When is a big-budget cinematic comedy also a punchline itself? When that comedy is Ishtar, the notorious box-office bomb that became the literal poster child for expensive Hollywood flops. Released in ...

For the three-hundredth installment of Movie of the Week, something special: Elaine May’s “Ishtar.” It’s one of my favorite films, and it’s the victim of enduring misunderstandings—which are ...

Elaine May’s 1987 flop, “Ishtar,” might well be the most accomplished punching bag in cinematic history. The reasons aren’t hard to figure out, but are almost too numerous to name. Well before the ...

The toxic reception Ishtar received upon its initial release exemplifies a phenomenon I like to call "The Curse Of Bigness." Epic size and scope is fine and dandy for costume epics, sci-fi ...

Famously, the great French director Robert Bresson often shot enormous numbers of takes of his actors—who, in his later films, are almost all nonactors—reportedly, as many as fifty takes, in order to ...

Thirty-three years later, it's easy to see that Hollywood applied a double standard to the brilliant Elaine May. “If all of the people who hate ‘Ishtar‘ had seen it,” Elaine May famously said, “I ...