George Hamilton

Like a series of linked MAD TV skits done without regard to network censors - the humor is about that intelligent - the film presents the 1992 Rodney King beating and subsequent riots as a grand comic opera of greed and stupidity, going after everybody involved with equal vigor. One can get a feel for how writer/director Marc Klasfeld intends to approach his subject a few minutes in, when the car chase and police beating of King (T.K. Carter) is done as a jokey game, with a police helicopter pilot serving as the announcer ("and they're off!"), while the cops themselves, having pulled King over, place beats over the ethnicity of the guy inside. Then Snoop Dogg shows up - serving, appropriately enough, as the film's narrator and chorus - to introduce the film proper, while fireworks go off behind him.

Continue reading: The L.A. Riot Spectacular Review

Roots begins with Kunta Kinte, emerging from childhood and undergoing warrior training in his tribal homeland. The slavers arrive soon enough, and after a harrowing three-month ride back across the Atlantic, Kunta is sold, becomes Toby under his new master, attempts repeated escapes, and eventually accepts his fate as he settles down with a wife and child. The Revolutionary War comes and goes, and Toby's daughter Kizzy is sold, becoming the mother of her new master's son, known as Chicken George. Chicken George in turn is sent to England to pay off a gambling debt. When he returns home after 14 years, he is a free man. The Civil War arrives, and the rest of the slaves are freed. Soon enough the family faces the perils of vehement racism and the KKK, and Chicken George finally leads his family to safety in a new settlement.

Continue reading: Roots Review

Somebody at Paramount Pictures must have owed Paul Hogan a humongous favor to green-light "Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles." Before even seeing the movie, I could have told you it's 15 years too late for another sequel in this series.

But that's the least of the problems with this lifeless, asinine, staggeringly inept mess of haggard franchise gags, out-of-date pop culture japes and Hollywood backlot antics that are less realistic than the tour at Universal Studios.

The obscenely contrived plot follows Mick Dundee, girlfriend Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) and their son Mikey (Serge Cockburn) to L.A. as Sue takes over the local newsroom of her dad's newspaper chain. The previous bureau chief died suspiciously while poking around the finances of a B-grade studio that cranks out money-losing action flicks for Eastern Europe. Could all these mean-looking toughs in ponytails and shark skin suits be -- oh, I don't know -- crooked?

Continue reading: Crocodile Dundee In L.A. Review

While it is getting harder and harder to indulge an aging Woody Allen's enduring fantasy of beautiful young women falling in love with him in his movies, the man's comedy instincts are as sharp as ever in "Hollywood Ending."

The sophisticated screwball jaunt stars Allen as washed-up movie director Val Waxman, whose hypochondria reaches new extremes when he's rescued from deodorant commercial hell by his producer ex-wife (Tea Leoni) and given one last shot by making a $60 million blockbuster. Panicked at the prospect of making or breaking his career -- not to mention working for his ex and the Hollywood greaseball she left him for -- Val goes psychosomatically blind.

Rather than quit the picture and doom himself to showbiz purgatory, he decides he just won't let on. He'll wing it and hope his cast and crew see his apparent ineptitude as visionary eccentricity.

Continue reading: Hollywood Ending Review