Makes the best of a bad idea. Now it’s funny! In A VERY BRADY SEQUEL, the gag of transplanting a 70’s family into the 90s works much better than it did in this movie’s predecessor, 1995’s failed experiment, THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE. The satire finds its feet possibly due to new director, Arlene Sanford, who displays a surer grasp of … Read More
BIG NIGHT
Thought for Food. Stanley Tucci outdoes himself with his directorial debut BIG NIGHT, the poignant, funny story of two Italian brothers risking it all on one feast that might save their failing Italian restaurant. Tucci is everything to BIG NIGHT. He is co-writer (with his cousin Joseph Tropiano), co-director (with Campbell Scott), and star. Even his character, Secondo, has many … Read More
THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS
A Bridge Too Roar. In 1898 Kenya, the construction site of a railway bridge over the Tsavo River is terrorized by two man-eating lions so vicious and elusive they become known as THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS. Lt. Col. John Paterson (Val Kilmer, high off TOMBSTONE and BATMAN FOREVER) is sent to the stricken Uganda-Mombasa Railway work site (by financier … Read More
CHRIS ROCK: BRING THE PAIN
The Shotgun Monologues. Chris Rock taught me what “tossing the salad” meant. Admit it: you too. During his HBO comedy standup special BRING THE PAIN, Rock recounts a prisoner’s graphic advice on what you need to do to get along in jail. And a superstar is born… By 1996, Chris Rock had grown into a formidable comedian in the United … Read More
GAMERA 2: ATTACK OF THE LEGION
Badass Turtle does good. A synopsis for GAMERA 2: ATTACK OF THE LEGION reads: “A strange meteor lands in Japan unleashing hundreds of insect-like “legion” creatures which find their way into Tokyo. When the military fails to control the situation, Gamera shows up…” (Alex Smits, imdb). Wait, the “military fails to control the situation”? Let me ask: Have the military … Read More
MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: THE MOVIE
The science of silly. I think it was TIME OF THE APES. Or one of the GAMERA movies. Circa 1993. I was channel-surfing and came across some car wreck of a movie, and, like every good rubbernecker, slowed down to see if there was a decapitated head in the street. Before long, I realized there was a secondary audio track … Read More
THINNER
THINNER is Phat. A gypsy’s curse makes a man become – thinner. Before every woman squeals out looking to have the same gypsy curse applied to her fat ass, take heed: he doesn’t stop getting thinner… “It is the tale, not he who tells it.” A Stephen King credo (from The Breathing Method, a short story in Different Seasons) that … Read More
JINGLE ALL THE WAY
Jangles the nerves. The single funniest thing about the bland and pointless “family holiday comedy” JINGLE ALL THE WAY has nothing to do with the supposed comedy it is trying to purvey – it’s Arnold Schwarzenegger unintentionally being funny while trying to be a comedian. I laff my ass off at that guy, but then, I laffed my ass off … Read More
COURAGE UNDER FIRE
Gutless Under Cliché. Yes, I know it’s trying to be inspiring and heroic and poignant, but COURAGE UNDER FIRE is one of the most blatantly gutless movies ever made. About a soldier investigating whether a downed female United States helicopter pilot in Desert Storm deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor. So I ask you: in which universe will America ever … Read More
12 MONKEYS
BACK TO THE FUTURE by way of BRAZIL. Like BACK TO THE FUTURE II with Biff in charge forever. Another Terry Gilliam dystopian vision, 12 MONKEYS (inspired by French short film LA JETÉE and modeled after Gilliam’s own inimitable BRAZIL), is a claustrophobic, strangling, time-paradox action stunner; like all Gilliam’s films, it’s also completely off the rails. A subterranean Orwellian … Read More
DEAR GOD
Dear God! Make it stop! Dear God, What foul transgression did humankind perpetrate to deserve this accursed movie? For surely it is your undying wrath that allows such offal from the buttocks of Lucifer. Dear God, Why give Greg Kinnear such an august kickstart into the A-List with SABRINA only to snatch away his momentum with DEAR GOD? Dear God, … Read More
MR. HOLLAND’S OPUS
Mopus Opus. A well-intentioned redemption movie that follows all its formulas sweetly, MR HOLLAND’S OPUS then tries one last tear-jerk that just makes us feel dirty, paying off with a piece of elevator muzak that is so memorable, it will have you humming something else within five minutes of hearing it. Richard Dreyfuss is Mr. Holland, a composer who begrudgingly … Read More
MULTIPLICITY
Keaton’s Bravura Quadriformance. One person sells MULTIPLICITY: Michael Keaton. And Michael Keaton. And Michael Keaton. And Michael Keaton. Keaton is Doug Kinney, so swamped in career and family life that in order to find felicity for himself, he creates a clone to share the burden of domesticity. But one clone turns into two clones turns into three clones… the complicity … Read More
INDEPENDENCE DAY
The Arrogance of Independence. The most likely circumstance is that extraterrestrial beings will look nothing like any organisms or machines familiar to us. Extraterrestrials will be the product of billions of years of independent biological evolution, by small steps, each involving a series of tiny mutational accidents, on planets with very different environments from those that characterize Earth. — Carl … Read More
RANSOM
Blow me the money. Mel Gibson is billionaire airline owner Tom Mullen, whose son gets kidnapped in RANSOM. Rather than play to the kidnappers’ ransom demands, Mullen’s status allows him to go on national TV to offer the 2-million dollars ransom money as reward for any info on his son’s kidnappers – the ransom money becomes bounty money! Serpentine Gary … Read More
TWISTER
TWISTER blows. I have spent my life laboriously doing nothing. — Hugo Grotius (on his deathbed 1645) Mysteriously-funded and irrationally-driven “storm-chasers” gad about the American midwest in TWISTER, trying to throw an aluminum thingy filled with little aluminum thingies into a tornado. They say it’s to research these natural disasters. Cue joke about this movie being natural disaster. Leading the … Read More
THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS
No Truth in CATS AND DOGS. Re-telling of the age-old Cyrano tale with Janeane Garofalo as The Nose and Uma Thurman as The Bod. Janeane is as alluring as she’s ever been onscreen – which is about as alluring as Gerard Depardieu in a unitard. (However – funnily enough – I really was attracted to Janeane at the time of … Read More
PHENOMENON
Battlefield Iowa. Long before John Travolta and Forest Whitaker turn Earth into a battlefield for L. Ron Hubbard in BATTLEFIELD EARTH, the Psychlos envoy (Travolta and his mildly-retarded lieutenant, Whitaker) inhabit a small midwestern American town, pretending to be human, in PHENOMENON. On his 37th birthday, Travolta sees lights in the sky – L. Ron Hubbard beaming down brain juice … Read More
ROMEO AND JULIET 1996
More Comedie Than Tragedie. All I’m saying is: Leonardo DiCaprio should stop being prettier than his female co-stars. In ROMEO + JULIET, snub-nosed Claire Danes bravely steps up to out-femme Leo’s manly prettiness. And fails. Leonardo is Romeo (kinda archly poetic, no?) and Claire is his Juliet. Shakespeare‘s retelling of Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe is retold with creative conceptualizing and … Read More
BARB WIRE
Livin’ Large on Marketable Melons. Her paps are centers of delight, Her breasts are orbs of heavenly frame. –Thomas Lodge, Rosalynde. If you’ve seen CASABLANCA, you don’t want to watch BARB WIRE. It will bring the pain – knowing that resting on that classic movie’s shoulders, are this movie’s breasts. Pamela Anderson-Lee, bountiful BAYWATCH überbim, stars as the titular secret … Read More
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