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Forty years ago, in 1964, Bruce Brown’s wave-riding documentary The Endless Summer introduced the world to surfing, and ten years ago he returned with a look at the worldwide phenomenon the sport has become. Now, The Endless Summer II arrives on DVD, though it may as well not have. Following champ surfers Robert “Wingnut” Weaver, … more…
Steven Bochco of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue acclaim created, in Brooklyn South, 22 episodes of some of the grittiest, most authentic police drama TV has ever seen, which was justifiably recognized by the Emmys and the People’s Choice Awards. Shot on the streets of Brooklyn and depicting in plain, unvarnished terms the job … more…
Oops, someone did it again: made a bad, bad movie that’s desperately hoping you’ll see it as a sort cultish, underground kind of thing and forgive it all its many, many flaws. But that’s not gonna happen. Cheaply made and badly acted, this is a disaster from start to finish, an embarrassingly awful film. A … more…
It’s what Will & Grace could have and should have been: a charming, urbane exploration of a complicated relationship between a gay man and a straight woman. Funny and human and never resorting to stereotypes, this six-hour miniseries — from Queer as Folk creator Russell T. Davies — follows Bob (Alan Davies) and Rose (Lesley … more…
It’s shocking what kids get up to these days: the drugs, the blow jobs, the wandering of lonely nighttime streets in the throes of adolescent angst. Yes, this German coming-of-age drama delivers stunning performances from its young stars, and director Maria von Heland is a talented visualist, but this box, however grim-prettily wrapped, is empty. … more…
This depressingly real depiction of the horrors of high school, from the Showtime cable network, won four Emmy awards, and deserves to be seen by every student — who will surely recognize something of their own school in it — and every parent of a teenager, who will be horrified at the toxic social environment … more…
Sometimes childhood memories are best left undisturbed. I seem to recall getting a kick, way back when, out of this 1982 big-screen adaptation of the Broadway hit, but sheesh, is this one overly long, uninspired, and frequently awful film or what? John Huston directs the absurdly spunky Aileen Quinn to a caricature of a performance … more…
We’ll always have the idiocies of fashion, celebrity, and pop culture, and one has to hope that we’ll always have AbFab to puncture them. After an absence of a few years from the airwaves, Patsy and Edina are back and as wickedly funny as they’ve ever been, stumbling drunkenly through days full of aversion to … more…
I cannot express to you how much I love how Michael Mann’s movies look and feel, but I love it so much I can practically taste it. It’s an actual palpable thrill, my reaction to them.
There’s nothing political or activist about *Maria Full of Grace,* which is just one more extraordinary aspect of an extraordinary film. It could have served as a plea to legalize drugs that are now illegal; it could have called for wiser and more effective drug interdiction. But instead of focusing on what could be or what might be, it’s only concerned with laying out what is, with a clear-eyed realism that’s devastating and mesmerizing in its simple, unembellished authenticity.
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