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By Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman is a film critic for EW

Bird on a Wire (PG-13)
Even in an era of paint-by-numbers moviemaking, director John Badham has brought off some sort of feat. He has made a film that's 100 percent generic — it should have been called ROMANTIC ACTION COMEDY. Mel Gibson plays a former '60s radical who runs into ex-flame, now a lawyer, Goldie Hawn while on the lam from some government stooges. The movie is nothing but machine-tooled wisecracks and endless car chases. It pummels you with formula, until there's nothing left to do but give in. D

Cadillac Man (R)
Robin Williams plays Joey O'Brien, a lecherous used-car salesman, and Tim Robbins is the machine-gun-toting prole who takes everyone in the showroom hostage in an attempt to find out who has been fooling around with his wife. The movie begins as a human comedy about Joey's economic desperation and then turns into a canned farce — a comic gloss on Dog Day Afternoon. Williams doesn't get a chance to cut loose, but he's charming anyway, and Robbins makes a beguiling crazy. B-

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Unrated)
British filmmaker Peter Greenaway is an exuberantly sick sadofetishist who directs like an avant-garde butcher. His latest misanthropic outrage is set almost entirely inside a plush, red velvet restaurant, where a ranting gangster-gourmand (Michael Gambon) discovers his wife's adultery and exacts a hideously cruel revenge. The movie is really just an exploitation fantasy done with bodily fluids instead of guns. C-

The Guardian (R)
Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist) returns to the horror genre with an inordinately earnest gothic chiller about an evil nanny (Jenny Seagrove) and a baby-eating tree. It's a competent, run-of-the-mill fright flick — not terrible, but not anything to get excited (or nauseous) about, either. These days, serving up horror without comedy seems a bit of a folly. B-

The Hunt for Red October (PG)
With the plot of Tom Clancy's Cold War best-seller at its core, John McTiernan's submarine thriller glides from climax to climax. Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin head an outstanding cast. B

Longtime Companion (R)
Produced by American Playhouse, this courageous and deeply affecting drama about the AIDS crisis is a lively ensemble movie — at once funny and tragic — that focuses on the hip, upscale fringes of New York gay life. While the film lacks the three-dimensionality of a major Hollywood production, one is carried along by the pungent writing, and by the fact that AIDS is treated here with such unblinking frankness and intelligence. B+

Pretty Woman (R)
There isn't much chemistry between Julia Roberts as a Hollywood hooker and Richard Gere as the corporate raider who hires her for a week. Garry Marshall's plastic screwball soap opera is an upscale Cinderella fantasy with a feminist veneer. The movie pretends to be about how love transcends money, but it's really obsessed with status symbols. D

Q&A (R)
Sidney Lumet's new police movie is an epic portrait of an urban-bureaucratic nightmare — it's about a criminal justice system so saturated with cronyism and rancor that it's beginning to strangle itself. Nick Nolte gives a performance of venomous brilliance as Mike Brennan, a treacherous NYPD rogue at the heart of a homicide cover-up. The movie has its flaws, but it's a superbly complex vision of urban racism and corruption-Lumet's darkest, most labyrinthine drama yet. A-

Strapless (R)
David Hare's stiff, heavy-handed drama features Blair Brown as a repressed physician living in England who is swept off her feet by a seemingly kind and worldly Continental gentleman with some sinister secrets (Bruno Ganz). The movie plays like a Pretty Woman for Mensa alumni — it's pitched too high for human ears. C-

Tales From the Darkside: The Movie (R)
Despite some imaginative gross-outs and a slew of creative casting turns, this slow, clunky horror-compilation film feels more like a TV show than a movie. It's not very scary, and there isn't much contrast between the episodes: They're about a killer mummy, a killer cat, a killer gremlin, and a killer housewife. So much for subtlety and suggestion. The performers include William Hickey, David Johansen (who proves a terrific straight actor), Deborah Harry, and James Remar. C-

Wild Orchid (R)
This ludicrous soft-core fantasia is really just a racy perfume commercial posing as a movie. Mickey Rourke gives another soft, impassive performance as a monosyllabic stud. He and newcomer Carre Otis don't actually bed down until the final scene, rendering Wild Orchid the longest film ever made about foreplay. D-


Posted Jun 08, 1990 | Published in issue #17 Jun 08, 1990 | Order Article Reprints