Milli Godzilli. Godzilla takes a bite out of The Big Apple. And Ferris Bueller is there to stop him. After Japan’s Toho Company killed off its greatest property in 1995’s GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH, TriStar Pictures sought to fill the vacuum with its own American Godzilla that would blow the Japanese version out of the water, by utilizing state-of-the-art CGI visual … Read More
LOST IN SPACE 1998
Lost In Act Three. LOST IN SPACE blasts off as a well-produced science fiction adventure, then gets lost loster than its lostest characters. Brought to the big screen from the 1965 TV series, LOST IN SPACE captures much of the dynamics between all the characters originally created by Irwin Allen; it updates the tech, the spaceship, the production value; it … Read More
STAR TREK: INSURRECTION
Insert Erection! The dancing! The singing! The bearded guy in the bathtub! Are we on a star trek or a pride parade?! STAR TREK: INSURRECTION is another example of an excellent idea – and I’m not being sarcastic! – ruined by small screen sensibilities and mediocre production values. The very first TREK movie, STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE (1979), also … Read More
KURT & COURTNEY
Don’t Believe Anything Anymore. A documentary about Kurt Cobain, as confused, conflicted and depressing as Kurt Cobain. KURT & COURTNEY certainly looks and feels like a credible documentary, with its hand-held ethos and somber-bordering-on-ominous narration by filmmaker Nick Broomfield, but in the end, it only throws more fuel on the fiery controversy surrounding Kurt Cobain’s and Courtney Love’s relationship and … Read More
KISS | Smashes, Thrashes & Hits
Not to be confused with actual KISS songs… f you don’t know KISS – don’t start here! True Fans of any band spit on Greatest Hits albums. They’re albums for the weak. Greatest hits are for Casual Listeners, or for some dork to explore a band without the expense of buying the back catalogue. (Well, that used to be the … Read More
KISS | Psycho Circus
You Wanted The Best — You Got… a facsimile thereof. drummer that forced hotel staff to put tinfoil on his windows that faced a certain direction and a lead guitarist that would rather play cards with his friends than catch a plane to a gig with the biggest band in the world. It truly was a… Psycho Circus. Did … Read More
YOU’VE GOT MAIL
You’ve Got Fail. There’s nothing like a good romance. And YOU’VE GOT MAIL is nothing like a good romance. You see, it’s trying to sell us “romance” via e-mail. And the very nature of electronic mail – digitization, depersonalization – removes the elements that romance is built upon. Writer-director Nora Ephron has taken an old story (Ernst Lubitsch’s THE SHOP … Read More
WAG THE DOG
Conflation Nation. “Of course there’s a war – I saw it on TV.” –Robert De Niro, WAG THE DOG. War is only real if you let them get away with it. As George Carlin used to say, “Why do the troops keep turning up?” But even if the troops didn’t turn up for active duty, WAG THE DOG is an … Read More
THE BIG LEBOWSKI
The Book of Duderonemy. All The Dude ever wanted was his rug back. –The Dude, THE BIG LEBOWSKI. Thus it begins. Two low-rent thugs mistakenly terrorize shiftless stoner Jeff Lebowski (aka The Dude) instead of the rich mark they were meant to threaten, also named Lebowski. They pee on The Dude’s rug for good measure, precipitating the rug’s demise. That … Read More
GOOD WILL HUNTING
Beautiful mind versus beautiful beard. All hail the *intelligent* screenplay! GOOD WILL HUNTING pairs “Bahston” boys Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in their first, and arguably most powerful, bromance to date (excepting maybe their turns as marauding angels in Kevin Smith’s DOGMA); written by Damon and Affleck, who deserve every inch of their little gold man (Best Screenplay 1998), a … Read More
THE NEGOTIATOR
Two Wrongs making Two Rights. THE NEGOTIATOR would have scored higher Cukee ratings had it not opted for melodramatic Hollywood-speak and Samuel L. Jackson‘s penchant for delivering didactic lines as if he was Jules in PULP FICTION explaining stuff to Vincent Vega. Jackson is police hostage negotiator Danny Roman – the best at what he does – who is framed … Read More
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
A Spielberg fantasy done horribly right. What if the United States Military actually possessed a shred of decency and humanity? Shyeh! What if. In SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, the people who type the “Sorry Your Son’s Dead” letters for the Warmongers Who Send Sons Off To Die notice that three letters are addressed to the Ryan family of Anytown USA. Seems … Read More
PAM AND TOMMY LEE: HARDCORE AND UNCENSORED
White Trash Circus. Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee naked. Like we haven’t seen that before. Let’s understand something: PAM AND TOMMY LEE: HARDCORE & UNCENSORED is not a movie in the regular sense of the word. It is a home video “leaked” to the press that has attained international notoriety because it features two well-known celebrities getting married. Oh, and … Read More
ARMAGEDDON
Arma Dyin’ Here. Imagine the worst pain and suffering ever. That’s how it’s gonna feel at the end of the world, the mythical Armageddon. Coincidentally, you can feel that exact same pain and suffering by watching Michael Bay‘s ARMAGEDDON. ARMAGEDDON is a painful exercise in squeezing every cliché possible into 150 minutes of swooping camera moves, slomo shots of blond … Read More
PI
Uneasy as Pi. There is something genius lurking its way to the surface in Darren Aronofsky’s PI – but it gets sidetracked with hallucinatory drugs. An indie film through and through, filmed in startling, scratchy black and white, with reasonably poor performances from everyone except the two leads – Sean Gullette and Mark Margolis (forever Alberto the assassin from SCARFACE, … Read More
DEEP IMPACT
Deep Hurting. DEEP IMPACT is one of those movies where you just know that at some point, someone is going to shout “Get the hell outa there!” long after it’s too late the get the hell outa there. Sure enough, someone does. Trouble is, that someone is The Legend Robert Duvall… oh, ye gods! Did he need the money that … Read More
THE TRUMAN SHOW
Masterpiece in a Microcosm. Jim Carrey is overdue being lauded as one of the Great American Actors. THE TRUMAN SHOW is his calling card into that exclusive club. Written by Andrew Niccol (GATTACA, 1997) in an audacious fit of prescience, Truman Burbank (Carrey) is an unsuspecting pawn in the most ambitious reality show ever conceived, THE TRUMAN SHOW: while the … Read More
MAFIA!
“What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?” This movie is the severed horse’s head bleeding all over the pajamas of intelligent moviegoers everywhere. Helmed by writer-director Jim Abrahams – the comedy maverick who brought us AIRPLANE, HOT SHOTS! And THE NAKED GUN – words cannot describe the humor that every single frame of this movie … Read More
VELVET GOLDMINE
Moonage Daydreams of Stardust. …Your poison doesn’t hurt me, no Tender wine disguised in a milk-fat fair kiddie show. I’m here to celebrate the one below The last I heard from good God above Was the slap on my ass by a lipstick-kissed elbow glove…” – “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon,” Shudder To Think. A true songwriter would give his … Read More
THE IMPOSTORS
The Genuine Article. After his magnificent, offbeat BIG NIGHT, writer-director Stanley Tucci reunites that movie’s cast (including Tony Shalhoub, Isabella Rossellini, Allison Janney, Campbell Scott, Oliver Platt, to name a few) in another offbeat triumph. Intentionally played as an hommage to slapstick and farce, THE IMPOSTORS finds two over-zealous, out-of-work actors, Arthur and Maurice (Tucci and Platt) offending an overrated … Read More