Looking back at Series 1 of The Cosby Show, it's easy to forget that momentous history was being made. Not only did this immensely popular sitcom hold the #1 spot among all network TV shows for five consecutive seasons (a record that still stands), but it promoted an evolutionary progression that influenced the entire TV industry from that point forward. African Americans had enjoyed sitcom ...
Confidently conceived and brilliantly executed, Gattaca had a somewhat low profile release in 1997, but audiences and critics hailed the film's originality. It's since been recognised as one of the most intelligent science fiction films of the 1990s. Writer-director Andrew Niccol, the talented New Zealander who also wrote the acclaimed Jim Carrey vehicle The Truman Show, depicts a ...
Rules of Engagement opens strongly with a Vietnam battle sequence that sets the stage for the rest of the story. But then director William Friedkin knows a thing or two about staging harrowing action sequences, and if you don't believe that, you've never seen The French Connectionor To Live and Die in LA. Unfortunately, Friedkin can't do much about the implausible plot that ...
Even when it misses a dramatic opportunity in favour of generic action, Set It Off benefits from a sharp understanding of its well-drawn central characters. They are a quartet of young African American women in Los Angeles (Jada Pinkett, Queen Latifah, Vivica A. Fox, Kimberly Elise), all struggling against a system that seems designed to prevent them from realising their dreams. The movie ...
Just Cause is a film that relies on phony plot twists and steals openly from any other thriller that it can remember. If there was a drinking game requiring players to drink during every cinematic "homage", you'd be tanked after its first 45 minutes. Take one case of racial injustice, place it in an exotic, exquisitely photographed location (the Florida Everglades), and bring in an ...
Based on Robert Ludlum's novel, The Hades Factor puts a bio-terrorism spin on a good old-fashioned spy thriller storyline for this tense TV mini-series. Stephen Dorff is top-billed as a former spy turned medical researcher who is pulled back into the espionage business when a new and mysterious disease erupts simultaneously in three military-sensitive regions. The target of the ...