Collective New York phobias -- fear of involvement, fear of strangers, fear of break-ins -- are enacted by way of a comic nightmare in which an Upper East Side word processor, lured by the prospect of a hot date, gets marooned in SoHo without a dime (well, actually with ninety-seven …

Directorial miscasting: Martin Scorsese moves from the agitated, violent, profane turf of Mean Streets and Raging Bull into the genteel neighborhood of Edith Wharton, of "fine literature," and of the Manhattan haut monde of the 1870s. He answers the opening bell in his customary Smoking Joe fashion: rushing in, reeling …

Eight re-creations of the Japanese director's unconscious dreams. All are so limpid, so economical, so tidy -- so much so as to cast doubts on the authenticity of their origins or the accuracy of their re-creations -- that the viewer is able to feel like Freud's brightest disciple. Death would …

A newly widowed housewife, advancing toward middle age, hits the road, with her vocal twelve-year-old son in tow, in search of a future of some kind, hoping to make a go of it as the Alice Faye-style singer she dreamed of becoming in her childhood. (The passion for goldie-oldie songs …

High-school coach and athlete both hope to use the Big Game as their ticket out of a small Pennsylvania steel town. The drama spun around this situation is modestly, even humbly, understated. (That the teen hero is a hard-nosed cornerback, not quarterback, and the coach is up for a job …

Martin Scorsese continues to suffer from a form of elephantiasis, compounded by a touch of Oscaritis: a pushing-three-hours epic on the tumultuous career of Howard Hughes (the eternally boyish Leonardo DiCaprio, deficient in gravitas even with the added mustache midway through) in the parallel worlds of filmmaking and aeronautics circa …

It’s Rocky joins the Head Injury Club for Men in this half sports/half disease-of-the-week biopic of world “champeen” pugilist Vinny Pazienza. After a head-on collision finds “Paz’s” sawbones fitting him for a Halo vest, his spirit and determination… Must I go on? The trailer offered a Viewer’s Digest condensed version, …

Serviceable action-adventure despite frequent interruptions for sermonettes on human rights and capitalist wrongs. The ripped-from-the-headlines story (yesterday's headlines: civil war in Sierra Leone, 1999) features the stock figures of a self-interested soldier of fortune, in league with slaughterous rebels and unscrupulous jewellers, an engagé foreign correspondent, and a hapless native …

If moviegoers were to vote on the one genre that best embodies the classification of seen-one-seen-’em-all, surfing films would sweep the election. For every Big Wednesday and Riding Giants, there are literally hundreds of vanity docs, the sole fixation of which is to track the perfect wave. Say hello to …

Minor Martin Scorsese, but in view of recent performance, minor is an improvement. Major Scorsese (Kundun, Casino, The Age of Innocence) is pretentious Scorsese, puffed-up Scorsese, inflated Scorsese. This one, an anti-valentine to New York City in the pre-Giuliani years of the decade, is an unmistakable companion piece to his …

Martin Scorsese's long-awaited sequel to Raging Bull?

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), …

Spike Lee offers the prospect of a couple of new angles of interest. First is the open acknowledgment of his debt to, or kinship with, Martin Scorsese, who co-produced the movie, and whose frequent actor Harvey Keitel has a leading role in it, and whose two-time scriptwriter Richard Price authored …

Martin Scorsese's extremely tardy sequel to The Hustler. The twenty-five-year interval between the two should prepare us for some pretty radical changes, and any perceived differences or inconsistencies in the character of Fast Eddie Felson (now a prosperous liquor salesman and only connected to the game of pool in the …

Spike Lee knows enough camera tricks to keep you glued to the screen. Though not necessarily with pleasure. The sequence here that most nearly approaches outright pain, in fact crosses well over the threshold of it, is the one that employs an anamorphic lens to compress the players into funhouse-mirror …