Terry Zwigoff's documentary on underground cartoonist R. (for Robert) Crumb is an interesting movie, but not really very interesting as a movie. Zwigoff's chief gift as a filmmaker -- an entitlement as distinct from a talent, a thing handed him on a silver platter -- is that of access. A …
A film -- the first film -- from the democratic South Africa. And as such, a rather tardy adaptation of the Alan Paton novel, particularly when held up against Zoltan Korda's 1951 version. It recounts, in between outright sermons, the "bitter journey" of a rural black clergyman to Johannesburg, where …
New-fashioned swashbuckler: more an amusement-park attraction than a tale of adventure; nearer Vegas's Treasure Island than Stevenson's. Lots of spectacular stunts, explosions, chases, and lots of slow-motion to assist your appreciation of them; not lots of charm, though, or spirit. Director Renny Harlin sees to it that his wife, Geena …
A Blackboard Jungle, a To Sir, with Love, for the Nineties. Which means something nearer a music video than a bona fide movie, driven by a persistent rackety background beat, and speeded through five-minute class periods forever interrupted by the clangorous bell at peaks of tension and unsettlement. The innate …
A Spanish priest deciphers the exact date of birth of the Antichrist (Christmas, 1995) and sets out on a quixotic quest (this is Spain, remember, where quests are prone to be quixotic) to save the world: "I must sell my soul to the Devil, but I don't know how." His …
Not even the thirstiest of Western fans could work up much enthusiasm over the news that Jim Jarmusch, of all people, had made one. And the emerging manhunt for a greenhorn named William Blake (Johnny Depp in wire-rim specs, plaid suit, bow tie) produces nothing to accelerate the heartbeat: the …
A debate-forum movie, a chew-over of the topic of capital punishment, complete with de rigueur attention to the moment-by-moment minutiae of death-day prison procedure (frequent shots of the clock on the wall along the way). As seemingly dissimilar as it is from writer-director Tim Robbins's first effort -- the political …
The Hughes twins, Allen and Albert, can't wait to show you their eerie images of black gunmen in mimelike whiteface, but (flashback to 1968) it's a long and long-winded route to return to that point. The first half-hour, tracing the evolution of a decent young Bronxite from milkman to numbers …
Silly willies: your basic Night of the Living Dead-type siege, under the aegis of Satan, but also that of TV's Tales from the Crypt, complete with jocular prologue and epilogue hosted by the Crypt Keeper. Gore galore, and bare breasts of great size if not frequency. All very adolescent. With …
Robert Rodriguez's big-budget Hollywood followup to his teensy-tiny El Mariachi: a faked folk tale, with a bubbling-over level of mirth, to do with an angelic avenger (the preening, posturing Antonio Banderas) who lugs around a private arsenal inside a guitar case. In spite of the newfound gloss, it still seems …
A terrible title, although as such an accurate forecast of the movie in its entirety: arch, pretentious, mystical-magical malarkey ("You are seriously underestimating the power of the forces aligned against us") in which an escaped convict chases his lost loot and his lost lady around the city where, as we …
Traditional hard-boiled private-eye stuff, set in the traditional time period (1948), but a little off the traditional beaten path (in the black community of South-Central L.A.). With this workmanlike adaptation of the first installment in Walter Mosley's series of Easy Rawlins detective novels, writer-director Carl Franklin graduates from low-budget independence …
NYPD Det. John McClane (Bruce Willis) is presently on suspension for undisclosed reasons, and hence hung over and unshaven, when a massive explosion rips through the Bonwit Teller department store (no casualty report: such is the level of human interest); and the German-accented, nursery-rhyming mad bomber (Jeremy Irons) phones up …
The Stephen King industry clatters on, with a stretched-out little wisp whose main distinction in the canon of King adaptations is the attention to Maine accents: "Stawp thaht," etc. The story is a straightforward either/or proposition. Did the housekeeper kill the crotchety old widow or did she not? Did she, …
A flat glass of bubbly in which Brando, with dyed yellow hair and an out-of-puff delivery, plays psychiatrist to a young fantasist (the drowsy Johnny Depp) who may not be the real Don Juan, may not have made love to over a thousand women by the age of twenty-one, but …