Shop Around the Corner, The

Having once lived in the area served by Channel 6 (Harrisburg, York, Lancaster, Lebanon), where Russ Richards (John Travolta) works as celebrity weather man in Nora Ephron’s amusing Lucky Numbers, I can assure you that not everybody in Central Pennsylvania is a moron. Nor would anyone but a supercilious Hollywood type suppose that “Harrisburg’s most…

Cradle Will Rock is a huge disappointment—nothing but a vanity project for Tim Robbins, who wrote and directed it. It’s a great shame, not only because Robbins showed that he was capable of something much better in Dead Man Walking a few years ago, but also because it has an all-star cast (including Vanessa Redgrave,…

The Thomas Crown Affair, a remake by John McTiernan of the classic of 1968 which starred Steve McQueen, is what I like to call a designer movie. True, it is also a cleverly conceived heist caper whose interesting premiss is that a rich man, the eponymous Mr. Crown (Pierce Brosnan), in search of excitement will…

The idea behind this movie is mistaken, I think, but its execution makes it very watchable

A persuasive and watchable version of the 16^th president makes us not mind too much the reduction in scale of his great story from the epic to a grubby political wrangle

Night Falls on Manhattan is that rare thing, a film that is bursting with talent—written and directed by Sidney Lumet it features fine performances from Andy Garcia, Ian Holm and James Gandolfini and even such cinematic palookas as Richard Dreyfuss and Lena Olin are punching above their weight—which is, nevertheless, a complete failure. It is…