If you’re interested in learning what the Star Trek craze is all about, this facetious cheap-shot documentary by Roger Nygard isn’t the place to go; it’s merely a freak show that invites the audience to ridicule the show’s fans and fanatics. The flavor of a daytime TV talk show is so thick that even some of the show’s creators and stars are slimed in the process. Denise Crosby serves as hostess. (JR) Read more
New York actors moonlight as violent money collectors. One (Barbara Hershey) is the ex-wife of a gang leader (Robbie Coltrane) who wants to stage a production of American Buffalo. I assume writer-director Amos Poe, an independent associated with Manhattan’s SoHo and Lower East Side, must have thought this was a funny and not simply ridiculous premise, and that someone else liked the idea enough to finance itor maybe the gore and sadism reminded somebody of Tarantino and somebody else needed a tax write-off. Go figure. A lot of good actors get wasted heretypes as diverse as John Leguizamo and Taylor Mead in a cameoand so does the time anybody spends watching this. PS: The title music is a bad reorchestration of Elmer Bernstein’s main theme for The Man With the Golden Arm; I hope that at least Bernstein received a royalty. (JR) Read more
A tender and sometimes very funny romantic comedy set in a New England seaside town, this is also something of a parable about what overheated summers can do to romantic imaginations. An unsigned love letter falls into the hands of various individuals who make creative assumptions about the author and intended recipient; many of them work at a secondhand bookstore. I suspect that a fair amount of the wit derives from Cathleen Schine Read more