A by-the-numbers divine comedy about a would-be TV anchorman, anchored instead to fluff pieces in the field, who curses God (Morgan Freeman) and is cursed in return with all of His powers on a temporary basis: see if you can do better. (Only two rules: "You can't tell anybody you're …
A reteaming of the star and director of Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen and Larry Charles respectively, to peddle the same or a similar shtick in a different persona: a different funny accent, different funny wardrobe, different funny hairdo. The shtick, should you need to be reminded, is to inflict the …
Prolonged dizzy spell brought on by an ancient Egyptian Soul Sucker who stalks the halls of a Texas rest home till he runs into some stiff opposition from a resident who may or may not be the real Elvis (weighing how he got there, you'd have to guess not) and …
First and foremost a marketing experiment, spearheaded by director Steven Soderbergh, in releasing a film simultaneously in theaters and on cable TV and DVD. Otherwise an exercise in frugality. An hour and a quarter in length. A strummy solo guitar for background music. A chamber-sized ensemble of nonprofessional actors in …
For his first directing try, a yarn about black pioneers. Sidney Poitier seems to have very orderly notions of what he wants to do, especially in the action scenes. Costarring Harry Belafonte with gimmicky bad teeth and Poitier with a gimmicky thunderous gun.
A feel-good death trip, directed by the crowd-coddling Rob Reiner, about two terminal cancer patients, a billionaire WASP and a blue-collar black, who bond as hospital roommates and set out together to do the things and see the sights they never had time for: skydive, car-race, get a tattoo, visit …
True story, incredibly bland in the telling, about an eccentric millionairess who, in the afterglow of the Scopes Trial, attempts to raise chimps and a gorilla as fully constituted, fully clothed members of the family. The parrot in the kitchen gets all the laughs. All two or three. With Rene …
Billy Wilder, who takes as his source material a French farce by Francis Veber, and who seems in general at a loss for original ideas, banks heavily on the very unoriginal idea of teaming Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon (for the third time in a Billy Wilder movie and fourth …
Gary Busey's surly, burly performance in the lead role somewhat elevates this conventional musical biography, which skims without pause over the short road from jam sessions in a small-town Texas garage, to Top 40s fame and fortune, to an early grave in the Midwest winter. (Nothing in this easygoing movie …
Ry Cooder, the eclectic American guitarist, singer, composer, and musicologist, rounds up some old lions (and a lioness) of Cuban popular music, for a series of live concerts, recording sessions, on-camera interviews, and ultimately a debut at Carnegie Hall. (Their sightseeing sidetrips on that occasion are a delight.) Directed by …
An emotionally imprisoned ex-con, who took a phony fall to square his account with a bookie, now wants to even the score with the Buffalo Bills placekicker, Scott Wood, who missed the Super Bowl-winning field goal. (The real-life former Bills kicker, Scott Norwood, could not be altogether pleased with this …
Or Robert Altman's absolutely unique and heroic enterprise of inimitable lustre. You can't get through the title and credits without wilting under the oppressive self-consciousness and self-congratulation of this debunking of an American hero (or this kicking of a dead horse). Altman's remedy for the anti-Indian attack of past Hollywood …
Hellerish, or just plain hellish, view of an overseas Army base in the late-Eighties: "Soldiers with nothing to kill except time," and hence the black-marketeering, the drug-manufacturing, the arms-dealing, and so on. The film's release was long postponed after 9/11, on the supposition that it wouldn't suit the nation's mood. …
What Bill and Ted did for time travel (i.e., less than nothing), Buffy does for vampire hunting. An airheaded high-school cheerleader, whose yellow-and-purple costume is neutralized by jaundiced cinematography, is the Chosen One to combat an infestation of bloodsuckers in Southern California. Mostly flat outside of Kristy Swanson's chest and …
Disney's second computer-animated feature, following Toy Story, and somewhat embarrassingly released two months after Antz, from arch-rival DreamWorks. There can be no question of outright copycattery. The movies were too close to neck-and-neck for that. But the mere coincidence of two computer-animated features set in an ant colony and centered …