Reviews

If I had not known at the beginning that I was about to watch a Sam Raimi film, no one would have been able to convince me that he was the director of this mess of schlock and stolen horror tropes. After all this is the guy who gave us THE EVIL DEAD back in 1981, a movie that despite mediocre acting and somewhat variable special effects managed to put its story across with a strength and surefootedness that borders on the work of directors like Billy Wilder and Robert Wise.

So I don't know what happened, but what Raimi has given us here is a terrible film full of tropes and images ripped right out of far superior horror movies. I saaw pieces of THE EXORCIST, THE OMEN, THE HAUNTING, and yes, even hark-backs to Raimi's own work, only not done as well.

The story, in brief, is of a loan officer who refuses an extension on a loan to an old gyspsy woman, who gets angry and curses the young woman. Fill in the blanks.

The whole mess is just awful, but perhaps the low point of the movie is when Christine, an animal lover, sacrifices the tiny kitten she has been fostering. I might have been able to swallow the character sacrificing an animal about which she felt nothing, but when that sweet little cat died it just left me sick to my stomach and I found the entire scene impossible to believe or accept.

To his credit, Raimi did remember that his previous films allowed for comedy; the laughs are easier to find than the scares. But a good movie in this genre needs both.

Certainly the most painful documentary, SHOAH is a nine-hour cry of anguish and fury, spoken by the people who lived through the Holocaust. Both the perpetrators of the worldwide massacre and the innocent victims of their unleashed and incomprehensible fury.

The horror that was Nazi Germany can never truly be understood, in my opinion. Neither the hatred that drove the killings of an entire group of innocent people nor the incomprehensible stupidity of a nation that followed blindly behind a leader so malevolent that his name has gone down in infamy.

True, Hitler was not the only monster in the history of the world. Ironically he was not even responsible for the most deaths; the evidence suggests that Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung both killed more people. But perhaps it is the way his Holocaust spread across the world that put him in the lead of the chamber of horrors.

SHOAH is an agonizing yet quiet series of interviews with the people who lived through it, Nazis and their victims alike.

I've seen some painful movies in my life but this one sits in the top spot.

Perhaps the archetypal film about sexual awakening, set in the 1920s, starring Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood as an utterly believable high school couple, deep in the throes of love, desire, and at times out-and-out lust and the effects these things have on the young couple and their awful parents.

(In fairness, one does wonder if parents really were as tone-deaf as the ones in this picture; however, the actors playing them are totally convincing.)

The youngsters are Wilma Dean Loomis (Wood) and Bud Stamper (Beatty); the kids are deeply in love with each other and are struggling to navigate what appear to be treacherous waters. The monsters in their ocean just happen to be their parents. Deanie's mother (Audrey Christie) is a sexually repressed woman who calls marital relations a duty and something that nice girls just don't enjoy. Deanie is left hanging by this monstrous woman and left with no way to deal with her own feelings.

Bud's sea monster is Dad (Pat Hingle); his take on premarital sex is less moral than practical: he expects his son to go to Yale, get good grades, and get on in the world. The son's desire to work on a ranch is not in keeping with his father's relentless ambition for him.

Suffice it to say that the outcomes are complex. I found some of it hard to believe, but I did not grow up in the period.

Kazan pulls no punches here; like most of his work, he looks his characters full in the face, warts and all. And the result is brilliant.

Iranian-born actress Shohreh Aghdashloo plays Detective Sunny Qadri of Brooklyn SVU. Sunny is an intense, driven woman very much like Olivia Benson; "Dirty" brings the two characters together in a tense and impressive episode involving the murder of a Brooklyn ADA and the investigation that follows.

I don't want to give much away; suffice it to say that Aghdashloo's performance here impressed me so much that I ordered a couple of her movies from Netflix.

Now I wish we had seen more of this remarkable actress. She is every inch as powerful in her role as Hargitay is in hers, and watching the tension build between the two women is both intriguing and entertaining.

This is one of the best episodes of that season.

I am sorry, but Nia Vardalos is a TERRIBLE actress. She is clearly out of her element here and it shows.

Fortunately the balance is restored by Max Carpenter as the self-loathing gay man Jeremy Jones and his rather mousy husband Mason, played with delicacy by Andres Quintero.

Also in the cast are Jenny Bacon as the widow of the one man Jones kills; she is sensational, nearly stealing the whole episode in a single brief scene.

Nick Amaro makes one blooper by suggesting that one of the victims was asking for what he got by going out on his wife; the remark is uncharacteristically judgmental for Amaro and leaves the viewer with a bad taste in his mouth.

Stephen Soderbergh's, debut film is a devastating study of people and their sexual quirks.

Don't go looking for scares here; you won't find them. That is not to say the film isn't creepy; there are, in fact, many elements that provide tension.

The story of Elizabeth Morison (Hiller) and Frances Lamont (Gordon). principal and vice-principal of St Gilbert's College, Oxford, is extraordinarily compelling despite the necessarily low budget these television films are made on.

Lamont is new to the college and Morison is not in the least happy at her arrival; to her mind she is an interloper coming to take away her power. The fact that Morison would be made to retire sooner or later anyway does not seem to occur to the older woman.

Nevertheless, they remain cordial to each other and then travel together to France, where they visit the Palace of Versailles, and on a walk one afternoon, they see a woman and two children who could not be anyone other than Queen Marie Antoinette and her two children.

The rest of the film deals with Lamont and Morison's struggle to tell their story. The Society for Psychical Research is called in but refuses to help on the grounds that the women could have read their story before their trip.

It does not end happily for them, and that in the end may be the real tragedy of this story.

Hiller and Gordon are magnificent.

The three people named in my review title are music teachers who shaped my life and made me a musician with a love of music that still endures today.

MR HOLLAND'S OPUS tells the tale of a man who dreams of fame as a composer but who is forced by circumstances to take a teaching position in a local high school.

Glenn Holland (Richard Dreyfuss in perhaps his finest performance since JAWS) arrives on his first day to encounter the Principal (Olympia Dukakis), Vice Principal (William H Macy), and Phys Ed Teacher (Jay Thomas).

At first Glenn Holland seems to be a fish out of water, lost in an environment that he does not understand and really does not want to. But he has a wife at home (Glenne Headley shines) and later on they have a son who turns out to be deaf (it's a little heavy on plot and characters at this point, but stay with it and let it lift you up.)

Finding out his son is deaf is a terrible blow to Glenn. He fights it but finally his wife cries out "I want to talk to my son!!" And finally he begins to listen.

I won't say anymore. Only a word of advice that viewers keep tissues on hand because this one is the biggest weepie since Douglas Sirk's IMITATION OF LIFE.

Ten stars because even with flaws (it has a few) it's probably one of the best films of 1995.

This is a tough movie to write about. On the one hand, the characters are well-cast and well-developed, the plot line is plausible (whether it actually happened that way there is no way to know and it does not really matter), and the basic conflict is brought to the screen intact.

On the other hand, we come into this movie knowing far too much for there to be anything remotely like suspense. We know that the fishing trawler ANDREA GAIL ran headlong into a three-storm cycle that pretty much ate up everything in its path. How it happened? Not a clue. And that makes this film a bit of a waste of time; it has no suspense to speak of and the only character that can actually bring a note of suspense to the proceedings is fellow captain Linda Greenlaw (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, really the only actor who creates a note of tension; it is a pity she does not have more screen time), who attempts to warn Captain Billy Tyne of the ANDREA GAIL that he is headed "right into the middle of the monster" a message it is not known whether he ever received because at some point the radio has gone dead.

TPS was directed by Wolfgang Petersen, a guy who is good at this sort of thing; among his major successes are DAS BOOT (film and mini-series), OUTBREAK, ENEMY MINE, and AIR FORCE ONE. The only mistake he made here was taking a true event and trying to turn it into what otherwise would have made a superb fiction film.

One other reviewer wrote of this title, "it's a movie, just a movie. Don't see a movie to learn about "what really happened" unless the film states very clearly that it is a documentary (and I say even then take it with a grain of salt).

For some reason I had forgotten the Rob Miller character. My bad, as Titus Welliver is outstanding here, and no one since William Lewis has had Benson swinging in the breeze the way Miller does here.

My only complaint is the way they wrapped it up. I didn't believe the payoff; Stone was not that attached to Olivia to hang himself out to dry; not to the point where he is forced to leave.

(Not that I am sorry to see the last of Philip Winchester; I've never liked the man or the character he plays).

The two Bergmans (Ingrid and Ingmar; no relation) alone would have made this film an event; Liv Ullmann as Ingrid's daughter Eva make it a firestorm.

To avoid giving away the whole plot: Charlotte Andergast (Ingrid), a renowned concert pianist, is invited by her daughter Eva (Ullmann) to come for a long-postponed visit with her and her husband; Mama rushes to their home; however Eva has not told her that her other daughter is suffering from a chronic illness and is now living with her and Viktor.

Charlotte nearly bolts, but Eva manages to keep her from seeing Helena as a threat (if she is one it is only a threat to her mother's pride and self-image), so Charlotte stays.

And she lives to regret it. In a long scene in the middle of the night, Eva and Charlotte lay all their cards on the table and defy one another to answer the question: Who is the strong one here?

I have to admit the ending surprised me: Bergman often wrote disastrous endings or at least doubtful ones, but here he allows the audience to hope. We have come to care for both these women, warts and all; speaking for myself, at the end I found myself hoping for their eventual reconciliation.

The good news here is that Chris Noth is back as Detective Mike Logan; he is a perfect foil for the uber-eccentric Goren (the highly overrated Vincent d'Onofrio). Unfortunately for the series they have paired him with Annabella Sciorra as Detective Carolyn Barek, a fascinating woman who mutters under her breath while she looks over evidence and who is in many ways a female version of Goren. The chemistry between them is electric as they are assigned to investigate a series of jewel robberies committed by a trashy, drug-addicted woman named Dee Dee Rebecca Wisocky) and her "son" (if that's what he is) Johnny (Peter Scanavino).

Noth proves once again that he is not a poor man's Goren; the viewer's attention is riveted on him whenever he is in view of the camera. And Sciorra is no less than brilliant as his partner and foil.

I read somewhere that the production team disliked Sciorra for some reason and replaced her with Julianne Nicholson. (Alicia Witt stepped in briefly while Nicholson was on maternity leave).

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT is basically the story of thirty years in the life of Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) and her daughter Emma Horton (Debra Winger); on the periphery are Emma's cheating husband Flap (Jeff Daniels) and Aurora's arrogant, self-centered astronaut boyfriend Garret Breedlove (Jack Nicholson).

The story can be summed up in four words: the mother and daughter fight. Constantly.

Aurora's contempt for everything her daughter does is so palpable that MacLaine's performance becomes one-note long before she finally gets to scream her lungs out in the hospital where her daughter lays dying.

As for their men, both of them are losers in one way or another: Garrett is an egomaniac who can't keep it in his pants. And Flap, Emma's sad sack of a husband, can't keep his in his own pants but in his case it is insecurity that drives him.

My problem with this film is that I disliked all the characters. Intensely. If there had been a hint of a single redeeming quality in any of them, it might have helped, but honestly, I just wanted to strangle all of them.

I am sure I will be thrown to the wolves for this, but I thought the movie sucked.

THE HASTY HEART, based on the stage play by John Patrick, is brought to the screen by Ranald MacDougall and Vincent Sherman, in a film starring Richard Todd (who received his only Oscar nomination as the prickly Scotsman Lachie and who should have won over Broderick Crawford's overcooked Willie Stark in ALL THE KING'S MEN), Ronald Reagan (who could have had a Supporting Actor prize for this one; he's that good, and Patricia Neal, an actress so gifted that even in a piece of dreck like Ayn Rand's THE FOUNTAINHEAD she manages to keep her head above water.

Todd is a Scottish soldier dying of kidney failure; Reagan is an American who starts out resenting the young Scot but who comes to respect and even love him as he tries so hard to be brave. Neal is the head nurse of the MASH unit where they are recovering from their wounds.

It isn't long before Neal reveals to the others Lachie's condition; the Scot is prickly and prideful and she can see no other way to reach the boys' hearts but to tell them the truth.

Reagan is actually splendid here; I am not sure I ever saw him deliver the goods so perfectly. His Yank warms to Lachie in a completely believable manner.

If you see it for nothing else, see it for Todd, Reagan, and Neal. The three of them together teach a master class on what good acting is.

The writers responsible for adapting Tennessee Williams's plays to the screen always found themselves in a pickle over Williams's use of homoerotic themes. From A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE to SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER to this, possibly his best, there was always the risk of offending someone in the audience.

But as John Adams (William Daniels) observed in the musical 1776, "this is a revolution, dammit! We're going to have to offend somebody!"

Having said that, it also needs to be said that the writers of this film had it easy. On the stage, there was a boy crush in full display between Brick and his football buddy Skipper. All the writers had to do was transfer Brick's desire for his pal and pin it on Maggie the Cat. Making it a matter of jealousy.

At any rate, it doesn't really matter; in the end the film is splendidly written and sensationally acted; thus its flaws are that much easier to overlook.

Patricia Jessel made her mark on the London stage and later on Broadway as Romaine Vole in Agatha Christie's masterpiece WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION.

Pretty she isn't, but she has a wonderful speaking voice and an incredibly commanding presence; it is impossible to take one's eyes off her no matter who else is on the screen with her.

CITY OF THE DEAD, made in the UK and released in the US as HORROR HOTEL, is a rare opportunity to see this remarkable actress put through her paces as Elizabeth Selwyn aka Mrs Newless. Watching this film, I almost wish Marlene Dietrich had not essayed the Agatha Christie play, good as she was in it.

ALL THIS, AND HEAVEN TOO was not among Bette Davis's favorites of her work. She disliked the way director Anatole Litvak worked and felt her performance was too restrained as a result.

I hope she lived long enough to see what a wonderful film this is: for it is her restraint that gives her character the emotional power it packs, especially as she is pitted against the over-emotional and unpredictable Duchesse de Praslin (Barbara O'Neil in a brilliant, Oscar nominated performance).

Davis is Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, a governess who is brought into the home of the Duc de Praslin to educate his four children. The tension between him and his wife is immediately seen; she is a selfish and jealous woman whose paranoia extends even to her own children.

Almost from the day she enters the home Deluzy-Desportes is the object of this woman's hysterical outbursts. O'Neil is magnificent here, playing a woman who is supposed to be somewhat older than Davis when in fact she was two years younger.

As for her husband (Charles Boyer, also magnificent), he never speaks a word to the governess that his wife could not hear (and neither does Mlle Deluzy), but this does not stop her from accusing him of all manner of sins ranging from coldness to infidelity (and her behavior is a good enough reason for his coldness).

Based on the first third of Rachel Field's book (worth a read too if you can find it), this is a long movie but there isn't a single moment wasted.

Davis did herself proud here as she always did.

This is a simple, powerful, and uncomfortably in-your-face docudrama about what it might have been like to be aboard United Airlines flight 93. The only one of the four hijacked jets to fail to hit its intended target, UA 93 crashed in a field in Shanksville PA because of the actions of a group of passengers and crew who attempted, unfortunately without success, to take back the plane from the hijackers.



Their heroism caused the plane to crash nose first into the ground. They sacrificed themselves because there was nothing else to be done.

I was chilled to the bone by this film. It is stark, uncompromising, and to its credit, it does not try to portray the hijackers as subhuman or the passengers as mere victims. Every member of the cast comes across as a complete and fully fleshed out human being.

Not for the squeamish, but it is of great historical importance.

This is a brilliant and important film; of all the films about September 11 it is the most powerful and hard-edged.

This movie is set in the 1950s. so I am not sure about the detail I am questioning here.

When I was born in 1963, it was common practice to circumcise infant boys. However I remember that my Dad, who was born in 1928, was not circumcised; so my question remains: when did it become common practice?

If most guys were uncircumcised at the time this film takes place, sharing the shower would have been a dead giveaway to the Gentiles in the school regarding their new classmate's religion.

I don't know the answer but it strikes me as something that should have been addressed.

I'll keep this one short and sweet, and leave out the spoilers so y'all can "experience" the idiots on this show for yourselves.

A bunch of twenty-somethings, most of whom appear to be of Italian descent (some of them are from Staten Island, which is where I grew up, God help me), are crammed together in a house "down the shore," as we used to say.

Self-involved and egotistical do not even BEGIN to describe this pack of tweens. They are either whining about their roommates or boasting about their own sexual prowess.

I've seen some crap television in my day but this has to be the worst.

Consider yourselves warned.

If the goal of a documentary is to depict a subject honestly, this movie scores big. Scary big.

The basic premise of this film is the ambition of evangelical Christians in this country to marry religion and politics. Or if they aren't seeking after a marriage, they are hinting at a fearsome love affair.

Most of the film takes place at a summer camp for evangelical kids called Kids on Fire. The leader of the camp is a woman named Becky Fischer, who frankly looks to me like an overweight Lesbian. And when you get into the nitty gritty of camp life, things get really strange. Fischer has the kids in an auditorium talking to a cardboard cutout of President George W Bush. And it gets even more ridiculous as it progresses: we have a kid named Levi, who sports a rather idiotic- looking mullet and whose Jesus- glaze is so thick you could cut it with a knife, getting home schooled by his mother about how global warming is a hoax and the earth is no more than six thousand years old.

If it were not so frightening I would have found it all hilarious. For balance, the directors have given us Christian radio host Mike Papantonio, whose worldview is much more moderate than the maniacs we are seeing in this documentary.

As far as what happens to the kids, I would call it abuse, but the kids don't seem aware of it.

Someone really needs to tell these people, who are calling for "warriors for Christ," that Jesus already said the final word on that subject:

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."

God isn't looking for an army. He is looking for peacemakers.

Anyone who buys the mess that this movie is selling is seriously deluded and needs to study the teachings of Christianity.

FOR A LOST SOLDIER is a film that could only have been made outside the United States. A tale of inter-generational love told without any judgments or commentary, the movie offers the truth of such a love story without taking the filmmaker or his actors to task.

I myself had a brief affair with a young man (about nineteen) when I was fifteen. I pursued him; not the other way around. And this movie shows clearly in a few scenes that young Jeroen is pursuing Walt; he's fallen in love with him and despite the fear that engenders in the boy, he pursues the older boy (Walt is really barely out of adolescence himself, as were many soldiers in the War) with a determination that is quite impossible to describe or to ignore.

Unfortunately the affair ends abruptly when the Liberators leave the country. Jeroen is heartbroken and tries for quite some time to find his lost soldier, but in the end he has to face the truth: Walt is gone.

There is something quietly devastating about this simple, quiet tale of love between two boys separated by years and language. It would be easy to label Walt a sexual predator but I know more about this sort of thing than most people; not only does he not pursue or "groom" Jeroen, but when he says "I love you" to the boy, it sounds like the God's truth.

An achingly beautiful film that rewards multiple viewings.

I wasn't sure about how many stars to give this film; it is low-key and its message so subtle that it is tempting to dismiss some of it.

Then I saw it again last night.

I had completely forgotten how engaging both stars are, separately and as a couple. Newman is pitch-perfect as a Florida liquor distributor who just happens to be the son of a deceased Mafioso. And Sally Field matches him scene for scene as Megan Carter, a young and somewhat green newspaper reporter whose ambition makes her do things that more seasoned reporters would find unthinkable. Though it must be said that sleeping with Paul Newman does not exactly make that list of no-nos.

Anyway, the story is this: there's someone (Bob Balaban) in the DA's office who wants Gallagher's (Newman) head on a pike for no reason other than it would be good for his already inflated ego. He uses others to try to get the goods on Gallagher but fails to engage most of them.

Except Megan. He leaves a file open on his desk and she reads it.

Now let's be real; no reporter with any brains would actually USE any of what she reads. But Megan is still young, still on fire, and still thinks that the First Amendment is an excuse to fillet a man and leave his entrails to dry in the Florida sun. But this one has consequences.

I'll keep it short. A woman friend of Gallagher's commits suicide, leading him to storm into Carter's apartment and nearly kill her. The ADA under investigation decides on a fishing expedition of his own and the whole mishegoss comes to a head in a conference room with all the interested parties being grilled by Assistant US Attorney James J Wells (Wilford Brimley in a performance that should have earned the man an Oscar).

By the time Wells is done with them, all their secrets are out on the table (with the exception of some of Megan's but there's no certainty there).

This is an intelligent, well-written film with electric performances from the entire cast. I only wish all Hollywood movies were this smart.

This is an amazingly authentic film about a young man (Nick Mancuso) who becomes involved in a pseudo-religious cult.

Predictably enough, while there are religious-sounding songs all over the place (a version of "Go Tell It On the Mountain" comes to mind), there is very little mention of God for a group that considers itself a "church."

The story revolves around David, a teacher who, in the opening moments of the film, is already involved with the cult. He is sitting in the back of a van, counting the money with one of the other cult members.

There are references to a leader called "Father" who is obviously all too human. God is conspicuous by His absence and the cult seems to worship a family (of grifters, no doubt).

The group has a woman in charge: Ingrid (Meg Foster), who bears a creepy resemblance to Elizabeth Clare Prophet. She controls everybody and everything. Is the resemblance deliberate? I couldn't say, but it is unmistakable.

David's friends and family are desperate. Best friend Larry (Saul Rubinek) and girlfriend Sarah (Dixie Seatle), along with David's parents (Marcia Diamond and Paul Soles) join forces and bring in deprogrammer Linc Strunc (R H Thomson).

The deprogramming sequence is harrowing, and I won't bother with details. Suffice it to say that David is human again at the end of the film.

This is a truly amazing and shocking film. Truth lives in every frame.

I doubt anyone can think of the winsome charm of Leslie Caron without recalling the winsome charm of this enchanting film. Forever known for GIGI, AN American IN Paris, and for those in the know, THE L- SHAPED ROOM, it is still LILI, and the song "Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo," a tune which I remember singing in grade school, that come to my mind whenever I see this film.

Just hearing that song again is enough to bring a lump to my throat. LILI is one of those films that, whenever it comes on, I simply HAVE to settle in and watch.

A simple little story: Lili Daurier (Caron), a teenager recently orphaned upon the death of her father, stumbles upon a carnival and soon falls in love with the puppet show, and the puppets. Lonely and mourning the death of her beloved father, she finds comfort in interacting with Carrot Top and Company, four puppets behind whom is a single man: Paul Berthalet, a French Canadian dancer lame from an accident who seems to hate the world and everyone in it.

Until he meets Lili.

Somehow she penetrates the coldness of his heart. But he cannot admit she has captured his heart so he is cruel to her. She takes comfort with Marc (Jean Pierre Aumont), but he is far too wise to take advantage of a girl in love with someone else.

That someone else is Paul, though the innocent Lili does not realize this: to her the puppets are people. People whom she has grown to love. But in a showdown with Paul, he reveals himself to her and tells her to go home.

Walking on the road once more, suitcase and purse in hand, Lili encounters the puppets in a dream scene: all four are played by dancers in costume, and after she has a dance with each of them, she finds herself once again face to face with Paul, and the love they share comes exploding to the surface.

The film ends with Lili and Paul in a passionate embrace, and the puppets, looking on, applauding wildly.

This is without a doubt the most enchanting movie to come out of Hollywood since THE WIZARD OF OZ. Leslie Caron has never been better, and Mel Ferrer displays great ability both as an actor and as a dancer. One wonders why he did not dance more in his films. And I dare you not to cry during this dream sequence; it is filled with unhappiness and longing.

At any rate this is an utterly charming film; few movies have dealt in fantasy as well as LILI.

And it remains special to me because the film came out the year my parents got married.