Some novels are ruined when they are turned into movies. Some are improved. And some are exposed. The faithful, indeed nearly reverential film adaptation of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City does to the book what its critics should have done upon its publication: it lays bare its poverty of invention and characterization. The book … Read more
Abraham Lincoln was a man who walked the earth for fifty-five years, but that’s beside the point. What concerns me here is that he is the central figure of American mythology. In his backwoods lawyer’s black duds he is a rural Hamlet. His already long figure absurdly extended by the stovepipe hat, he is a … Read more
Written and Directed by James Brooks 20th Century Fox Broadcast News, a romantic comedy set in a Washington TV news bureau, is every bit as “bright,” as “painfully funny,” as “dizzingly smart,” as you may have read or heard. In fact, it is even better than that. It entertains you for two hours, and after … Read more
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went…one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous safe attached to its ankle…cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, on a doorstep. The misery with them … Read more
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went…one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous safe attached to its ankle…cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, on a doorstep. The misery with them … Read more
Written by James Dearden Directed by Adrian Lyne A Paramount Release Fatal Attraction may be the first psycho/slasher horror movie made for the readers of New York magazine. It’s that smart and that shallow. Both its victims—a well-heeled lawyer and his wife and child—and its victimizer—a book editor for a successful publishing firm—certainly might be … Read more
Written by Steve Martin Directed by Fred Schepisi Warner Brothers The keynote of Roxanne, the charming Steve Martin-Fred Schepisi modernization of Cyrano de Bergerac, is sounded very early in the film. C. D. Bales, a gallant fire chief with a proboscidean nose, is on his way to join a friend for breakfast when he encounters … Read more
Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, Michael Herr, and Gustav Hasford Directed by Stanley Kubrick Warner Brothers Stanley Kubrick is the film poet of process, of team effort and team disharmony, of corporate strategy and corporate dissolution, of the urge of the unified many to reach beyond the stars, and of the equally strong urge of the … Read more
The final episode of Hill Street Blues, which aired on May 12, was a surprise because it contained nothing particularly surprising. In concluding this series that so often tried to zing the viewer with violent deaths of cast regulars, with black comedy, with (hints of) kinky sex, and with startling character revelations, the staff writers … Read more
Screenplay by Louis Marx and Giles Foster Directed by Giles Foster A B. B.C. Film Compared to Protestants, cradle Catholics must seem nostalgic, fatalistic, complacent. Saved at infancy, they can spend the rest of their lives merely consolidating. Since consolidation isn’t dramatic, no wonder Catholic novelists and playwrights exert their ingenuity devising ever new ways … Read more
Written and Directed by Oliver Stone Orion Pictures Watching the scenes of combat in Platoon, I found it difficult at times to breathe. Oliver Stone is a masterful director who uses all the resources of his medium to place the viewer squarely in the center of jungle fighting — which is to say squarely in … Read more
Written by Robert Bolt Directed by Roland Joffe Warner Bros There’s a brief exchange in Citizen Kane that crystallizes my feelings about The Mission. Orson Welles/Kane is looking at a group photo of a rival newspaper’s distinguished staff. His aide-de-camp, Bernstein, remarks that with journalists like that it’s no wonder the rival is such a … Read more
The young punk looks up from the practice pool game he’s been shooting by himself and sees the nattily dressed fat man studying him. “You ever play?” the punk asks tauntingly, well knowing whom he’s addressing. “Once in a while,” smiles the fat man, sketching a self-deprecating gesture with his cigarette. “I’m the best there … Read more
Heartburn: Written by Nora Ephron; Directed by Mike Nichols; Paramount Nothing in Common: Written by Rick Podell and Michael Preminger; Directed by Garry Marshall; Tri-Star People want to be changed by their troubles. If a tragedy jolts the sufferer toward a new goal or a different view of himself, grief may not disappear but it … Read more
Written and directed by John Hughes Paramount In the American heart there’s a spacious niche for rogues. Flux rules American life and rogues know how to go with the flow: up and down the social scale, into intimacies with reform-minded women, into the pockets of the rich, out of harm’s way. While most of us … Read more
Written and directed by Woody Allen An Orion Release Because storytellers make the world a happier place to live in, we in turn wish storytellers much happiness. But they should leave all the well-wishing to us. Because if storytellers start wishing themselves well by proxy, by providing their characters with happy destinies in no way … Read more
Written by Tom Cole Directed by Joyce Chopra A Nepenthe/American Playhouse Theatrical Production Everything about this movie is banal except the very things that make it a peculiar and irreplaceable work of art. Certainly, there is nothing unique in the plot. In fact, it’s essentially that old wheezer of a formula that has done service … Read more
Written by Dennis Potter Directed by Gavin Millar A Universal Picture It’s odd. At a time when most movies are made for teenagers, and are as frantic as a game of Pac-Man and as disposable as Kleenex, not one but two movies in current release (from the same studio!) feature superb performances by actors playing … Read more
Written by Kurt Luedtke Directed by Sydney Pollack A Universal Picture Love and art create strange countries. The only way tourists can get in is by hiring the creators of those countries to conduct guided tours. You buy the book and read it. Isak Dinesen’s Africa is not on any map. Her Kenya existed only … Read more
Written and directed by Istvan Szabo Orion Classics Journalists have dubbed 1985 the “Year of the Traitor.” The turncoats I’ve read about all seem to be slightly more ambitious versions of street hustlers who sidle up to you with stolen watches fastened to the insides of their coats. Whatever happened to the idealistic traitor who … Read more