Big Girls Don’t Cry (review)

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…

Bang Bang You’re Dead (review)

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…

Annie: Special Anniversary Edition (review)

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…

Absolutely Fabulous: The Complete Series 5 (review)

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…

Maria Full of Grace (review)

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.

Little Black Book (review)

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.

V: The Complete Series (review)

The two original V miniseries still rank, 20 years later, among the most watched in TV history… and among the most loved TV productions by science-fiction fans, with their adventure- and metaphor-laden tale of alien invasion and human resistance, with their enormous, city-sized spaceships (which Independence Day would later ape; and yes, I know: both … more…

Northern Exposure: The Complete First Season (review)

My memories of Northern Exposure are of one of the finest television series I’ve ever seen, and watching its beginnings again, 14 years later, only confirms that assessment. This is the rare series that hit the ground running, with smart, ardent scripts written by writers who knew their characters well right from the start, performed … more…

The Complete Gidget Collection (review)

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…