Isn't the world ready for the return of Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello? Hasn't the world of movies, that is, skidded far enough downhill that the old beach-ball epics might seem almost average -- or slightly above? The old ones, maybe. This new one, however, has skidded downhill right along …
The task of tailoring the time-travel theme to the teenage market has led to, besides such concrete accessories as skateboards and electric guitars, an inordinate dwelling on anachronisms, with a contemporary teenager plunged (much like an addict of TV's Happy Days, only deeper) into the Fifties. It's as though the …
The task of tailoring the time-travel theme to the teenage market has led to, besides such concrete accessories as skateboards and electric guitars, an inordinate dwelling on anachronisms, with a contemporary teenager plunged (much like an addict of TV's Happy Days, only deeper) into the Fifties. It's as though the …
A loud, ugly, ungodly mess. It starts out with what's already the biggest pill to swallow in a time-travel adventure, and proceeds to let this snowball into a burden of disbelief such as could not be suspended by wire cables. Namely: the manufacture of a mobile time machine which, by …
A loud, ugly, ungodly mess. It starts out with what's already the biggest pill to swallow in a time-travel adventure, and proceeds to let this snowball into a burden of disbelief such as could not be suspended by wire cables. Namely: the manufacture of a mobile time machine which, by …
Anyone who wasn't lost, in one sense or another, in Part II will have plenty more opportunity here: plenty more of that formula of obviousness and overstatement blended with in-jokes and incoherence. This time, science fiction collides with the Western (as our aging teenager travels to 1885 in his Nikes), …
Jennifer Lopez, artificially inseminated and pregnant with twins before she meets Mr. Right, stands out as a pearl among pebbles. Her hair and makeup (in the part of a pet-shop proprietor) are a wonder to behold, and are indeed beheld with tunnel vision and starry eyes by director Alan Poul …
Hollywood stands in front of a mirror, and is not displeased. A power-hungry producer (Kirk Douglas) does dirt in turn to a director (Barry Sullivan), an actress (Lana Turner), and a writer (Dick Powell). The three-part narrative structure -- stop and restart, stop and restart -- makes the movie seem …
Another big idea -- or "high concept," as it's known in the trade -- from the producers, most pertinently, of Beverly Hills Cop (Simpson and Bruckheimer). In fact, an even bigger idea. Exactly twice the size. Two black comedians (Will Smith, Martin Lawrence), not just one, in the roles of …
Bad movie too. Two and a half hours of bang-screech-crunch-boom. With Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Gabrielle Union, Jordi Mollà, and Peter Stormare; directed by Michael Bay.
A black-market-nuclear-bomb scenario played for laughs. Or anyway Chris Rock plays it that way, while the rest of the cast plays it more or less straight. Rock, a Madison Square Garden ticket scalper and Washington Square chess hustler (like Laurence Fishburne in Searching for Bobby Fischer, like Samuel L. Jackson …
David Newman and Robert Benton, authors of Bonnie and Clyde and There Was a Crooked Man, are the smart alecks of Hollywood, cutting through history's mists to remind us of man's universal pettiness. Their promising story of a good Christian lad, who flees from the Civil War draft and falls …
You can see why the Disney company didn't bother to promote this project, but not why it agreed to produce it in the first place. No flash. No dash. No one (the kiss of death in the American marketplace) to identify with and to root for. The "fault," if such …
Modern-day pulp Western, hard-boiled to suit the modern-day taste, concerning a one-armed war veteran (Spencer Tracy) bringing to light the deep dark secret of a sun-baked desert town. Director John Sturges's resourceful use of the then new Cinemascope format nicely captures the arid spaciousness and siesta atmosphere of the setting. …