Released in 1991, The Commitments was Alan Parker’s third film about pop music. His first, Fame, was a frothy coming of age musical that made the most of its youthful enthusiasm despite a disease of the week style script. The second, Pink Floyd: The Wall, was a depressive, insular, and angular pastiche of moody myth-making […]
Thank you, Robert Altman. Coming fast on the heels of one of the worst moviegoing years of recent memory, The Company appears like a wondrous beacon of light. (It even trumps Altman protégé Alan Rudolph’s clear-eyed ode to middle class challenges, The Secret Lives of Dentists.) Altman casts his gaze upon the Joffrey Ballet of
Sam Rockwell (best known for show-stealing turns in Charlie’s Angels and Galaxy Quest) makes for an engaging and wildly funny doppelganger for Barris, owning the character so completely it’s hard to tell where the source material ends and Rockwell’s interpretation picks up. With Barris appearing in almost every scene, the film takes us down his
Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Amy Heckerling, director of the now classic Fast Times at Ridgemont High, after free-falling through Look Who’s Talking and its (first) sequel, has turned in an unquestionably dismal look at the wealthy teen’s life in the mid-’90s. But this ain’t no 90210. Starring Alicia Silverstone and a gaggle of
Classic action director John Woo, redeeming himself for making a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie (Hard Target) in 1992, proves himself capable in the Hollywood arena of big explosions with this stylish story. Broken Arrow is your (very) basic action/adventure featuring an air force pilot gone mad (John Travolta), the sidekick (Christian Slater) who tries to
Brutal. Ugly. Predictable. Boring. Stereotypical. Comical. Violent. Lethargic. Seven words to describe the hellish cinema experience of The Brotherhood of the Wolf. Alas, I forgot two more epitaphs: disappointing and plagiaristic. The Brotherhood of the Wolf has all of the makings of a great French epic. Dashing leading men including Vincent Cassel (The Crimson Rivers),
A family of Irish Catholics living in New York, their stories explore living a morally upright life in the 90s, dealing with failed romances, and the timeless question of how to commit. Jack (Jack Mulcahy), the only married brother, is tempted by another woman. Patrick (Mike McGlone) is torn between committing to his long-time girlfriend
The Brown Bunny is the story of Bud Clay (Gallo), a professional motorcycle racer facing a long, depressing trip across country after a third place finish on a New Hampshire racetrack. As Bud points his car west towards his home speedway in Los Angeles, the camera watches him reminisce about his girlfriend Daisy (Chloë Sevigny)
It’s one of the most blatantly simple movies I’ve ever seen: Jim Carrey becomes God. End of story. To say Bruce Almighty would have been a mighty bore without Carrey is a supreme understatement. Carrey ad-libs his way through this film, first as Bruce Nolan, a down on his luck TV newscaster who’s passed over
A dark comedy on par with Pulp Fiction, Aussie director Gregor Jordan (in his second film) transports us to Germany in 1989, on an American Army base during the waning days of the Cold War. These enlisted troops aren’t your Officer and a Gentleman go-getters. They’re criminals, offered the option to serve their country in
