Former U.S. marshal Wesley Snipes is hot on the trail of a team of skydiving computer crooks (including Gary Busey) who killed his brother, but who cares? This is a stupid, cliche-ridden, characterless action romp (1994), directed by John Badham from a script by Peter Barsocchini and John Bishop, and the absence of much moment-to-moment story logic isn’t much compensated for by the skydiving sequences, which aren’t a patch on those in Point Break. With Yancy Butler and Michael Jeter. (JR) Read more
A quirky and intermittently interesting period drama about the 16th-century humanitarian doctor and involuntary prophet who allegedly foretold, among other things, the French Revolution, the rise and fall of the British Empire, World War I and World War II, Hitler, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the moon landing (though whether he also foretold black-and-white newreels and TV documentary footage, complete with the right camera angles, as this film implies, is something else again). Working from an OK script by Knut Boeser and Piers Ashworth, director Roger Christian, a former art director, does a good job of holding one’s interest without insulting one’s intelligence, and the performancesincluding Tcheky Karyo as Nostradamus, Amanda Plummer as Catherine de Medicis, and Julia Ormond, Assumpta Serna, Rutger Hauer, and F. Murray Abrahamare all serviceable. (JR) Read more
