Why Do Fools Fall in Love — apparently meant to be rendered without its mark of interrogation — is written by Tina Andrews and directed by Gregory Nava and is based on real events. Frankie Lymon (Larenz Tate) wrote and sang the Do-Wop hit of the 1950s of that name and never rose to that…
Rather like Safe Men, Return to Paradise, directed by Joseph Ruben (Sleeping With the Enemy, Money Train), is worth seeing even though it has a tendency to make light of criminal behavior. In this case, the criminal behavior is drug-taking. Three American friends, Sheriff (Vince Vaughn), Lewis (Joaquin Phoenix) and Tony (David Conrad) vacation in…
How Stella Got Her Groove Back, directed by Kevin Rodney Sullivan from a screenplay by Terry McMillan and Ron Bass from Miss McMillan’s novel, is a middle-aged woman’s wish-fulfilment fantasy and, unfortunately, little else. I thought at least it might be amusingly bad, but it doesn’t even reach as high as that. Angela Bassett stars…
The Parent Trap, directed by Nancy Meyers, is an intermittently charming remake of the Disney classic of 1961 which starred Hayley Mills as twin 13-year-olds, separated since birth, who meet by chance at a summer camp and then plot to reunite their divorced parents. In this version the twins, played by Lindsay Lohan, are presented…
In Snake Eyes by Brian De Palma we are presented with Nicholas Cage in the role of Rick Santoro, a loud, corrupt and casually brutal cop in Atlantic City. He gambles, takes bribes, keeps a mistress on his illegal income and rarely sees his wife and child. He knows all the angles and has a…
Out of Sight by Steven Soderbergh.is a film reminiscent of so many of the brilliant products of the Coen brothers in that it is an excellent bit of movie-making with absolutely nothing to say. It plays around with time sequence like Pulp Fiction (only not so boldly) and fantasy and provides us with a real…
In the first paragraph of his review, of Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s movie, There’s Something about Mary, Stephen Hunter of the Washington Post suggests that the picture is not only brilliantly funny but also one in the eye of those carping critics (presumably those with “artistic” pretensions) who don’t believe that “it is enough for…
It’s time that the team of computer programmers from IBM who developed “Deep Blue,” the machine that beat the world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, to take on a real challenge. Let them try to develop a movie-making program that is more formidable — or more machine-like — than Steven Spielberg. His latest directorial effort, Saving…
Small Soldiers, directed by Joe Dante, is typical of Hollywood attitudes towards military values and military people. Even the grief of soldiers for their dead comrades in arms is made fun of as the leader of the toy soldiers brought to life by computer wizardry pronounces over one of his men that: “Nick Nitro’s battery…
Brother, a Russian film written and directed by Alexei Balabanov, stars Sergei Bodrov, Jr, as Danila, a recently discharged soldier at a loose end who makes his way to St. Petersburg where his brother, Viktor (Victor Suhorukov) is somebody in the burgeoning underworld of Russia’s second city. The city itself is a main character in…
Slamnation by Paul Devlin is a ridiculous if not often comical documentary about the growing fashion of the “poetry slam” — a kind of competitive sport involving mostly execrable poetry and the little clique of neurotics and borderline exhibitionists who write it for performance before vast arenas of enthusiasts. The film tells the story of…
There are several things to like in Armageddon, directed by Michael Bay. One is that the sympathetic main character, Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis), is a wildcat oil-driller who is introduced to us as he harasses a Greenpeace ship which has been sent to harass his offshore drilling platform by hitting golf balls at it. The…
