Editorial Product Review: essential video:Peter Bogdanovich directed this sensitive and moving story about a teenage boy, Rocky (Eric Stoltz), who lives with severe facial deformities and poor prognosis for survival beyond childhood. The film concentrates on that threshold-of-adulthood period familiar to past and present 16-year-olds, folding together common experiences of youth (love, hassles with mom, a desire to travel) with the special burdens endured by the hero. Stoltz, absolutely unrecognizable under lots and lots of prosthetic makeup, is quite good, as are Cher (as Rocky's mother) and Sam Elliott (Rocky's father figure). ...
Editorial Product Review: essential video:Peter Bogdanovich directed this sensitive and moving story about a teenage boy, Rocky (Eric Stoltz), who lives with severe facial deformities and poor prognosis for survival beyond childhood. The film concentrates on that threshold-of-adulthood period familiar to past and present 16-year-olds, folding together common experiences of youth (love, hassles with mom, a desire to travel) with the special burdens endured by the hero. Stoltz, absolutely unrecognizable under lots and lots of prosthetic makeup, is quite good, as are Cher (as Rocky's mother) and Sam Elliott (Rocky's father figure). ...
Editorial Product Review: :Mannequin is notionally a romantic comedy in which Andrew McCarthy plays a luckless department-store employee and Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) is an Egyptian princess reincarnated as a shop-window dummy, who comes to life when she encounters McCarthy, only to revert to mannequin status when anyone else is watching her. With her encouragement, he becomes emboldened in his career as a window decorator as well as falling in love with the princess. James Spader's oily, stammering executive is just one of the many examples of a film that tries ...
Editorial Product Review: :This terrible 1987 film stars Kim Cattrall as an ancient spirit from Egypt who occupies the form of a department-store mannequin. A store employee (Andrew McCarthy) is the only one who sees the woman within, and they fall for one another. A great idea that might have made a nifty romantic comedy in the late 1930s--when Hollywood knew how to make these things--is bungled here. Meshach Taylor (of TV's Designing Women) is embarrassing as a flamboyant follower of fashion. You want comedies about spirits mingling with mortals? Try Topper or ...
Editorial Product Review: :Based on the ever-popular Barry Manilow song, 1985's Copacabana is a light, innocuous hour and a half. Dime-a-dance girl Lola LaMar (Annette O'Toole) longs to showcase her talents at NYC's famous Copacabana club. She and bartender-songwriter Tony Starr (Manilow) meet cute and fall in love with visions of fame dancing in their heads. O'Toole's strong voice and sexy shimmers are showcased in 'Man Wanted,' while Manilow shines in 'Who Needs to Dream' and 'Sweet Heaven (I'm in Love Again).' When suave Rico (Joe Bologna) offers Lola a headliner at his ...
Editorial Product Review: :Based on the ever-popular Barry Manilow song, 1985's Copacabana is a light, innocuous hour and a half. Dime-a-dance girl Lola LaMar (Annette O'Toole) longs to showcase her talents at NYC's famous Copacabana club. She and bartender-songwriter Tony Starr (Manilow) meet cute and fall in love with visions of fame dancing in their heads. O'Toole's strong voice and sexy shimmers are showcased in 'Man Wanted,' while Manilow shines in 'Who Needs to Dream' and 'Sweet Heaven (I'm in Love Again).' When suave Rico (Joe Bologna) offers Lola a headliner at his ...
Editorial Product Review: :Mannequin is notionally a romantic comedy in which Andrew McCarthy plays a luckless department-store employee and Kim Cattrall (Sex and the City) is an Egyptian princess reincarnated as a shop-window dummy, who comes to life when she encounters McCarthy, only to revert to mannequin status when anyone else is watching her. With her encouragement, he becomes emboldened in his career as a window decorator as well as falling in love with the princess. James Spader's oily, stammering executive is just one of the many examples of a film that tries ...
Editorial Product Review: :Those who are wondering what became of C. Thomas Howell and Corey Feldman--child actors turned direct-to-video stars--need look no further. Here they've found more work in yet another direct-to-video venture. Unfortunately, this film won't raise filmmaker Neil Mandt's directorial status from his previous minor ventures, Arthur's Quest (1999) and Hijacking Hollywood (1997). Written by Mandt collaborator Gregory Poppen, this silly and sweet little film chronicles the adventures of a family who win the lottery but lose the ticket. Wackiness ensues. The featured family includes former 'John Boy Walton' Richard Thomas ...
Editorial Product Review: :Those who are wondering what became of C. Thomas Howell and Corey Feldman--child actors turned direct-to-video stars--need look no further. Here they've found more work in yet another direct-to-video venture. Unfortunately, this film won't raise filmmaker Neil Mandt's directorial status from his previous minor ventures, Arthur's Quest (1999) and Hijacking Hollywood (1997). Written by Mandt collaborator Gregory Poppen, this silly and sweet little film chronicles the adventures of a family who win the lottery but lose the ticket. Wackiness ensues. The featured family includes former 'John Boy Walton' Richard Thomas ...
Editorial Product Review: :This live-action version of E.B. White's novel doesn't have quite the magic of, say, Toy Story. Instead of entertainment the whole family can be enthralled with, Stuart Little is squarely aimed, and successfully so, at the 4- to 10-year-old watcher. Does this make it a bad family film? Not in the slightest. The gee-whiz visual effects (created by original Star Wars wizard John Dykstra) and the film's ebullient wholesomeness make this a welcome addition to the home library. In E.B. White's world, it's hardly surprising that human parents would adopt ...
