Film
It's a rare comedy that is so painfully unfunny that it earns not a single laugh. The Bachelor, based loosely on Buster Keaton's 1925 Seven Chances, is a monotonous, charmless travesty, easily the worst film I've endured this year. ...
Film
The critic William Pechter once wrote this about Sam Peckinpah's Junior Bonner: Nothing much happens, except that some people, the place they inhabit, and the quality of their lives are brought vividly before us. Which is to say ...
Film
Cameron Crowe is a frustrating filmmaker. Though possessed of enormous gifts, he's yet to make a film that's as good as its best moments. He has elicited deeply felt performances from the most unlikely actors. He can write dialogue ...
Film
Rembrandt Dazzling White Tooth Bleaching Value Kit There is nothing like an Almodovar film. Triumphs of excess, they are nothing if not too much: too much color (reds so vibrant ...
Film
Andre Techine's Alice and Martin is Greek tragedy in modern dress. Rather than restage Sophocles as turgid, angst-ridden melodrama (as in Volker Schlondorff's Voyager) or insert a masked chorus into standard issue romantic comedy (like Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite), ...
Film
Frederic Fonteyne's An Affair of Love opens beautifully, with a shot of a crowded Paris street so out of focus that the image is pure abstraction. Pedestrians begin as enormous blobs of light that only begin to take shape ...
Books & CDs
Los Lobos began as the dance band of your fondest dreams. Their best songs blended '50's R&B rave-ups and norte�a stomps: two hot guitarists fought for space with an accordion over a two-stepping polka, Cesar Rosas growling the fast ...
Books & CDs
Let's say you're 15 years old and you want to annoy your parents. But how? Dad used to stagedive at Black Flag shows and Mom embarrasses you by wearing her old Dead Kennedys T-shirt to the grocery store. ...
Books & CDs
In their five brief years, The Clash left behind a peerless body of work. Sweeping, ambitious and constantly evolving, their music encapsulated a short history of rock and roll. At first, they were a crude and caterwauling garage band, ...
Television
Ken Burns' new documentary series Jazz completes the trilogy that began with The Civil War and continued with Baseball. It is less a celebration of a musical idiom than his latest attempt to define the very essence of America. ...
