March 9, 1990 | If, as the poet noted, most men lead lives of quiet desperation, then Joe Banks (Tom Hanks) truly is an exceptional fellow: His desperately unhappy life…
January 3, 1992 | Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t. Two years ago this month, Wendell B. Harris Jr. copped the top prize at the Sundance Film Festival…
May 3, 1989 | Kevin Costner was all set to make Revenge, a violent melodrama about illicit love and bloody retribution, when he was asked to read a script…
April 21, 1989 | It’s difficult, even more difficult than hitting a high, hard one into the stands at the Astrodome. And yet, somehow, the people who made a wonderful…
March 11, 1993 | There’s at least one brightly charming story in The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, Donald Spoto’s controversial 1983 biography of The Master of Suspense,…
August 6, 1992 | Now is the summer of Clint Eastwood’s reassessment. It is the best of times for the 62-year-old superstar, as he greets a seemingly endless series of…
July 16, 1999 | Stanley Kubrick knew what you’d be expecting, and maybe even hoping for, when you bought a ticket to see Eyes Wide Shut. And so, during the opening seconds…
July 23, 1987 | La Bamba, a film about the short but eventful life of Mexican-American rock star Ritchie Valens, finds Rosana De Soto cast as Connie Valenzuela, mother of the…