I spent some years as a pretty serious filmbuff -- seeing everything, hanging with fans and critics, meeting and interviewing movieworld people, etc. Here's a collection of the reviews and essays and such that I wrote during that period.
REVIEWS (alphabetical by movie title)
A-L - Chris Menges' debut movie, the South Africa-set "A World Apart," was a modest beauty.
- Polly and I shared some chuckles at the expense of Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence."
- I loved-loved-loved Carroll Ballard's childrens' film "The Black Stallion."
- Yasuzo Masumura's Butoh-influenced psychodrama "Blind Beast" is a kinky turn-on.
- The baseball comedy-romance "Bull Durham" charmed me.
- "The Cooler," a Vegas-set fairy tale starring William H. Macy and Maria Bello, is a charmer.
- "Death Becomes Her," a Robert Zemeckis comedy about women and aging, is an inspired black comedy.
- I found Denys Arcand's French-Canadian "The Decline of the American Empire" a stylish, funny and touching pleaser.
- As ersatz as it was, I still enjoyed the Demi Moore/Michael Douglas sex thriller "Disclosure."
- Juzo Itami's gentle satire "The Funeral" tickled and moved me.
- The 1984 new-wave-ish sci-fi indie "Liquid Sky" gave me a high.
- blah blah
M-S - Spike Lee's biopic "Malcolm X" was anything but persuasive.
- I found Guillermo Del Toro's horror movie "Mimic" thrilling -- even if he regrets the film.
- I was one of the few writers who loved Brian De Palma's "Mission to Mars."
- Polly and I giggled over Jane Campion's period romance "The Piano."
- I did a lot of Serious Filmcrit about Altman's "The Player," a film I semi-loved.
- I'm a huge fan of the French filmmaker Catherine Breillat, and got Salon magazine to let me rhapsodize about her film "Romance."
- The Sharon Stone / Sly Stallone action-romance "The Specialist" was one of my favorite bad movies of the 1990s.
- I raved about an early Roger Donaldson film, the Kiwi marital drama "Smash Palace."
- blah blah
T-Z
BOOKS ABOUT MOVIES
PROFILES AND THEME PIECES - When Robert Altman's "Nashville" turned 25, I took the occasion to revisit the movie. I gave the moviegoing years since a look too.
- David Ansen and I brought readers up to date about recent developments in film editing.
- Salon magazine asked me for some reflections about eroticism in movies. Now that was a fun assignment.
- When he died in 1999, I considered the career of George C. Scott.
- Jean-Luc Godard's melancholy "Hail, Mary" set me to thinking about his one-of-a-kind career.
- Opera News asked me to survey a little-recognized genre: the composer biopic.
- Chris Marker's nostalgic and brilliant "The Last Bolshevik" made me muse about the fate of movies in the digital era.
- For Opera News, I did a survey of how people have seen Richard Nixon over the years. It includes some reactions to and reflections about movies that featured Nixon.
- When his movie "Vincent & Theo" was released, I had a quick visit with Robert Altman.
- I thought that the brilliant New Zealand director Geoff Murphy did a terrific job with the glamorous Western sequel "Young Guns II," so I gave him a call.
- blah blah
- blah blah
|
|
