Word: casablanca
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...Audiences chanting favorite lines from 'Casablanca' was in a small way akin to audiences present at theatres in ancient Greece," Harvey said...
They may call this movie Havana. But in our hearts we know it is Casablanca. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, for the first hour or so it is a very good thing. For director Sydney Pollack is a living oxymoron, a meticulous romantic. In reconstructing, very persuasively, the life of the Cuban capital as Fidel Castro's revolutionaries prepared to take it in the waning days of 1958, he also recaptures something of the doomy delirium of the film that obviously inspired him. And some of its smartness too: the dialogue -- especially that of its resident cynic...
...well-judged ending -- renunciations and not completely quashed yearnings all nicely mixed up. At its least, Havana reminds us how infrequently movies today invoke the romantic spirit. At its height, it satisfies our longing to experience that spirit anew. Put it this way: we can stand more than one Casablanca every 48 years...
...decades, critics lamented that cinema, unlike painting and music, was yoked to narrative. Movies told stories about real people, and the audience was meant to care about them. Would Rick leave Casablanca with Ilsa? Would Scarlett get Rhett? Film theorists didn't care. They wanted movies to slip the shackles of realism and burst into modernism. For cinema to enter the intellectual mainstream, there had to be movies whose subject was movies...
...lair in RoboCop 2 and find effigies of his patron saints: Jesus, Mother Teresa, Elvis, Oliver North. Listen hard to Gremlins 2 and catch witty details about zillionaire Daniel Clamp's cable empire. It includes 24-hour channels devoted to archery and laundry, and a movie channel featuring "Casablanca, but with color -- and a happier ending." Gremlins 2 should carry the warning FOR ATTENTIVE VIEWERS ONLY...