Back Street Jane Movie Review
First-time feature director Ronnie Cramer may indeed have made “excellent” rock videos for his Denver band, Alarming Trends, but Back Street Jane is a real snoozer.
Independent Film Guide - B
Backbeat Movie Review
Backbeat begins with stylish titles that capture the pace and feel of the early ‘60s and then cuts to an absolutely perfect girl singer in a club, circa 1960: cute, dressed to the nines in a bright yellow dress and demure hair bow, and singing drekky music slightly off-key. One thing leads to another, and the two young male protagonists are fighting in an alley with a gang of thugs much big…
Bad Lieutenant Movie Review
This is a guy movie with heavy doses of Catholic gobbledy-gook. Harvey Keitel is the Bad Lieutenant, and his award-winning performance will keep you watching despite the scumminess of his character. In one sequence, he stops a couple of young girls in a car and won't let them go unless they'll let him masturbate while he ogles them—yuchhh…. “What a lech!” …
Badlands Movie Review
Just as Bonnie and Clyde gave a 1967 vision of 1930–34, Badlands examined 1957–59 through eyes that saw 1974 parallels in every frame. Although Bonnie and Clyde used real names and Badlands made up new ones, both films are essentially fiction. Each re-invents legendary criminals for later generations living in an entirely different world. Martin Sheen, then 34, and Sissy Spacek, 25, …
The Balance Movie Review
The Balance focuses on a strong, compassionate wife and career woman in her early 30s, who puts marriage, work, and self on the line for reasons that are not entirely clear to her.
The Balcony Movie Review
Joseph Strick's The Balcony gave Lee Grant a chance to sink her teeth into a meaty character role 12 years after her movie career was put on hold because of the Hollywood blacklist.
The Ballad of Little Jo Movie Review
Suzy Amis delivers an outstanding performance as a woman passing as a man, based on a real-life character of the Old West. As unwed mother Josephine Monaghan, she is rejected by her rich family and heads west. She quickly discovers how difficult life is for a woman alone, and invents a new identity for herself as a male loner named Little Jo (who rather resembles Eric Stoltz). Ornery…
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe Movie Review
Quick: you're casting a movie set in a Depression-era mill town in the South and you need someone to play Miss Amelia, a love-starved local recluse. Who's the first person on your short list? Outstanding actress that she is, Vanessa Redgrave does not spring immediately to mind. Did anyone try to contact, say, Sissy Spacek or Shelley Duvall? This screen adaptation of Carson McCullers&…
Bang Movie Review
The powerlessness in the life of The Girl (eloquently played by Darling Narita) is eating her up. She goes on an acting audition and the scurvy producer hits on her, then Officer Rattler (Michael Newland) threatens to bust her on some trumped-up charge unless she gives him a blow job. She manages to grab his gun, forces him to strip, and handcuffs him to a tree. Once sh…
Barcelona Movie Review
It's good to see Christopher Eigeman (as Fred) in a movie again, four years after Metropolitan. Taylor Nichols is in it, too, as his cousin Ted. I once traveled to Paris with a couple of brothers from Spain and the rivalry between them crowded out any other social possibilities for the trip. Like them, Fred and Ted's rivalry never lets up for an instant, but since they&…
Barefoot Gen Movie Review
Animation often has the curious effect of lulling me into a false sense of security. I expect that the appealing images onscreen will amuse and entertain me, but not make me think too deeply or cry. The 1955 British version of George Orwell's Animal Farm changed my perception of what an animated film could be. 1983's Barefoot Gen offers a devastating contrast to live-action films lik…
The Basketball Diaries Movie Review
Leonardo DiCaprio's tremendous performance as Jim Carroll is the main reason to watch The Basketball Diaries, which otherwise is your standard drugalogue flick, no better and no worse than many others. Two significant elements that might have supplied meaningful context for THIS drugalogue (Carroll's Catholicism and the time period of his addiction) have been given shor…
Basquiat Movie Review
Jean Michel Basquiat is not exactly a household name today, although he has all the ingredients for legendary status: early fame, early death, umpteen mentions in Andy Warhol's diary, etc. He was an artist who slept on the streets, but believed he was fresh as a daisy (although Warhol's diaries say otherwise). At his scruffiest, he romances waitress Gina Cardinale �…
Bastard out of Carolina Movie Review
This exceptional first film by director Anjelica Huston was first intended for broadcast on Turner Network Television, which would have aired it with commercials. It was actually a blessing that it first aired on the Showtime Network without interruption 10 days before Christmas. (Showtime had originally planned to make the film until director Allison Anders resigned, then it wound up at TN…
The Battle of the Sexes Movie Review
The Catbird Seat is treasured by James Thurber fans for taking the sort of teethgnashing experience everyone dreads and discovering an ingenious way out of it. Mr. Martin (Peter Sellers) is a quiet Edinburgh accountant for Mr. Macpherson's (Robert Morley) textile company. He wishes to be left alone and he certainly leaves everyone else alone. That is, until Angel…
Beat the Devil Movie Review
This was Bogie's and Huston's sixth and final film together. Huston and Capote intended it to be an Italian-style satire of The Maltese Falcon, but audiences of the ‘50s failed to appreciate it on that level. Television viewers and revival house devotees finally got the joke. It's a kick to watch and so different from the studio films Bogie and Huston made in the ȁ…
Beauty and the Beast Movie Review
For many people, Jean Cocteau's 1946 version of Beauty and the Beast is the loveliest film ever made, and one of the few that I wish I could go back in time to see again for the very first time. (The only American film of that era with even a fraction of its sense of imagination, wonder, and style is Val Lewton's 1944 classic Curse of the Cat People, most notably the sequences…
Bedazzled Movie Review
Nowadays, when we discuss the Seven Deadly Sins, we don't kid around, but in the Swinging ‘60s, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore got away with it in this side-splitting Faustian comedy, co-scripted by its stars. Cook (1937–95) is The Devil, George Spig-got; Moore, then 32, is Stanley Moon, Wimpy's short-order cook. Stanley is desperately in love with Wimpy�…
Before the Rain Movie Review
Aleksandar (Rade Serbedzija) left Macedonia to live and work in London as a photographer many years ago. He returns to his former homeland as a war correspondent and is saddened by what his country has become. He is witness to an execution in Bosnia shortly before he goes back to see what has become of his old village. War is everywhere, ignited by racial hatred. Milcho Manchevski di…
The Belles of St. Trinian's Movie Review
If there's anything more inviting than the prospect of the great Alastair Sim in a comedy, it would be TWO Alastair Sims, one of them in drag as Miss Fitton, Headmistress of St. Trinian's School for Young Ladies, the other as her brother, Clarence. The story is inspired by the cartoons of Ronald Searle, first published in Punch magazine. The Belles, to put it mildly, are bloody terro…
Bellissima Movie Review
Luchino Visconti's Bellissima focuses on a marginal fixture at Cinecitta studios: the ubiquitous stage mother. Anna Magnani wants stardom for her little girl and a better life for her small brood. In America, the stage mother is rarely shown as anything other than a selfish, conniving bitch who mercilessly exploits her offspring; the 1955 performance of Jo Van Fleet as Lillian Roth's…
Bellman and True Movie Review
Bellman and True, a British thriller produced by George Harrison, is a bare-bones crime saga about computers, blood, and money, with a no-star cast and senseless characters. At one point, one crook tells another not to try to be Michael Caine, but in fact, Caine or Bob Hoskins or Peter O'Toole might be just what the doctor ordered to punch up this movie. I say “might be,” beca…
The Belly of an Architect Movie Review
Many of the press corps laughed hysterically at Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect, starring Brian Dennehy and Chloe Webb. They laughed at things like Dennehy plunging headfirst onto the roof of a car at the same time as wife Webb's baby was being born. Obviously, Greenaway's work is fraught with humor that you have to be on the same wave length to appreciate. The tit…
The Best Way Movie Review
Claude Miller worked with François Truffaut on eight movies before he made the shift from assistant to director. Unlike Truffaut, Miller's view of life is harsh and blunt. Marc, the major character in The Best Way, is discovered romping alone in woman's clothing by Philippe, a fellow boys’ camp director. The two begin a brutal, uneasy relationship, with Marc (Pat…
Betrayed Movie Review
The films of Constantin Costa-Gavras are often complicated, controversial, or disturbing. Betrayed is all three. When we see a man onscreen who appears to be a dutiful son, a kind father, and a considerate lover, we draw certain conclusions about his character. So, unfortunately, does federal agent Debra Winger, who is assigned to investigate the allegedly homicidal white supremacist character por…
Beware of Pity Movie Review
Stefan Zweig was an idealistic Austrian writer whose dreams of a united Europe were shattered by World War II. In 1942, he fled with his wife to Brazil where both committed suicide. Zweig left behind an impressive body of work, including several biographies, a novel called Beware of Pity, and many short stories, including “The Royal Game” and “Letter from an Unknown Woman,…
The Big Easy Movie Review
Although purists might deny that today's color film noir efforts approach the excellence of the crisp black-and-white noir visions of another time, The Big Easy by Daniel Petrie Jr. certainly comes close. One of the best things about the film is its realistic depiction of sex between two people who don't know each other very well. Only in the movies are such pairings flawless, and Th…
The Big Lebowski Movie Review
Large or lean, Jeff Bridges is loaded with charisma, even when he's The Dude, who wants nothing more from life than a little weed and a lot of bowling. He's the sort of nowhere man who gets caught up in This Huge Plot and spends the whole time yearning to return to his leisurely life of restricted activities because he is, after all, The Dude. The Dude's bowling buddies are Wa…
Big Night Movie Review
This excellent film is to struggling owners of small Italian restaurants what Strictly Ballroom is to Open Amateurs dancing on Federation steps at the Pan Pacific Grand Prix championships. Big Night takes a look at Primo and Secondo Pilaggi, two Italian brothers living and working in 1950s New Jersey: Primo (Tony Shalhoub), a genius chef who can't promote, and Secondo (…
Black Beauty Movie Review
Filmmakers have tried many times, with variable results, to transfer Anna Sewell's classic children's book Black Beauty to the screen. First published in 1877, when many regarded horses as mere vehicles for their convenience, Sewell's novel was a shocking consciousness raiser. Written for the audience who would be most vulnerable to its grim message, Black Beauty was so effect…
Black Joy Movie Review
Black Joy focuses on life in Brixton, a Jamaican neighborhood in London.
Black Litter Movie Review
Widely praised for its frighteningly accurate view of the fascist mentality, Black Litter, for this viewer, anyway, fell into the Operation-Was-a-Success-but-the-Patient-Died file.
Black Moon Movie Review
Black Moon is pure mumble-jumble, with gorgeous cinematography by Sven Nykvist and pretty faces belonging to Rex Harrison's granddaughter Cathryn, Joe Dallesandro, and Alexandra Stewart, to charm us into thinking that what we're watching can't be all that bad.
Black Narcissus Movie Review
In 1960, director Michael Powell enraged British audiences with Peeping Tom, a sympathetic look at a psychotic killer and the kinky upbringing that contributed to his adult illness. The fact that Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was wildly successful that same year didn't matter. Contemporary critics resented such an in-depth view of the dark side of human nature from a staid and genteel fi…
Blackmail Movie Review
An archival print of the silent version of Blackmail still exists and, as good as the early talkie is, the silent version is an altogether better film, with a fluid style and a minimum of intertitles. Joan Barry (later to star in Rich and Strange for Hitchcock) read Anny Ondra's dialogue just offscreen and Harvey Braban plays the talking inspector. (Sam Livesey had play…
Blessing Movie Review
It's an unhappy time down on the Wisconsin dairy farm in this tale of family life.
Blithe Spirit Movie Review
Condomine (Rex Harrison) lives in the country with second wife Ruth (Constance Cummings), but the spirit of his delectable first wife Elvira (Kay Hammond) turns up to make mischief. Madame Arcati (Margaret Rutherford) tries to return Elvira to the spirit world where she belongs, but Elvira has other ideas. As you might expect from director Da…
Blood Concrete: A Love Story Movie Review
Joey Turks (Billy Zane) is a cute but dumb bottle-blonde car thief. Just because he tries to steal a drug dealer's television set, Mort the owner (William Bastiani) stabs him! Joey's still bleeding when he meets a gloomy singer named Mona (Jennifer Beals), and she's just about to commit suicide by slashing her wrists! Their meeting sav…
Blood Simple Movie Review
Blood Simple put the Coen Brothers on the map and deservedly so. M. Emmet Walsh is the slimiest private investigator you can possibly imagine, or he wouldn't have accepted an assignment to murder the lover (John Getz) of Dan Hedaya's wife, newcomer Frances McDormand. When this flick first came out, movie buffs said it was the Citizen Kane of film noir, and it did re-inv…
Blow-Up Movie Review
Under no circumstances were kids who went to Holy Rosary Convent School supposed to see this movie! David Hemmings is shown carousing with two naked school girls, which was absolutely outrageous for a major 1966 release. When movies as great as Blow-Up were condemned from the pulpit, the Catholic Legion of Decency began to lose its clout. Also, Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills were clearly NOT little…
Blue Country Movie Review
Jean-Charles Tacchella, who gifted the world with 1976's Cousin, Cousine, serves up a new treat with 1977's Blue Country.
The Blue Kite Movie Review
This Chinese nominee for 1995's Independent Spirit Award's Best Foreign Language Film appeared to be unavailable for reappraisal at San Francisco video outlets, although it can be purchased through Kino on Video.
Blue Velvet Movie Review
I don't know who ever came up with the idea that the suburbs are a great place to raise kids; they're absolutely terrifying! I spent 15 of the worst years of my life in the Sacramento Valley (first Davis, then Woodland) before making my escape on a Greyhound bus on Friday, August 31, at 5:30 a.m. David Lynch understands the true horror of suburbia. It looks okay, but un…
Rest Motion Bodies Movie Review
…I used to live in a town where the main extracurricular activity was having, talking about, or cleaning up after sex; no wonder the leading cause of death was cracking up on the county road that led into town. My driving ambition between ages 10 and 18 was to leave town, but if I'd been 28 at the time, it would have taken me all of eight minutes to get out. Welcome to 94 minutes of …
Body Count Movie Review
Alyssa Milano has paid her dues in a number of flicks you wouldn't go near if she weren't in them. As these quickly made entries go, Body Count isn't bad. For key stretches of the film, director Kurt Voss employs the radio drama technique of letting the sounds within a house build an effective atmosphere of horror. Even if everything unravels at the end, the production team de…
Bongwater Movie Review
When I lived in Solano Park (that's a student housing tract, not a youth hostel camp), I used to hear geniuses-in-residence at the Davis campus of the University of California say, “Why don't more filmmakers show what getting stoned is really like?” As Bongwater clearly shows, the answer to that burning question is, “Because drugs on film slow down …
Boogie Nights Movie Review
Much of Boogie Nights makes the pornographic film industry look as wholesome as a Sunday school picnic. Burt Reynolds and his brood of sex stars are like family, only their home movies make money. Long but absorbing throughout its 155-minute running time, the plot follows sex stars Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Heather Graham et al from the ‘70s into the ‘80s. If the entire movie we…
Boss’ Son Movie Review
This early Bobby Roth film is an autobiographical account of why he isn't taking over his father's job as boss of a carpet mill. Despite the extremely personal primary source material, Roth manages to achieve just enough emotional distance, to the great advantage of his film. Working on a tiny budget of $500,000, Roth assembled an impressive cast of veterans, all of whom outsh…
Bound Movie Review
This sizzling neo-noir was just as much fun for me to watch as many classic entries of the 1940s and the ‘50s. Jennifer Tilly is femme fatale Violet stuck with a schmuck named Caesar (Joe Pantoliano). When a butch ex-convict named Corky (Gina Gershon) enters her life, it's love and lust at first sight. Many bodies later, the Wachowski Brothers use all the …
Box of Moonlight Movie Review
Tom DiCillo's Box of Moonlight is a beautifully observed story of how a tightly coiled electrical engineer learns how to appreciate life after a chance meeting with a free spirit known only as The Kid. It's the sort of movie that would have been trampled by too many conflicting approaches at too many studio story conferences. You can almost envision the artistic compromises that woul…
A Boy and His Dog Movie Review
Harlan Ellison has been outraging people through most of his career as a professional writer. He admits frankly that much of this is hype. Contemporary writers have to be strong personalities to get booked on the chat shows that will promote their work. Ellison considers A Boy and His Dog to be one of the best science-fiction novellas he's ever written, and director L.Q. Jones’ scree…
The Boy from Mercury Movie Review
Martin Duffy's The Boy from Mercury looks like it was shot in saturated Technicolor from the 1940s, but it's actually a ‘90s movie from Ireland, starring Rita Tushingham, Tom Courtenay, and a young charmer named James Hickey as Harry, a fatherless child who's convinced he's a creature from another planet. (All those weekly Flash Gordon serials fuel his imagination.) Tushingham and Courtenay are more animated here than they've been in quite some time, and Hickey is altogether winning as the little would-be alien.
Boy Next Door Movie Review
The BBC has always been fascinated by pop iconography, and Boy Next Door might easily qualify to be a segment on A&E's Biography series.
The Boys of St. Vincent Movie Review
The Boys of St. Vincent is a hard-hitting Canadian drama set in a Newfoundland orphanage for boys run by the Catholic Brothers. But Brother Lavin, the orphanage's well-respected director, has a secret life with the children under his care. He uses them as sexual outlets and, if they reject his advances or his authority, he beats them until they require medical attention. The three-hour-plus…
The Brandon Teena Story Movie Review
Teena R. Brandon's short life spanned from December 12, 1973, to December 31, 1993. Her coffin is inscribed “Daughter, Sister, Friend.” And so she was to the people who loved her. Teena was having a sexual identity crisis. Born a girl in Lincoln, Nebraska, she felt like a boy, and as Brandon Teena, she dated a number of young women, all of whom liked Brandon very much. They ap…
Breakaway Movie Review
Well, what did we expect? A mere 16 months after Nancy Kerrigan was temporarily sidelined while training for the 1994 Olympics, Tonya Harding's first movie was rushed to the Cannes Film Festival. When Sonja Henie, Vera Hruba Ralston, Belita, Carol Heiss, and Lynn-Holly Johnson were introduced to international film fans, they were groomed and protected and shown in the best light possible fo…
Breaking the Waves Movie Review
This extremely long film (17 minutes longer than Secrets and Lies, which felt like forever) is not suitable for everyone on Planet Earth, like, for example, ME. I suspect that it impressed the Grand Jury at the Cannes Film Festival because of its power and its sincerity, and because of Emily Watson's tremendously hard work as Bess. Obviously I can't speak for The Deity,…
Breathless Movie Review
Iowa-born Jean Seberg was only 17 years old when director Otto Preminger chose her to play the title role in Saint Joan. It was a spectacular way to launch a career and her subsequent failure in the film was equally spectacular; Saint Joan was chosen as the worst movie of the century by the Harvard Lampoon. Preminger gave her another chance with Bonjour Tristesse, but Deborah Kerr attracted most o…
Bride of the Monster Movie Review
The 1994 movie Ed Wood wasn't kidding: In order to secure financing from Donald E. McCoy, the owner of the Packing Service Corporation, Wood had to hire his son Tony as Lieutenant Dick Craig. A star was born, but only for this movie. Bela Lugosi has a bit more oomph than usual as Dr. Eric Vornoff; he's a great mad scientist and his sequence opposite a rubber octopus in Griffith Park …
Bride to Be Movie Review
Bride to Be is quite unintentionally funny.
Brief Encounter Movie Review
Early in his long career, David Lean made several small, beautifully observed films about love, about death, about how people survive, and about how things end. My favorite David Lean film is Brief Encounter; I can watch it over and over again and never grow tired of it. The story is deceptively simple and we discover it in bits and pieces. We see a woman and a man talking quietly in a railway tea…
A Brief History of Time Movie Review
Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking was given two years to live when he contracted Lou Gehrig's disease in the early 1960s, but, over three decades later, he shows no indications OR inclinations of fulfilling that prophecy. As always, Errol Morris does a remarkable job of communicating an interesting subject on his own unique terms. Even if you barely squeaked by with a “C” …
Brilliant Lies Movie Review
Richard Franklin's Brilliant Lies is talky and stage-bound, feeling much longer than its 93-minute running time. Susy Conner (Strictly Ballroom's Gia Carides) is a definite target of Gary Fitzgerald's (Anthony LaPaglia) sexual harassment, or is she? She asks sister Katie (Gia's real-life sister, Zoe) to back up her version of ev…
Brother's Keeper Movie Review
In both Brother's Keeper and Paradise Lost: The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills, the filmmakers take a look at a murder case in which community members have pretty much made up their minds about the innocence or guilt of the accused. There is also a heavily charged side issue in each case to cloud the evidence: in Keeper, it's incest; in Paradise, it's Satanism. I've …
The Brothers McMullen Movie Review
This overpraised indie about three Irish Catholic brothers in Long Island, New York, is a guaranteed button pusher for Irish Catholic women, which is why I originally disqualified myself from reviewing it. (Hey, is anyone out there laboring under the delusion that movie reviewers are objective ROBOTS? Dream on, baby!) Ed Burns’ next movie, She's the One, was widely pann…
Bulldog Drummond Movie Review
It's hard to sit through early talkies made in 1929, even if they've been archivally restored until they're as glistening as the day they were released. There are, of course, exceptions: Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail, F. Richard Jones’ Bulldog Drummond, ahm….ahm…ahm…and I'm thinking it over! Well, definitely Blackmail and Bulldog Drummo…
Bullets over Broadway Movie Review
This valentine to Broadway is a full notch above Tay Garnett's Main Street to Broadway, a star-studded fest that crammed the best theatrical troupers of that era (including wonderful Tallulah Bankhead) into a slight story about a first-time playwright (newcomer Tom Morton, whom no one got a chance to remember before he was forgotten). Bullets’ story line i…
Burnt by the Sun Movie Review
Burnt by the Sun deservedly won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film of 1994. It captures a heartbreakingly lovely summer day in the country. Bolshevik hero Serguei Kotov is madly in love with his wife and small daughter and their life together is joyful and serene. The arrival of his wife's former lover Dimitri appears to be no more than a catch-up-on-the-past visit at first. But gradua…
Bury Me Dead Movie Review
A movie as good as The Amazing Mr. X made me wonder if director Bernard Vorhaus and cinematographer John Alton worked together on anything else. They did, but the results were very different. Bury Me Dead originated as a radio drama by Irene Winston and was adapted for the screen by Dwight V. Babcock and Karen De Wolf. Someone, somewhere, thought that he just might be able to make another Laura on…
Business As Usual Movie Review
Economic sanctions may be the only thing that sexual bullies understand. This is the point that a gutsy young working-class filmmaker, Lezli-Ann Barrett, makes with her first movie, Business As Usual. Glenda Jackson plays the “manageress” of a Liverpool boutique to whom model Cathy Tyson appeals for help against the unwelcome advances of Mr. Barry, the area manager. None too thrilled…
Butley Movie Review
It's hard to imagine a story in which a man loses both his wife and his best friend in the same day could possibly be slow-paced. But it IS, and only Alan Bates’ powerhouse performance in the title role keeps Simon Gray's attenuated structure from falling apart. If Jimmy Porter, the angry young man of the late John Osborne's Look Back in Anger had made it past the 1950s…
Butterfly Kiss Movie Review
The May 1996 issue of Films in Review arrived three months late, as usual. It featured pages and pages about the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, attenuated reviews of movies that have been out for ages, and a color cover shot of Dian Hanson. (Who?) But this quaint little publication also seemed to contain a few words of warning for folks like, well, me. It appears that contributor…