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Foolkiller (1990-1991)
The last time I read Foolkiller, almost fifteen years ago, I really liked it. I wish I knew what I’d liked about it because it’s really not good. Even back then I know I thought the art—Joe Brozowski...
View ArticleThe Hunt for Red October (1990, John McTiernan)
Sean Connery, who’s so important to the workings of Hunt for Red October he could easily be “and special guest star” credit instead of top-billed, has his last scene on the bridge of his ship, giving a...
View ArticleThe Match Factory Girl (1990, Aki Kaurismäki)
The Match Factory Girl is a hyper-focused character study. It opens with the visually fascinating process of a match factory before introducing lead Kati Outinen. Technically protagonist, obviously...
View ArticleFlatliners (1990, Joel Schumacher)
I spent much of Flatliners’s first half trying to figure out if there was anything technically redeeming about Jan de Bont’s photography. While it’s easy to qualify certain failings—with Schumacher’s...
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Avalon (1990, Barry Levinson)
Avalon is not a success. It very frustratingly waits until the very end of the picture to clearly not succeed. After trying real hard, there’s just nothing to it. Writer and director Levinson makes a...
View ArticleI Come in Peace (1990, Craig P. Baxley)
I Come in Peace is a Dolph Lundgren versus alien movie. It’s from the period before Lundgren went to acting classes but had gotten rid of his Swedish accent, which ends up working against the picture....
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Birdland (1990) #1
So, I wasn’t actually aware Birdland is a porno comic. I also wasn’t aware it was from during Love and Rockets: Volume One’s run and not immediately following it, meaning Fritz Herrera from Birdland...
View ArticleJoe Versus the Volcano (1990, John Patrick Shanley)
Joe Versus the Volcano’s final punchline comes during the end credits when it turns out Industrial Light and Magic did the special effects. Volcano’s got terrible special effects, especially for an...
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Leather Underwear (1990) #1
I’m trying to imagine how Leather Underwear would’ve read when it dropped in 1990, one of the first comics from then early twenty-something creator Roger Langridge. The comic is entirely a riff on...
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The Flash (1990, Robert Iscove)
As a pilot movie, The Flash is a success. It establishes its regular cast—John Wesley Shipp, Amanda Pays, Alex Désert, Paula Marshall (who wasn’t back, but sure seemed like she would be)—and doing an...
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Dekalog (1989) s01e06 – Six
Six is a mess and it shouldn’t be, because at the center of it director Kieslowski has this phenomenal performance from Grazyna Szapolowska. He opens with her (doing some hippy thing where she...
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Dekalog (1989) s01e07 – Seven
Seven is definitely one of the stronger “Dekalog” films, but Kieslowski can’t figure out what his best angle is into the story. The story is the thing of melodrama and soap opera–Maja Barelkowska’s...
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Dekalog (1989) s01e08 – Eight
Eight is, unquestionably, great. At a certain point, it got good. And then Kieslowski didn’t screw up it being good. It started with problems, of course. The episode opens with Maria Koscialkowska as a...
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Dekalog (1989) s01e09 – Nine
With Nine, writers Krzysztof Piesiewicz and Krzysztof Kieslowski have finally figured out how to parody themselves and the rest of “Dekalog.” This entry, overwrought from the opening titles, is awful,...
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Dekalog (1989) s01e10 – Ten
Part of me desperately wants Ten to be intentionally over the top. The episode opens with a song about breaking the Ten Commandments. “Dekalog.” And then the rest of it is just more of wondering if...
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The Exorcist III (1990, William Peter Blatty)
The Exorcist III is a weird movie. It’s a somewhat surreal detective story–one seeped in Exorcist continuity, only without the original cast (mostly) returning. That disconnect from the original, along...
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Hard to Kill (1990, Bruce Malmuth)
The best thing about Hard to Kill is how hard supporting player Frederick Coffin tries. He doesn’t have much of a part, but it’s got some soap opera dramatics to it and Coffin goes for it. There’s...
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Days of Being Wild (1990, Wong Kar-wai)
Director Wong crafts Days of Being Wild as a series of vignettes, only with the film’s principal character never the protagonist of any of these vignettes. Wong and editors Kai Kit-wai and Patrick Tam...
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Marked for Death (1990, Dwight H. Little)
The beginning of Marked for Death is nearly all right. It’s a prologue, with lead Steven Seagal–as a DEA agent–in Mexico, doing an undercover drug buy. Things go wrong. Until things go wrong, it’s not...
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Dances with Wolves (1990, Kevin Costner)
From the start, director Costner embrues Dances with Wolves with melancholic tragedy. Even as Costner’s protagonist–a Union soldier reassigned to the frontier–travels west, seeing startling natural...
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Young Guns II (1990, Geoff Murphy)
In many ways, Young Guns II is an improvement over the first. Geoff Murphy knows how to direct a Western, at least until he has to do a showdown scene and then he’s in trouble, but if it’s general...
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Hammer, Slammer, & Slade (1990, Mark Schultz)
Hammer, Slammer, & Slade is a television pilot spin-off of a movie (I’m Gonna Git You Sucka). It has the same writer as the movie–Keenan Ivory Wayans–and much of the movie’s cast. The three “leads”...
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Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese)
Most of Goodfellas is told in summary. After an opening scene introducing leads Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, and Joe Pesci, the action flashes back to Liotta’s childhood. Liotta narrates. Christopher...
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Puppet Master II (1990, David Allen)
Puppet Master II opens with a mostly successful animate puppets resurrect their long-dead master in scary graveyard sequence. It’s a mix of stop motion and live effects; it just has a nice tone about...
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Darkman (1990, Sam Raimi)
The last twenty or so minutes of Darkman are when director Raimi finally lets loose. He’s been building to it, hinting at how wacky the movie’s going to get, but it doesn’t all come together until the...
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Ident (1990, Richard Starzak)
Ident is an unpleasant five minutes. Intentionally unpleasant. Even the dog is unpleasant, but mostly because the protagonist finds the dog unpleasant. The protagonist is unpleasant himself; the dog...
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Janine (1990, Cheryl Dunye)
Janine is shot–and edited–on video. So when Dunye cuts to an insert shot for mood, there’s a jerky quality. She does a lot of freeze frames and the format just means it can’t gracefully return to...
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Love and Rockets (1982) #32
The issue opens with Beto and Poison River. It’s set in 1970, during Luba and Peter’s honeymoon. In four pages, Beto develops Luba from a scared teenager to a domineering trophy bride (sort of trophy...
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Love and Rockets (1982) #33
Both Jaime and Beto get a lot done this issue, but Jaime’s is a little more subtle. In his Locas, he addresses something more directly than usual– Maggie and Hopey as a couple–as well as introducing...
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Love and Rockets (1982) #34
In all… Love and Rockets #34 is the least successful issue of the comic book so far. It’s still a good comic. With great art. But as far as what Los Bros do and get done? It’s distracted and erratic....
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The Godfather: Part III (1990, Francis Ford Coppola), the director’s cut
Here’s an all-encompassing theory to explain The Godfather Part III, based only on on-screen evidence (i.e. ignoring production woes, casting woes, rewrites, budget and schedule comprises, and whatever...
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A Shock to the System (1990, Jan Egleson)
A Shock to the System is almost a success. It’s real close. It has all the right pieces, it just doesn’t have enough time at the end to put them away in their new arrangement. Everything’s in disarray...
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