Word: moonstruck
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
ITALIAN AMERICAN RECONCILIATION. In John Patrick Shanley's Little Italy, all the women are worldly-wise, and all the men are moonstruck. John Turturro leads the cast of this chocolate-heart comedy at the Manhattan Theater Club...
...movies and on TV, the Italian-American male is Stanley Kowalski without the sex appeal, the female a masochistic Judy absorbing too many Punches. So it is a tonic to meet the Italian Americans in John Patrick Shanley's plays (Danny and the Deep Blue Sea) and films (Moonstruck). The residents of Shanley's Little Italy dare to express their feelings in street poetry whose melodic line is closer to Verdi's than to Bon Jovi's. In his new off-Broadway play Shanley goes further, announcing that these days it is the women who have aerobicized their hearts...
...plot and production, this is Moonstruck on the cheap. But it is hardly less satisfying, with smart, authentic turns by the rumbustious Turturro and the gorgeously desperate San Giacomo. Shanley's title is appropriate: he wants to reconcile the comic-derisive image of Italian Americans with his own comic romanticism. And like almost everyone in this poignant fable, he gets what he wants...
...helps too that he has written the wittiest, busiest screenplay since Moonstruck, and that his three stars do their very best screen work. Costner's surly sexiness finally pays off here; abrading against Sarandon's earth-mama geniality and Robbins' rube egocentricity, Costner strikes sparks. Aided by a snazzy red-neck roadhouse bar-band score, Bull Durham is a long, smart kiss to baseball that should last longer than three days. How about all season? Wouldn't it be poetic justice if Ron Shelton were the movies' Mr. October...
Were the Oscar voters telling The Last Emperor's director that they loved the movie, they really loved it? Surely there were waves of affection breaking over the winners of the acting prizes: Cher (Moonstruck), Michael Douglas (Wall Street), Sean Connery (The Untouchables) and Olympia Dukakis (Moonstruck). But The Last Emperor, with its stern, sumptuous sprawl, more likely earned a decorous, distanced respect in a slim year. The other nominees for Best Picture were three comedies and one high-tech yuppie horror movie -- not the Academy's favorite genres. By contrast, Bertolucci's true-life fable of Aisin-Gioro...