Broadway Damage
Broadway Damage 1998, NR, 110 min. Directed by Victor Mignatti, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Michael Shawn Lucas, Mara Hobel, Aaron Williams, Hugh Panaro, Gary Janetti. At its best, Broadway Damage evokes the sweet melancholy of those post-college, twentysomething years when you’re ambivalently ready for the world. It’s a time of financial and…
Disturbing Behavior
Disturbing Behavior 1998, R, 84 min. Directed by David Nutter, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring James Marsden, Katie Holmes, Nick Stahl, Steve Railsback, Bruce Greenwood, William Sadler. John Hughes meets Ira Levin at Carrie’s high school. Dopey, histrionic fun from The X-Files alum David Nutter and Scott Rosenberg, writer of a real horror…
Full Speed (A Toute Vitesse)
Full Speed (A Toute Vitesse) 1996, NR, 85 min. Directed by Gaël Morel, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Elodie Bouchez, Stephane Rideau, Pascal Cervo, Meziane Bardadi. Although fast-paced and well-intentioned, this French youth film falls into the same trap as so many other youth-focused movies throughout the world: a callow and self-absorbed perspective.…
Henry Fool
Henry Fool 1998, R, 137 min. Directed by Hal Hartley, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak, Parker Posey, Maria Porter, Kevin Corrigan. “Get up off your knees,” barks Henry Fool (Ryan) to Simon Grim (Urbaniak) as he swaggers into Simon’s basement at the beginning of the film and takes…
James Ellroy: Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction
James Ellroy: Demon Dog of American Crime Fiction 1993, NR, 90 min. Directed by Reinhard Jud, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring . “I want to leave all of you with a weird, strange, utterly pervasive sense of the bad juju ramifications extending beyond the last page of my books,” says Ellroy as he…
Mafia!
Mafia! 1998, PG-13, 93 min. Directed by Jim Abrahams, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Jay Mohr, Lloyd Bridges, Olympia Dukakis, Christina Applegate, Billy Burke, Pamela Gidley, Jason Fuchs. The cinematic equivalent of Cracked magazine, Mafia! never quite lives up to its MAD potential, instead shooting for the obvious, and releasing a steady stream…
Passion in the Desert
Passion in the Desert 1998, PG-13, 102 min. Directed by Lavinia Currier, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Ben Daniels, Michel Piccoli. In Passion in the Desert the love that dare not speak its name is the love that passes between man and beast. Interspecies love is the dubious topic of this unusual and,…
Saving Private Ryan
Saving Private Ryan 1998, R, 168 min. D: Steven Spielberg; with Dennis Farina, Ted Danson, Tom Hanks. Weeks before its release, Saving Private Ryan had already been tagged as “the best film about war ever made.” This from critics and veterans alike, and though I fall (thankfully) into the former category, the film is inarguably…
Yellow
Yellow 1998, NR, 105 min. Directed by Chris Chan Lee, Narrated by , Voices by , Starring Hung, Burt Bulos, Mia Suh, Soon-Tek Oh, Mary Chen, John Cho, Jason J. Tobin, Emily Kuruda. Lee’s debut feature is a seriocomic look at the pre-graduation jitters surrounding a group of Korean-American high schoolers over the course of…
