Film Reviews
Film reviews are updated on Fridays. This section compiled by Marjorie
Baumgarten (M.B.); with reviews by Hollis Chacona (H.C.), Steve Davis (S.D.),
Robert Faires (R.F.), Alison Macor (A.M.), Marc Savlov (M.S.), Russell Smith
(R.S.).
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Ratings:
5 stars As perfect as a movie can be
4 stars Slightly flawed, but excellent nonetheless
3 stars Has its good points, and its bad points
2 stars Mediocre, but with one or two bright spots
1 stars Poor, without any saving graces
0 stars La Bomba
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D: Billy Bob Thornton; with
Thornton, Dwight Yoakam, J.T. Walsh, John Ritter, Lucas Black, Natalie Canerday,
James Hampton, Robert Duvall.
(R, 135 min.)
So you thought you were talking funny after seeing
Fargo, yah? Well, Billy Bob, you ain't seen nothing yet. Wait until you
experience Sling Blade. Not only will it take some time to get your speech right
again, it'll be a good while before you get your mind right again. That's how
deeply Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade gets under your skin and soaks right
through to the tributaries in your skull. Thornton, who wrote, directed, and
stars in Sling Blade, has created an unforgettable character and situation, a
film that's sure to become an American classic. It's something of a Southern
gothic tale populated with characters who might have stepped over from a Carson
McCullers story. Thornton plays Karl Childers, a mildly retarded man with a
distinctive speech pattern who, at the start of the film, is involuntarily
released from an asylum for the criminally insane where he has spent the last 25
years for the crime of killing two people. He returns to the small Southern town
of his birth where he is befriended by a young boy named Frank (Black), who is
probably about the same age as Karl was went he was sent away and is also the
first person to accept this strange child/man without judgment. Frank and his
mother Linda (Canerday) take Karl into their home, a shelter that is darkened by
the abusive, alcoholic violence that pours forth from Linda's ever-encroaching
boyfriend Doyle (Yoakam). The situation forces Karl into a moral dilemma, which
he confronts with all the understanding of good and evil that his simple mental
capacity and warped religious background can bear. A virtuosic showcase for the
talents of Billy Bob Thornton (a fact that has not escaped Academy voters who
nominated Thornton in dual Oscar categories), the success of Sling Blade
nevertheless stems from so much more than Thornton's efforts alone. Sling Blade
is a character-driven story, dependent on so many vivid performances and original
characters. John Ritter (Thornton's co-star in the short-lived TV series Hearts
Afire) delivers a career-great performance as Linda's best friend and ineffectual
protector, a closeted gay man trying to live unobtrusively in this small Southern
town; Dwight Yoakam is, at first, virtually unrecognizable as Linda's despicable
cur of a boyfriend; and not until I saw the end credits was I able to see that it
was Robert Duvall (the original Boo Radley figure) who portrayed Karl's
disheveled, besotted hull of a father. In addition to figures such as Jim
Jarmusch showing up in a cameo as a Tastee Cream counter clerk and J.T. Walsh
lending his distinctive brand of eccentricity to the proceedings, musicians such
as Vic Chesnutt and local luminary Ian Moore make priceless appearances as
members of Doyle's godawful backyard band. Although it could be argued that Sling
Blade could withstand a touch of judicious trimming and that the plot
occasionally strains the boundaries of realism, these things do not mar the
awesome achievements of the movie in the least. With an aim that's true, Sling
Blade plants one right between the eyes.
(2/21/97)
4.0
stars (M.B.)
Village
D: Darrell Roodt; with
Elizabeth Hurley, Ice Cube, Ving Rhames.
(R, 92 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. From the director of
Sarafina! and Cry, The Beloved Country comes this action-drama shot in South
Africa. Rapper-actor Ice Cube plays a man who is searching for his brother and
becomes mixed up with a Johannesburg drug cartel that seems to have seized
control over post-apartheid life. Model-actress Elizabeth Hurley plays the
missing man's girlfriend who joins in the search through the underworld of
Johannesburg. ()
(M.B.)
Highland, Lake Creek, Riverside,
Westgate
Recommended
THE EMPIRE
STRIKES BACK: THE
SPECIAL EDITIOND: Irvin Kershner; with Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford,
Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, Frank Oz, Alec Guinness, Anthony Daniels,
David Prowse.
(PG, 127 min.)
Part Two of Lucasfilm's Star Wars: Special Edition
(Chapter V in the ongoing project, actually) is a faster, meaner riff on the
original, retrieving the principal characters from the cookie-cutter clichˇ
factory of the original and fleshing out the relationships between Vader and
Luke, Leia and Han, and so on. It's been called the best of the series, and for
good reason: Whereas Star Wars was a near-plotless smorgasbord of Gosh-Wow!
special effects, director Kershner and guiding light Lucas have broadened the
scope of the tale to include our first intimations of the Emperor and his
nefarious schemes, Han Solo's ongoing struggle to look good while trying to keep
his neck attached to his body, the introduction of the bounty hunter Boba Fett,
and perhaps most importantly, young Luke Skywalker's ongoing training as a Jedi
Knight. I seemed to remember the wizened Jedi master Yoda as a olive-drab blob of
a puppet, all creaky movement and rustling rubber. The Special Edition proves me
wrong, though: Jim Henson's Creature Shop did a marvelous, fully-realized job on
this most important of the Star Wars critters. With the phlegmatic rattle of
voice artist and longtime Henson collaborator Oz in place, Yoda fits nearly
seamlessly into the swamps of Dagobah (although at times he does sound a bit too
much like a drunken Fozzie Bear). Empire is also a far darker film that its
predecessor, and not just in terms of cinematography. Granted, much of the
picture takes place in inhospitable climes - the icy netherworld of Hoth, with
those incredible scenes (now beefed up thanks to ILM) of the Imperial ATATs, the
lushly rotting swamps of the aforementioned Dagobah, and the dark and brooding
interiors of Lando Calrissian's Cloud City - but The Empire Strikes Back also
benefits from a certain dolorousness of the spirit. Luke loses his right hand,
gains a bad dad extraordinaire, and is taunted by the dark side, while luckless
flyboy Solo finally gets a shot at the Princess, only to be betrayed by his old
friend Lando, carbon-frozen, and then kidnapped by the mysterious Fett. It's
almost as if Lucas had called in angst-ridden tunesmith Morrissey for rewrites.
Even more than its grand predecessor, The Empire Strikes Back is filled with
spectacular dogfights, awe-inspiring shots of the Imperial Fleet blundering about
in deep space, and the climactic, wrenching meeting of father and son (not to
mention the Special Edition's glorious use of THX and a few, brief additional
scenes). Still brilliant.
(2/21/97)
4.0
stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Movies 12, Northcross,
Riverside, Roundrock
D: Beth Gage and
George Gage.
(Not Rated, 72 min.)
The U.S. Army's 10th Mountain Division was a
singular animal in martial history: an entire unit trained to use their existing
skills of skiing, climbing, and hiking in combat waged on harsh alpine terrain.
By all accounts, they were a virile, mud-in-yer-eye band of free spirits who'd
previously been outdoorsmen, pro skiers, mountaineers, and rich ski bums. If
absolutely required to do the regimented military thing, here was the only cool
way to go. This much-lauded 1995 documentary follows the men of the 10th from
their training through their brief, bloody WWII service in the mountains of Italy
to postwar lives in which they've attained remarkable success and influence.
(Alums include David Brower, the first director of the Sierra Club; Paul
Petzoldt, instructor of the first Outward Bound program; and Bill Bowerman, who
founded the Nike Shoe company.) The Gages have latched onto some juicy subject
matter here and have smoothly integrated abundant first-person storytelling with
high-quality archival film along a clear, easy-to-follow timeline. Yet I have to
differ with critics who've described Fire as "spellbinding," "engrossing," and
"thrilling." The Gages' obvious goal is to show how the tempering fire of harsh
training and combat prepared their subjects for postwar success. While one may
fairly question whether these mountain-hardened stud ducks are really that much
more successful than any comparably sized group of white guys from similar
economic and educational backgrounds, it's a defensible premise. But instead of
dramatically supporting their case, the Gages waste long stretches of Fire on
achingly jejune blather about skiing techniques, trivial date-and-place
citations, and quotes that betray a tin ear for the music of oral history. The
combat material, though vivid and harrowing, is explored only briefly and with
little psychological insight before returning to peppy reportage on the postwar
rec skiing boom. It's as if WWII was little more than a brief, unpleasant hiccup
in the glorious history of the winter sports industry. I hold Ken Burns
responsible for this and other recent documentaries that, instead of artfully
filtering information, simply gush it with the random promiscuity of a Liberian
oil tanker. Powerful, moving scenes such as a recent mountaintop "peace summit"
between former German and American soldiers, exists side by side with long, dull
stretches of almost Warholian nullity, leaving one with little confidence that
the filmmakers see the difference. I have no doubt that there's a "spellbinding"
story to be told about the 10th Mountain Division. Unfortunately, not enough of
it is in this documentary.
(2/21/97)
2.5
stars (R.S.)
Texas Union
D: Craig Rosenberg; with Aden
Young, Saffron Burrows, Simon Bossell, Pippa Grandison, Ray Barrett, Julia Blake,
Peter O'Brien.
(PG, 89 min.)
For some inexplicable reason, Hotel de Love missed a
Valentine's Day opening and quite possibly just the right kind of holiday
audience that would have appreciated this quirky, slightly out-of-control,
romantic comedy. Marking the feature film debut of writer-director Craig
Rosenberg, Hotel de Love actually is based on some of the tales told to him by an
embittered manager of a honeymoon hotel in Niagara Falls. In the film, twin
college-aged brothers Rick (Young, who appeared in Black Robe) and Stephen
(Bossell) both fall for Melissa (Burrows, last seen in Circle of Friends), but it
is the more suave and quick-thinking Rick who wins her affections. Despite a
declaration of undying love, they drift apart due to separation and the ravages
of youth. Fast forward 10 years later. Rick has become the cynical manager of a
kitschy, fantasy theme, honeymoon hotel called the Hotel de Love. Stephen is just
as awkward as he was 10 years earlier, but now he is a successful stockbroker
cultivating an unrewarding personal life. When fate brings Melissa and her
current boyfriend Norman (O'Brien) to the Hotel de Love, Rick and Stephen are
forced to confront their past mistakes and their present unfulfilling lives. Set
amidst the completely hilarious theme rooms of the hotel, this romantic comedy
invests heavily in hope and the power of love at first sight. For this reason, it
makes the perfect valentine: magical, sugary, and even a bit clever. But its
winsome ways and quirkiness become tiresome, as do Stephen's twitchy mannerisms
and even Rick's good looks. Hotel de Love has its moments, such as the
football-themed honeymoon suite that Rick and Stephen's parents check into so
that they can rejuvenate their crumbling marriage. But, for me, the film's
wackiness cannot withstand its running time. Some of the gags seem a bit too
labored, and by the time the rather charming ending unfolds, these weaker moments
in Hotel de Love may force some viewers to check out early.
(2/21/97)
2.0
stars (A.M.)
Highland
Recommended
ROSEWOODD: John Singleton; with Jon Voight,
Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Bruce McGill, Loren Dean, Michael Rooker.
(R, 139 min.)
You understand, of course, that, as a film reviewer, I
see many, many movies. Much more so than the average person. Some of them are
very good, and many of them are awful, but it's a rare film indeed that sets my
heart and head thrumming, that affects me on a personal level, and that makes me
gasp in outrage, shock, and a modicum of joy. I left the screening of John
Singleton's new film Rosewood quite literally shaking, simultaneously elated at
the director's obvious success with his material, and sickened by the events
portrayed within. Set in the central Florida township of Rosewood in 1923,
Singleton has isolated a single, almost forgotten historical incident and brought
it slamming home with all the force of a lead pipe to the jaw. Rhames plays the
drifter Mann, a black WWI vet who rides into the smallish, nearly all-black
community of Rosewood one warm January day and finds it to his liking. Unlike the
neighboring town of Sumner, Rosewood's inhabitants enjoy a precious quality of
life in which families own their own land, grow their own crops, and, in general,
appear to live an idyllic (by 1923 Floridian standards) and peaceful lifestyle.
It's not what Mann expected. That's further down the road in Sumner, a
white-trash snakepit of a town, all tarpaper and tin shacks, and bitter, violent
people. When a white woman in Sumner falsely accuses an unnamed black assailant
of beating her, the Sumner men take up arms against their imagined assailant,
and, over the course of a day, burn Rosewood to the ground, destroying not only
the township but also many of its inhabitants. Into this racial powderkeg are
thrown not only Mann, but also Rosewood's lone white inhabitant, John Wright
(Voight), a casually racist shopkeeper who, nonetheless, feels compelled to take
a stand against the Sumner men's madness, if only to protect his own interests.
At over two hours, there's much more to Singleton's film than this simple
synopsis can offer. The director is unflinching in his portrayal of the horrors
that occurred, and nearly all the characters, from Voight's Wright to Rhames'
Mann, are wonderfully nuanced, desperately believable creations. Bruce McGill's
Duke is as pure a cinematic depiction of deep-Southern racist inbreeding as you
are likely to see - whenever he opens his mouth, you cringe - and Esther Rolle's
wise and silent matriarch Aunt Sarah is gripping in her own steadfast, peaceable
way. With its almost Spielbergian denouement toward the penultimate reel,
Rosewood may put you in mind of Schindler's List. Singleton lacks that director's
fine, elegiac touch with atrocity, preferring instead to shock you into
submission with lingering shots of lynchings and their battered aftermath, and
his final movement seems a tad rushed after the film's languorous first third.
This is Singleton's beast, though, and to compare it to anyone else's is
pointless and wrong. Suffice to say Rosewood is an epic: a dark, ghastly chunk of
our bloody American history, strung up again for all to see, and, far more
importantly, to remember.
(2/21/97)
4.0
stars (M.S.)
Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Westgate
D: Richard Linklater; with Giovanni
Ribisi, Steve Zahn, Amie Carey, Nicky Katt, Dina Spybey, Jayce Bartok, Parker
Posey, Samia Shoaib, Ajay Naidu.
(R, 118 min.)
Adapted by Eric Bogosian from his stage play, subUrbia
follows the alienated, angst-ridden, and collapsing world of five friends over
the course of one night as they meet up with a former buddy of theirs who is now
a successful rock star. Twenty-year-old Jeff (Ribisi) is the de facto ringleader
and conscience of the group, if only by virtue of his sluggish collegiate career
and idealistic ambitions. His girlfriend Sooze (Carey) is a budding performance
artist and painter with dreams of New York City in her eyes, while her friend
Bee-Bee, a quietly damaged girl fresh out of the bottle, seems content to have
dreams at all. Besotted party animal Buff (Zahn) and the alcoholic, racist,
ex-Air Force thug Tim (Katt) round out the motley group which spends most of its
time hanging outside a convenience store run by a Pakistani couple, Nazeer and
Pakeesa (Naidu and Shoaib). When word spreads that old pal-turned-rock star Pony
(Bartok) might be dropping by later after his concert, everyone assembles outside
the Circle A to shoot the shit and Wait for the Man. Pony does indeed show up -
in a stretch limo, and with slinky publicist Erica (Posey) in tow - but far from
being the friendly reunion they had in mind, the evening soon degenerates into an
emotional free-for-all, with Pony questioning his good fortune, Sooze questioning
her feelings for Jeff, and Jeff questioning everything he can get his mind
around. Meanwhile, Tim is baiting Nazeer with racist remarks, Bee-Bee's grip on
sobriety is slipping, and Buff is running out of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Perhaps the
most interesting thing about Linklater's (and Bogosian's) running commentary on
disaffected suburban youth is that it doesn't bore you half as much as it should.
Linkater's fluid direction (and Lee Daniel's eerily lit nighttime cinematography)
keeps the petty mutterings of Generation Beer! at bay long enough to develop some
tangentially interesting storylines, but with a running time of over two hours,
the film could have lost a solid 30 minutes and been all the more tighter for it.
As Jeff, Ribisi is the spearhead of rational thought (he's also a dead ringer for
Green Day's Billie Joe, but that's neither here nor there), and there's precious
little of that to go round. With a best friend who's a not-so-closeted racist and
another who spends 90% of the film in an alcoholic haze, his late-breaking
epiphany of pulling up stakes and heading east with Sooze feels less like an act
of romantic courage than common sense. Set in the fictional town of Burnfield,
subUrbia could take place in virtually any urban-lite zone (it was shot here in
Austin), which makes it all the more nightmarishly disturbing for its realism:
waves of semi-talented young wastrels, idly killing time, never noticing that
time fights back. (2/21/97)
3.0
stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Dobie, Lakehills
D: Bob Spiers; Christina
Ricci, Doug E. Doug, Dean Jones, George Dzundza, Peter Boyle, Michale McKean,
Bess Armstrong, Dyan Cannon, John Ratzenberger, Estelle Parsons.
(PG, 89 min.)
Though I never saw the 1965 original starring Hayley
Mills, I wasn't really averse to seeing this remake. After all, it stars
Christina Ricci, who was so deliciously dolorous as Wednesday Addams. It was
directed by Bob Spiers of Absolutely Fabulous and Fawlty Towers fame. And the
screenplay is by S.M. Alexander and L.A. Karaszewski, who are reaping notoriety
and accolades for having penned The People vs. Larry Flynt. This picture is plain
weird, a sort of Blue Velvet for the younger set, a portrait of a picaresque New
England town with a split personality. Teen rebel, Patti (Ricci) is bored stiff,
stuck in sleepy Edgefield, which seems stuck in the Fifties. She amuses herself
by trying, futilely, to get her Stepford mom (Armstrong) to utter a curse word.
What she doesn't know, but her sidekick cat does, is that Edgefield seems sleepy
in the daytime because it's been up all night. The denizens of the deeply
disturbed burg include a dowdy-by-day butcheress who at dusk dresses up like a
prostitute and deposits fine cuts of meat on the object of her (unrequited)
love's doorstep, a pair of dueling bozos who don ski masks and trash each other's
business every night, and a 70-year-old soda jerk who jitterbugs with his
prom-dressed wife, to name but a few. And any one of them (or all of them), as
the cat discovers, could be kidnappers. But wait, I make it sound too
interesting. Actually, this picture is tedious and painful. Doug plays his FBI
rookie Zeke Kelso as a sort of Agent Andy in search of an Amos. His
characterization, also stuck in the Fifties, is insultingly unfunny. And the
verrry long movie ends in a spectacularly boring, drawn out car chase. In short,
That Darn Cat has plenty of weirdness, but not a bit of wit. Despite its
pedigreed credits, the humane thing to do would be to put That Darn Cat quickly
and quietly to sleep.
(2/21/97)
1.0
stars (H.C.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Movies 12,
Roundrock
D: Andrˇ
Tˇchinˇ; with Catherine Deneuve, Daniel Auteuil, Laurence C™te, Benoit Magimel,
Fabienne Babe, Didier Bezace, Julien Riviere.
(R, 117 min.)
French director Andrˇ Tˇchinˇ incorporates the same
intriguing narrative structure and complex characterization in his most recent
work, Thieves, as with his last film Wild Reeds. Daniel Auteuil stars as Alex, a
cop who comes from a family of sophisticated criminals. When his older brother
Ivan (Bezace) is killed during a high-stakes car theft, Alex begins an
investigation into his death that reveals much more than simply the events that
surrounded Ivan's homicide. Complicating Alex's investigation is his own romantic
involvement with Ivan's occasional lover Juliette (C™te), a young woman of
considerable passion and emotional instability. With co-screenwriter Gilles
Taurand, Tˇchinˇ slowly reveals each character, allowing us to view the same
events through their very different viewpoints. Like a carefully crafted puzzle,
each individually titled segment gives us more insight into Alex, Juliette, Ivan,
and Juliette's professor/mentor/lover Marie (Deneuve). Thieves unfolds much like
a novel, with each segment representing a distinct chapter of the same story. And
similar to a novel, the film appears quite wordy, with the characters speaking
constantly, either to themselves or to one another. Despite the wealth of
information revealed by these characters, they remain somewhat distanced from us
and each other. They are thieves in the traditional sense, but they also are
emotional criminals, stealing feelings from one another in an effort to be alive
and to stay connected. Some of the characters, like Alex and his nephew Justin
(Riviere), benefit from this thievery. Others, like the mysterious Marie, seem
only to self-destruct once they complete the connection. Similar to Wild Reeds in
the way that the film privileges emotional exploration over dramatic action,
Thieves nonetheless maintains a vigorous pace through its shifting of viewpoints.
The film's ability to capture the different voices in the family allows us to
choose whom to identify with, providing a changeable viewing experience. As with
many French films and Tˇchinˇ's films in particular (his Ma Saison Prefˇrˇe is a
good example), the narrative exploration conveys a distance that may appear
sterile or overly intellectual to some, but ultimately it makes Thieves a
challenging - and perhaps refreshing - alternative to many of the films of late.
(2/21/97)
3.0
stars (A.M.)
Dobie
D: Paul Schrader; with Skeet Ulrich,
Christopher Walken, Tom Arnold, Bridget Fonda, Janeane Garofalo, Gina Gershon,
Lolita Davidovich, Paul Mazursky, John Doe, Conchata Ferrell, Mason Adams.
(R, 97 min.)
This trenchant little satire of modern celebrity culture and
spiritual bankruptcy would be an instant minor classic if sheer aggregate mass of
cool participants translated directly to artistic merit. Touch boasts a director
of passion and occasional brilliance (Schrader), a script (by Elmore Leonard)
that valiantly avoids clichˇ, and a cast bristling with some of the best actors
working today - including personal favorites Walken, Gershon, and Garofalo. But
as with other checklist juggernauts (Short Cuts for example), there's an odd
lifelessness to this movie that's largely traceable to the script's emphasis of
vivid characterization over compelling ideas and narrative momentum. Leonard's
fascination with scuzzy hustler types again surfaces here in the form of a
washed-up evangelist named Bill Hill (Walken). Hill wants to get back in the game
and thinks he's found his ticket in an ex-monk named Juvenal (the suddenly
ubiquitous Ulrich) who heals the sick and disabled by laying on hands -
accompanied by a visually socko effect of Christlike bleeding from the side and
extremities. Aided by a cute accomplice (Fonda), Hill connives to spirit Juvenal
away from the tiny inner-city church where he works his miracles in an obscurity
consistent with his humble, regular Joe personality. Parallel plotlines activate
at this point, including a tenderly sexy love story between Fonda and the
appealing (in a generic, Ethan/Deppish way) Ulrich, and a war between Hill and a
rival huckster (Arnold) over who'll bring in the monetary sheaves of managing
Juvenal's "career." Tasty, ironic humor and gemlike cameos - Gershon is
especially savory as a scurrilous TV talk-show host - follow, but these vivid
moments are just that and nothing more. They emerge briefly from the story's
gentle, rolling boil then submerge without a trace. Numbingly utilitarian
camerawork leaves the script to carry the film, and it isn't up to the job. Even
granting Schrader his right to avoid fulsome Big Statements and satirical cheap
shots (what ridicule hasn't already been heaped on televangelists' Brilliantined
heads?), this is a letdown. One looks for heat, if nothing else, from a movie
helmed by the guy who wrote Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, and Light Sleeper. Instead,
Touch simply jangles coolly along until an innocuous ending that, while
semi-unexpected, gives the entire film the effect of a two-hour shaggy dog story.
Funny; I always figured Schrader for a bang-not-a-whimper guy.
(2/21/97)
2.5
stars (R.S.)
Village
D: Stephen Kessler; with
Chevy Chase, Beverly D'Angelo, Randy Quaid. (PG, 91 min.)
Not
reviewed at press time. Here they go again. ()
(M.B.)
Arbor,
Barton Creek, Highland, Lake Creek, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside,
Roundrock
D: Clint Eastwood; with
Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Scott Glenn, Dennis Haysbert,
Judy Davis, E.G. Marshall, Melora Hardin.
(R, 121 min.)
Eastwood plays Luther Whitney, an aging, solitary,
master cat burglar who is interrupted one night while looting the home of
billionaire philanthropist Walter Sullivan. Secreted (and trapped) behind a
one-way mirror in the bedroom, Whitney witnesses the brutal murder of Sullivan's
young wife Christy (Hardin) by her drunken, abusive lover and a trio of
gun-toting assassins. The catch? The killers are U.S. Secret Service agents and
her violent, drunken swain is the president of the United States, Alan Richmond
(Hackman). Whitney manages to make his way out of the mansion before he can be
caught, but for safety's sake he grabs a crucial piece of evidence - a bloodied
letter opener with both Christy's and the president's fingerprints on the hilt -
and takes it with him as a possible bargaining tool. As the Secret Service
prepares a cover-up of the whole incident - led by presidential chief of staff
Gloria Russell (Davis) - Whitney finds himself pursued not only by overzealous,
trigger-happy Secret Service agents, but also by Washington detective Seth Frank
(Harris), who sifts through Whitney's past and comes up with his estranged
daughter, Kate (Linney), and inadvertently puts her in jeopardy as well. Adapted
by William Goldman from David Baldacci's bestseller, Eastwood's Whitney is
another brilliant character study that can now be added to his perpetual canon.
Grizzled and quiet, Whitney wants nothing more than to be left alone to pursue
his two hobbies: theft and painting. Eastwood himself is looking somewhat long in
the tooth these days; unsurprisingly, that only adds to his subtly nuanced charm.
Absolute Power is a fairly predictable film, however, despite Eastwood's best
intentions. He makes clever use of Whitney's predilection for disguise and
subterfuge, but from the moment the murder is committed, it's no secret the truth
will eventually come out. Harris, likewise, offers little new here, playing the
aw-shucks detective with more than a dose of his previous good-guy roles thrown
in. It's Hackman, as the thoroughly unctuous First Freak into rough sex and
betrayal, and Davis, as the cool, witchy chief of staff, who steal the show here.
Hardly a misstep on Eastwood's part, Absolute Power instead relies too heavily on
past thriller archetypes, baiting the viewer with obvious references and tired
clichˇs.
(2/14/97)
3.0
stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Barton Creek, Highland, Lakeline, Movies 12, Northcross,
Riverside, Roundrock
D: Kevin Spacey; with
Matt Dillon, Faye Dunaway, Gary Sinise, William Fichtner, Viggo Mortensen, John
Spencer, Skeet Ulrich, M. Emmett Walsh, Joe Mantegna.
(R, 96 min.)
If nothing else, Spacey's directorial debut boasts the
year's best cast thus far. Apart from that, however, Albino Alligator is a fierce
little hybrid: part deadpan black comedy, part classic noir. Leader Dova
(Dillon), his wounded older brother Milo (Sinise), and their unpredictable
sidekick Law (Fichtner) are a trio of lowbrow robbers who find themselves trapped
in a New Orleans basement bar one night after their heist goes spectacularly
awry. They've also inadvertently killed several ATF agents in the process. As
luck would have it, Dino's Last Chance Bar, a former Prohibition speakeasy with
no back door, is their last line of defense against the massing police force out
front. Also at Dino's are five late-night barflies-cum-hostages: the barmaid
Janet (Dunaway); young Danny (Ulrich); grizzled Jack (Spencer); the silent,
mysterious Guy (Mortensen); and owner Dino (Walsh). As nerves begin to fray on
both sides of the crisis, tensions come to a boil, and the inevitable violence
erupts, more often than not in the form of the woefully inappropriately named
Law, a sociopathic Cajun maniac who plays the rampant Id to Sinise's melancholy
Ego. Law is the most disturbing screen maniac since Mr. Blonde, and indeed
Spacey's film owes much to the Tarantino school of botched-heist filmmaking, and
perhaps even more to Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon and Humphrey Bogart in The
Petrified Forest. Spacey doesn't steal from the masters as much as he
appropriates, but all the same, his stylistic flourishes are obvious and
occasionally glaring. Which isn't to say Albino Alligator is a waste of time.
It's not. Sinise and Fichtner, in particular, give stand-out, nail-biting
performances, and Ulrich is Johnny Depp (intentionally or otherwise). But the
dark, wry humor that flows so effortlessly from Dillon's Dova doesn't always
register. "Was that a joke? Should I laugh?" Sometimes it requires some thought,
bogging the film down until the next wash of blood, random violence, and Faye
Dunaway.
(1/31/97)
2.5
stars (M.S.)
Dobie
D:
Ken Kwapis; with Fran Drescher, Timothy Dalton, Lids Jakub, Ian McNiece, Patrick
Malahide.
(PG, 107 min.)
A key premise of this comedic love-child of The King
and I and Evita is that "big career break" is a relative term defined by where
you're starting from. For lowly beauty-school instructor Judy Miller (Drescher),
it's a stranger's invitation to move to a tiny Eastern European police state and
tutor the children of fearsome dictator Boris "The Beast" Pochenko (Dalton). If
this move up means prolonging your employers' misconceptions about what you teach
(they think it deals with hard sciences not hair extensions), then so be it. And
who knows what might happen when a cute, eligible Jersey girl finds herself in
the thrillingly butch milieu of jackbooted secret police, looming Stalin-era
statuary, and gloomy castles draped with crypto-Nazi, red-and-black banners. Can
romance be far behind? This latest vehicle for the star of TV's The Nanny
certainly can't be accused of picking an obvious setting for the comedic skills
of the brassy-mouthed, American-as-mustard-pretzels Drescher. Even less expected
is the decision by screenwriter Todd Graff (Used People, Fly by Night) to develop
this screwy concept into the aforementioned homage to The King and I, in classic
Kerr-Brynner fashion, Judy and Boris butt heads early as she introduces the
Pochenko brood to Romeo and Juliet via tapes of West Side Story, but before long
she's melting his icy heart with her earthy humor, common sense advice, and tight
Capri pants. When the pair's animosity starts giving way to amore, you almost
expect them to break into a duet of "Getting to Know You." This is just a
strange, disorienting film all the way around. The story often feigns serious
interest in its weightier political elements (odd enough for a comedy), then
casually flips them aside like peanut shells. For example, when Judy tries to
wheedle the strongman into freeing a student activist his daughter is dating, the
main result is not a triumph of justice but a bonding experience between herself
and the daughter. As with so many recent Hollywood comedies, The Beautician and
the Beast crackles with fitful bursts of real wit and good comic acting (Dalton
is especially enjoyable) that only heighten the frustration when the plot takes
bizarre, nonsensical turns and crucial payoff scenes are market-pandering
clichˇs. In a way, mediocrities like this are more galling than straightforwardly
brain-dead movies of the Beverly Hills Ninja ilk. Viewers need to start demanding
better. Otherwise, we'll continue to see comedies that favor one-liners and high
concept over outmoded verities like character and plausible story development.
Give this Beast a wide berth.
(2/7/97)
2.0
stars (R.S.)
Arbor, Barton Creek, Lakeline, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside,
Roundrock
D: Dennis Dugan;
with Chris Farley, Nicollette Sheridan, Nathaniel Parker, Soon-Tek Oh, Chris
Rock, Robin Shou.
(PG-13, 90 min.)
Nearly as much fun as a case of scabies, Beverly
Hills Ninja transports the viewer into a mystical realm where pratfall is king
and mediocrity is its own reward. Granted, one doesn't attend Chris Farley
vehicles to bask in their sublime theatre-of-the-absurd ambience, but Dugan's
painful, childlike finesse with a Panaflex never approaches even the subtle,
self-inflicted hilarity of sea-salted razor wire ground inexorably into raw,
weeping sores. Essentially, the former Saturday Night Live player is recreating
any one of a number of his previous parts from SNL or Tommy Boy: the hulking
man-child, oblivious to the chaos that surrounds and engulfs him, slapstick gone
over the top. Here, however, he is Haru, a mindlessly inept wannabe Ninja warrior
who makes his way from the hills surrounding his ancient Dojo to Beverly Hills in
hopes of rescuing a mysterious blonde (Sheridan) who may or may not be in peril
from her "boyfriend," Martin Tanley (Parker). Tanley, as it turns out, is
scheming to get his hands on one-half of a set of stolen Treasury plates the
Yakuza has. The Yakuza, naturally, would like the other half that Tanley has, and
Haru is stuck in the middle, too overwhelmed to know quite what to do, but
knowing he must do something, if only to prove to his sensei that he is less of a
buffoon than his martial arts comrades would think. Shadowing Haru's every move
is his brother Gobei (Shou), a skilled Ninja sent to keep watch over the bumbling
Haru and all-around general foil. Dugan keeps Farley moving around, having him
run into immobile objects every time the film threatens to bog down in
rationality, but it's no use. There are only so many ways even a Mack Sennett
clown could fall over, and Farley exhausts them all within the space of a half
hour, leaving us with a good 60 minutes to wonder what comes next. When nothing
does, we're left to ponder the rampant unfunniness of it all, counting Jujubes in
the dark and waiting for Adam Sandler to save the day. (01/24/97)
0
stars (M.S.)
Westgate
D: Tsui Hark; with Wing Zhao, Xiong
Xinxin, Sang Ni.
(Not Rated, 104 min.)
Current Hong Kong filmmakers, faced with a
climate of wrenching political change, evolving tastes among domestic fans and
the pressures of a worldwide market, have no choice but to adapt or die. With the
John Woo/Jackie Chan modern action contingent fully embracing Hollywood and
others poised to make the same leap, there seems to be no place for those whose
hearts lie with the traditional historical drama. UT-educated Tsui Hark, whose
career has always straddled the fence between the two genres, explores a third
option with this revisionist drama adapted from a the 1967 Shaw Brothers movie,
One-Armed Swordsman. The generic plot involves a young milquetoast (Wing Zhao)
who, energized by romantic rivalry and the desire to punish bandits who killed
his father, becomes a swordfighting legend despite losing one arm in an ambush.
However The Blade quickly signals its maverick intentions with fast-paced scenes
that employ hand-held cameras, highly mannered acting styles, and idiosyncratic
use of wipes and jump cuts. In a style reminiscent of Wong Kar Wai's Ashes of
Time, the narrative is jarringly discontinuous with inscrutable visual motifs and
symbolic imagery popping up at regular intervals. All this mucking around with
the viewer's mind occasionally seems perverse, but as with Wong's equally
challenging art, the effort does pay off. The plentiful fight scenes, which start
out wild and grisly and progress into neuron-frying Grand Guignol spectacles, are
some of the best I've seen. With an almost psychotic obsessiveness, they seek out
and amplify the primal insanity that always lurked beneath the surface of the
swordsman and martial arts genres. All emotions - hate, lust, adolescent romantic
fantasy, latent homoeroticism - are pushed to extremes, creating a comic-bookish
ambience in which few traces of cheap sentiment (except for the incongruously
trad ending) are tolerated. This all marks a sharp departure from Tsui's previous
work and puts him squarely in the company of not only Wong but other Asian
avant-gardists such as China's Huang Jianxing (The Wooden Man's Bride) who are
trying to find new things to say with an old film vocabulary. It makes one wonder
if a risk-averse American film industry couldn't benefit from a little creative
chaos of its own.//////////Director Tsui Hark will introduce the 7pm show on
Sunday, February 16 and following the screening, he will be available for a Q&A
session in the Eastwoods Room of the Texas Union.
(2/14/97)
3.0
stars (R.S.)
Texas Union
D: Roger Donaldson; with Pierce
Brosnan, Linda Hamilton, Charles Hallahan, Grant Heslov, Elizabeth Hoffman,
Jeremy Foley, Jamie Renee Smith.
(PG-13, 108 min.)
Jaws with a bigger shark. Well, not entirely, but
this pyroclastic disaster flick frequently raises the comparison, especially in
the film's earlier scenes. The small, tourist-supported town of Dante's Peak,
near Washington's Northern Cascades, is gearing up for its annual Pioneer Days
festival, and readying itself for a new influx of out-of-towners to arrive when
the dormant volcano that looms over the community begins to make ominous
rumblings. Harry Dalton (Brosnan), a volcanologist from the U.S. Geological
Survey arrives in town to check the situation and quickly determines that the
slumbering giant is indeed waking up, and everyone within a 10-mile radius is in
grave danger. What with the incoming tourist trade, however, this isn't what the
town elders want to hear, and so Dalton's warnings go unheeded until the mountain
finally, literally, blows its top. Throw in Hamilton as the town's leggy,
divorced mayor Rachel Wando, her two kids (Foley and Smith) and crotchety
mother-in-law Ruth (Hoffman), and you've got a character-heavy disaster movie
that would make Irwin Allen proud. The early Jaws allusions (dim-witted
selectmen, young lovers as early victims, festival seating at a natural disaster,
and others) don't distract from the real show here, which, of course, is the
mountain's final, catastrophic eruption. In a cinematic decade marked by Things
that Go Bang, Dante's Peak puts its money where its effects are and goes it one
better: Not only do we get the volcano's explosive disgorgement, but also floods,
earthquakes, lakes of acid, fire, and even brimstone in the form of toxic sulphur
dioxide emissions. The only things missing are the locusts. It seems almost
beside the point to bring up the notion of plotting and characterization in such
an effects-driven film - nobody's going to rush out to catch Dante's Peak on
account of the Shakespearean-calibre thespians involved. Nevertheless, both
Remington Steele and "that Terminator chick" (as the guy in front of me referred
to Hamilton) acquit themselves admirably despite some woefully ponderous dialogue
and the ludicrous notion that four-wheel-drive trucks can navigate lava flows on
rims alone. Right. Take this behemoth for what it is (a big, dumb summer
blockbuster released a tad early) and you won't be let down. And if you are, well
geez, Volcano's opening soon anyway.
(2/14/97)
2.5
stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Movies 12, Northcross,
Riverside, Roundrock
D: Anthony
Minghella; with Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott
Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth, Julian Wadham.
(R, 162 min.)
Based on the Booker Award-winning novel by Michael
Ondaatje, The English Patient is a lush, sprawling epic about romantic betrayal
and redemption set against the backdrop of North Africa and Italy before and
during World War II. At just under three hours, there's plenty of sandblown
eroticism to go around, but, comfortingly, director Minghella (Truly, Madly,
Deeply) never lets the film (or the audience) get bogged down in panoramic crane
shots and gorgeous sunsets. Fiennes is uncanny as the titular patient, a man who
is found beside the wreckage of his plane in the gritty dunes of Northern Africa.
Burned beyond recognition and with no memory of his name or existence before the
crash, he is found and cared for by a group of nomads who eventually place him in
the hands of Hana (Binoche), a French-Canadian nurse with some grievous emotional
scars of her own. At this point in The English Patient's decidedly non-linear
story line, the war is just ending, and Hana moves her disfigured charge into an
abandoned monastery in Tuscany, where she can care for the mysterious man and
nurse her own wounds in solitude. Into this picture wanders Caravaggio (Dafoe), a
Canadian soldier who says he's been recruited to help disarm the local partisans.
The truth of his arrival appears to be a bit more shady; he stares at the English
patient for long periods, picking away at his faulty memory as if it were as easy
to peel away as the countless layers of scar tissue that surround the man.
Concurrent with this Tuscan interlude is the film's backstory, seen in
flashbacks, which chronicles the forbidden love between a brilliant, solitary
royal cartographer working in North Africa (Fiennes, sans makeup) and the wife of
another member of the Royal Cartographic team (Kristin Scott-Thomas). Gradually,
Minghella draws these seemingly unrelated strands together into a skein of bitter
loss and hopeful redemption. Any synopsis will fail to do this magnificently
complex film justice, and repeated viewings may well be in order - it's simply
that emotionally resonant. Suffice to say, The English Patient is operating on
any number of levels throughout. Subtextually, the film is like some enormous
cinematic onion, ripe with the promise of hidden meaning for anyone who cares to
look. Films this rewarding are rare enough these days. Films this rewarding with
casts this good have, in recent years, been more or less the sole property of the
Merchant-Ivory conglomerate. The entire cast is electrifying, with Fiennes
guaranteed a nod (at the very least) come Oscar time. His Count de Alm‡sy is a
rich, eminently watchable creation, and Binoche, Dafoe, and Scott Thomas match
his prowess every horrifically romantic step of the way. Despite its lengthy
running time and occasionally languid pace, The English Patient feels brief and
dreamlike. Waking from its spell, you touch your face, and it's wet, but you're
smiling anyway.
(11/22/96)
4.0
stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Highland, Lake Creek, Movies 12
D: Woody
Allen; with Allen, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda, Julia Roberts, Drew Barrymore, Edward
Norton, Tim Roth, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman.
(R, 101 min.)
A feeble attempt to recreate the magic of the movie
musical, Everyone Says I Love You is a post-modern throwback to those films in
which characters spontaneously burst into a song and danced their hearts out
whenever the mood hit them. The trouble is, director-screenwriter Allen - who
seems to be in a creative rut these days - has made the mistake of emulating the
less-than-stellar examples of the genre, forsaking both plot and character
development seemingly in favor of staging clever song-and-dance numbers that
could easily exist outside the celluloid confines of this film. Everyone Says I
Love You ostensibly chronicles the romantic travails of a bunch of well-to-do,
intellectual Manhattanites (the only focus group Allen can apparently focus
upon), all to the tune of vaguely familiar popular standards. With the exception
of Roberts and Allen - she must be tone-deaf, he confuses croaking with singing -
the cast performs these musical numbers without too much embarrassment,
especially when you consider that none of them (with the exception of Hawn) has
any training or experience in this area. (The fact that only Barrymore's voice
was dubbed speaks volumes about how totally lacking her singing talents must be.)
Yet, while certain of the film's artifices induce a smile - store-window
mannequins, funeral-parlor ghosts, and Gallic Grouchos contribute to the musical
merriment, and there's a wonderful lighter-than-air pas de deux on the banks of
the Seine - there's still something terribly facile about the whole thing.
Allen's writing continues to get lazier and lazier: Characters' emotions flip on
and off like light switches, and turns in events occur without rhyme or reason.
His jokes aren't that funny anymore, although the occasional one-liner can still
zing like the best of them. The preoccupation with rich, uninteresting New
Yorkers continues to distance his audience from his work more and more with each
movie. (When was the last time you heard someone say, "Remember our first
Christmas in Paris?") And his narcissistic insistence on having beautiful, young
women tell him - er, his character - how great he is in bed is getting downright
twisted. Though its title entices with the promise of sweet flattery, Everyone
Says I Love You is really not much more than a calculated fib.
(1/17/97)
1.5
stars (S.D.)
Arbor, Westgate
D: Alan Parker; with Madonna, Antonio
Banderas, Jonathan Pryce, Jimmy Nail.
(PG, 135 min.)
That Madonna... she's voguing again. This time she
strikes a pose as Eva Peron, the cultishly worshipped former first lady of
Argentina and, not incidentally, the eponymous star of a fabulously successful
stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. It's perfect material for the
Material Girl and it's easy to see why she fought so hard for the part. The
resemblances between the lives of these two women - each of whom rose from
obscurity to become a mesmeric one-name wonder - should be evident to even the
laziest of armchair analysts. And clearly, that's the audience toward whom this
film version of Evita is aimed. It's the "no muss, no fuss" historical approach
toward the military dictator and his popularly adored wife, an approach that
skims and ignores many of the tale's darker elements (such as the perverse
years-long saga of Evita's embalmed yet unburied corpse). Experiencing Evita is
like watching one uninterrupted long-form music video divided only by different
arias or costume changes (of which there are untold numbers). The movie is a wall
of musical sound, an unending barrage of sung exposition. Madonna and Antonio
Banderas, who serves as the story's Brechtian narrator Che, perform the
difficult, near-tuneless Lloyd Webber music nicely enough, although their vocal
skills tilt more toward the adequate than the spectacular realm. The music itself
is full of Lloyd Webber's typical bombast and grandiosity and director Alan
Parker's visual style maintains the tone of the aural onslaught. Visually, Evita
is also huge. Yet, for all the teeming crowd scenes and sweeping visual
pastiches, the movie still feel bereft of substance and weight. Parker has a
substantial history with musicals having helmed the kiddie gangster movie Bugsy
Malone, the high school song-and-dance ditty Fame, the sweet, Irish rock band
saga The Commitments, and the overblown rock opera Pink Floyd - The Wall. He now
probably qualifies as the world's premiere living director of movie musicals and
that may be equivalent to saying that the movie musical is thoroughly dead. There
is little about Evita that will leave audiences wanting more.
(1/10/97)
2.0
stars (M.B.)
Great Hills, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills
D: Andy Tennant; with Matthew
Perry, Salma Hayek, Jon Tenney, Carlos Gomez, Tomas Milian, Siobhan Fallon, John
Bennett Perry, Jill Clayburgh, Anne Betancourt.
(PG-13, 109 min.)
Boy meets girl. Boy shtups girl. Girl gets
pregnant. Boy and girl get married. Boy and girl experience multiple
cross-cultural and racial difficulties and must adapt to each other's deep-seated
insecurities and long-term goals though a series of humorous and occasionally
touching misunderstandings and familial outbursts. So goes Fools Rush In, the
kind of film that elicits such Michael Medvedian adjectives as "light," "frothy,"
and "sweet," but nevertheless manages to rise above the treacle and present an
interesting if not entirely original look at impulsive love from an Anglo/Latina
viewpoint. Perry (Chandler of TV's Friends) plays Alex Whitman, a New York
corporate architect who finds himself in Las Vegas one day, overseeing the
construction of a Hard Rock Cafe-like nightclub, along with his partner Jeff
(Tenney). While dining at a Mexican restaurant, he bumps into the gorgeous Isabel
Fuentes (Hayek), the two hit it off, and coitus ensues. After an absence of three
months, Isabel shows up at Alex's house to inform him that she's pregnant, she's
keeping the baby, and would he please accompany her to her parents' house to meet
the relatives, if only to lessen the shock of the soon-to-be-obvious. He does,
and although he's at first taken aback by the cultural differences inherent in
the Latino family structure, he's also very impressed by the obvious love and
affection there. Later that same night, smitten, he suggests immediate marriage,
Las Vegas-style, and, under the watchful gaze of the King, the knot is tied. Much
of the film's humor comes from the striking contrast between the couple's
parents. Alex's WASPy, racist-lite folks (Perry and a hilarious Clayburgh) are of
the Hamptons/country club set right down to their Topsiders, while Isabel's
deeply religious mother and father (Betancourt and Milian) are aghast that their
only daughter has forsaken her childhood sweetheart in favor of this New York
gringo. Many of the jokes are broad, but few if any could be called offensive, a
trap into which so many "comedies" of this ilk unnecessarily fall. Perry's
transition to the big screen is unremarkable - he's playing Chandler with an
edge, but the film fairly lights up every time the radiant Hayek (late of Robert
Rodriguez's Desperado and From Dusk Till Dawn) is onscreen. She has the luminous,
wide-eyed insouciance of a classic Hollywood starlet, and the film practically
rests on her shoulders. Neither too pedantic nor too airy to complain about,
Fool's Rush In is instead a fluffy bit of Valentine's amore: Love 101 for the
frantically muddled.
(2/14/97)
2.5
stars (M.S.)
Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Lincoln, Movies 12, Riverside
D: Kenneth Branagh; with Branagh, Julie
Christie, Billy Crystal, Gerard Depardieu, Charlton Heston, Derek Jacobi, Jack
Lemmon, Rufus Sewell, Robin Williams, Kate Winslet.
(PG-13, 238 min.)
The man we can pretty much thank for the movies'
current "Bard Wars" - actor-director Kenneth Branagh, who set off this frenzy of
Shakespeare on film with Henry V and Much Ado About Nothing - wades back into the
fray swinging the Big One, the saga of the melancholy Dane, and at first glance
he looks to be trying to trounce the competition just by using the biggest sword.
I mean, everything about this film is big. Big script. Big names. Big screen
format. Big running time. Big sets. Big crowd scenes. And, yes, some mighty big
acting. But the more you watch, the more it seems that Branagh is following in
the footsteps of the century's other great Shakespearean cinematizers, Olivier
and Orson; he's trying for the grand gesture, the bold stroke, that conveys the
epic quality of Shakespeare's writing. It doesn't always serve Branagh well -
some of his more fiery orations come off as mere ranting, and a few of his
spectacular set pieces reek of a self-indulgent "watch me work" quality, and do
we really need Gerard Depardieu sitting in a chair smoking a cigar and saying
"Yes, m'lord" a half-dozen times? - but much more often than not, Branagh's
bigness connects with the text in a big way and gives us astonishing visuals,
passionate performances, a daring, sweeping, living version of this dramatic
masterwork. Part of Branagh's genius is providing contexts for Shakespeare's
characters into which modern viewers can key. When he has Hamlet retreat into a
library and lean against a wall, his body outlined by hundreds of volumes, the
sense of Hamlet as a private man and one who takes comfort in knowledge and
books, strikes home in us, in a way that all his talk of Wittenburg may not.
Here, he endeavors to provide us with a context for the whole of Hamlet's world -
Denmark as a political entity, Hamlet and Claudius as public figures whose
actions are watched closely by the Danish people, the characters as people of
faith - all of which draws us closer to the prince and makes us feel his tragedy
more keenly. Although the film's scope is broad, it retains a tight focus on the
war between Hamlet and his stepfather Claudius, the murderer of his true father.
Branagh sets up a dynamic tension between himself and Derek Jacobi that wrenches
the screen. Jacobi is a wonder, sounding all the notes in the complex Claudius -
his ardor, his frustration, his fear, even his horror at his own crime. It's the
performance of a titan. Few members of the cast here match his majesty, but most
bring rich feeling to the project, particularly Christie as Gertrude, Winslet as
Ophelia, and Sewell as Laertes. And some of the Hollywood casting is surprisingly
good, notably Charlton Heston, as an aged actor, and Robin Williams as the
foppish servant Osric. In fact, it may be Osric who best sums up Branagh's
Hamlet: "A hit. A very palpable hit."
(1/24/97)
4.0
stars (R.F.)
Village
D: Richard Attenborough;
with Sandra Bullock, Chris O'Donnell, Mackenzie Astin, Emilio Bonucci.
(PG-13, 116 min.)
It seems like some kind of cruel joke that a lot
of movies lately are based on books through which I struggled in high school.
Suddenly, the mysteries of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet unfold before me at the
Highland 10; where was this movie when I was muddling through the play during the
hell of high school? I had a similar experience watching this new film by Richard
Attenborough (Chaplin) about the early love life of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway
immortalized that time in A Farewell to Arms, another of my required, somewhat
impenetrable high school texts. Attenborough's film, however, is based on the
book Hemingway in Love and War, by Hemingway's friend and fellow WWI compatriot
Henry Villard and details Hemingway's first - some say his only - love, with
American Red Cross nurse Agnes von Kurowsky. Unfortunately for me, watching In
Love and War did not open my mind to the nuances of first love that I had been
too dense to understand in high school. Instead, Attenborough's film seems to
struggle under the combined weight of spark-less chemistry between leads Bullock
and O'Donnell and the tendency of the director toward sweeping epic strokes, even
when the moments might best be played out quietly. In 1918 Italy, a brash
19-year-old American reporter named Ernest (O'Donnell) reports for duty as a kind
of cheerleader-cum-soldier to boost the morale of the Italians, who are trying to
stave off a final demolition by the Austrian troops. At the same time, another
American arrives in Italy, a nurse who has come to Europe to improve her skills
and flee an overzealous suitor. When young Ernie is shot in the leg during his
first visit to the front, he finds himself under Aggie's care. Thanks to her
knowledge of progressive medical techniques, he recovers nicely and finds himself
falling for her despite their age difference. Being the older of the two, Aggie
is more cautious, yet ultimately she too admits to tender feelings. There are
some sweet moments here, but they're few and far between. O'Donnell's fresh-faced
acting and general overeagerness (granted, a trait that young Hemingway
apparently had in spades) become irritating. My sympathies lie with Agnes and her
painful decisions; the character of Hemingway becomes an afterthought and not
just because he gets less screen time. The film begins with Agnes' voice-over,
which suggests this will be her story, but the script never seems to make up its
mind on that point. This unevenness and the lackluster romantic energy between
Bullock and O'Donnell made In Love and War more of a homework assignment than an
enjoyable moviegoing experience. (1/24/97)
1.5
stars (A.M.)
Lakeline
D: Cameron Crowe; with Tom
Cruise, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Renee Zellweger, Kelly Preston, Jerry O'Connell, Jay
Mohr, Regina King, Bonnie Hunt, Jonathan Lipnicki, Todd Louiso. (R, 135
min.)
Jerry Maguire opens with the kind of event that a more traditional
movie would generally save for its concluding moments. This disruption should be
our first indication that Cameron Crowe's new movie is anything but "business as
usual." At the outset of the story, top-of-his-game sports agent Jerry Maguire
(Cruise) suffers a pang of conscience that causes him to stay up all night and
write an impromptu 25-page-long rant entitled "The Things We Think and Do Not
Say: The Future of Our Business." Before dawn, Jerry has his idealistic mission
statement photocopied, bound, and distributed company-wide, eliminating all
possibility of turning back in the light of day. What Jerry proposes is the
agency's elimination of "business as usual" and a refocusing of the company's
goals toward quality rather than quantity: placing the firm's values in people
rather than dollars. Jerry's revelation is the kind of yuppie crisis of faith
that other movies structurally build toward, the kind of leaf-turning that
signals a happy ending just around the bend and better days ahead. But in Jerry
Maguire, the bold act of conscience is only the beginning. Of course, Jerry's
midnight scribblings cause him to be fired within the week, thus forcing him to
confront the wisdom of his ideals. Only two other people flock to his camp:
Dorothy Boyd (Zellweger), an agency bookkeeper who defects with Jerry, and Rod
Tidwell (Gooding), a second-tier wide receiver for the Arizona Cardinals. Jerry's
crisis, however, is interesting in that it doesn't really force him to question
the root of what he does, only the manner in which the business is conducted.
(For example, the creation of a meretricious, sports-merchandising phenomenon
such as Space Jam might still be one of Jerry Maguire's goals; only now he'd make
sure that no human beings were harmed during its making.) Swiftly abandoned by
his high-powered fiancˇe (Preston), it's not long before Jerry and Dorothy are
found tying the knot. Dorothy loves him for "the man he nearly is"; Jerry still
has to learn the difference between loyalty and love. We've seen Cruise play this
type of smooth operator before: the button-down yupster with the Cheshire grin.
What's fascinating is the depth of humanity Cruise finds within the character of
Jerry and also Cruise's generosity toward the other actors in the story - a
generosity that allows all the other performers to shine and create vivid and
memorable characters. Cuba Gooding, Jr. practically steals the show as the ball
player with a mouth and attitude as big as his heart. As his proud and loving
wife, Regina King delivers a searingly real portrait of a proud black woman and
football spouse. Newcomer (and Austin success story) Renee Zellweger takes to the
screen like a true natural, and as her caustic yet loving sister Bonnie Hunt
winningly serves as the audience's eyes and ears. And captivating new kid star on
the block Jonathan Lipnicki demonstrates the truth in the old show-biz adage
about never working with dogs, children, or other natural scene-stealers. Very
much in keeping with Cameron Crowe's previous writing-directing projects Say
Anything and Singles, Jerry Maguire is another sweet (though somewhat long) movie
wrapped around a jagged emotional core - one of those tempting sugar confections
you devour halfway through before recognizing the strange new taste sensations at
the center. (12/13/96)
3.5 stars (M.B.)
Great Hills, Lake Creek,
Lakehills, Lincoln, Movies 12, Roundrock
D: Thomas Carter; with Eddie Murphy, Michael
Rapaport, Michael Wincott, Carmen Ejogo, Denis Arndt.
(R, 117 min.)
Having revived his moribund career with last year's
out-of-nowhere hit, The Nutty Professor, Eddie Murphy now attempts an even more
ambitious artistic feat: reanimating the fly-blown carcass of the cop-buddy movie
genre that he helped define with early-Eighties blockbusters like Beverly Hills
Cop. But while Metro is patently a get-well commercial move for Murphy, it's
also, to his credit, not just Axel Foley redux. Eddie's 35 now, so it's fitting
that his new alter ego, San Francisco police hostage negotiator Scott Roper,
isn't merely another smack-talking kid squawking along with Sting on his Walkman.
Roper is an adult, a guy whose trade tools are psychological insight and a cool
head. In his personal life, though, he's still pretty much a screwup, displaying
far more expertise at handicapping horse races than managing personal
relationships. As a result, his girlfriend Ronnie (exotic up-and-comer Carmen
Ejogo) has ditched him for a studly Giants outfielder and is having none of his
wan pleas for reconciliation. Back at the station, we have the core elements of
the traditional buddy pic, including the pain-in-the-butt new white partner
(Rapaport) and the cranky, by-the-books captain (Arndt). But as pro forma as the
setup is, director Carter (who directed 1993's underappreciated Swing Kids) and
screenwriter Randy Feldman also subtly but meaningfully subvert our expectations.
For example, much more attention is paid to Scott's relationship with his old
flame than with his partner, especially after Ronnie is kidnapped by a psycho
jewel thief (Wincott) who has a vendetta against Roper. The usual car chases and
explosions are here, of course (the latter are truly ludicrous, rivaling those
Dr. Strangelove fireballs from the action movie parodies in Last Action Hero),
but these scenes are at least a bit more inventive than usual and never feel like
the story's whole rationale. This is one of those rare cop/action movies driven
by character, not spectacle. Murphy helps the cause with the most focused,
persuasive acting of his career. As a young phenom, he got by on charisma, which
he promptly commodified and cheapened with Hollywood's enthusiastic collusion.
Now there's a calm, unfakeable assurance behind his eyes that only comes with
life experience. It's something he can and should build on. Two straight hits, as
Murphy well remembers, bring you a lot of juice in Hollywood. Here's hoping he
doesn't waste it again. (1/24/97)
3.0 stars (R.S.)
Lakeline, Movies 12, Westgate
D: Nora Ephron; with John Travolta,
Andie MacDowell, William Hurt, Bob Hoskins, Robert Pastorelli, Jean Stapleton,
Teri Garr.
(PG, 105 min.)
Last time we checked in with comeback kid John
Travolta he was channeling the powers of higher intelligence in the
crypto-spiritual barnstormer Phenomenon. Gossamer fuzz similarly shrouds his
follow-up film Michael, in which Travolta appears as an archangel returned to
earth to meddle in the affairs of human beings. This kind of angel stuff is
classic Hollywood fare, especially at Christmastime. Thus, it's all the more
wonder that director Nora Ephron has missed and mishandled so many of her cues.
Michael finds Ephron recycling bits and pieces of her previous movies: the
casting of a holiday assortment of Mixed Nuts and the sweet belief in the
predestination of lovers as in Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally....
The best thing about Michael winds up being Travolta himself. As always, he
delivers a magnetic performance and, as has become de rigueur, Travolta dances.
And in that one dance sequence, Travolta lifts this sodden angel tale into a
truly magical realm. Also good is the performance of William Hurt whose bemused
diffidence as a jaded tabloid reporter shows signs of someone actually working to
create a believable character. The script (which is credited to four writers:
Ephron, her sister Delia Ephron, Pete Dexter, and Jim Quinlan) suffers from thin
plotting and lame set-ups. Audiences are likely to react badly to the movie's
disappointing pay-offs. Hurt and sidekick Pastorelli play two cynical tabloid
reporters from Chicago, Frank Quinlan (there's that name again) and Huey
Driscoll, who land an assignment to go to Iowa and follow-up on a report of an
angel. Sent to accompany them is "angel expert" Dorothy Winters (MacDowell).
Travolta plays the angel Michael, whose mission here is also to be his last visit
on earth and he intends to enjoy every minute. (Angels, he explains, are only
allowed 26 visits, a curious and unexplained fact that is an example of the kind
of extraneous detail that the movie allows us too much free time to explore.)
Michael's hook is that he is not a stereotypical angel. He is an earthy figure
who is an unkempt, beer-swilling, Beatles-quoting skirt-chaser. Part of his
heavenly power is that he exerts a raw magnetism over all women who stray into
his path. His mission is to bring together the movie's two squabbling stars,
Quinlan and Dorothy, who need divine intervention to realize on their own that
they are the two stars of the movie and, therefore, must fall in love. Lacking
any real chemistry, however, it is easy to see why these two might miss the
point. The whole movie is constructed with a similar kind of disinterested
pallor. It's a good thing this archangel Michael comes to earth sporting his own
wings. Those ungainly flappers will at least will spare him the indignity of
being tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail. (Opens 12/25)
(12/27/96)
1.0
stars (M.B.)
Lakeline, Westgate
D: Albert Brooks; with Brooks, Debbie
Reynolds, Rob Morrow, Lisa Kudrow, Isabel Glaser, Peter White.
(PG, 104 min.)
John Henderson (Brooks) is a science fiction writer
who, following his second divorce, decides that it's time for him to figure out,
once and for all, the root cause of his failure with women and intimacy. To
accomplish this, he decides to move back in with his mother - the primal source
of all things intimate and woman-related. Not only does he decide to move back in
with his less-than-convinced mom, he wants his old bedroom back (despite its
conversion into a sewing room by a woman who never sews). To the tune of a
lyrically hilarious update of "Mrs. Robinson," John loads up his convertible and
cruises up the highway to Sausalito, drags in from the garage his old lava lamp,
twin bed, and wall posters, and reinstates himself in his boyhood home. "Why
didn't you want to stay in a hotel?" asks his mom Beatrice (Reynolds). From
John's point of view, she once more doesn't "get" it. Or maybe, just maybe, it's
that she does get it and though she's happy to see her son, she also knows that
his upending of her happy domestic life will do little to explain why his two
marriages failed. And perhaps that's the point that Brooks is trying to make,
that mothers are people too and that part of John's difficulties stem from his
inability to see Beatrice as an individual. Some of the film's funniest moments
come from these two as they tentatively try to mesh their habits and lifestyles.
Mother finds Brooks in top form as he dons the tri-fold hat of director, star,
and writer (with co-writer Monica Johnson). His humor has more of an
observational zing than a jokey, one-two patter. Within this structure, Brooks
uncovers many of the fidgety truths about the relationships between parents and
their grown children. The film comeback of Debbie Reynolds is also a most welcome
offshoot of this movie. With impeccable timing and a spirit as pert as ever,
Reynolds as Beatrice can manage to introduce John to her supermarket friends as
her "other son" and at once be both believably sweet and sadistic. Rob Morrow as
the "successful" son who woos his mother with speaker phones and other expensive
gifts also delivers a fine performance that mixes deep-seated sibling rivalries
with genuine familial concerns. Although Brooks apparently takes a long time
between projects (the last movie he directed was 1991's uneven Defending Your
Life), the finely honed Mother proves that a new Brooks film is well worth the
wait.
(1/17/97)
4.0
stars (M.B.)
Arbor, Lakeline, Westgate
D:
Milos Forman; with Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton, James Cromwell,
James Carville, Crispin Glover, Larry Flynt.
(R, 130 min.)
A flag-waver for the free speech set, The People vs.
Larry Flynt isn't what you might expect it to be - it's more raucous than
raunchy. Using the trials and tribulations of the self-proclaimed smut king to
teach a civics lesson in the meaning of the First Amendment, this audacious film
will undoubtedly be reviled by feminists and fundamentalists alike for its
refusal to judge Flynt's fleshy commerce. (One of the film's critics has
pontificated that director Forman, who allegedly had never seen Hustler magazine
before committing to the movie, would have never agreed to direct had he first
seen a copy. Given that Forman - a Czech ˇmigrˇ - left his homeland while it was
under totalitarian Communist rule, I'd guess he'd probably be more willing to
undertake this freedom-of-speech project than one of his American counterparts.)
Those disturbed by the film's glorification (of sorts) of its white-trash Hugh
Hefner - there's nothing airbrushed about Larry Flynt - may rightly be concerned
that less discriminating viewers will see it as elevating its subject to martyr
status, as a forthright defender of American civil liberties, when in reality the
man is nothing but a pornographer for profit. The truth is, however, that The
People vs. Larry Flynt depicts its focal character as both hero and antihero.
Flynt's ascent into notoriety smacks of pure 20th-century Horatio Alger. Born to
a dirt-poor Appalachian family, he got into the strip-joint business in
less-than-hospitable Cincinnati in the 1970s, striking paydirt only when he began
publishing a skin magazine that defied all notions of good taste. (A hilarious
scene in which copies of Hustler are distributed to concerned - and "respectable"
- citizens at a posh dinner, as evidence of the depravity that has entered their
community, beautifully exemplifies human beings' natural curiosity to look at the
forbidden, even when it's repellent and vile to them.) It is only when Flynt's
cash flow is threatened and the prospect of incarceration becomes real that he
unwittingly becomes an advocate for constitutional rights. Still, if the First
Amendment is to mean anything when it comes to the right of free speech, it must
include the right to be selfish - to say what you think, rather than what others
believe you should or should not say, regardless of what your motivation may be.
Battered by obscenity trials and paralyzed by a sniper's bullet, Flynt reaches
his abyss in the 1980s - addicted to painkillers and mentally unhinged - all the
while accompanied for the wild ride by his wife, Althea, the love of his life.
Unlike most film biographies in which the love interest angle is an often obtuse
one, the romance of Larry and Althea - the Sid and Nancy of porn circles - is a
truly genuine one. All the notions of co-dependency aside, the film presents them
as two people acutely attuned to each other, eternal soulmates by default because
no one else in the world could love them as they loved each other. This
unexpected poignancy, blooming amidst an unflinching portrait of the couple's
downward spiral - he was hospitalized in an institution, she died an AIDS junkie
- easily makes The People vs. Larry Flynt one of the most adept movies seen in a
while, especially when considering its satiric panache as well. Harrelson gives
an almost fearless performance as Flynt, clearly relishing the thought of playing
this American icon. (About halfway through the film, Harrelson's timbre decidedly
changes; was there any irony in this acting choice, in that he then sounds like a
gravel-voiced James Stewart?) Harrelson is more than matched by Love in an
open-wound performance. In an acting turn full of physical and emotional
contortions, she gives herself wholly to the role of Althea, most likely because
she's actually lived it to some degree. When the perfect arc of Scott Alexander
and Larry Karaszewski's smart screenplay is completed, you may find yourself
tearing up, but not in response to the tragedies that marked Flynt's life.
Rather, the unlikely culprit is the opening language in a United States Supreme
Court opinion, in which the nine justices unanimously ruled in Flynt's favor in
an infamous lawsuit brought by the Reverend Jerry Falwell. The People vs. Larry
Flynt is proof that you can find patriotism in the most unlikely of places.
(1/10/97)
4.0
stars (S.D.)
Northcross
D: Paul Miller; with John Leguizamo,
Jeffrey Jones, Edoardo Ballerini.
(PG-13, 85 min.)
Without resorting to the extreme measure of zapping
a cage full of rabid stoats with a Tazer, it would be hard to top The Pest for
sheer kinetic spectacle. Leguizamo, the beady-eyed hyperadrenal Latino best known
for his roles in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar and the TV skit
show House of Buggin', is in full manic overdrive in this low-budget comedy
designed to showcase his hip-hop slapstick moves and teeming array of characters
and impressions. Our man stars as Pestario "Pest" Vargas, a nickel-and-dime Miami
South Beach con artist who finds himself deep in debt to a syndicate of
middle-aged, kilt-wearing Scottish gangsters (don't ask). In a narrative setup
copped from the old Cornell Wilde movie The Naked Prey, he accepts a bizarre
offer by two visiting German sportsmen - you know they're bad if they dare set
foot in South Florida - to serve as human prey in a hunt staged on a remote
tropical island. If he can survive 24 hours he'll earn the $50,000 he needs to
pay off the menacing Scots. From this basic premise flows a constant stream of
dizzyingly lowbrow gags based on flatulence, buggery, projectile vomiting, and
racial stereotypes offhandedly delivered as the zany Pest seeks to outmaneuver
his Teutonic adversaries. Oddly enough, considering that much of Leguizamo's
early renown was based on international characters displayed in his well-received
off-Broadway Mambo Mouth show, his ethnic and cultural impressions are, almost
without exception, massively lame. People who've done this kind of humor well
over the years, from Groucho Marx to Robin Williams, have succeeded largely
because they started from a base of real understanding of who and what they were
lampooning. But when your referential baseline is Hogan's Heroes, The Three
Stooges, and old Freddie Prinze routines, the results are sure to be witless,
dull, and irredeemably stoopid. Even allowing for a few amusing set-pieces -
notably a rap-vs.-classic-rock mobile sound system battle between Vargas and a
bunch of white doofuses - there simply isn't that much substantial humor here
once you start seeing through Leguizamo's Tasmanian Devil blur. No movie comic
inane enough to make Jerry Lewis appear by contrast as a figure of George
Sanders-like urbanity deserves even a second chance at cinematic life. Pass that
can of Black Flag, hon.
(2/14/97)
0
stars (R.S.)
Roundrock
D: Peter Hyams; with Penelope Ann
Miller, Tom Sizemore, James Whitmore.
(R, 110 min.)
With no undue hype, The Relic can be hailed as a new
quality benchmark in the always competitive field of movies about part-gecko,
part-bug, part-human, hypothalamus-munching, breast-fondling genetic mutant
monsters. All facetiousness aside, the new offering from Peter Hyams (Capricorn
One, The Presidio) isn't nearly as original as that summary makes it sound. Much
like the DNA-scrambled beast to which the title alludes, this film is a
chimerical chop-shop product, consisting mostly of spare parts pulled from Alien,
Jurassic Park, and even The Ghost and the Darkness. Director-cinematographer
Hyams, who's actually a pretty fair hand with sci-fi and suspense material,
samples Alien most heavily in this gory yarn about a mythical South American
demon critter who's reborn (some mumbo jumbo involving retroviruses and brain
hormones) and ends up terrorizing rich philanthropists trapped in a natural
history museum. Once you get past that Mystery Science Theater 3000-ready plot,
the suspense stuff is not too shabby. The aforementioned Alien parallels kick in
via Hyams' skillful transformation of the museum's lower chambers into a
claustrophobic labyrinth of horrors reminiscent of Ridley Scott's dank, shadowy
spaceship Nostromo. Repeating the Alien carnival ride, with Penelope Ann Miller
as a fair-to-middling Sigourney Weaver fill-in, is enjoyable enough. However, the
downside of such faithful tributes is a near-inevitable emergence of The Copy Is
Never as Sharp Syndrome, and that's certainly the case here. Entire scenes are
ritualistically quoted from Scott's original, and at times you can almost hear
the vigorous pencil-scratch noises of Hyams checking off items from his subgenre
feature list. And many of the basics are competently handled here. Ace animator
Stan Winston, who also contributed heavily to Jurassic Park and last year's The
Island of Dr. Moreau remake, has fashioned a suitably ghastly monster that
pinches necks and torsos asunder with almost palpable glee. Screenwriter Amy
Holden Jones pumps a few extra ergs of creative energy into the dialogue,
resulting in surprisingly fresh interaction between co-protagonists Miller and
Sizemore (the poor man's George Clooney or is he trying for Kevin Spacey?).
Veteran TV actress Audra Lindley even contributes a short but juicy scene as a
mordantly funny coroner. The Relic's blood-and-guts index is way off the scale,
but more by virtue of sheer quantity than startling innovations in gorehoundry.
Long story short: This film stands as a near-perfect specimen of two hardy cinema
archetypes - the cheesy but diverting creature feature and the weekend bargain
matinee.
(1/10/97)
2.5
stars (R.S.)
Westgate
Good things keep repeating: Returning to local screens this week are some of
the year's most talked-about films, Beavis and Butt-head Do America checks
in for a midnight run at the Dobie, Secrets & Lies plays at the Arbor,
and Fargo comes to the Discount Cinema
|
D: Wes Craven; with David Arquette, Neve
Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy, Matthew
Lillard, Courteney Cox.
(R, 100 min.)
A triumphant return to form for Wes Craven, Scream is
the kind of psychological slasher film for which horror fans have been waiting
years. The stalk 'n' slash gorefests of the early to mid-Eighties may be a
distant crimson glimmer in cinematic history, but most people who grew up with
such unique also-rans as Terror Train, Happy Birthday to Me, Hell Night, and the
Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street franchises will gleefully admit the
role they played in their adolescence. Like a cultural watermark, those films
(and many, many others) helped define teenagers in the Eighties just as surely as
did Def Leppard, Stridex Pads, and pre-Jordan Nike footwear. They also prepped us
for what not to do when being pursued by an axe-wielding maniac, but sadly, very
few ever had the chance to put that knowledge to the test. Not so for the cast of
Scream, Wes Craven's new horror film that playfully uses such movies of the past
and their writ-in-stone lessons (never leave the house to check on a strange
noise outside, never assume the psycho is really dead, never go in the basement
if the lights have gone off, etc.) as pivot points in Craven's wonderfully
self-reflexive plot. Neve Campbell plays Sidney, a young girl who, one year ago,
lost her mother to a murderous maniac. Almost to the day, more body parts start
popping up, but this time, it's her friends at Woodsboro High School who are the
victims. The unnamed killer wears a cheap Halloween mask and queries his victims
on horror-show etiquette via threatening phone calls before doing them in. It's
up to Sidney and her clique of horror film buffs (among them the excellent Skeet
Ulrich, looking very, very much like Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street) to
stay alive long enough to ID the madman before everyone's strung up and butchered
like Yuletide hogs. That's the plot in a nutshell, but the real thrill in Scream
comes from Craven's gleefully over-the-top plotting and nightmare psychology. One
scene featuring a pair of small-town cops discussing the case out-Lynches David
Lynch, and Craven's brilliant use of film-within-film-within-film is taken to new
heights in the final reel as the surviving characters watch themselves watching
John Carpenter's Halloween as they're being stalked, courtesy of a hidden video
camera. Scream operates on so many levels at once that you could write a
dissertation on it, but the real fun lies in the director's (and cast's) obvious
love of the genre. Craven is obviously having a ball here, and it's impossible
not to sit back and go grinning into this dark, gory ride.
(12/20/96)
3.5
stars (M.S.)
Highland, Movies 12, Riverside, Westgate
D: Scott Hicks; with Geoffrey Rush, Noah
Taylor, Alex Rafalowicz, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Lynn Redgrave, John Gielgud, Googie
Withers.
(PG-13, 105 min.)
What is it about our mad artists that makes us
love them so? Shine now adds the story of Australian pianist David Helfgott to
our popular literature. Based on the life story of this child prodigy, Shine
tells the story of this artist's life - from his early years of study under the
tutelage of his stern, tyrannical father (Mueller-Stahl), who is himself an
emotionally scarred victim of the Holocaust; to David's decision to accept a
scholarship to study abroad, which results in his disinheritance by his father,
who permanently cuts David out of his life; to David's own mental breakdown in
his 20s while performing his personal bogeyman piece, Rachmaninoff's "Piano
Concerto No. 3" (affectionately referred to throughout the film as Rach 3); to
David's decade-long institutionalization for treatment of his mental condition
during which time he is forbidden to play the piano (the movie breezes past these
years); to David's resurrection of himself as a popular performer and his
discovery of the love of a good woman, an astrologer named Gillian (Redgrave).
This sentimental favorite from last January's Sundance Film Festival begins with
the artist's redemption, showing his re-entry into the world of the living
following his long hibernation. It seals our romantic vision of the mad artist as
an indomitable vessel whose functional resurrection is a testament to the human
spirit. By choosing to tell in flashback the sad trajectory of this young man's
life, the filmmakers have chosen to stress the human ability to triumph over the
injustices of the past. It's as if to state that true artistry and a good soul
will win out every time, and since we see little of David's years of isolation
and therapy, we have no evidence to refute that romantic notion. Despite Shine's
over-reliance on its feel-good story structure that leaves more questions
unanswered than asked, the movie is wonderfully constructed. The viewer is swept
along by the drama of David's life story, in its specifics of how a father's love
and pride also contain the seeds of poison, and in its generalities about Oedipal
knots and the sins of the fathers. No one aspect is ever examined terribly
closely, making David Helfgott almost as much of a cipher at the end of the movie
as at the beginning - only now we have witnessed a resurrection and a just cause
to celebrate. Contributing enormously to the success of the movie are its awesome
performances. It is no accident that Geoffrey Rush, who plays David Helfgott in
his latter years (he is played as a child by Alex Rafalowicz and as a young man
by Noah Taylor) is showing up as best actor of the year on so many critical
year-end lists. His performance as the babbling, stuttering bundle of childlike
manhood is the film's most exuberant glory. As the anguished father,
Mueller-Stahl delivers a performance that is truly devastating to watch. If, at
times, Shine's luster reveals more elbow grease than internal radiance, the movie
is still a moving tribute to the human capacity to overcome all odds.
(12/27/96)
3.5
stars (M.B.)
Barton Creek, Highland, Village
D:
George Lucas; with Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Sir Alec Guiness.
(PG, 125 min.)
No synopsis necessary, I'll presume. On the eve of
commencing work on the new triumvirate that will make up the Star Wars trilogy's
prequels, wunderkind Lucas and 20th Century Fox have opted to soup up the first
three films as part of a simultaneous marketing push and as a means to smooth
over some of the rougher spots that made it to theatres 20 years ago. Has it
really been that long? It certainly doesn't seem so, but, yes, here we are in
1997 and the Force is still with us, iconic and pervasive in ways that no one -
not even the studio brass - could have predicted two decades back. This "Special
Edition" is by no means the director's cut one might expect from Lucas and
company; the total additional footage amounts to a little under five minutes, and
most of it is extraneous, there only to highlight and flesh out certain scenes.
The Mos Eiseley spaceport on the desert planet Tatooine - where Obi Wan takes
Luke and the droids to meet Han Solo - is now the sprawling den of thieves it was
originally intended to be, complete with a much-improved landspeeder for Luke and
plenty of rearing Dewbacks and assorted CGI critters hamming it up in the
background. Previously excised footage of Jabba the Hut conversing with a
startlingly youthful Solo is back in, and the rebel fleet is now much, much
larger than it first appeared. Most of the changes on this newly refurbished
print are purely cosmetic (the film is now in THX, although not, for some reason,
at the advance screening I took in), but Lucas' vision still packs a mighty
Saturday-afternoon wallop. I'd forgotten just how viscerally exhilarating the
rebel forces' final run on the death star is. It's an icy-pure, white-knuckle
ride that never lets up until the final ceremony on Endor - masterful editing,
pacing, and vision all the way. Whew! Those of us who were old enough to catch
the film as kids the first time around may even find an unexpected lump in their
throats as the nostalgia gates bust wide open and Vader gets his, once again, on
that giant, silver screen.
(1/31/97)
4.5
stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Highland, Lake Creek, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside,
Roundrock, Westgate
D: Doug Liman; with Jon Favreau, Vince
Vaughn, Ron Livingston, Patrick Van Horn, Alex Desert, Heather Graham, Deena
Martin.
(R, 108 min.)
"You're so money and you don't even know it" is the
constant refrain that Mike (Favreau) hears from his hipster friends Trent
(Vaughn) and Sue (Van Horn) throughout director Doug Liman's feature film debut
Swingers. Being money is the thing, baby, and if you're like Trent, you work it
in order to get the "beautiful babies." If you're like Mike, who's still reeling
from the breakup with his longtime girlfriend Michelle, you're just too damn
depressed to care. I like Mike, and I found myself enjoying Swingers the more it
developed these characters. Or I should say, I liked the film in spite of
characters like Trent and Sue, who categorize women as either beautiful babies or
nasty skanks, a paradigm that begs the question, "Were you abandoned by your
mother at an early age?" Mike, on the other hand, is not willing to buy into
those beliefs, and once he gets back on his feet and realizes he is money in his
own way, he becomes quite an appealing (dare I say sexy?) guy. But Mike's
realization is a long time coming, and the bulk of Swingers' narrative focuses on
the exploits of these friends - all aspiring actors or entertainers of some kind
- as they make their way through the L.A. party scene, which includes the
subculture of 1940s-style swing clubs and lounges. The well-crafted script
(written in two weeks by Favreau for his actor friends) and slick visuals pay
homage to swingers both past and present: from the Rat Pack of the 1960s and
films like Ocean's Eleven to the current prince of pastiche Quentin Tarantino and
Reservoir Dogs. Prefacing a tribute to a particularly iconic Reservoir Dogs
sequence is this tongue-in-cheek comment about contemporary filmmakers: "Everyone
steals everything from everybody." But viewers will be pleasantly surprised to
see something rare in this film, which is the way that Mike's character
experiences his romantic suffering. Rather than take it on the chin, Mike wallows
in it, managing to retain viewer sympathy despite some very ill-advised dating
decisions that involve the basic standards and practices for calling a woman.
There's no question that Mike's the underdog here, and I found myself rooting for
him throughout the film. Swingers gets off to a slightly irritating start but
segues smoothly into a series of comical and bittersweet plot developments.
Favreau himself is no stranger to uphill battles; shedding 90 pounds prior to
this film, he liberated himself as an actor from "fat kid" roles such as his
appearance in Rudy. Weight issues aside, actor-screenwriter Favreau and director
Liman demonstrate with Swingers that they're definitely "money."
(11/1/96)
3.5
stars (A.M.)
Dobie
D: Danny Boyle; with Ewan
McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Jonny Lee Miller, Kevin McKidd, Robert Carlyle, Kelly
Macdonald.
(R, 94 min.)
Two young men are hurtling down a street as Iggy Pop's
incantatory ode to survival, "Lust for Life," blasts through the theatre's
speakers. Concurrently, a voiceover, with a thick Scottish accent, sardonically
disembowels society's empty exhortation to "choose life." Trainspotting is a
modern-day movie about the experiences of some unrepentant Scottish junkies, yet
in its opening moments, Trainspotting spiritually resembles nothing so much as
the Beatles' careening burst of adrenaline-charged "devil-may-care" in their
introductory movies, A Hard Day's Night and Help! Hardly cute and cuddly moptops,
these Trainspotting rogues are, nevertheless, driven by similarly simplistic
formulas. In the movies, the Beatles race along trying to stay one step ahead of
crazed fans and other pursuers; action for the Trainspotting crew is solely
motivated by the need to fix and score. Instead of the social-realism approach
taken by most movies dealing with drug subcultures, Trainspotting observes its
subjects with a mordant eye - an inclusive perspective that permits humor,
exhilaration, wit, and hyperbole to mingle with stark realism and dingy morality.
Some have (falsely) interpreted this stance as a dangerous glorification of
heroin, but Trainspotting really remains neutral on the subject. Heroin, with its
pitfalls and pleasures, is merely a fact of life, and so are the subcultures and
lifestyles it generates. The movie does not ignore the drug's harrows, but
neither does it deny heroin's intractable lure and efficacy. In fact, the movie's
most pathologically violent and twisted character is an alcoholic who never
touches heroin. Trainspotting plainly includes various heroin-related tragedies
such as AIDS, crib death, and personal betrayal, but it also resorts frequently
to humor and exaggeration in order to drive home other points. (The most obvious
example of this is the scene in which a character swims into the most disgusting
toilet/cesspool of feces in order to retrieve a couple of heroin suppositories he
unwittingly excreted, thereby showing in an astonishingly vivid, surreal, and
unforgettable manner the literal depths to which one can sink in the quest to
score.) The same Scottish team (director Danny Boyle, producer Andrew Macdonald,
screenwriter John Hodge, and actor Ewan McGregor) responsible for 1994's surprise
low-budget hit Shallow Grave reunite here for Trainspotting despite serious
wooing and many lucrative proposals from Hollywood financiers. Also retained for
this sophomore effort are many of the same crew members who worked on Shallow
Grave. Additionally, Irvine Walsh, the author of the novel on which Trainspotting
is based, appears as a drug dealer toward the end of the movie. At times, the
Scottish accents seem difficult for Americans to penetrate, and the characters'
dexterous use of slang and subculture references do not make things any easier.
Yet the ear, if permitted, adapts quickly to the foreign cadences, and though
some of the specifics and nuances may pass unclarified, isn't that the way of all
subculture lingo? The on-target performances, along with the unceasing barrage of
popular music and daring narrative gambles, combine to make Trainspotting one of
the grand movie rushes of 1996.
(8/2/96)
4.0
stars (M.B.)
Dobie
D: Lee Skaife, Loch Phillipps; with Craig Addams,
Ben Phillipps, Conrad Aderer, Paul Williams, Lucy Snowe, Aaron Alpern.
(Not Rated, 100 min.)
While Pharmaco may have indirectly funded
Robert Rodriguez's first film, co-directors Lee Skaife and Loch Phillipps take
the scenario one step further by making a drug research lab both the setting and
supporting actor in their film Use Your Head: The Greatest Hits of a Drug Study.
Based on the writings of John Huss and director Phillipps, Use Your Head focuses
on the interactions among three pairs of participants in a 10-week-long,
government-sponsored drug study investigating the combined effects of marijuana
and alcohol use. One night a week these human lab rats come together for hits and
humor, making observations laced as much with pot as with their own tweaked takes
on life. But these characters seem pretty "normal," all things considered. They
just have the time (and the drugs) to say the things that most people don't have
the energy to process, let alone remember. The film meanders among Moss
(Phillipps, brother of co-director Loch) and Kellen (Addams), two friends who
decide to do the study together; Conrad (Aderer) and Dave (Williams), two
diametrically - and philosophically - opposed participants; and Sara (Snowe) and
Duncan (Alpern), who both could use a little loosening up. For all of its
uninhibitedness and lack of structure, Use Your Head does attempt to develop the
relationships among the six characters. Where it succeeds best, though, is in its
humor, which mines the "little" moments in life - such as buying condoms at the
corner convenience store - for some stranger-than-fiction guffaws. Although the
film's momentum runs a bit ragged by the end, Use Your Head is fairly consistent
in delivering hilarious scenarios with poker-faced sincerity. Watching Dave act
out "If Men Got Their Periods" is worth the price of a box of tampons, at least.
A film that had a lot of people buzzing at its world premiere during last year's
SXSW film festival, Use Your Head seems destined for cult status no matter how
drug-free the country becomes.
(2/14/97)
2.5
stars (A.M.)
Dobie
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