It was during the Fourth of July weekend twenty-five years ago that I was taken by my parents to my first R-rated film in the theater. Of course, we'd already had cable for a while which means that it wasn't the first R-rated film I'd ever seen. Why it took them even longer to let me actually go to see one in the theater is a mystery that will probably never be solved. Meanwhile, at a multiplex som...

In some ways the ideal person to view Jacques Demy's 1969 film MODEL SHOP would be somebody who has already seen his first feature LOLA, loves it, then watches MODEL SHOP with no awareness whatsoever that the lead character from the earlier film is going to turn up once again. The first moment Lola appears in the Los Angeles set-film, a million miles away from the small town of Nantes where we last...

One good thing about the new DIRTY HARRY DVD box set is that it gave me the chance to finally see THE ENFORCER, the third film in the series. I don't know why I'd never seen it, but I liked the fact that in not seeing it I somehow still had a Dirty Harry film to look forward to. So that's been taken care of now. I wasn't expecting greatness from it but I was hoping for some seventies action so it's...

If you were in L.A. this past weekend, you know how hot it was. Determined to not be trapped in the heat on Sunday, I decided to go to the Arclight. It was the perfect day to plant myself where I knew there would be air conditioning which made it ideal to see something which I already knew was going to be very long. That's right, I went to see SEX AND THE CITY. Am I going to lose the respect of eve...

Simply put, GET SMART is the best Alan Arkin movie that I've seen on my birthday since THE ROCKETEER. Is any greater praise really needed? If it is, then I'll say that all things considered, it's easy to imagine this movie turning out much, much worse. Maybe I was just in a good mood, maybe expectations have been lowered these days, but I wound up having a pretty good time with the thing. It gets b...