The original Candyman, minus colon and subtitle, was something a bit special among contemporary horror films. The follow-up is nothing special. Not even with the change of scene to atmospheric New Orleans, birthplace of the "urban legend," christened Daniel Robitaille. A few gruesome homicides (thick dark molassessy blood), with many …
The star and director of Death Race 2000 -- David Carradine and Paul Bartel -- team up again, perhaps in the belief that things could not get any worse than the last time. But this encore cross-country race has one idea less than the one-idea Death Race, and is completely …
The apparent plan was to treat the formation of the Village People in the style of an old Hollywood musical, though there seems to be some uncertainty as to which old musical and what that style was. Nancy Walker, a directorial debutante, shows more care with roles she herself could …
Nasty piece of work about a paroled rapist (a thoroughly malevolent Robert Mitchum, rivalling himself in The Night of the Hunter for sheer badness) who threatens an encore performance on the wife and/or daughter of the lawyer who put him away. Much superior to the remake by Scorsese (who re-used …
Martin Scorsese's remake of a thing that was made well enough the first time, 1962. The director's appreciation of Hollywood Past can still be caught here in glimmers — mainly in the use of the stars of the original, Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum (along with supporting player Martin Balsam), …
With Philippe Torreton, Samuel Le Bihan, Bernard Le Coq, and Claude Rich; directed by Bertrand Tavernier.
Michael Moore's overview of the American economy is, needless to say, not a love story. "Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil." In other words, Capitalism: A Horror Story, the moral of which might best be summed up as capitalism, no; democracy, yes — a tricky distinction for …
The first Jordanian cinematic import, nothing to awaken a craving: an ineptly manipulative heart-tugger about an airport janitor who fishes a captain’s hat from the trash and regales the neighborhood kids with fictitious tales of his world travels. Nadim Sawalha, Rana Sultan; directed by Amin Matalqa.
Scenic World War II romance between a Greek island beauty (the Spanish Penelope Cruz, with her unaltered native accent) and a music-loving Italian officer (Nicolas Cage, with an unsteady Italian one). Shades, or shimmers rather, of Mediterraneo -- though it ultimately turns much darker. Slow, somewhat soggy, but rewarding in …
City Slickers at sea. An Illinois landlubber inherits a boat formerly of the Clark Gable estate, and takes his family on a Caribbean cruise under the tutelage of a one-eyed drunken old salt (Kurt Russell gargling rusty razor blades) of doubtful dependability. Formulaic -- and obsequiously so in the uplifting …
Andrew Jarecki's documentary for HBO rehashes a late-Eighties criminal case that never came to trial, in which a Jewish upper-middle-class family man and teacher in Great Neck, Long Island, already caught red-handed in possession of child pornography (postmark Amsterdam), was brought up on charges, together with the youngest of his …
The hit-and-run car, with no markings, no license plates, and no driver, belongs properly to the tradition of monster movies instead of car movies; and Elliot Silverstein, the director, dwells not on chases and crashes, but on the rapidly mushrooming sense of alarm and amazement (some of the exclamations recapture …
Who wants to know? The defunct Sixties TV show should have stayed there -- on TV, in the Sixties, defunct. David Johansen, John C. McGinley, Rosie O'Donnell, Fran Drescher; directed by Bill Fishman.