You can just picture it. Someone comes up with this great idea to make a fun, hip flick about cops in Hollywood full of cameos by stars that ends with a chase down Hollywood Boulevard. And one day theyll make that film. In the meantime we have HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE, a film so bad that the… Read More »
S.W.A.T.
Did or does S.W.A.T. the television series have the sort of cult following that made a film version inevitable? Are there conventions of kids who dress up in ersatz S.W.A.T. uniforms and stage mock rescues? Are there Hondo worshipers? A frightening thought, but not as off-putting as sitting through this film. The passel of writers… Read More »
RUNAWAY JURY
With RUNAWAY JURY we are deep into classic Grisham territory. Based on his novel of the same name, it pits evil big business against an idealistic do-gooder with the moral lines firmly drawn. The bad guys are the gun manufacturers and their creature, Rankin Fitch (Gene Hackman), a whiz of a jury consultant whose… Read More »
ALIEN VS PREDATOR
I know even as I type this that its a futile question, but can we have a rule that we only make movies when theres an actual story to tell? I am inspired to ask because Ive just come from enduring ALIEN VS PREDATOR, a film that was press screened the day before it opened.… Read More »
CELLULAR
There are as many conceptions of Hell as there are people who imagine what it must be like. CELLULAR presents a very particular one. The one where the damned soul is doomed to wander in Los Angeles traffic for all eternity on an endless and hopeless quest, thwarted at every turn by traffic jams, idiot… Read More »
MILLION DOLLAR BABY
MILLION DOLLAR BABY is a perfect film. Director and co-star Clint Eastwood has taken a story about people who live on the margins of life and turned it into a universal story about redemption and respect, and getting them the only way that counts, by being self-administered. The conceit is boxing, which Scrap (Morgan Freeman)… Read More »
WHITE NOISE
As I sit and tap out these words on my computer, it is January 4, 2005 and I have just seen WHITE NOISE, a prime contender for NEXT years Razzie Award. It is inept, it is inane, and it is seemingly interminable. And why shouldn’t it be? The people behind this dreck thought it would… Read More »
BE COOL
It should be a rule of filmmaking that when the plot fizzles out, the film should end. Actually, it should end before any signs of fizzle appear, but that, perhaps, is asking too much. In any case, it is the sin that afflicts BE COOL, the sequel to GET SHORTY, a film that did not… Read More »
THE INTERPRETER
My friend Daisy, an enthusiastic but discriminating cinema fan, has a way of summing up her movie-going experiences with a succinct take, and so it was as we exited the preview screening of THE INTERPRETER. It almost seemed, she opined, as though something was on the verge of happening. Alas, director Sydney Pollack’s lugubrious pacing… Read More »
SKELETON KEY
There is one perfect moment in SKELETON KEY, which is remarkable more for the fact that it’s the only good moment in the entire film than for its own innate effectiveness. In it, a character picks up a cigarette, lights it with the torpid evil inherent in supernatural films set in the swamps of Louisiana,… Read More »