Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1981, Gal Young ‘Un is set during the Prohibition era, in which a rich, middle-aged woman living on her property in the Florida backwoods finds herself courted by a much younger man.
A fine supporting cast somewhat compensates for the casting of over-the-top Topol as Galileo.
This is the Melanie Griffith movie very few American audiences have ever seen.
This Allison Anders film takes its time showing the lives of waitress Nora (Brooke Adams) and her daughters Trudi (Ione Skye) and Shade (Fairuza Balk). The best thing about the movie is Balk's award-winning performance as a teenager confused by the haphazard life she shares with her mother and sister. James Brolin makes a classy, lived-in appearance…
People who pine for the good old days when Hollywood studios had a stranglehold on the worldwide film industry might appreciate how good old MGM made an international hit out of 1944's Gaslight. Gaslight was originally made in England four years earlier with Diana Wynyard and Anton Walbrook. Since neither Wynyard nor Walbrook were MGM stars, what's a rich powerful studio to do? Bingo…
Genevieve is the perfect movie to watch when you're in the world's worst mood; it will cheer you up in no time. John Gregson and Kenneth More are two antique car buffs obsessed with winning the annual Brighten-to-London run. Dinah Sheridan and Kay Kendall are along for the ride. That's all there is to it, but with that cast and the gifted Henry Cornelius at the helm, Genevieve…
Addison DeWitt is alive and well and residing in the offices of Time magazine. His name these days is Richard Corliss, but his critical approach is the same, and one of his 1995 critiques is even semi-cobbled from All About Eve. Luckily, Richard Corliss was ineligible for 1995's Academy Awards. Unluckily he seemed to believe that he was on some sort of a mission from God to keep Jennifer Ja…
1966 was a heady year for the Redgrave sisters: both Lynn and Vanessa received Academy Award nominations for Best Actress. Elizabeth Taylor won that year, but Lynn and Vanessa established secure places for themselves on the international movie map. From then on, Michael Redgrave was more likely to be referred to as their father than they were to be mentioned in footnotes as simply his daughters. I…
Robert Donat plays a dual role here as Murdoch and Donald Ghourie.
I was invited to the Altamont concert on Saturday, December 6, 1969, but the prospect of a free Rolling Stones concert was pretty terrifying for anyone with even a mild strain of agoraphobia so I declined. When I saw the Maysles Brothers magnificent film of the concert nearly 30 years later, I was stunned that they'd somehow managed to include one of the people who invited me: I'll n…
This stunning film, which appears to violate every single item in the then-current production code, was considered lost for over 40 years. Joanne Arnold is a tall, voluptuous brunette who'll do anything for a fix, and Timothy (Glen or Glenda?) Farrell is the sleaziest dope dealer you'll ever see. Girl Gang reveals, in graphic detail, exactly how to shoot heroin PLUS how…
Nobody asked me, but I always thought that Melanie Mayron was among the most appealing actresses of her generation in the days when she created delightful characters like Ginger, Marsha, and Susan in enjoyable flicks like Harry and Tonto, Car Wash, and Girlfriends. She was healthy, self-possessed, and reassuring, with no actressy mannerisms or ticks. Even though Mayron, then 26, was cast as a youn…
Hey, everybody, it's guilty pleasure time, and for tonight's snack, we are not featuring that bizarre (male) hot dog that leaps into a (female?) bun, but ta-dah!: Fashion Victims of 1943, also known as Girls in Chains. Talk about having to see a movie to believe how cheap it can really be. Director Edgar G. Ulmer must have been out to set some sort of a re…
Nikki (Aunjanue Ellis), one of a group of four friends, kills herself after being raped. Patti (Lili Taylor), Emma (Anna Grace), and Angela (Bruklin Harris) try to come to terms with their loss and mostly wind up acting out (vandalizing the rapist's car, snapping at each other, et cetera). Although the actors have given t…
Jeremiah Pollock (Kevin Kildow) is a Los Angeles bank executive riddled with guilt over the people on Skid Row. On an impulse, he decides to give $10,000 to the homeless. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Jeremiah's generosity is regarded with suspicion by a homeless spokesperson named Gregor (Lee Hampton). Jeremiah's intentions are serious, though. Already r…
The canon of Edward D. Wood Jr. holds a special place in the hearts of his many fans because Wood really had faith in his subject matter; there isn't a trace element of condescension in any of his films. When Wood made Glen or Glenda? for producer George Weiss (who also appeared in the film), he thought enough of the material to retain the services of a medical adviser, Dr. Na…
Go Fish is a bit too self-consciously arty for its own good. I hope that the rules and regulations for P.C. lesbians are meant as satire, not as a code of conduct. It looks as though Go Fish were a fun movie to make, but it is less fun to listen to the copious self-analysis that accompanies each move that Max (Guinevere Turner) makes toward Ely (V.S. Brodie). Maedchen i…
Hollywood is the wrong place to be a Nobody, even if you previously were a Somebody of the Highest Wattage. Gods and Monsters is a speculation on the sad last days of the legendary director James Whale, who brought us Frankenstein just in time for Christmas 1931, plus The Old Dark House (1932's Halloween release), 1933's The Invisible Man and, just in time for Easter 19…
Sure, Gog doesn't have the cachet of Godzilla or Rodin, but it did terrorize my friend Clinton Vidal as an enfant terrible, and he's one of the roughest, toughest guys I know, ROWR! So there. Richard Egan is David Sheppard, Security Agent for something called the Office of Scientific Investigation. At this point, I should mention the number of women in the cast, which is above averag…
Okay, everybody, let's play movie producer! Here's the story: first, we need Matt Dillon in the lead, because at the age of 30, he can convincingly age from 22 to 38 without ever changing his suit or hair. Dillon starts out as eager beaver FBI agent Kevin Walker, who just wants to get laid and make a name for himself in the Bureau. So he tells this girl he wants to lay (Teri P…
A Good Man in Africa is an odd hybrid of a film. For much of its running time, you may find yourself giggling at the sheer silliness of the situations its protagonist gets himself into, but the heart of the film seems to have been given short shrift. What's more, the whole thing ends on a flat, abrupt, and entirely unsatisfying note. The cast is as uneven as William Boyd's script. Co…
Since this is the only filmed version of Ford Madox Ford's classic novel, it deserves a video release. Originally made for Granada television, it was nominated for an international Emmy and featured on-target performances by the late Jeremy Brett in the title role, the late Susan Fleetwood as his long-suffering wife Leonora Ashburnham, and Robin Ellis and Vickery Turner as dense John and de…
Once upon a time, there was a type of movie called a woman's picture, AKA a four-handkerchief weeper. These films were invariably written and directed by men, the plots usually involved the heroine having to choose between security and sex, and there were always strong undercurrents of moral disapproval, even when they were charged with considerable sympathy. Today the woman's pictur…
Everyone raved about this feel-good date movie in 1997. If you couldn't get into Titanic, you saw Good Will Hunting instead. Matt (Will Hunting) Damon and Ben (Chuckie) Affleck got their very own magazines (just like Leonardo DiCaprio!) with HUNDREDS of color photographs and hardly any words to read. They won an Oscar for best original screenplay, R…
Rosina Da Silva is a fiercely independent young Sephardic Jewish woman, who has spent all her life with her loving family in London, circa 1840. When tragedy strikes, Rosina must earn money to support them. She has always wanted to be a great actress, but impersonating a gentile governess named Mary Blackchurch wasn't quite the role she had in mind. Harsh times call for harsh measures and R…
I spent a dozen hours of my life in 1996 watching The Beatles Anthology. I don't know how much more thorough an in-house project could have been. It had every scrap of footage, with massive commentary by the group, their producer, their press officer, and their tour manager. Yet I found myself recalling, with increasing fondness, the devastating and very funny 70-minute satire All You Need …
The Graduate was the most successful independent film from 1967 through 1990, until the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; indies that attract over $100 million in boxoffice receipts are on a very short list. Admittedly, The Graduate's credentials were so impeccable that its first audiences may not have realized that they were watching a groundbreaking film in so many ways. Dir…
The opening night selection for 1991's On Screen: A Celebration of Women in Film Festival was Grand Isle, based on Kate Chopin's 1899 novel The Awakening. It's the story of a young mother married to a jerk who pines for another jerk who teaches her how to swim but who actually sleeps with a third jerk. She attempts art work in the nude, burns all her paintings, and drowns hers…
For David Lean's 1946 film of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, John Mills and Valerie Hobson were cast as Pip and Estella, and a one-time advertising copywriter named Alec Guinness, then 32, was cast in the pivotal role of Herbert Pocket. It was the first of seven films Guinness would make with Lean over the next 38 years. Great Expectations and Lean received Best Picture and Bes…
Mark (Craig Chester) is a writer on the syndicated daytime TV show The Love Judge. Still numb from his lover's death from AIDS the previous year, Mark begins to take an interest in fellow writer Bill (Alexis Arquette), while writer Paula (Lucy Gutteridge) desires to become the show's new producer and secretary Leslie (Illeana Douglas&#…
Jim Thompson's tightly written novels grab you by the throat and never let go until you finish reading them. The Grifters supplies movie audiences with an equivalent cinematic wallop. Ironically, it took a British director, Stephen Frears, to do full justice to Thompson, and The Grifters is arguably the finest film noir to emerge in recent years. The Grifters examines con artists in extreme…
Grim Prairie Tales is director/screenwriter Wayne Coe's first movie and his heart, if not his maturity as an artist, is definitely in the right place. Brad Dourif plays the sort of innocent who would have provided fodder for a monster in a different sort of movie. As it is, James Earl Jones comes barreling into his camp with a dead body in tow. Although Jones is armed with a full ars…
The interesting thing about Guest in the House is what it had to say about a frail 22-year-old girl whose manipulative behavior is plenty clear to the viewer, but not to any of the characters in the movie. Or is her behavior so strikingly clear because we know that the roles of Eve Harrington and Nefretiri are lurking in Anne Baxter's future? The part of Evelyn Heath is a preview of the man…
Peggy Cummins IS Annie Laurie Starr in this film noir classic! Three years after her ignominious firing from Otto Preminger's Forever Amber (reportedly because she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in period costumes), Cummins showed that she could be every bit as sexy as her replacement, Linda Darnell, in a blonde wig. In this beautifully directed saga by Joseph H. L…
Drew Barrymore and James LeGros star in Guncrazy, a film that both exploits Barrymore's checkered offscreen image and protects her status as a 17-year-old minor.