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I mean it as the highest of compliments when I say that the return of the campy 1960s daytime serial is deliciously, histrionically goofy: the performances are hilariously awful, the plot ridiculously soapy, the general outrageousness of it just gloriously absurd. This is the entirety of the short-lived 1991 NBC series, 12 episodes of steely-eyed … more…
It’s kinda the TV version of those cheerfully cornball old-fashioned movies in which someone chirps, “Hey, kids, let’s build a stage in the barn and put on a show!” Here the kids are students at New York’s High School for the Performing Arts, so they’ve already got the stage, but they’re constantly organizing themselves to … more…
Science fiction in the visual realms — film and TV — frequently bears little resemblance to its bookish cousin, which makes this new incarnation of the 1960s anthology show a particular joy. The 21 episodes here, from the series’ 1995 first season on the Showtime cable network, are intelligent, literate, even provocative: just what science … more…
There’s a gritty authenticity to this rough-edged reality show: instead of letting viewers rubberneck on the bizarre personal disasters of the rich or the weird (or the rich and the weird), here we’re voyeurs peeking in on an ordinary American family behind the typical closed doors — actual and metaphoric — that protect us all … more…
Bad Things Happen When You Leave the City Well, there goes my dream of driving across Australia. I used to think, Hey, if I’m ever gonna go to all the expense of traveling to the opposite side of the planet, and spend 24 hours on a plane to get there, I’m not gonna go for … more…
So, I was raving to a friend about this great new movie I’d just seen, *The Family Stone,* how it’s about this big wacky family getting together for Christmas– And she stopped me right there with a moan and said, Oh God, it’s not like that Jodie Foster movie *Home for the Holidays,* is it? And I said, Why, yes, it’s exactly like that, but even better. She moaned again and said, Oh, I hate that movie.
Words like ‘meditation’ and ‘contemplation’ may seem inappropriate, at first glance, because the standard hack-movie-critic phrases like ‘roller-coaster ride’ followed by multiple exclamation points don’t even come close to doing justice to the heart-revving adrenaline rush Jackson has crafted. Two words: dino stampede. I probably should have put my head down between my knees and taken a series of long, deep breaths to recover from that early Skull Island setpiece, except it would have meant taking my eyes from the screen, and there was no way in hell I could have done that.
What with the new DVD release of Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1933 *King Kong* and the anticipation over Peter Jackson’s about-to-be-released homage, the eternal question is renewed: Just why the hell did the natives on Skull Island build an anti-Kong wall… and then put a Kong-size door in it?
John Cusack as a neo-noir antihero? Hell yes: he’s been building to this his whole career. And now he’s done it, yanked the rug out from under us and left us to wonder just how far over he’s gone.
I left the screening room on Monday afternoon with Johnny Cash’s voice— no, with Joaquin Phoenix’s where’d-he-get-that-from baritone echoing in my head…
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