Year: 2004

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…

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.

I don’t see any male devils in *Little Black Book.* I do see a lot of lying, cheating, manipulative women. I do see Holly Hunter as the female personification of Satan, a shrieking harpy of demonic evil who seduces Brittany Murphy into adding corruption and moral depravity to her list of attributes that had been limited to the minor malfeasances of witlessness and inanity.

It’s the original all-singing, all-surfing beach-party movie, starring the original surfer girl. The circa-1959 Gidget is a mixed bag of horrifyingly retro antifeminism — 16-year-old Gidg (Sandra Dee) laments having expended all her effort on getting straight A’s when she should have been learning how to catch a man — and surprising frankness: the s-e-x … more…