Meteor
BB (out of 5) Scientist Sean Connery is pulled away from an exciting boat race and dragged to Washington to consult on a serious matter despite the fact that he left the government’s employ… Continue reading
Tag Archive: Albert Wolsky
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Larry Crowne
0.5 (out of 5) A film so disastrous it has to be seen to be believed. Tom Hanks is a longtime employee at a Walmart-like store who is devastated when he gets fired due… Continue reading
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance)
BBBB (out of 5) Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu recovers from the bloated mess of Biutiful with a big movie in a small space, an eccentric and deliciously funny look at the mad world of live… Continue reading
Maid In Manhattan
BB.5 (out of 5) An honest and hardworking hotel chambermaid (Jennifer Lopez) gets the chance to be a princess for a day when she tries on the discarded clothing of a wealthy guest… Continue reading
Ask The Dust
B.5 (out of 5) Incredibly dreary, uninvolving drama set in Depression-era Hollywood. Colin Farrell plays an Italian-American writer who shows up in L.A. in the hopes of chasing the dream, but finds only a… Continue reading
She-Devil
BB.5 (out of 5) This silly comedy is adapted from the novel by Fay Weldon and remade from the 1986 British miniseries. Roseanne Barr is terrific as a mistreated housewife whose social climbing husband… Continue reading
Junior
BBB.5 (out of 5) When genetic scientists Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito can’t get their anti-miscarriage drug approved by the national drug board, they decide to try it out on a test subject in order… Continue reading
Where’s Poppa?
B (out of 5) George Segal made a promise to his dying father that no matter what happened, he would not put his aging mother (Ruth Gordon) in a nursing home. Living with her… Continue reading
Galaxy Quest
BBBB (out of 5) Marvelous science-fiction comedy about a troupe of has-been actors who were once stars of a Star Trek-like television show called Galaxy Quest, now making most of their money at… Continue reading
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
BBB.5 (out of 5) Moving film adaptation of the novel by Carson McCullers. A deaf-mute man (Alan Arkin) leaves town to follow his only friend (Chuck McCann) who has been placed in an… Continue reading
The Grass Harp
BBB (out of 5) Loving adaptation of Truman Capote’s novella about an orphan boy (Edward Furlong) who is raised by his aunts, two women as different as two sisters could ever possibly be.… Continue reading
Runaway Bride
B.5 (out of 5) Idiotic romantic comedy from Garry Marshall that makes his Pretty Woman seem like a graduate thesis. Julia Roberts and Richard Gere (reunited from the aforementioned romantic comedy after nine years) do extremely well… Continue reading
Toys
B (out of 5) Visual splendour is compromised by a nonsensical screenplay in this Robin Williams comedy directed by Barry Levinson to little effect. When his uncle (Donald O’Connor) dies and leaves him… Continue reading
Up The Sandbox
BBBB (out of 5) Barbra Streisand is great as a New York housewife who is constantly indulging in odd daydreams, some pleasant and some paranoid, about all aspects of her life. Is her… Continue reading
Across The Universe
B (out of 5) Julie Taymor follows her brilliant biography of Frida Kahlo with this completely soulless exercise in style, an exploration of the birth of 1960s counter-culture using songs by the Beatles… Continue reading
Grease
BBBB (out of 5) This tune-filled, eye-candy musical still thrills audiences of all ages more than two decades after its original release. Based on the hit Broadway play, it’s a tribute to the… Continue reading
The Falcon And The Snowman
BBB.5 (out of 5) True story about Christopher Boyce and Daulton Lee, two young men from wealthy California families who decided to turn a profit by selling CIA secrets to the Russians during… Continue reading
The Turning Point
BB.5 (out of 5) The world of ballet gets world class treatment from Hollywood and director Herbert Ross, but the screenplay of this film is mired down in soap opera cliches. Shirley MacLaine… Continue reading
The Pelican Brief
BB.5 (out of 5) Excessively long film version of John Grisham’s popular bestseller. This time the lawyer-in-distress plot revolves around a young law student (Julia Roberts) who ruminates on the recent assassination of… Continue reading
Sophie’s Choice
BBBB (out of 5) The performance that has defined Meryl Streep‘s fantastic career is to be found in this harrowing drama, about a naive Southern boy (Peter MacNicol) who goes to live in… Continue reading
Harry And Tonto
BBBB (out of 5) Aging New Yorker Harry (Art Carney, in an Oscar-winning performance) is evicted from his Manhattan apartment building with his cat Tonto, so they go live with his son’s family… Continue reading
Tempest (1982)
BB (out of 5) Bloated, self-important near-adaptation of Shakespeare’s play in a modern setting, with John Cassavetes as an architect who has disturbing, prophetic dreams about his family. Fed up with his difficult home… Continue reading
Down And Out In Beverly Hills
BBB.5 (out of 5) This hilarious comedy is a remake by Paul Mazursky of Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved From Drowning. It stars Nick Nolte as a homeless man who tries to drown himself in… Continue reading
Scenes From A Mall
BB.5 (out of 5) Paul Mazursky continues to make humorous reinterpretations of famous foreign films, here taking Ingmar Bergman’s somber Scenes From A Marriage and setting it in sunny California. Bickering couple Bette… Continue reading
Duplicity
BBBB (out of 5) A guy picks a girl up at a party and they go back to his hotel room: simple setup for a steamy romantic comedy, with the added complication that… Continue reading
Lucky Numbers
B (out of 5) Truly awful Nora Ephron comedy about a financially troubled weather man (John Travolta) who decides along with his slutty, foul-mouthed girlfriend (Lisa Kudrow) to fix the state lottery. Unluckily… Continue reading
You’ve Got Mail
BBB.5 (out of 5) Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan reunite with their Sleepless In Seattle director Nora Ephron in a remake of The Shop Around The Corner (which was also remade in musical form as… Continue reading
Charlie Wilson’s War
BB.5 (out of 5) A minor Texas congressman (Tom Hanks) finds himself inspired by a gutsy society dame (Julia Roberts) to get involved in post-Soviet invaded Afghanistan and help the country defend itself… Continue reading
The Manchurian Candidate (2004)
BBB.5 (out of 5) Jonathan Demme once again adapts a popular 1960s movie for the modern age and this time does a much better job than his painful bastardization of Stanley Donen’s Charade… Continue reading
The Jackal
BB.5 (out of 5) Remake of Fred Zinnemann’s Day of the Jackal tries to update the original story’s political climate to today but ends up being a routine thriller with nothing original to offer. Bruce… Continue reading
Revolutionary Road
BBB (out of 5) WARNING! The suburbs are bad for you–I know, I know, you might not know this despite the fact that it’s been dealt with in only seven hundred million other… Continue reading
Jarhead
BBB (out of 5) Jake Gyllenhaal enters the army for reasons not unlike Goldie Hawn’s in Private Benjamin, is put through the unimaginable rigors of marine training and is then sent, along with 500,000… Continue reading
Road To Perdition
BBB.5 (out of 5) Should be called Road To Pretentious; it’s so perfectly photographed and brilliantly art-directed within an inch of its life that it makes for the most shameless Oscar-baiting of the… Continue reading
Striptease
BB.5 (out of 5) Demi Moore took an unfair beating for this comedic dud: she’s no natural at humour, but the film fails because of a bad screenplay and confused direction by Andrew… Continue reading
Crimes Of The Heart
BBBB (out of 5) Three very different sisters reunite after the youngest of them (Sissy Spacek) shoots her husband and tries to kill herself by baking her head in the oven. Naturally, as… Continue reading
Nadine
BB (out of 5) Kim Basinger‘s considerable comedy talents are wasted in this pointless effort by Robert Benton. She plays a daffy hairdresser who has no idea that when she goes to a… Continue reading
Still Of The Night
BB.5 (out of 5) Humdrum thriller has Robert Benton trying to do Hitchcock but is only partly successful. Meryl Streep reunites with her Kramer Vs. Kramer director as a femme fatale who crosses paths… Continue reading
Red Corner
BBB (out of 5) Richard Gere is an innocent man framed for murder in this passable thriller set in China, as a visiting businessman who really steps in it when a fashion model ends… Continue reading
Up Close & Personal
BBBB (out of 5) When Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne sold their script of Up Close And Personal, based on a biography of the late Jessica Savitch called Golden Girl, to Walt… Continue reading
Chances Are
B (out of 5) Gimmicky fantasies about romances mixed up in heaven were not hard to find in the eighties, and while this one is among the more bearable, that’s not saying much.… Continue reading
Manhattan
BBBBB (out of 5) Woody Allen creates a tribute to the Big Apple, to romance, to movies and to the love of love itself with this dreamy film. He plays a writer working on… Continue reading