Sep
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Tue
2nd
- Rigid Stone fails to turn on critics February 4, 1999
- Smart thriller more than ‘Simple’
- ‘Babe’ & ‘Bug’ bring home the bacon December 3, 1998
- ‘Joe Black’ full of life after death
- ‘Still Know’ still sucks
- ‘Pleasantville’ measures society’s change
- ‘Holy Man’ is God awful October 16, 1998
- “What Dreams May Come” October 8, 1998
- ‘Urban Legend’ just a boob job
- American Film Institute leaves flicks to be desired
- 70s story ‘54’ deader than Disco September 3, 1998
- Comic book story ‘Blade’ is dull August 27, 1998
“Gloria” is a reminder of the nagging genre of films that doesn’t want to leave: overly sentimental melodramas that have become about as appetizing as swill milkshakes.
A new year always starts off with studios dumping as much trash as they can (1998’s first major releases? “Hard Rain” and “Spice World”), which means you now have absolutely no good reason NOT to see “A Simple Plan” (Paramount, R), one of last year’s finest films that has just recently received wider distribution.
It’s becoming more apparent that “kid’s movies” aren’t just for kids anymore. At one time you might have felt guilty sitting in a theatre showing a film with anything less than a PG-13 rating, but that all changed in 1995.
Martin Brest’s “Meet Joe Black” (Universal, PG-13) is a film that blends the qualities of many successful films. It has the set-up of a “Ghost,” the awkwardness of a “Big” and it’s almost as long as a “Titanic.”
“I Still Know” stars Jennifer Love Hewitt’s breasts, being pressed out of whatever open or low-cut shirt she’s wearing.
“Pleasantville” is a surprisingly thoughtful film that makes us realize how far our culture has come. Life in the 90s is bombarded with problems, but it certainly seems we have more freedom than 40 years ago.
It’d be nice to report that Eddie Murphy has done a complete turnaround from his overwhelming array of rectal jokes in “Dr. Dolittle,” but the turn just goes to the front of the male anatomy. For a PG “family film,” there are references to balls, testicles, blue balls, penis, urine and the ever popular phrase “suck it.”
The movie tries valiantly to dazzle our eyes in hopes that we might not notice that these dreams are actually pretty empty.
It’s nearly impossible to keep count of the number of times we get that sequence where the music shows tension, the character gets nervous and BOO! Oh, it’s just some shmuck who decided to stand three inches behind the girl when they tapped her on the shoulder before the classic, “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
The AFI list marks another sorry chapter in the history of the American Film Institute, which has had to stoop to new publicity lows since Congress decided to annihilate the NEA budget.
Strip “Boogie Nights” of its humor, wit and any other positive qualities, and you have a general idea of what to expect in”54” (R, Miramax), an uninspired, poorly written mess of a movie that does the unthinkable: it makes the 70s boring.
The screenplay, penned by David Goyer (who also wrote Dark City, which explains the similarity between the end sequences of the two films) probably consisted of a lot of scenes that read “Blade beats some dudes down.”
