First night on the new job, Calvin Natt called a couple of his guys by the wrong names, and he found himself constantly amazed. “I had no idea the kids had so much athletic talent,” he said the next day. “I’d only watched them on tape from the East game,…
In the seniors division of the Buddy Movie Sweepstakes, you could scarcely ask for a classier pair of contenders than Robert Duvall and Richard Harris. Their resumes would daunt Moses, their pride in craft has never been more evident and in Wrestling Ernest Hemingway they both look like they’ve been…
Civil liberties remain in short supply for the beleaguered Catholics of Northern Ireland, but filmmaker Jim Sheridan has taken the liberty of vividly dramatizing one of the most notorious instances of recent British tyranny. Let’s hope Prime Minister John Major and Parliament are watching–red-faced and thoughtful. With a passion reminiscent…
Figure skating isn’t exactly a sport, and it isn’t Swan Lake. It is, rather, that frozen netherworld where community theater meets the double axel, in costumes on loan from the floor show at Caesar’s. It’s no wonder that the skaters themselves are often quivering bundles of nerves and that their…
Despite a director with a case of the shouts and a hopelessly miscast leading lady, that prince of players, Anthony Hopkins, can still make magic. Richard Attenborough’s Shadowlands, a well-mannered tearjerker set at well-mannered Oxford in 1952, aspires to romantic tragedy and to the kind of Merchant/Ivory polish that keeps…
They sport red ribbons from the costume department and pass the hat at parties, but Hollywood’s glitterati know where their bread is buttered, and otherwise avoid the explosive AIDS issue. Even the studio advertising campaign for Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia is discreet and noncommital: You must read between the lines to…
Back in the Middle Ages, when the Miami Dolphins could still field eleven men on defense and Buddy Ryan was fighting in the Golden Gloves, I wrote in this space that the Dolphins would beat the San Francisco 49ers in this year’s Super Bowl. Sure, and the Germans will win…
Ever ready with a new theory, the social psychologists are saying that Western movies are making their current comeback because beleaguered Americans have a revived desire for law and order. Pin a star on an upright, fearless sheriff, let him clean the bad guys out of the local saloons, and…
The intense love triangle at the heart of Chen Kaige’s sumptuous epic Farewell My Concubine could be the least of its concerns, but it’s not. As Rick Blaine told us, “the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world,” and it’s difficult…
It is not yet time to print playoff tickets and map a parade route through downtown, but your Denver Nuggets–the problem children of the National Basketball Association–are growing up. Last month they put together their first .500 December in four years. They won five straight before collapsing against Philadelphia Sunday…
Ethan Hunt complains to his boss about his new assignment: “It’s going to be difficult.” “It’s not mission difficult, Mr. Hunt,” the boss icily replies, “It’s mission impossible. ‘Difficult’ should be a walk…”
