Word: biopics
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...dealing faro or looking for a gold strike, occasionally makes a living as a peace officer not entirely immune to corruption. What you shouldn't do -- especially at 3 hours and 15 minutes, a length that implicitly promises epic grandeur -- is turn his story into a solemn biopic, grinding relentlessly, without selectivity or point of view, through a rootless and episodic life from adolescence...
...stark biopic raises old welts on a classy soul survivor...
...this the ultimate biopic or what? It has all the romantic and celebratory moves of the genre, in addition to which its subject is no bearded duffer moping around a laboratory or gallant, tear-streaked lady belatedly triumphing over a dismal affliction, but a movie star (of sorts) who specialized in doing a highly cinematic thing -- namely a form of kung fu, all lightning reactions and fluid, swirling choreography. Moreover, the movie retains that air of breathless awe and dauntless approval that has always made movie biographies . such a pleasant relief from the gloomy ambiguities of written ones...
...would he settle for a Malcolm-like niche in movie history: the radical prophet who achieved his stature posthumously. Lee would rather be a top- grossing auteur now than a biopic subject later. Perhaps that is why his movie is so stately, reverent and academic, so suitable for the Oscars with which Hollywood rewards high-minded mediocrity. Some other director will have to find a way to merge the danger of a brilliant, racist orator with the seismic jolt of energized filmmaking. That picture will be worth skipping school...
...never quite works for Buddy Young Jr. (Billy Crystal) in the prodigiously funny biopic Mr. Saturday Night. A Jewish kid with a talent to amuse, Buddy lusts for those irreconcilable opposites: to be loved and to be himself. To be all-American and 100% kosher. Buddy begins by facing a Catskills audience so primed for Yiddish comedy that when he says, "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen," a guy in the front row keens, "Oy! English!" He ends in Florida, nearly a half-century later, doing the same routines for an invalid army of the Jewish sun set. In between...