The way I see it, Martin Scorsese has one problem He’s in love with the sound of his own voice, as it comes out through the dialogue of films like GoodFellas and now, Casino. Clocking in at three long hours, Casino is an entertaining and engrossing film, but just drags a simple story into a […]
“Get two geniuses, put them together in a room, and… wow!” That was Steve Martin’s self-conscious gag incorporated into the dialogue of his play Picasso at the Lapin Angile. It said, in effect, that we shouldn’t give famous intellectuals more credit than they’re due. They have inconsistencies like all of us. Peter Bogdanovich’s bitter Hollywood
Make a movie about a black cat, and you’re just asking to be cursed with a streak of bad luck. Yet even the most hardened cynic will be surprised at how far Universal’s The Cat in the Hat strays from the childish antics of Dr. Seuss’ original work. Judging from this humorless monstrosity, the Cat
By 1967, Frank Abagnale Jr. (Leonardo DiCaprio) had become the youngest con man to make the FBI’s “Most Wanted List.” He’d cashed millions of dollars in forged checks, posed as a co-pilot for a major airline, landed a job as a surgeon in Atlanta, and passed the bar exam in New Orleans. At the time,
A wry and sarcastic (and thick as hell) book about the ridiculous duplicity of war? Sounds like a movie to me. And so it did to Mike Nichols and Buck Henry, collaborators on The Graduate who conspired once again to make one of the greats of cinema. While Catch-22 has none of the cachet of
There’s an important lesson every male should learn, even at a young age: Women always get their way. You listening, fellas? Pack it up, party’s over, that’s the way of the world. The likable but unambitious Catch That Kid delivers this bubble-bursting curveball to ten-year-old boys everywhere, delivering a preteen heroine that knows the only
At the American Ballet Academy, there is an abundance of passion, talent and determination. Of course these things simply aren’t enough when it comes to making it as a professional ballet dancer. As the camera probes into a crowded room of ballerinas spinning and dipping, a young blond is immediately isolated from the bunch. The
Hollywood is a pimp. A fat, cigar-smoking chump wearing a fur hat and 12 gold chains around its fat, hairy chest. All of its stars and starlets are an evil brood of scum-sucking vampires looking for the next percentage take, the next summer blockbuster, the next casting couch to audition on. Pumping out comic-book adaptations,
I don’t understand why directors decide to remake perfectly good movies. This thought races through my head because I recently saw Charade, the 1963 Stanley Donen gem featuring Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, and an endless amount of thrills, chills, and sweet goofiness. It’s an unabashed delight, featuring two screen legends whose charisma is unmatched whether
Angels fight in slow motion. Angels show skin in slow motion. And most importantly, Angels explode in slow motion. Thus we have the three immutable laws of the reinvented Charlie’s Angels, that most improbable crossover hit from the 1970s TV show. Alas, what made the original film such a guilty pleasure wears thin in this
