SEX AND THE CITY, the television series, was all about fashion labels and sex. Delivered in tantalizing half-hour gobbets, it was the perfect fantasy antidote to real life. The women were fabulous, the stories were glamorous, the dialogue wittily impudent, and the glorification of the trivial was a deliciously wicked guilty pleasure. This is a… Read More »
LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS
Life is frustrating, exhilarating, confusing, astounding and unpredictable. So is LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS, a film with high aspirations and a slightly muddled follow-through. Based on Jamie Reidy’s book “Hard Sell: The Evolution of A Viagra Saleman” and set against the world of medicine as a business, it makes a piquant juxtaposition of Viagra and true… Read More »
SPRING BREAKERS
What is most interesting about Harmony Korine’s SPRING BREAKERS is the way it turns its imagery on its head while revealing harsh truths about the hollowness of American pop culture. Though the camera revels in shots of decadent excess, it never quite reduces them to mere cheap exploitation. Instead, by the end of this anti-fairy… Read More »
SEX TAPE
The protagonists of SEX TAPE are a happily married couple, deeply in love and deeply committed to one another and their two kids, but, after 10 years or so of marriage, the fiery passion they enjoyed in the first flush of lust/love, and before discovering how versatile a ladys lady parts are, has become a… Read More »
DIE, MOMMIE, DIE!
DIE, MOMMIE, DIE! is a glorious, oddly loving evocation of those low-budget, high-concept films that populated drive-in screens in the late 50s and early 60s. As brought to glorious life by the brilliantly twisted mind of Charles Busch, the pretensions of that genre are reborn as a study in post-modern camp. Its a vicious tweak… Read More »
THE SINGING DETECTIVE
Translating a first-rate concept from one medium to another is always a risky business, even a remake of a film carries with it the seeds of its own destruction as iconic stars and situations are recreated only to be endlessly compared to the original. Thus it is that THE SINGING DETECTIVE, so superb as a… Read More »
FEAST OF LOVE
After a promising beginning, FEAST OF LOVE devolves into a sloppy wallow in melodrama of the most turgid variety. It dallies with hyperbole, but refuses to commit to a conceit that might have made it all come together as a satisfying whole. Instead of magic, it is at best contrived. Morgan Freeman is our narrator.… Read More »
HEARTBREAK KID, THE
It takes chutzpah of a particularly flagrant sort to update the Neil Simon/Elaine May classic, THE HEARTBREAK KID. The Farrelly Brothers obviously pack that sort of gumption, taking the droll but deadly humor of the original and rethinking it with their trademark penchant for slapstick and silliness. It may not have the same wry weltschmertz… Read More »