A famous movie composer once told me a joke: Two songwriters are sitting around, and one of them says to the other, "I just saw the most amazing... More>>
Shine strikes a few false notes in its delicate tale of salvation
By Peter Rainer,
January 02, 1997
When we first see middle-aged Australian David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) in Shine, he's standing in the driving rain and tapping at the window of... More>>
Lots of hearts are in the right place in Rob Reiner's Ghosts of Mississippi, but none are beating. Scripted by Lewis Colick and based on the true... More>>
Shirley MacLaine shines -- but she's the only bright spot in Terms of Endearment's sequel
By David Kronke,
December 26, 1996
Hollywood routinely creates movies whose sole reason for existence is to provide a beloved celebrity a scenery-chewing star turn; occasionally,... More>>
Beavis and Butt-head get off the couch and onto the big screen
By Edith Sorenson,
December 19, 1996
For years, smarm mongers have urged us to get in touch with our inner child, a delightful little creature who would greatly improve our outlook... More>>
Early this year, in the psycho-gangster/vampire movie From Dusk till Dawn, George Clooney, of TV's ER, kept his head while all about him were... More>>
After 40 years, The Crucible's melodrama still works its spell
By Peter Rainer,
December 19, 1996
Why a movie of The Crucible now? Arthur Miller's play about the Salem witchcraft trials was first staged on Broadway in 1953, when McCarthyism... More>>
The Preacher's Wife is a tepid remake of a tepid original
By Elvis Mitchell,
December 12, 1996
Whitney Houston has had a Movie Star Moment -- just not in a movie. Near the end of the "I'm Saving All My Love for You" video, she turns toward... More>>
In Mars Attacks!, Tim Burton turns his ray gun on everything in sight
By Peter Rainer,
December 12, 1996
Forget Independence Day. If you really want to see Earth get it, you can't do any better than Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! It's a destructo orgy... More>>
The stodgy works of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory, makers of Howard's End and Jefferson in Paris, have encouraged the sad notion that costume... More>>
It's impossible to capture on the printed page the anticipatory thrill of watching Sylvester Stallone handle rapid-fire dialogue: the rumbling... More>>
Arnold goes last-minute Christmas shopping, and he buys a turkey
By Andy Klein,
November 28, 1996
In the golden age of Hollywood, no less than Frank Capra owned Christmas on the big screen. But if you want Proof Number 496 of how far things... More>>
Anthony Minghella believes in ghosts -- and, at his best, makes believers out of viewers, too. The writer/director of Truly Madly Deeply and this... More>>
The ratings system has its inconsistencies, but, after reading a synopsis of Microcosmos, you'd have to wonder just what the MPAA was thinking.... More>>
After the rowdy cacophony of Baz Luhrmann's turbo-charged Romeo & Juliet, the prospect of a more traditional Shakespearean adaptation is more... More>>
Whenever someone makes a film about a great artist, it is much easier, and a great deal more cinematic, to show him hopping into bed instead of... More>>
To his credit, Neil Jordan never attempts to disguise his sympathies in Michael Collins, his forlorn epic of blood and thunder. This sweeping... More>>
The movie is respectfully titled William Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, but don't expect anything like a traditional interpretation of the Bard.... More>>
