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John Waters cult classic tribute to filth was recently released for its 25th anniversary. The film's shocking images are still very potent after all that time. Divine-Waters frequent star-plays Babs Johnson, "The filthiest person alive", who finds that title challenged by the equally vile couple, The Marbles (Mink Stole and David Lochary). The various images include Divine stashing a hunk of meat in her (his?) crotch, The Marbles servant raping kidnapped women with syringes and the notorious final scene, which involves Divine eating stuff we usually scrape off our shoes.Certainly not the feel-good movie of the year, but the film has many merits. The hysterically outlandish visuals and images keep you from gagging, and tickles your funny bones in ways you never thought possible. The acting is delightfully over-the-top, with Divine at his wonderful peak, as he does things no other actor in their right mind would think of doing. Only Waters could make bad taste and ugliness into an art form.
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Are Home Alone clones really needed so much, that annoying features like this have to keep coming out every seven months? Producer John Hughes attempts to return to the formula that made him rich, with this dull comedy about a baby's day in the city. The little tyke is being chased by three bumbling kidnappers, led by Joe Mantegna as the short-tempered head. Like Macauley Culkin, the baby leads the three dupes into a series of dumb pratfalls, which barely make you crack a smile.The kid's adorable, but enough with the stupid pratfalls Hughes! Mantegna and crew are badly wasted and there are one too many nuts-getting-smashed sight gags for comfort. The punishment for producers, writers and directors who make films like this should be that they experience the exact same pratfalls that their idiotic characters have to go through. Either that or lock them in a room and force them to watch this for the next three months. That would be a most severe punishment.
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A heavily cliched, brainless rehash of the Bad News Bears-Mighty Ducks formula, which involves a group of misfits who form a pee-wee football team. The group is coached by one of the players geeky dad (Rick Moranis), who is basically doing this to show up his brother (Married...With Children's Ed O'Neill), a former gridiron legend. They don't get along very well, and it shows when both their teams face off with each other.Even with half a dozen writers working on the story, this still turns into a by-the-numbers comedy, where the underdogs triumph over their foes and everyone's a sore winner-loser. I do not hesitate to use the words "Gag Me!" Moranis has played this type of role one too many times. So has O'Neill, doing his usual unlovable creep act. A real snorefest, for those of you who don't have the patience to slog it out to the end.
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A delightful little film which proves that Paul Newman is still one of the best American actors ever. Newman stars as an aging childlike man, who spends most of his time trying to fix other's lives up, instead of working on his own. He has a love-hate relationship with the various townsfolk, including his work partner (Pruitt Taylor Vince), his occasional boss (Bruce Willis) and his cantankerous old landlady (Jessica Tandy, in a charming farewell performance). He also must deal with the trials of his grown-up son (Dylan Walsh), whom Newman left when he was just a baby.With a witty, inventive screenplay and a cast of slightly eccentric characters, Newman towers in a relatively simple role of an Everyman. The supporting cast is just as good, giving realistic, complicated characterizations. A small sleeper film which has been nearly overlooked by the critics and public, this is something that's perfect to see on a rainy day.
Probably the highest rated miniseries of all-time, this stunning six part adaptation of Alex Haley's best-seller follows the painful struggle of Haley's family through seven generations. This film covers the first four. It starts in Africa, where Kunta Kinte (first played as a teenager by LeVar Burton, as an adult by John Amos) is snatched from his homeland and into slavery. Taken to America, he will experience (as will his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren) the harshest treatment ever experienced by black people: The constant backbreaking slave work in the fields; The revolts which are brutally crushed by white slave owners; The punishment for escape; And the cost of freedom after the Civil War, when they are set free and must deal with the newly formed Ku Klux Klan.Full of memorable characters and heartbreaking moments, this spans over a century, through two continents and four generations as Haley's story is brought to the small screen beautifully. Burton earned his highest praise for the role of the defiant Kunta Kinte, who became a symbol of the fight for equality and the end of racism. But the problems for the descendents of Kinte do not end with the Civil War, as you will find out soon.
Though criticized as being less memorable than it's highly-praised predecessor, this features a heap of great performances and is an equally well-produced achievement. Alex Haley's story of his family continues from the era of Jim Crow to the time when Haley (Played powerfully as an adult by James Earl Jones) goes to Africa in search of his roots. Among the various events shown here, they include: The quest for equal voting rights in the south; the awful trench warfare of WWI; Haley's interview with American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell (a chilling cameo by Marlon Brando); And finally, the eye-watering finale, where Haley finally finds the village where the story started.The filmakers were able to capture the ever-changing times in great detail, with acting kudos going to Jones, Brando, Dorian Harewood and Irene Cara as Haley's parents and Richard Thomas (The Waltons), as a man who marries a black woman and pays a price for it. I'd say this is as equally good as the first miniseries, if not better.
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A funny, underrated satire about what goes on behind the scenes of a popular soap opera. Sally Field stars as the Susan Lucci-like star, who is going through a real-life sudser of her own, when certain scandalous information is revealed about one of her former co-stars (Kevin Kline) and her niece (Elizabeth Shue). In the midst of the ever growing problem is the vain and extremely jealous soap star, Montana Moorehand (Cathy Moriarty), who is out to destroy Field's career. Not if Field's best friend (Whoopi Goldberg) and the show's top writer has anything to say about it!A consistently intricate screwball comedy, although ravaged by the critics, is full of devilish plot twists and some pleasant surprises. Field, Kline, Goldberg, Shue and especially Moriarty are at their comic heights. Robert Downey Jr., as the suck-up producer, is the only weak link in an otherwise finely crafted comedy.
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