Email Author Bill Gallo

1999 Stories by Bill Gallo

• On the Yellow Brick Road

  published December 9, 1999

  The hipster wisdom about America in the 1950s holds that the entire war-weary nation was at political and spiritual rest, straitjacketed by... More >>

• Pop Icons Redux

  published October 28, 1999

  Trust Allison Anders and her old running mate Kurt Voss to come up with a piquant, carefully observed movie about tarnished hope, overfed vanity,... More >>

• Lots o' Libido

  published October 7, 1999

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! The repressed Irish Catholic schoolgirl who Molly Shannon plays on Saturday Night Live is certainly not everyone's... More >>

• Northern Lights

  published September 30, 1999

  The premise is preposterous, the final score inevitable, and the record reading on the feel-good-ometer is totally predictable. But Mystery,... More >>

• The Way We Live Now

  published September 23, 1999

  Grownups, take heart. Even if you misspent your summer at the movies pigging out on reheated space adventure, slob humor, and stubborn old ball... More >>

• Hard Times

  published September 2, 1999

  When last we encountered Peter and Bobby Farrelly, they were pelting movie houses with industrial-strength jokes about retarded kids, lost semen,... More >>

• New Rules

  published August 19, 1999

  If Kevin Williamson has anything to say about it, the good works of noble movie schoolteachers like Mr. Chips and Miss Dove and Mr. Holland will... More >>

• Spite in the Heartland

  published July 22, 1999

  Feel like shooting lutefisk in a barrel? Pick on beleaguered Minnesota again as the epicenter of everything that's square-headed and unhip in... More >>

• That Summer of '77

  published July 1, 1999

  To hear Spike Lee tell it, Summer of Sam means to be a panoramic view of the summer of 1977 in New York City -- when temperatures shot into the... More >>

• Just Another Final Frontier

  published June 10, 1999

  In John Sayles' Limbo, which is set amid the rough-and-tumble of southeast Alaska, an ex-salmon fisherman with guilty memories (David Strathairn),... More >>

• The Phenomenon Known as Star Trek

  published May 27, 1999

  If your poodle is decked out in the complete Captain Kirk uniform, you've taken Klingon language classes, or you once mailed DeForest Kelly a... More >>

• High School Unhinged

  published May 6, 1999

  The latest release from Paramount Pictures' bouncing baby, MTV Films, is set in a high school and has been inoculated with the usual doses of... More >>

• Into the Heart of Bleakness

  published April 22, 1999

  When we first see Isa, the 21-year-old heroine of Erick Zonca's The Dreamlife of Angels, she's trudging under the weight of a huge backpack... More >>

• The Ultimate Illusion

  published April 1, 1999

  Stuffed full of fantasy comics, addicted to action, and steeped in digital technology, the frenetic moviemakers Andy and Larry Wachowski have done... More >>

• Chance of a Lifetime

  published March 18, 1999

  In the three decades that director Ken Loach has been a steadfast champion of the British working class, his films have lost none of their sting.... More >>

• Neoscrewball Strikes Out

  published March 18, 1999

  At the movies the fun-loving temptress has been liberating the buttoned-up clod ever since Katharine Hepburn's leopard made off with Cary Grant's... More >>

• The Mobster and the Shrink

  published March 4, 1999

  When hit men wore hats and Cadillacs had running boards, the average Mafia don could knock off the Tattaglia brothers in midafternoon and sit down... More >>

• Paradise Muddled

  published February 11, 1999

  For better or worse, the father figure in Larry Clark's ironically titled Another Day in Paradise turns out to be Mel, a foul-mouthed, 40-year-old... More >>

• Return to Sender

  published February 11, 1999

  Short of nuclear holocaust, a major sale at Kmart, or a confirmed Clint Eastwood sighting back in rural Iowa, there's probably no way to keep the... More >>

• How Strange Fruit Got Its Groove Back

  published January 28, 1999

  Between the current nostalgia for platform shoes and the epidemic of midlife crisis that has so many baby boomers in its grip, director Brian... More >>

• You'll Laugh! You'll Cry!

  published January 21, 1999

  The cold-hearted among us have watched Camille die tragically on the late show and have seen Brian Piccolo run his last yard through the cancer... More >>

• Dead Zone

  published January 14, 1999

  Because it revealed the coke-snorting, ego-fueled corruption of Hollywood in the early '80s with such acid wit, David Rabe's play Hurlyburly... More >>

• Never Mind the Troubles

  published January 7, 1999

  The relentless charm of Kirk Jones' Waking Ned Devine lies in its embrace of two lovable Irish geezers who manage to work beautiful mischief on... More >>

• Objection Overruled

  published January 7, 1999

  The great attorneys of our time -- Tom Cruise, Susan Sarandon, Tom Hanks -- must now make room in the firm for a new partner. John Travolta, who... More >>