Dave Kehr

Throughout Kathryn Bigelow`s gripping and stylish ''Blue Steel,'' people keep asking Officer Megan Turner (Jamie Lee Curtis) the same question: Why does a woman want to be a cop? The...

''Bad Influence'' does indeed feature the close conjunction of Rob Lowe and a video camera, but scandal value aside, the film stands up nicely as a polished, pseudo-Hitchcockian thriller, directed...

In airport adventure novels-the kind at which Tom Clancy excels-there is one basic metaphor at work: The secret world of international military intrigue stands in for the bureaucratic structure of...

''Men Don`t Leave'' comes seven years after Paul Brickman`s first film as a director, ''Risky Business,'' and it both confirms his great talent and enlarges it. It`s a magnificent piece...

Made in 1969 and received back then with blank indifference, Michael Roemer`s ''The Plot Against Harry'' now has become the beneficiary of an unlikely revival. Given its first public showing...

As square as it may be, the old-fashioned, pious liberalism of Martin Ritt`s ''Stanley & Iris'' still seems preferable to the smarmy new variety represented by Michael Moore`s ''Roger &...

There is every possibility that Daniel Day-Lewis will be nominated for an Oscar for ''My Left Foot''; there is even a chance (at this point remote) that he will win...

Closed for renovation for the last two years, the new Esquire comes back to life under the management of M&R-Loews Theaters, the Skokie-based chain that operates the Old Orchard, Fine...

The main joke in Jim Jarmusch`s films is the complete passivity shown by his characters-no matter what happens, nothing can impress them, nothing can rouse them out of the distracted,...

Lumbering in with two tons of sincerity and noble purpose strapped to its back, Costa-Gavras` ''Music Box'' reminds us that the Academy Award nominations aren`t far away. It`s the kind...