Predictably, it was the woman whose career was most decimated by Ishtar‘s failure, as Elaine May, one of the brightest comedic talents Hollywood had ever seen, never directed another movie ...

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 ...

But if that pairing were announced, and the movie’s budget were highly publicized as being north of $100 million (adjusting for inflation from Ishtar’s $50 million), and reports were rampant ...

The 1987 film “Ishtar” has long held a cultural status much larger than that of just a single movie, as shorthand for the utter worst, an epochal flop with audiences and critics alike and a ...

Even “Ishtar,” her much derided 1987 flop, clawed its way into the black by the early aughts, as emails from the Sony hack revealed. And yet, it’s impossible not to feel as though movie ...

Ishtar is what happens when a studio writes the industry’s most mercurial movie star a blank check to make a film with a notoriously meticulous writer-director and stays the hell out of the ...

On Wikipedia’s list of the biggest box-office disasters, with losses over $100 million (at current dollar values), “Ishtar” doesn’t even rate a mention. That’s because the movie lost ...

It’s especially appropriate to say so because “better late than never” is more or less the subject of the movie. “Ishtar” has one of the greatest credit sequences ever—the voice-over ...