny hairdo, is "the world's oldest living freshman" and "the walking epitome of the decline of modern education" -- the nouveau riche big-wig of Tall and Fat Clothing Stores, who buys his way into college with a considerable donation, continues to throw around …