James Woods

"Diggstown" is a perfect example of a bad thing done well, or well enough. Derivative and completely predictable, the movie still enjoys being a movie so much that joy is contagious.Like "The Sting," it's the story of a con, and its pleasures come from watching the amoral scamp at its center choreograph a monstrously big conspiracy that leaves a truly bad man busted flat broke.What is it that's appealing about a con man? Well, as James Woods, that hyperkinetic live wire, plays him, it's the unflappable sense of command, that utter refusal to rattle, that deep, sure craftiness and aplomb.

"Diggstown" is a perfect example of a bad thing done well, or well enough. Derivative and completely predictable, the movie still enjoys being a movie so much that joy is contagious.Like "The Sting," it's the story of a con, and its pleasures come from watching the amoral scamp at its center choreograph a monstrously big conspiracy that leaves a truly bad man busted flat broke.What is it that's appealing about a con man? Well, as James Woods, that hyperkinetic live wire, plays him, it's the unflappable sense of command, that utter refusal to rattle, that deep, sure craftiness and aplomb.

Dolly Parton is so good-hearted and beams with such amiability and country-morning charm that the temptation to sit back, shut up and simply bask in her screen presence is nearly overwhelming."

Dolly Parton is so good-hearted and beams with such amiability and country-morning charm that the temptation to sit back, shut up and simply bask in her screen presence is all but overwhelming."

New York fashion designer Nicole Miller is getting a reputation for leading a "zippy existence."Witness:* She's been pictured in People magazine rollerblading in her New York loft, which is so long and huge she calls it a "one-bedroom dancehall."* Another magazine recorded the way she celebrated her 40th birthday: by dancing on the bar of Manhattan's Punsch with her friends from the New York City Ballet.* One of her best-selling items is a $60 tie that features a vice theme from cigarettes and dice to martinis and coffee.

Talk about nerve! "The Hard Way" has the moxie to lambast "typical Hollywood movies," full of phony stunts by bland twits; then, without a look back or a whisper of regret, it blithely turns into a typical Hollywood movie full of phony stunts by bland twits.There's a nugget of a kernel of a core of a good idea here, and when the movie hews to it, it's absolutely brilliant. But far too often, and finally fatally, it loses its concentration.The idea is the opposition between authentic experience and imagined experience and the movie yanks endless yuks out of the clash between them, as a hard-guy homicide cop (James Woods)

THE HARD Way'' is a buddy-cop movie, but it isn't just another in the genre. This is one of the better ones, maybe the best we have seen since the cycle began.Michael J. Fox and James Woods star. Woods plays an explosive, seasoned New York cop, and Fox is Nick Lang, a movie actor who is planning to play a cop on the screen and, before he does, wants to live the life of a cop.Moss (Woods), however, doesn't think this a good idea. He considers the movie actor something less than human and doesn't want him anywhere around.