SLEEPLESS will put you to sleep. Sleepless in Seattle? Must be from all that grunge music you kids are listening to. The macro, self-aware message in SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE is in the scene where characters measure the emotional impact of 1957’s AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER against the parachuting scene in THE DIRTY DOZEN where Trini Lopez breaks his neck. It’s … 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
TOP GUN
Highway to the Gayer Zone. TOP GUN – the movie that wrested the crown from MAD MAX 2: THE ROAD WARRIOR as the Gayest Movie Ever Made. Tom Cruise is Maverick, the pop gun let loose in billion dollar taxpayer war machinery, one of the best fancypants F14 Tomcat pilots stationed onboard an aircraft carrier, though so smug, irritating and … 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
FRENCH KISS
French Crass. When one is in love one begins by deceiving oneself, one ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls romance. — Oscar Wilde, “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” Kate’s (Meg Ryan) love-of-her-life, Charlie (Timothy Hutton) travels to France, where he meets his love-of-his-life (Suzan Anbeh), and leaves Kate. Misbegotten, forlorn, neurotic, rudderless Kate pursues Charlie to … Read More
JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO
Sacrificial Ham. During JOE VERSUS THE VOLCANO, Tom Hanks’s head took out a restraining order on his hairstyle. His head won the case, which is why halfway through the film, Hanks sports a halfway decent ‘do – the old hairstyle finding a home on Whitney Houston’s head, of which Houston is still unaware. Diagnosed with a “brain cloud” which leaves … Read More