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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.), Marc Savlov (M.S.), Russell Smith (R.S.).
| 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 |
D: Paul Verhoeven; with Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Dina Meyer. (R, 125 min.)
How would mankind respond to an invasion of giant extraterrestrial insects who can travel interstellar space and annihilate millions with blasts of nuclear plasma from their butts? Starship Troopers, a classic summer blockbuster inexplicably displaced to mid-autumn, answers this timeless question with goofy charm, high camp flamboyance, and unwavering faith that nothing succeeds like excess. And of course, when the game is excess, the first name that pops to mind is Paul Verhoeven (Basic Instinct, Total Recall). Using Robert Heinlein's more subtle novel as only a general reference point, Verhoeven and screenwriter Edward Neumeier revisit the formula that worked so well for them in 1987's Robocop: wall to wall blood 'n' guts laced with surprisingly keen social satire, much of it targeting the fatuousness of media culture. Crass sexual exploitation? Natch, especially given the opportunities provided by a cast of sleek young actors and actresses playing the starship pilots and infantrymen who battle the alien creepy crawlies. Howard Sternesque single-entendre humor, coed military showers, and battlefield sex all remind us that this is, in fact, the work of Showgirls' mastur-mind, though in this adolescent context, Verhoeven's trademark salaciousness seems perfectly apropos. Leading the warriors into the fray is Johnny Rico (Van Dien), a fair-haired, brutally cheekboned young action hero sired by John Milius and Leni Riefenstahl. Savoring this cast's energetically mediocre acting is great fun in a Melrose Place sort of way, and the abundance of camp classic dialogue rivals even the aforementioned Showgirls ("The goddamn bugs whacked us, Johnny!"; "You're some kind of a fat, smart bug, aren't you?"). The lethal beasties, ranging from ottoman-sized thrips to gargantuan beetles and slugs to shrieking swarms of razor-jawed "arachnids" are masterfully rendered and animated by Amalgamated Dynamics. Insectophobes in the audience should count on spending the night fully clothed in bed with a can of Black Flag on the nightstand. And those bugs certainly blow up good, erupting in copious showers of carapace fragments and lava lamp-hued bug juice during the series of wildly entertaining battle scenes that bring the story to a breathless close. (Note: we're talking unprecedented levels of gore here; when it comes to biting off heads, sucking brains and ripping entrails, Verhoeven's rapacious critters obliterate all previous movie-monster benchmarks.) As noted, Starship Troopers is built to summer movie specs and it's by those standards it should be judged. This means the pertinent qualities we're looking for are a special effects budget that would shame the Pentagon, cataclysmic violence, high levels of ambient horniness, and total lack of pretense to any goal higher than pure, mindless fun. Starship Troopers delivers all of these goods in spades, making it my pick for the belated summer smash of the year. (11/7/97)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock
D: Jim Jarmusch; with Neil Young, Billy Talbot, Poncho Sampedro, Ralph Molina. (R, 107 min.)
It's been nearly three decades since Neil Young and Crazy Horse's first album, Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere, came out, and that quintessentially American, purebred rock & roll band is still deep in the trenches, slogging through tour after tour and producing some of the most enviably balls-out music anyone's ever heard. Jarmusch's documentary on the Horse's 1996 tour is more of a historical marker than an actual history of the band, and as such it's of most relevance to the group's fans. Jarmusch, for whatever reason, doesn't dig too deep into Neil Young's checkered past -- the deaths of past members are mentioned in passing, and Crazy Horse's various problems with substance abuse and the like are brought up only once -- but despite that, or perhaps because of it, Year of the Horse is a hell of a film; it cuts right to the savage heart of it all, thrusting the music center stage and leaving the rumors and anecdotes (most of them, anyway) to the biographers. That's as it should be. Neil Young and Crazy Horse have always been first and foremost about rock & roll, from Rust Never Sleeps to Cinnamon Girl, and Jarmusch gives us huge, unedited slices of the band's powerhouse rock; there are no short Crazy Horse songs. Shot in a combination of Super-8, 16mm, and Hi-8 video, the film deftly captures the chaotic, dangerous, ready-to-implode live vibe of the band on stage. Young, looking for all the world like the haggard godfather of grunge, his thinning hair waving in the breeze from stage fans, keeps himself center stage, punching out chords on "old black" and grinning at his bandmates. There's something magical about the combination of musicians that make up Crazy Horse (their sound, like some gargantuan, lumbering freight train rolling over sleepy, dreamswept hills, is utterly unlike anything else), and Jarmusch ably captures the essence of that magic in his live concert footage, although his attempts to draw the band out in backstage interviews are less that satisfactory. Still, trying to define what makes the band function the way it does may be a task on par with defining the universe. It's enough that it works at all, so perhaps its best not to push the issue. Fans of Neil Young and Crazy Horse will doubtless revel in these lengthy concert scenes, and although occasionally the band's songs wander off into what appear to be impromptu jam sessions, Year of the Horse is never boring. Jarmusch himself prompts the most hilarious behind-the-scenes dialogue, as he explains the Old Testament to Neil Young, leading to a brief exchange concerning the vengeful nature of God, which Young then likens to being on the road. It's a funny, caustic, innocent moment sandwiched between some of the most crunchy, shattering rock & roll I've ever heard, and sitting there on the tour bus, Young's drooping lizard eyes tell us he's already been there, done that, and lived to rock another day. (11/7/97)
Arbor, Dobie
D: Mel Smith; with Rowan Atkinson, Peter MacNicol, Andrew Leary, Pamela Reed, Harris Yulan, Burt Reynolds. (PG-13, 87 min.)
Mr. Bean, perhaps the most annoying British import yet, has arrived amidst much hullabaloo, though one hopes that Beanmania will be relegated rather quickly to passing fad status. As created by rubber-faced comic Atkinson (also of the British comedy shows The Black Adder and The Thin Blue Line), Mr. Bean is a bumbling child-man, forever placing himself and those around him in endless, hilarious jeopardy, and then somehow managing to survive until the next time. Atkinson, who looks a bit like a congested ferret, was restructuring his highly elastic facial muscles long before Jim Carrey came along and will more than likely be doing so well past Ace Ventura's final outing. Still, Mr. Bean is an acquired taste. There's something almost sinister in his indistinct baritone mumblings, and his eyes always appear to be straining to pop clear out of his head, like some postmortem Marty Feldman. This first big-screen Bean adventure (there's already talk of a sequel), however, takes the character out of his native Britain and places him squarely in the heart of Los Angeles, which may have seemed like a terrific idea at the time, but ends up forcing the filmmakers to ratchet up the Bean weirdness quotient far too high to compensate for L.A.'s standard level of the bizarre. It's too much, and the less-than-clever script -- essentially no more than a series of Bean television sketches strung together -- doesn't help matters any. The plot casts Mr. Bean as a hapless security guard who spends his time looking at paintings at the London National Art Gallery. His superiors, however, hate the fumbling goon so much that they send him to America to oversee the transfer of Whistler's Mother (yes, that Whistler's Mother) to the Grierson Gallery in Los Angeles, in the hopes of getting rid of the fellow permanently. The Grierson's curator, David Langley (MacNicol), assumes that Mr. Bean is an eccentric British genius, and invites him into his home and life. Naturally, both are reduced to shambles in record time, while Whistler's masterpiece is manhandled and eventually destroyed. Along the way, Bean somehow provides a series of life lessons for the overworked and underappreciated curator, and all's well that ends well, or something equally British like that. Atkinson's a pro at the character -- he mastered his Beanisms long ago, and all anyone else has to do is play straight man (or woman). It works, up to a point, but it's difficult not to grow restless after more than 30 minutes of Mr. Bean at a sitting. There are only so many pratfalls you can string together sans storyline and keep a ball like this rolling, and unfortunately, too many of Bean's schticks were old news by the time they first aired on PBS. (11/7/97)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock
D: Kasi Lemmons; with Samuel L. Jackson, Lynn Whitfield, Debbi Morgan, Diahann Carroll, Jurnee Smollet. (R, 107 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Samuel L. Jackson produced and costars in this Louisiana family drama that's told through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl. Actress Kasi Lemmons (best remembered as Jody Foster's roommate in The Silence of the Lambs) makes her directorial debut. ()
Arbor, Highland, Movies 12, Riverside, Westgate
D: Deepa Mehta; with Shabana Azmi, Nandita Das, Ranjit Chowdhry, Kulbushan Kharbanda, Jaaved Jaaferi, Kushal Rekhi. (Not Rated, 104 min.)
Fire is a hothouse family melodrama with radical social underpinnings. Set in a New Delhi middle-class home, this film by Canadian-Indian filmmaker Deepa Mehta is spoken in English though filmed in India. Within a tradition-bound society, Fire depicts two women's discovery of lesbian desire and self-expression, freedoms that directly challenge the social order and the conventional family unit. Following an arranged marriage, Sita (Das) joins the extended family of her new husband Jatin (Jaaferi), a household that includes his brother Ashok (Kjarbanda) and his wife Radha (Azmi, a pre-eminent Bollywood film star), their aged mother (Rekhi), and their houseboy Mundu (Chowdhry). This tale of two marriages details the emotional and sexual neglect experienced by the two sisters-in-law. The lovelessness of Sita and Jatin's arranged marriage is established from the get-go, as Jatin clearly prefers the company of his vivacious, Westernized girlfriend from China who wants nothing to do with marrying into the repressive Hindu family unit. Radha and Ashok's longtime marriage suffers from their inability to conceive a child and Ashok's consequent devotion to a religious swami who teaches marital celibacy. It's within this confined world of ritual practices and social customs that the two neglected wives find companionship and sexual comfort in each other's arms. Sita is the bolder one, Radha proceeds more cautiously; but yet, the outcome is inevitable: Their defiance uproots the family structure and threatens the religious beliefs that govern their lives. Fire is an odd amalgam of Western subject matter about sexual role-playing and social stratification and the floridly elaborate traditions of the Indian cinema (the most productive national cinema in the world) that largely relegates women to sexual objects in a host of lurid yet oddly chaste films in a variety of styles. In fact, one of the issues raised by the film is that the Hindi language has no official word to describe what the two women are doing. Fire's flat-out depiction of average middle-class existence in New Delhi is eye-opening; the inherent implausibility of the story's incendiary melodrama can be traced to the country's highly stylized film traditions. Still, for a film with such volatile subject matter, the performances are subdued and naturalistic. Fire burns with a rare flame. (11/7/97)
Texas Union
D: Carlos Saura; with Paco de Lucia, Manolo Sanlucar, Lole y Manuel, Joaquin Cortes, Farruco, Farruqito, Mario Maya. (R, 112 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Spanish filmmaker Carlos Saura (Carmen, Blood Wedding) takes stock of the art of flamenco dance and song by showcasing hundreds of performers who all swirl past the lens of ace cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, a three-time Oscar winner (Apocalypse Now, Reds, The Last Emperor). (10/31/97)
Village
D: Costa-Gavras; with Dustin Hoffman, John Travolta, Alan Alda, Mia Kirshner, Ted Levine, Robert Prosky, Blythe Danner. (PG-13, 110 min.)
It's easy to imagine the pitch meeting for Mad City: Oh, it's a cross between Dog Day Afternoon and Network. The only thing the pitchers forgot to mention was that Mad City lacked the passionate action of the former and the satiric edge of the latter, leaving their film a rote and non-too-penetrating morality tale about the crass underbelly of the TV news biz. As delivered by the politically inclined international filmmaker Costa-Gavras (Z, The Music Box), Mad City's oversimplification of the ethical issues is bound to annoy those with any first-hand knowledge of the news dissemination process and disappoint others who've come for the promise of a city whipped into a "mad as hell" frenzy. Travolta plays the confused, laid-off museum security guard Sam Baily, who wants nothing more than reinstatement in his old minimum-wage job. Much like his spiritual namesake George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, Sam is this story's Everyman, the centerpiece without whom all the other characters' lives would be different. He's a dim but likable working stiff with a gun, the most baffled schlub caught in a crisis that escalates beyond his control since John Cazale's ill-equipped bank robber in Dog Day Afternoon. Hoffman plays news shark Max Brackett, a network reporter banished to the sticks for a national on-air indiscretion, who chances onto Sam's drama while covering a fluff story about the museum's financial downturn. Max correctly recognizes the story's potential to launch him back up the career ladder, especially if sweetened and manipulated by his savvy storytelling and image-shaping techniques. He goes about molding the clueless Sam into a "poster boy for the disenfranchised," all the while serving his own best interests instead of Sam's. Mad City is populated with a supporting cast of stock characters: Alan Alda's vainly omnipotent network news anchor, Robert Prosky's crusty local news editor, Blythe Danner's patrician museum executive, Mia Kirshner's wide-eyed intern, and so on. The fact that the museum is host to a group of schoolchildren when Sam inadvertently takes the place hostage adds ready-made emotionality to the story and provides Travolta with the opportunity to cavort charmingly with kids for a couple of scenes. For their part, Travolta and Hoffman both turn in solid work and watching these actors go through this strange pas de deux is the only aspect of the film that remains engaging. Mad City is destined to remain a blip on the map. (11/7/97)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Movies 12, Riverside, Roundrock
D: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne; with Jérémie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Assita Ouedraogo, Rasmané Ouedraogo. (R, 97 min.)
Which of our traits are socially ingrained and which are genetically imbued? And what about morality, that most personal of all characteristics? How is it acquired, adapted, shed, and reconfigured? The Belgian film La Promesse, by the brothers Dardenne, presents an opportunity to observe these issues up-close while presenting the story of 15-year-old Igor (Renier), a boy facing an unexpected moral quandary. He's caught between obedience to his single-parent father Roger (Gourmet) and a nagging inkling that what his father is asking him to do is morally suspect. His father's law is the only rule he knows, yet an unforeseeable accident sets in motion a whole series of events that causes Igor to question his father's absolute authority. Roger's livelihood comes from trafficking in illegal aliens, whom he provides with doctored papers, subsistence shelter, and off-the-books employment in exchange for hefty cash fees and other forms of human barter. Roger is training Igor to follow in his footsteps, an apprenticeship that involves forgery, deception, and petty thievery, and is predicated on the exploitation of foreigners and other strangers. At 15, Igor is stumbling through the vague twilight years between childhood and adulthood. He works daily for his father instead of attending school, but most of all wishes to spend time working on his go-kart and playing with other boys his age. And although Roger's tyranny of the boy borders on the abusive, it is also clear that feels sympathy and tenderness for his son. Then one day during a police raid, one of the illegal workers falls to his death and Igor finds himself torn between his instinct to report the accident to the police and his father's insistence on hiding the evidence. The dilemma is complicated by the growing compassion Igor discovers for the worker's wife Assita (Assita Ouedraogo) and her young baby. Assita is a self-assured immigrant from Burkina Faso, someone whose otherness is starkly apparent to Igor. But as he comes to witness the emotional brutality of the situation in which she finds herself, Igor comes to realize that father may not always know best. The film's staging of the final father-son confrontation puts a successfully memorable spin on an age-old dramatic conflict. The film's tightly framed and often hand-held camerawork keeps the story's focus on Igor's point of view. La Promesse is a penetrating coming-of-age story, one that argues that adulthood begins with the emergence of moral convictions. (11/7/97)
Village
D: Jeb Stuart; with Dennis Quaid, Danny Glover, Jared Leto, F. Lee Ermey. (R, 120 min.)
Funny what a difference 17 years can make. In 1980, novice screenwriter Jeb Stuart drafted a script about a serial killer, entitled Going West in America, that got Hollywood all hot and bothered. Although unproduced at the time, the draft screenplay opened the door for Stuart, who went on to script Die Hard, The Fugitive, and other high-profile thrillers and action films. With these kinds of writing credits under his belt, you'd think that Stuart's first script effort -- and now his directorial debut -- might prove to be something mildly interesting, if not downright captivating. Unfortunately, that's rarely the case, largely because the serial killer angle in SwitchBack (the ill-conceived retitling of Going West in America) seems dated, almost passé in the wake of films such as The Silence of the Lambs and Seven. (The irony is that under contemporary standards, the script comes off as less-than-original, even derivative.) Granted, the intertwined storylines of the killer's murderous rampage and the kidnapping of a FBI agent's young son starts off as an intriguing narrative conceit, but even with its twists and turns, SwitchBack can't sustain what the genre requires, even up to its snowy climax on a train in the Colorado mountains. The acting is decent, with Glover and Ermey seemingly enjoying themselves as a former railroadman and an Amarillo lawman, respectively. (Quaid, on the other hand, is pretty grim throughout -- no alligator grin here.) Knowing the torturous history of SwitchBack, you feel somewhat badly for Stuart and the others involved in the film because it's such an earnest effort. It all comes down to being a case of the wrong place, the wrong time. (11/7/97)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside
D: Guy Ferland; with Kevin Bacon, Brad Renfro, Maximilian Schell, Calista Flockhart. (PG-13, 101 min.)
The arrival of this subtle, endearing, emotionally nuanced film is a blessing for movie fans but a loss for the American slang lexicon. No longer can we say, for example, "I can't stand to be in the same room with that guy; he's just so Joe Eszterhas" and be absolutely sure we've used an exact synonym for "loathsome, maggot-brained perv." A display of disciplined, humane talent from Mr. Jade himself? The pud-stroking hack responsible for Showgirls, Sliver, and Basic Instinct? Believe it. With help from talented young director Ferland and a sublime performance from Kevin Bacon, Eszterhas has created a gentle and affecting ode to universal growing-up conflicts within a beautifully rendered evocation of a specific time and place. Bacon stars as Billy Magic, a well-traveled disc jockey who in 1960 takes over the featured rock & roll show at a station located in the less than prestigious Cleveland market. Leering, chain-smoking Billy is effortlessly cool and his playlist is a roots rock aficionado's wet dream, but something about his manner suggests a man with as much guile and raw appetite as soul. Shortly after rolling into town in his red Caddy convertible, he hires a shy young immigrant kid named Karchy Jonas (Renfro) as his assistant. Karchy, an anonymous outsider at his rich-kid school, finds the job much to his liking with its lavish pay, short hours, and opportunities to bask in Magic's aura of mega-coolness. There's a hitch, though: It turns out Karchy's main function is to serve as a bagman for payola flowing between record promoters and his boss. It's wrong, of course, but Karchy can't help wondering whether the good results, including the ability to help his poor, rigorously honest father (Schell), don't outweigh the negatives of the pissant offense. And so he faces one of youth's central dilemmas: how seriously to take the truth-as-ultimate-good homilies laid down by one's elders, especially in the face of massive evidence suggesting that lies are the grease that keep civilization's gears turning? Bacon, with his oily hair, gaunt face, and crooked smile that identifies him as one of the lucky few who gets life's joke, is an overwhelming force calling Karchy to cross over to The Gray Side. Influences on the other side are his Old World, old-school dad and Diney (Flockhart, from the Ally McBeal TV show), a sympathetic older girl who recognizes the delicate cusp he's riding. And that's your story. No breasts, no blood, no Nazi beasts. Just consistently fine acting, adroit and assured directing and, yes, pitch-perfect writing by an artist with much to prove and the real (if underused) talent to do it. Rusty says check it out. (11/7/97)
Arbor
D: Agnieszka Holland; with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Maggie Smith, Albert Finney, Ben Chaplin. (PG, 115 min.)
One reason Henry James is such a hot movie property these days is the relevance of one of his dominant themes -- money's ability to mock and compromise our dearest ideals and illusions -- to our era of soulless rock & roll capitalism. Washington Square is one of the most "modern" works in the Jamesian oeuvre, owing to its dark comic shadings and the scabrous cynicism lurking beneath the author's elegant prose. Like many of his works (Daisy Miller, The Wings of the Dove) its protagonist is a young woman facing a conflict between the sophisticated, power-driven world around her and the simple truth and goodness her heart desires. Catherine Sloper (Leigh) is a rich but homely heiress being courted by a sweet, floridly earnest hunk named Morris Townsend (Chaplin). The gawky Catherine is practically floating in his pheromonal wake, but not her father (Finney), who regards the penniless smoothie as a no-account gigolo. Catherine's Aunt Lavinia (Smith) is the go-between among all three. Though nominally on her niece's side, wily Lavinia also seems to be pursuing her own personal agenda. As with so many of these revered 19th-century mahst'pieces, the story's particulars are straightforward soap opera. Their enduring power is supplied by the rich subtlety of the omniscient author's commentary. Director Holland (Olivier Olivier, The Secret Garden) is a fine writer herself, and she goes to great lengths to assure that James' worldly sensibility and brilliant dialogue are preserved. Chaplin and the redoubtable Smith are especially delicious in their face-to-face exchanges. A clever pair whose fortunes are contingent upon others, they recognize this quality in each other, yet acknowledge it only in the most slyly oblique manner. Finney is likewise terrific as Dr. Austin Sloper, a despicable man who nevertheless has a troubling charm and magnetism -- troubling because these qualities proceed from his ease with life's harsh, Darwinistic nature. But Catherine, the only innocent of the lot, is the key character here. For this movie to work, Leigh has to nail down each step in the naïf's progress toward full emotional autonomy. Unfortunately, as she's wont to do, Leigh uses a 30-pound sledge to drive those nails, especially in the early scenes when she turns Catherine into a blinking, twitching, pratfalling spaz, not the pained introvert James had in mind. The critical piling-on of Leigh (who's now getting hammered for the very same traits that once drew delirious praise) may seem unfair, yet Washington Square is a perfect example of the drawbacks inherent in her approach. When a key character's artlessness and lack of self-awareness are defining traits, it's hard to imagine a casting decision more disastrous than having her played by someone as helplessly and compulsively self-conscious as Jennifer Jason Leigh. (11/7/97)
Arbor
D: Wolfgang Peterson; with Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, Wendy Crewson, Paul Guilfoyle, William H. Macy, Liesel Matthews, Dean Stockwell, Xander Berkeley, Glenn Close. (R, 125 min.)
Another day, another summer blockbuster. Really, my ears are ringing and my head hurts and isn't it about time for a musical? Perhaps not. Perhaps just one more big shoot-'em-up, and then we can all go take a nap. Honestly though, Air Force One may be the best of the lot thus far, when it comes right down to it. Chock full of witty, honest dialogue, human beings as actors (as opposed to adenoidal cartoons), and a clever script that takes itself just seriously enough to warrant our attention, Peterson's film is an America-a-Go-Go version of Nightmare at 20,000 Feet. Tightly constructed and with precious little humor (thankfully, there are no winking asides to the audience, nor an overabundance of cocksure one-liners, à la Batman & Robin), Air Force One tells the story of American President James Marshall, a no-nonsense family man and ex-marine. While returning from Moscow one night, the legendary presidential bird is hijacked by Russian ultra-nationalists (led by Oldman) intent on securing the release of their leader, a captive of the current Russian regime. Problems galore for this president (you get the distinct feeling he's the sort of guy who could make Bill Clinton cry just by looking at him), including the fact that both his wife and young daughter are also on board, along with his chief of staff and various other cabinet members. The film quickly becomes a seek-and-destroy mission set on high, as President Marshall -- believed by the hijackers to have escaped -- stalks his captors and slowly turns the tide against all odds. This is the sort of film Howard Hawks would have had a ball with, but that said, Peterson (who directed one of the greatest anti-war war movies of all time -- Das Boot ) is no slouch. He knows damn well the audience isn't going to fall for that President Superguy crap anymore, and so he's taken great pains to ground the film in some sort of reality. He includes frequent cuts to the White House, where Vice President Bennett (Close) holds out against what appears to be a coup of sorts by over-zealous Defense Secretary Walter Dean (Stockwell) while also negotiating to save the lives of everyone aboard Air Force One. That's a tough job, made even more so by the fact the she's dealing with Gary Oldman who, I think we all realize by now, is probably a handful on his best days. Like the aircraft of its title, Peterson's film is a huge, loud beast of a film, filled with gunfire, explosions, and not a few tears. It's all grounded, however, in Ford's gritted-teeth performance as President Marshall. Ford is the closest thing to Gary Cooper we have these days, and he pulls it all off without making it (or us, by association) look ridiculous. Yes, Air Force One is another loud, chaotic summer blockbuster, but this time out, it's a loud, chaotic summer blockbuster for adults. And that's something Jerry Bruckheimer and his crew just don't seem to be able to do. (7/25/97)
Lakeline, Westgate
D: Paul Thomas Anderson; with Mark Wahlberg, Burt Reynolds, Julianne Moore, Don Cheadle, William H. Macy, Heather Graham, John C. Reilly, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ricky Jay, Nicole Ari Parker, Robert Ridgely, Luiz Guzman, Alfred Molina, Thomas Jane. (R, 147 min.)
From the second it begins, Boogie Nights seizes your senses and pulls you right in: no turning back, no time for debate, no regrets. You're in for the whole ride (and it's a long one at nearly two and a half hours), but you wouldn't dream of having it any other way. As the opening shot of Boogie Nights whooshes us into its disco world (much like the intoxicating long-take restaurant scene in GoodFellas), resistance proves futile. We hopelessly surrender to the dazzling neon and the propulsive music and the sight of Burt Reynolds giving the whole scene his thumbs up. Set during the waning years of the Seventies and the early Eighties, Boogie Nights focuses on a tight cluster of people who are involved in what is euphemistically called the adult film industry. It's a propitious moment for porn films: The late Seventies held out a small window of expectation that pornos were actually on the verge of becoming semi-respectable entertainment, a hope that was again shoved behind closed doors as the home video revolution of the early Eighties radically altered the industry's modus operandi. That's the cultural bedrock that grounds this period piece, a bedrock that includes wonderful attention to the period details of set design, costuming, music, and dialogue. Yet the movie is no socio-cultural abstract; Boogie Nights at heart is the story about a group of characters and the de facto family that emerges from their relationship. A stunning ensemble of actors is essential to creating this seamless world. As Jack Horner the porn director with artistic aspirations, Reynolds turns in the smoothest and most controlled performance of his career; Wahlberg, as the story's central figure, once again proves that he's more than just a billboard underwear jockey (and this story about the transformation of busboy Eddie Adams into self-invented porn superstar Dirk Diggler is only a jockstrap removed from the Marky Mark aka Mark Walhberg saga); Moore, Macy, Graham, Cheadle, Reilly, Hoffman, Ridgely, and Molina all should be singled out for their finely etched turns but to do so would come at the expense of so many others. Paul Thomas Anderson has managed to astonish the world with his sophomore effort. His debut film (the solid and stylish modern noir twister Hard Eight) gave little notice of the attention-grabber his follow-up would become. Anderson brings the right amount of humor, observational distance, and visual discretion to subject matter that most certainly would be instead easier to deal with in a salacious and voyeuristic manner. Anderson clearly invokes numerous films by such filmmakers as Scorsese and Altman as models for his multi-charactered subculture study. And it all works nearly perfectly for the first hour or so, but then some of the one-dimensionality of the characters and the schematic nature of the narrative become more evident. Each of the characters is given one or two bits of business that they carry with them from scene to scene, from year to year, but none of them ever expands much beyond these narrow parameters. A better model for Anderson might be something like Jonathan Demme's Citizens Band, a movie that puts the emphasis on the sense of community that's formed by characters existing on society's fringes rather than the fringe characters who evolve from the previously established communities in films such as Nashville and Mean Streets. And while Boogie Nights remains refreshingly nonjudgmental about its characters, an overly simplistic moralism nevertheless governs the story's overall path: Those who reach great heights must also experience great depths and the only thing that can save these individuals is their ultimate acceptance of the supremacy of "the family." Still, most of these hesitations are fodder for post-screening rumination. Boogie Nights will keep you going 'til morn. (10/31/97)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland
D: Robert Greenwald; with Russell Crowe, Salma Hayek. (R, 89 min.)
When you're in love, when you're really in love, head over heels deep into that slick red vein, there is nobody else around -- just you and her/him. Lovers exist in a protective bubble that renders them oblivious to the mundane goings-on that surround them. The same holds true for the dog end of relationships, those interpersonal implosions when all you want to do is go bang, but end up hitting your head against the same kitchen cabinets over and over and over. Greenwald's closed, two-character study of a relationship plummeting earthward is dead on target; you can hear the wind whistling between Steve (Crowe) and Monica (Hayek), and you know it's icy cold, though not from any absence of sparks. Michael Cristofer's screen adaptation of his stage play provides a darkly humorous glimpse into a place to which we've all -- however reluctantly -- been. The film is rich in both comic asides and scathing, emotional fisticuffs. Photographer Steve is a shallow semi-goon, pointedly unaware of how rewarding the two-year-long relationship with his schoolteacher better half is. He's looking at all the odd angles and seeing none of them, while Monica, for her part, is running smack dab into a brick wall every time she tries to sit down and talk about things with her beau. Cristofer has laced his script with so many scenes adapted from what must have been real-life breakups that watching the film gets to be, at times, a virtual tour of one's past. You may find yourself sitting there associating just a little too closely with various scenes and situations, and, depending on your current romantic compass, this can dramatically affect how you feel about Breaking Up as a whole. Crowe and Hayek are perfectly matched, though, there's no doubt about that. Her Latin fire and his flippant indifference to the obvious suggest a pairing that should have gone supernova some time ago. Crowe's performance here is much more subtle (and precarious) than his turn in L.A. Confidential; any more vacuously smarmy and he'd be teetering on the brink of John Cleese. In an effort to open up the inherent staginess of the material, director Greenwald employs any number of cinematic tricks to keep things from becoming too static -- freeze frames, Hi-8 videography, and bracketing asides to the audience all come into play. To what extent you can tolerate these unconventional tactics may depend on how traditional a filmgoer you are. Nevertheless, Breaking Up is powerful, catty stuff; it's as close to the real thing -- the humor and the horror -- as I'd like to get for some time. (10/17/97)
Village
D: Taylor Hackford; with Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, Jeffrey Jones, Judith Ivey, Craig T. Nelson. (R, 138 min.)
The Lawyer Joke, taken to its obvious conclusion... and at almost two-and-a-half hours it's a hell of a running gag. Devil's Advocate is such a bloated, gargantuan, and ultimately tasteless juggernaut of a film that it manages to achieve a righteously cheesy splendor; rarely do we actually encounter such a brazen example of the "so bad it's good" genre of filmmaking. By the penultimate scene (extremely satisfying though it may be), director Hackford has pulled out all of the stops far past their legal limits, and it's all you can do not to cackle. Now that's entertainment. Reeves is once again saddled with an unwieldy accent (Southern) and a shocking inability to act (genetic) in his role as Kevin Lomax, a hotshot prosecuting attorney from Gainesville, Florida, who accepts an offer from a shady New York law firm whose chief is played by Al Pacino. Although this obvious step up fails to elicit any hallelujahs from his Bible-thumping, chicken-picking mother (Ivey), Kevin's perky, eager-to-breed wife Mary Ann (Theron) takes to New York like a mallard to Central Park, at least initially. As her husband's new caseload increasingly grows morally abstruse, and his hours at the firm lengthen until he's hardly home at all -- and what a gorgeous home it is -- she finds herself sinking into a pit of loneliness and despair, unable to connect with her new, firm-associated girlfriends and unwilling to return to Florida without her better half in tow. For his part, Kevin might as well be wearing blinders -- this new outfit positively drips evil and you can hear the patter of concentrated nastiness that accompanies every triumphal courtroom win or rises every time a lustful harlot-cum-secretary eyes Kevin's innocent Southern mug. It's Pacino's game all the way, though, and as firm head John Milton (!), he allows the ghastly, reptilian charm to flow like a river wild. Never has Pacino been so gleefully out-of-control. He holds absolutely nothing back here, relishing every wicked line and lustily sucking the marrow out of every scene. It may be the wittiest depiction of the Father of Lies I've ever seen. Hackford inexpertly allows the film to drag until midway through, and then it suddenly begins firing on all cylinders amidst a river of gore and frightful shenanigans. Until that point, he seems to be striving mightily to emulate the more sublime, sustained suspense of Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, but he misses the mark again and again; Devil's Advocate is not a subtle beast by any stretch of the imagination. But when the film suddenly, unexpectedly kicks into high gear about midway through, it does so with crazed abandon, and Pacino's preening zest for his craft is a wonder to behold. It reaches up and out of the silly film it is confined within and grabs you and shakes you mercilessly, like a rag doll. Not since Scarface has the actor so clearly thrown himself, body and soul (or lack thereof), into a role. He's enjoying himself tremendously, and it shows. Devil's Advocate is a theological shipwreck of a film, ham-fisted and boorish at its best, but seeing Pacino leer and caper and set the holy water aboil in its fount is almost worth the price of Keanu. Almost. (10/17/97)
Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Westgate
D: Lee Tamahori; with Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Elle Macpherson, Harold Perrineau, L.Q. Jones. (R, 117 min.)
Here's yet another film that, dealt a seemingly unbeatable hand, somehow fails to take the pot. The Edge's four aces are director Tamahori (whose 1994 film Once Were Warriors was one of the most powerful and original films of the Nineties), magnetic co-leads Hopkins and Baldwin, and screenwriter David Mamet (whose tale of wilderness survival and sexual rivalry explores issues of primal, even mythical resonance). These men's artistic histories raise tantalizing expectations of deep-probing light being cast on dark, uncharted areas of the male psyche. It never really happens, though the setup is at least interesting enough to string you along for an hour or so. Hopkins plays Charles Morse, a billionaire whose business success is largely due to his freakish ability to retain facts gleaned from his nonstop reading. His fortune made, he's now free to join supermodel trophy wife Mickey (Macpherson) on a trip to Alaska, where she's shooting a fashion spread under the supervision of pretty-boy photographer Robert (Baldwin). Morose, insecure Charles suspects that Robert has already cuckolded him and is now plotting to murder him so the adulterous pair can live off the fat of his stock dividends. When a plane bearing the two men and Robert's photographic assistant Stephen (Perrineau) crashes in a remote Alaskan forest, the only question Charles has for the younger man is, "How do you plan to do it?" But as it happens, Charles' mental knick-knack collection includes a lot of very useful stuff about roughing it in the wild. The citified billionaire, energized by the first real trial-by-fire life has ever presented him, becomes the men's best hope for escape. So now, a new question enters this psychosexually charged relationship: Will Robert's desire to kill Charles prevail over his urge for self-preservation? Mysteriously, this dramatic powderkeg fails to ignite. For all of Tamahori's skill in visually implying an imminent eruption of primeval rage, Mamet seems oddly tentative as the climax approaches. Hopkins and Baldwin argue and posture like junior high boys, a grizzly bear devours Stephen, Hopkins does some slick, McGyverish tricks with safety pins and belt buckles, yet the story's central conflict languishes too long in the background. Is Mamet is trying to inject a bit of restraint into what threatens to be a heavyhanded Papa Hemingway yarn of macho validation? Could be. But a more likely theory is that Mamet's just a city guy with a much better feel for the dramatic potential of real estate offices and cop shops than The Edge's deep-woods, Mark Trail milieu. Neither Hopkins nor Baldwin can be faulted. Both explore and illuminate their half-realized characters as best they can, but creating any real power or suspense is just too big a bear to kill. Watch that mailbox, Dave, your subscription to American Outdoorsman is on its way. (9/26/97)
Gateway
D: Charles Sturridge; with Peter O'Toole, Harvey Keitel, Florence Hoath, Elizabeth Earl, Paul McGann. (PG, 99 min.)
In 1917, two English girls named Elsie Wright (Hoath) and Frances Griffiths (Earl) disappeared into a garden with a Midg lightweight camera borrowed from Elsie's dad. They returned with pictures that brought the spiritualist craze of the early century, mostly dormant throughout World War I, back to a full, roaring boil. In these snapshots, the little girls posed with a capering, prancing group of tiny creatures they blithely identified as their fairy companions. Photo experts checked in vain for evidence of fakery. Soon, a hoard of Fleet Street journalists, gawkers with butterfly nets, and celebrities -- including Harry Houdini (Keitel) and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (O'Toole) -- descended upon the country house to be close to the story that, as Doyle noted, bid fair to change our oldest assumptions about existence. Though hints of fakery later surfaced, the incident still poignantly illustrates humanity's yearning for transcendent mysteries and spiritual sustenance richer than the tepid corned beef hash of daily reality. Sturridge (Where Angels Fear to Tread, NBC's Gulliver's Travels) has to walk a fine line with this subject matter. To play up the hoax angle is to commit the cardinal kiddie-movie sin: failure to "believe in magic." Yet to ignore the element of doubt altogether is to deprive adults of the compelling dramatic conflict between Doyle's eloquent argument that reality doesn't stop at the boundaries of our five senses and the truth-shall-set-you-free philosophy espoused by Houdini. Although Ernie Contreras' intelligent script and the strong acting (especially by O'Toole, who pours all his vaunted passion and lucidity into the role of Doyle) saves Fairytale from the dreaded "interesting in a boring way" designation, I wouldn't call it essential viewing for anyone. Not for children, who'll love the enchantingly rendered fairies in their brief appearances but be bored by the endlessly ruminating adult characters. And probably not for grownups either; the history of spiritualism, theosophy, and the real-life encounters between Doyle and Houdini could be grist for several movies, but due to commercial and thematic constraints, Sturridge can only deal with them in passing. Still, there's a laudable blend of smartness, originality, and charm here. My hair-trigger schmaltz alarms lay mostly dormant. And the talented young Hoath's piercing, almost disturbingly wise gaze already shows more depth than that of ballyhooed actresses twice her age. If there's a precocious kid like her in your life, she might represent the ideal audience for Fairytale. Otherwise, go for the slam-dunk and rent Peter Pan, a timeless children's classic with enough adult resonance to have a major emotional disorder named in its honor. (10/24/97)
Gateway, Highland, Lakehills, Lakeline, Movies 12, Northcross
D: Peter Cattaneo; with Robert Carlyle, Mark Addy, Hugo Speer, Paul Barber, Steve Huison. (R, 90 min.)
Bountiful laughs and a subtle dose of consciousness-raising coexist easily in Peter Cattaneo's comedy about laid-off English steelworkers whose financial desperation leads them to form a Chippendales-knockoff strip act. The title translates roughly to "full frontal nudity," which is the hook these out-of-shape, rhythmically impaired males hope will inspire the womenfolk of Sheffield to show up for "Hot Steel"'s one-night-only gig. The ringleader of the group is Gaz (Carlyle, who played the hell-raising Begbie in Trainspotting), a divorced dad looking for a quick score to pay off his delinquent child support. The way he figures it, if a bunch of arse-wiggling "poofs" can drive women into frothing ecstasy and earn 10,000 pounds in a single night, why not a virile crew of steel-driving roughnecks straight outta the mills? As it turns out, the men of Hot Steel are far from cocky about how they'll look strutting around in red silk g-strings. Pudding-bellied Dave (Addy) is insecure about his weight and afraid his recent impotency will drive his wife to another man. Horse (Barber) lacks the anatomical bounty his nickname suggests and resorts in desperation to a mail-order enlargement device. Lomper (Huison) and Guy (Speer) both have the muscular definition of Gumbys -- though Guy at least fills out his bikini pouch impressively. As showtime nears, their performance anxiety grows geometrically, with some threatening to bail on their comrades and all recognizing for the first time how women must feel about having their bodies casually critiqued by men. Granted, this all sounds pretty broad, but the actual effect is far more tender and affecting than you'd expect. Once you've bought into the improbable premise, the particulars of the story -- the ridiculous early practices (a videotape of Flashdance serves as a technical reference), their children's embarrassment, the community's amusement and titillation -- all develop quite plausibly. This film bears some resemblance in setting and structure to the recent Brassed Off!, but any social-protest content in Cattaneo's movie is strictly implicit. He's much more interested in illuminating individual personality quirks than the pressing economic issues of the day. These modest ambitions, along with a generally predictable story, will keep the The Full Monty from ever attaining the critical regard of other English social comedies like I'm All Right, Jack, or even My Beautiful Laundrette. But by all means, see this movie anyway, because it's a rare comedy indeed that generates such a steady flow of hilarious scenes (including one in which the lads start unconsciously twitching and undulating to Donna Summer's "Hot Stuff" as they're standing in line to collect their dole) from such simple, sweet-natured premises. The Full Monty is feel-good comedy with none of the pejorative hints of innocuous blandness that term so often implies. (9/12/97)
Arbor, Highland, Lakehills, Village
D: David Fincher; with Michael Douglas, Sean Penn, James Rebhorn, Deborah Kara Unger, Peter Donat, Carroll Baker, Armin Mueller-Stahl. (R, 128 min.)
Shadows, fluorescent lighting, and David Fincher. The unholy trio. Fincher's first outing since the wildly popular Seven has echoes of everything from the cult TV show The Prisoner to various nods to Hitchcock, though it's certainly Fincher's game all the way. It also has wild plot holes and requires an almost inhuman suspension of disbelief, but it's still a fun ride up to a point. Douglas plays Nicholas Van Orton, a wealthy and ruthless San Francisco investment banker who is given a mysterious birthday gift by his black sheep brother Conrad (Penn). The gift in question is a ticket to a game created by a highbrow executive entertainment firm called Consumer Recreation Services. And the game in question? Well, no one seems to know. According to CRS pitchman Feingold (Rebhorn), Van Orton will not know when or where the game begins, or even what the objective is, or even if there is an objective. After undergoing rigorous psychiatric and physical testing, Van Orton nonetheless agrees, and the game, so to speak, is afoot. Van Orton soon finds his privacy intruded upon, his house broken into, his life repeatedly threatened, and his world literally turned upside down, and the hell of it all is that it looks as though he's being taken for a very dangerous ride. Is the game some high-priced scam to separate him from his money? Is his brother in on it? Are people actually being killed all around him? Are his life and mental well-being suddenly up for grabs to the highest bidder? Van Orton hasn't a clue, and neither does the audience. Fincher wisely keeps everyone and everything in the dark about what the real machinations here are, and though that may annoy some of the more literal-minded members of the viewing public, it does make for a terrific emotional roller coaster. The Game gives Douglas a much-needed venue to run the gamut of his acting abilities, everything from the vicious Wall Street-smarts of Gordon Gekko to the frantic panic of Basic Instinct is rehashed, and Douglas is clearly having a ball. Likewise his supporting cast, including Crash's Unger as a mysterious blond (everyone in The Game is mysterious, come to think of it), and Donat as Van Orton's lawyer. It's all a bit much after a while, and how much you enjoy The Game will depend on how much you enjoy shoddy, creaking carnival rides and Halloween haunted houses. There's no explanation -- certainly not a very satisfying one, at any rate -- given for the rules, or non-rules, of the game, and I have the feeling that a slightly more upbeat ending has been tacked on at short notice, but the effortless ease with which Fincher creates palpable disquiet and overwhelming anxiety is genuinely fun to watch. It's not for everyone and it doesn't make much sense when you stop to think about it, but it's still a lot more fun than Parcheesi. (9/12/97)
Great Hills, Lakeline
D: Andrew Niccol; with Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Alan Arkin, Jude Law, Loren Dean, Gore Vidal, Ernest Borgnine, Blair Underwood, Tony Shalhoub. (PG-13, 108 min.)
A striking debut from British director Niccol, Gattaca posits a not-too-distant future in which, thanks to the wonders of modern science, a person's genetic makeup is determined before birth. No diseases, no lazy eyes, no mediocrity, just faster, stronger, smarter all across the board -- except for the unlucky few whose parents choose to have them via natural births. These unfortunates are the "In-valids" and their lot in this brave new world is to act as the new underclass forced to roam from dead-end job to dead-end job, picking up the refuse left behind by their more perfect brethren. Vincent Freeman (Hawke) is one such person. As a child, he dreamed of becoming a space traveler and taking one of the daily Gattaca Corporation rockets to another world, but due to a congenital heart defect, it's a dream he will likely never achieve. Still, Vincent works, exercises, and studies day in and day out, and then one day he sees his opportunity in the form of Jerome Morrow (Law), an Olympic swimmer and almost-perfect specimen who's had to forego his career due to a broken back. Jerome and Vincent trade identities, causing Jerome to contribute the necessary daily samples of his self (hair, urine, dead skin particles, fingernail clippings) to help Vincent pass the rigorous testing. And it all goes swimmingly until Vincent's boss, the Gattaca flight director, is murdered and the police descend, searching for answers in literally every corner. Led by Detective Hugo (Arkin) and the mysterious Investigator (Dean), the team even searches the dust and discovers Vincent's eyelash, which places both him and Jerome in jeopardy. As if that weren't enough, Vincent finds himself falling in love with Irene (Thurman), another Gattaca employee, albeit one with a less-than-perfect constitution. Niccol's futuristic fable is a gorgeous construct, from its cast on down to the brilliant, clinical nature of the set design that reflects a future in which even a particle of saliva can be one's undoing. The world of the future is a sleek, quietly humming, extremely well-lubricated machine, full of electric cars and black suits with white shirts. Everything is painfully well-ordered. For once, Thurman's chilly visage serves her well: She's the female future perfect, all trim lines and pursed lips. Hawke is likewise well-cast, parlaying his all-American looks to good, "normal" advantage in a world where the term is an anachronism. It's Jude Law, as the handicapped, bitter Jerome, however, who represents the heart and (broken) backbone of Gattaca. He's the damaged proof that the system does not work, and as such he's Vincent's only hope, and only real friend. For all its genre-hopping (science fiction, mystery, love story, socio-political exploration), Gattaca never gets away from itself; it's firmly rooted in Hawke's masterful humanity, making this less a sci-fi epic than a simple (and simply wonderful) lesson in humanity and the direction in which one hopes it's not heading. (10/24/97)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Movies 12, Riverside, Roundrock
D: Jim Gillespie; with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Johnny Galecki, Bridgette Wilson, Anne Heche, Muse Watson. (R, 100 min.)
So Scream wasn't a fluke. Who'da thunk it? That film's screenwriter, Kevin Williamson, returns with yet another gory teen-trauma tale that both looks and feels ripped (sticky eviscera and all) from that much-beloved splatter movie boom of the early and mid Eighties. Taking its cue from such stalk 'n' slash low-budgeters as Happy Birthday to Me and Prom Night, I Know What You Did Last Summer slickly resurrects so many of the hallowed trappings of those films that it might as well be a long-lost cousin. Adapted from the Lois Duncan novel, the story revolves around a quartet of teens who one night find themselves on the running end of a deadly hit and run. While Julie (Hewitt) wants to call the police and report the accident immediately, the boorish, drunken jock Barry (Phillippe) convinces her and the other two passengers Helen (Gellar) and Ray (Prinze, Jr.) to dump the body in the nearby Atlantic. Barry's reasoning -- foggy at best -- is that the cops will smell the liquor reek all over the car and assume he was the one driving, thus sending him to jail and nixing his All-Star-Team dreams. Right. Cut to "one year later." All four of the friends have gone their separate ways, and all of them are shadowed by the dark cloud of guilt, when Julie receives an anonymous note bearing the titular inscription. Before long, the four are being viciously stalked by a guy who looks like the Gorton's Fisherman From Hell, which prompts the question: Is that a fish stick in your hand or are you just happy to kill me? From here, I Know What You Did Last Summer proceeds along a fairly predictable track, with minor and major characters alike turning up dead, deader, and deadest at every available opportunity. Heche makes a goofy yet disturbing cameo of sorts as a white-trash swamp mama, but this is not nearly as comically self-referential a piece of work as Williamson's Scream. Which isn't to say it's not scary as a sack full of Jesse Helms' nipples. It is. More so, even. Gillespie knows how to tighten the screws until it's all you can do to keep from gagging on the adrenaline. Rarely have I seen an audience do the old "leap 'n' shriek" so many times during the course of a single film. In unison, no less. Most of the splatter movies I remember -- even the ones I liked -- ended up looking stupid and mildly degrading once I breached puberty. I Know What You Did Last Summer is neither, and despite an inordinately complicated third-act resolution, it's head-and-shoulders above most so-called suspense films out there today. (10/17/97)
Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Westgate
D: Frank Oz; with Kevin Kline, Joan Cusack, Tom Selleck, Matt Dillon, Debbie Reynolds. (PG-13, 92 min.)
Anyone who claims to know the formula for movie comedy success is, almost by definition, a liar. But I'd venture that one element common to most great comic filmmaking is the exhilaration of watching order slowly and inexorably unravel. Grasping that principle is only half the battle, though. The other is making that descent into madness seem spontaneous, and this is where In & Out succeeds with a seat-of-the-pants audacity that makes it one of the year's funniest films to date. A dynamite cast certainly gives director Oz (Little Shop of Horrors, What About Bob?) a leg up on his competition but then, as Ready to Wear and Fierce Creatures remind us, great personnel guarantees nothing. The real electricity here emanates from a fresh, recklessly inventive script by Paul Rudnick (Jeffrey, Addams Family Values) and a performance by Kline which confirms his status as one of the more remarkable comic acting talents of his generation. Kline plays Howard Brackett, a small-town English teacher whose Oscar-winning former student (Dillon) lauds him on national TV as a brilliant teacher who happens to be homosexual. The only cloud hanging over this glorious moment in gay history is that Brackett not only professes to be 100% straight but is mere days away from wedding his longtime girlfriend, Emily (Cusack). No matter; the town is soon teeming with TV camera crews and journalists, the most obnoxious of whom is down-in-the-Nielsens gossip hound Pete Malloy (Selleck). Suddenly, everyone from Emily to Howard's students to his beer-drinking buddies starts finding deeper significance in the star teacher's "prissy" mannerisms, immaculate grooming, and Barbra Streisand fetish. Aghast, he responds with a rigorous program of masculine reprogramming, a wagon from which he repeatedly tumbles in a series of uproarious scenes that demonstrate Kline's stone genius for physical comedy. Cusack matches Kline's manic brilliance with an all-stops-out performance as the emotionally discombobulated fiancée. Watching her, pigface drunk and decked out in her wedding dress, roll around like a white organza dust kitten in a beer joint parking lot is, to invoke the timeless critical cliché, worth the price of admission. As in Jeffrey, Rudnick's approach to screenwriting is a bit gimmicky and built around hit-or-miss payoff moments. But with Kline, Cusack, Dillon, and Reynolds (as Howard's mom) all buying completely into his vision and embellishing it with their own instinctive flair, the duff scenes were far outnumbered by ones that had me on the verge of hyperventilation from laughter. True, many of the gags build upon classical gay stereotypes, but in context, they actually support a message of good-natured tolerance. Aspiring Republican politico Selleck even trashes his family-values capital by initiating one of the lustiest (and funniest) male-male kissing scenes in mainstream film history. My advice: Go; see; laugh yourself silly. Repeat. (9/19/97)
Alamo Drafthouse, Gateway, Lakeline, Lincoln, Movies 12, Westgate
D: Neil LaBute; with Aaron Eckhart, Stacy Edwards, Matt Malloy. (R, 93 min.)
It's possible that we may see no better movie this year than Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men. As disturbing as it is well-made, this low-budget indie is a thoroughly original piece of work. It's a dark, incisive, and funny drama about contemptible behavior, behavior that is so amoral, so despicable, so capricious, and so ordinary that we can't help but recognize its human dimension. It's an evil that's bred in the bone -- this desire to control and to hurt others either for the sheer hell of doing it, or as some kind of displaced payback for perceived injustices -- but it's also an evil that's bred in our culture and is embedded in the corporate work structure. In the Company of Men illustrates and dissects that behavior with the methodological precision of a criminal pathologist. Chad (Eckhart) and Howard (Malloy) are two mid-level corporate managers sent out of town on a six-week assignment. At the outset, Chad proposes a vicious plan, to which Howard readily consents, for the two men to target a susceptible woman for emotional abuse and then hightail it out of town, with the payoff being that they will be able to look back and laugh about it until they are very old men. Christine (Edwards), a deaf temp in the typing pool, becomes their unwitting target. Not 'til near the end of the movie do we discover that the scheme involves more victims than merely Christine. But it also makes clear that the venom fueling the plot is an evil that can't be reduced to simple misogyny or hatred of the handicapped. The film shows us a poison that's sprayed with indiscriminate abandon when some perversion of the survival instinct reacts to all human contact as a threat. What's truly rare about In the Company of Men is the way in which it encourages us to find the likable qualities of these loathsome characters and then refuses to settle the dramatic score by imposing some moral retribution. It requires viewers to make their own peace with the horrors just witnessed (something that may lead some viewers, at least at first glance, to confuse the messengers with the message, but it should soon become apparent even to these viewers that hateful characters in a work of fiction do not automatically serve as proselytizers or recruiting agents). The pared-down visual style of In the Company of Men also perfectly complements the movie's narrative and emotional economy. Shot on a shoestring budget in 11 days in the director's hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, the film's locations all exude the anonymity of Anywhere, USA: airports, hotels, and the stripped-down shell of an office that's in a state of perpetual renovation. So too, Chad and Howard speak so much of the time in a kind of corporate blather, which has the effect of shuffling words around the officeplace in the same rote manner that one shuffles papers around a desk. In the Company of Men's language and its delivery are a very real pleasure to experience, an aspect that's made all the more pointed because of Christine's hearing impairment. Its deftness with language is also a testament to the skill of the actors and the good training of LaBute's background as a playwright. LaBute, however, also seemed to know exactly what he wanted to accomplish once he got a camera in his hands. The visual structure of In the Company of Men is an organic whole, with thoughtfully composed shots and tableaux functioning as the story's backbone. There is absolutely nothing extraneous in LaBute's movie -- one of those lovely confluences of artistic vision and budgetary restrictions. For LaBute, the balancing act seems to have been just one more sprint down the Morality Mile. (9/5/97)
Dobie
D: Gary Fleder; with Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Cary Elwes, Tony Goldwyn. (R, 117 min.)
In the dank basements of our subconscious minds, most of us harbor a creature from a Roy Tompkins cartoon: a bug-eyed, projectile-sweating perv with a voyeuristic lust for "forbidden" images and thrills. It's this monster from the id that drives the newish film category -- first codified in Michael Mann's Manhunter (1986) -- which cross-pollinates the horror and noir crime-drama genres to offer viewers both the raw, reptile brain rush of the former and the artistic legitimacy conferred by the latter's high-style presentation. Kiss the Girls director Gary Fleder (Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead) even ups the respectability quotient by featuring a strong, nobody's-victim female character (Judd), who escapes a deranged criminal's clutches and helps a police psychologist (Freeman) track him down. Judd's role certainly flouts the genre tradition of helpless women being terrorized and slaughtered for the audience's delectation, but at bottom this story is still pretty boilerplate stuff. A suave and courtly psychotic, who calls himself Casanova, kidnaps attractive young women and imprisons them in a dungeonlike lair where they must either participate in his Arabian Nights harem fantasies or suffer grisly consequences. Judd, placing herself at risk, aids the investigation by providing insight into Casanova's twisted mind. As with Seven, Jennifer 8, Manhunter, and (by far the best of the lot) The Silence of the Lambs, sensory overstimulation heightens our gut response to the horrific subject matter. The now familiar spasmodic hand-panning, indigo-drenched frames, and drastically under- and overlit interiors are all here. It's diverting enough, and intermittently suspenseful, but also strangely empty and decadent in a way that truly merits that overused term. Basically, the problem I have with these films is that they inspire an esthetic, rather than moral, intellectual, or even visceral response to evil. Without the warm, richly human presences of Freeman and Judd, Kiss the Girls would be a wholly repellent movie. By the way, while I'm holding forth here, it is too much to ask that stylistic concerns be set aside now and then when they clash too jarringly with reality? For example, when a woman knows she has a prowler in the house, wouldn't common sense dictate that she turn the light on, even at the expense of some of the production designer's exquisitely crafted mood? But then, in films so utterly defined by style, that would be like expecting to get through a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced film without seeing any helicopters explode. (10/3/97)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Movies 12, Roundrock
D: Curtis Hanson; with Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito. (R, 138 min.)
Kudos to director Curtis Hanson and co-screenwriter Brian Helgeland for whipping James Ellroy's seminal novel of 1950s Los Angeles police corruption and noir sexuality into recognizable shape for this distinguished film adaptation. Ellroy's original manuscript fell under the heading of "epic." With over 100 distinct characters and nearly that many plot twists, it was long considered unfilmable and it languished in development hell for years, nevertheless remaining one of the hottest unproduced properties around. Now it's here, finally, and well worth the wait. Spacey plays a smooth-talking LAPD detective named Vincennes, who moonlights as technical adviser on a high-rated TV cop show; as such, he's looked up to by the regular Joes on the beat, although some police officers resent his penchant for working celebrity busts alongside Sid Hudgens (DeVito), the smarmy editor of Hush-Hush magazine, a seamy Hollywood scandal sheet. Together with the straitlaced, rising LAPD star Ed Exley (Pearce) and the violent, emotionally confused detective Bud White (Crowe), Vincennes falls prey to a series of internal police scandals revolving around a recent massacre at the aptly named Night Owl Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard. As the body count mounts and the internal affairs intrigue spirals out of control, this trio of good cops/bad cops furiously works to cover its collective ass before the perilous house of cards that is the 1950s LAPD collapses atop them. You come away from the film with the distinct feeling that it should have been shot in high-contrast black-and-white; echoes of classic film noir crop up in almost every scene, but cinematographer Dante Spinotti's (Heat, Last of the Mohicans) lush colors and steamy atmosphere more than make up for that. Like the best dirty cop procedurals of the past, L.A. Confidential chugs along like an approaching thunderstorm, ratcheting up the dirty dealings and hazy suspense at an alarming rate until the final, hideous confrontation. Just when it seems things can't possibly get any worse for the fallen angels in blue, things do, and the film jacks itself up to another brutal level. Full of period locations, costumes, and one very clever Lana Turner gag, it's easy to see why Ellroy is so pleased with the film. It's tough enough adapting run-of-the-mill Michael Crichton books to the screen -- with a sprawling tome like Ellroy's, results such as Hanson's are downright miracles. (9/19/97)
Arbor, Dobie, Lincoln, Westgate
D: Danny Boyle; with Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo, Dan Hedaya, Stanley Tucci, Ian Holm, Maury Chaykin. (R, 103 min.)
(10/24/97)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland
D: Barry Sonnenfeld; with Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D'Onofrio, Rip Torn, Tony Shalhoub. (PG-13, 98 min.)
Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the alleged Roswell alien crash comes this witty-but-slight comedy from Addams Family director Barry Sonnenfeld. In fact, Men in Black opens with titles that are strikingly similar to Sonnenfeld's earlier film, as well as a jaunty soundtrack by Danny Elfman and an appearance by Carel Struycken (Addams' Lurch) as an alien, making it briefly feel like some sort of weird Addams offshoot. It's not, though. Having survived a rumored 22 rewrites, Men in Black is its own critter, and as far as breezy, effects-laden summer fare, it's not half bad. Jones plays K, a longtime member of a super-secret, non-government-affiliated agency created to monitor here on earth the comings and goings of extraterrestrials -- some friendly, some not. As part of this underground INS, Jones and his cohorts get to wear standard-issue black Armani suits and blacker Ray-Ban shades, making them look as though they wandered in off the set of Reservoir Dogs 2. After K recruits as his new partner young NYPD hotshot Will Smith (henceforth known simply as J), erasing his fingerprints along with his identity, the pair embarks on a mission to seek out and destroy an evil alien "bug" (sort of a giant, intergalactic cockroach) that's taken over the body of Edgar, an upstate bumpkin farmer. The bug is bent on destroying the members of another, slightly more diminutive alien race, and it's up to the Men in Black to stop him before intergalactic war -- and the requisite destruction of the earth -- occurs. That's all we have going on in Men in Black's mighty slim storyline, but it works, up to a point. Sonnenfeld has created a series of alien gags that work 90% of the time; strung together like washing on a backyard clothesline, the film hops from joke to joke, enormously fueled by the obvious comedic synergy between its two leads. The pairing of Jones and Smith is one of the better duos to come out of Hollywood in some time, with Smith's wide-eyed amazement at the new and strange sights he encounters as an MIB deftly ricocheting off of Jones' craggy-faced, been-there-done-that stoicism. D'Onofrio's Edgar is terrific as well; with a little help from Rick Baker's effects team, he plays the farmer-cum-insectoid alien as a lumbering, twitchy, one-man freak show, full of alien faux pas and an ill-fitting human skin. He's so disgusting you can't help but laugh, and then laugh again. As the sum total of its gags, Men in Black succeeds nicely, though if you take away the jokes, you're left with little more than a handful of none-too-startling creatures and some missing backstory. Comparisons with Ghostbusters have been making the rounds, but Sonnenfeld's film lacks the sheer joyful enthusiasm of that Ivan Reitman production. Like the inky void of space, there's really not much here, but what there is, is certainly entertaining. (7/4/97)
Lakeline, Westgate
D: Bart Freundlich; with Roy Scheider, Blythe Danner, Julianne Moore, Noah Wyle, Hope Davis, Laurel Holloman, Michael Vartan, James LeGros, Arija Bareikis, Brian Kerwin. (R, 90 min.)
A family reunites for the Thanksgiving holiday: Instead of turkey, The Myth of Fingerprints serves up family dysfunction under glass. First-time feature film director Bart Freundlich presents a finely distilled portrait of dysfunction as a group organism, a symbiotic pathology that infects the whole structure. Freundlich's movie shows us aspects and consequences of this disease, but it never pries or picks at the scabs of damage long done. In many ways, these are Ordinary People, not unlike the ones brought to life years ago by Robert Redford and Judith Guest, families that become undone by everything that is left unsaid and unexamined. Here, too, the family has to contend with that chilly Northeastern reserve. The Myth of Fingerprints is set in Maine. Three grown children return to the family homestead for the holiday and join their kid sister (Holloman) who still lives at home. Two of them are also accompanied by significant others -- outsiders to the family dynamic. The family is presided over by aloof dad Hal (Scheider) and warm mom Lena (Danner). Although he loves his children, Hal is clearly pained by their invasion into his household. It seems more the result of a deep-seated misanthropic streak than any genuine dislike of his children. He is unable to express feelings and it appears that long ago he and Lena settled into a mutually satisfactory pattern of co-dependence. Son Jake (Vartain) arrives with his bubbly, outspoken companion Margaret (Davis), who provides a real contrast to this clan's reserve. Jake is perplexed because he is unable to admit his love for Margaret and worries that a child can never truly escape the family knot. Mia (Moore) is the more outspoken sibling, quick to anger and find fault, especially with pleasantly accommodating companion Elliot (Kerwin). Over the weekend (in a poorly developed storyline), Mia meets up with an admirer from childhood who has changed his name to Cezanne (LeGros). Most overtly troubled is Warren (Wyle) who hasn't been home for three years, ever since the breakup with his hometown girlfriend Daphne (Bareikis). As things turn out, Daphne is also home for the weekend and as the old lovers inevitably reunite, skeletons come pouring out and further pieces of the family pathology fall into place. But The Myth of Fingerprints is no jigsaw puzzle. Sometimes you can only surmise which pieces might interlock and moreover, not all the pieces are available to view. That's both the elegance and the frustration of this movie. There's a simple, well-honed understatement to the proceedings (which is played beautifully by the ensemble) but there's also a paucity of solid information on which to build any deep attachment to these characters and their predicaments. Less can sometimes be perceived as more, but in the case of The Myth of Fingerprints less is simply less. (10/24/97)
Village
D: Mimi Leder; with George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Marcel Iures, Alexander Baluev, Rene Medvesek, Gary Werntz, Randal Batinkoff. (R, 118 min.)
This maiden theatrical effort from DreamWorks Pictures -- the film company formed some while back by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen -- is almost completely what you might expect from such a union. Big stars, big story, and big effects make for big box office, and that's just what we're getting. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, although I'd like to think the film was originally slated for a summer release as it has "blockbuster" scrawled all over it in bold, intimidating strokes. In a nutshell, Clooney, as iron-jawed Lt. Colonel Devoe, and Kidman, as Dr. Julia Kelly, the acting head of the White House Nuclear Smuggling Group (!), are called in to make heads and/or tails of an accidental nuclear explosion in the remote wilds of the Russian back country. As countries on both sides of the former Iron Curtain raise their DefCon stakes, tough-guy Devoe calls it as he sees it and declares the incident a ruse to cover the theft of a fistful of tactical nukes by an unknown terrorist party. He's right, of course, and off the two speed to find out who nicked the nukes... and where, how, and why. Unsurprisingly, it's a pesky Russian satellite zealot from Bosnia, who seeks retribution against the United States and the whole United Nations for both their splotchy peacekeeping records in Sarajevo as well as the death of his child by a sniper's bullet. The reasoning is faulty, I know, and the film provides precious little backstory on its many semi-sympathetic bad guys (and even less on the good guys), but somehow The Peacemaker slides right through those ever-present plot holes and isoscelean character arcs. This is due in large part to first-time feature director Mimi Leder's skills behind the camera, which have been honed to near-perfection (along with Clooney's) on television's ER. She stages her action sequences (of which there are many) with a clever swagger; even when you've seen it before, Leder manages to make it all seem fresh. By no means an embarrassment to the fledgling DreamWorks, The Peacemaker is instead a grand, noisy step in the right direction. What next, indeed? (9/26/97)
Gateway, Lakeline
D: Andy Wilson; with David Duchovny, Timothy Hutton, Angelina Jolie, Michael Massee, Peter Stormare, Andrew Tiernan. (R, 93 min.)
In the preposterously scripted yet defiantly engaging Playing God, actor David Duchovny gives us the story of Dr. Eugene Sands, a man suffering from a desperately bad case of "physician, heal thyself." Eugene is a doctor who, as we first meet up with him, has already lost his license due to his pesky drug addictions. And this is the heart of his problem: He can't decide which he loves more -- being a doctor or being a junkie. It doesn't help that it seems as though every time he turns around another life crumbles at his feet waiting to be healed. He has this uncanny propensity for standing next to people who are about to be splayed open by gunshots. So what's an ethical doctor to do, even if it just so happens that the shooting victim is inconveniently bleeding to death in the shady bar where Eugene has just copped his drugs? It also doesn't help that this doctorly act brings Eugene to the attention of underworld kingpin Raymond Blossom (Hutton) and his seductive girlfriend Claire (Jolie). These two want Eugene to play doctor to their injury-prone accomplices who would rather avoid the troubling paperwork involved in a hospital's treatment of a gunshot wound. So, for a time at least, the junkie doctor is able to have his cake and eat it too. Silly and unbelievable, the pleasures of Playing God are all surface-level aspects. Timothy Hutton delves into the malevolent Blossom with delicious abandon, sustaining the character's off-kilter blend of being both an appealing master of destiny and trip-wire mad dog. Hutton's colorful flourish contrasts with Duchovny's laid-back self-mocking tone, and together their styles create an interesting interplay. Andy Wilson's feature directorial debut (following his award-winning work as director of the British TV series Cracker) is pock-marked with every visual toy on a studio control board. Jazzy wipes between scenes, druggy camera shots even for scenes in which no one is high, balletic gunplay, and much more erupt from the screen. Yet, what's in between is shot in a fairly routine and unimaginative manner that additionally squanders many rich opportunities while never missing an opportunity to focus provocatively on Angelina Jolie's full, lush lips. The script by Mark Haskell Smith offers little help -- it piles on such stock characters as clueless FBI dorks and single-minded Russian mobsters to an already tenuous storyline. Granted, it's hard to figure out at this point who's responsible for what since the film has been tinkered with since completion and its opening date pushed back several times. Eugene's voiceovers that dot the movie are probably one of the results of that process. Playing God demonstrates why it's a job best left to a pro. (10/17/97)
Great Hills
D: Jon Avnet; with Richard Gere, Bai Ling, Bradley Whitford, Byron Mann, James Hong, Peter Donat, Tsai Chin, Tzi Ma, Richard Venture. (R, 122 min.)
From the producer of all three Mighty Ducks films comes this bloated courtroom harangue against Red China, big business, and lawyers. Granted, Gere may have been attracted to the project by the script's decidedly unflattering portrayal of the Chinese government. The actor's ongoing and laudable crusade to draw attention to China's woeful treatment of occupied Tibet may have moved him to hop onboard Red Corner before he realized what a stale courtroom drama the film actually is. Personal politics aside, Avnet's film is a tedious bore, filled with improbable goings-on and a weak mystery involving corporate greed that seems as though it was thrown together over sushi one night. Gere plays Jack Moore, an American attorney in Beijing sent to hammer out a distribution deal for American television shows behind the bamboo curtain. There's competition from a German rival, but Moore appears to have the deal fairly well sewn up when he picks up a beautiful Chinese girl in a bar one night and wakes the next morning to find her dead beside him and himself behind bars. His protests fall on deaf ears, and it becomes apparent that even the U.S. Embassy is hard pressed to aid his case. To make matters worse, no Chinese lawyer will touch his case, fearing repercussions and possible execution. Only Shen Yuelin (Ling), the court-appointed defense attorney, can help him, although at first she believes (as does everybody else, it seems) that he is indeed guilty of murder. Once the pair begin to work together, however, a deeper and more insidious mystery becomes apparent, as frequently happens in films like this. Gere, for his part, looks as though he's sleepwalking through the role, and not just because of his perpetually tousled hair. His character Jack comes off as an unsympathetic lead, and so, toward the third act, when he makes a desperate bid for freedom and flees through the streets toward the lone American flag atop the U.S. Embassy only to give himself back over to the Chinese a few minutes later, you can't help but stifle a chuckle: That's not how it's done. Absurdities such as this abound, and though Red Corner certainly seems to have its heart in the right place, it rarely has anything else there simultaneously. Its wheedling, pedantic tone is grating, and by the time the final credits roll, its stridently moralistic tone is enough to make your eyes bleed. (10/31/97)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock
D: Stuart Gillard; with Harland Williams, Jessica Lundy, William Sadler, Jeffrey DeMunn, Beau Bridges. (PG, 94 min.)
Oh Houston, we have a bit of a problem here. As far as kid-friendly, live-action Disney comedies go, RocketMan is "all systems go." In the first starring role of his career, "RocketMan" Harland Williams (Dumb and Dumber, Down Periscope) receives a spectacular launch. Not since the heyday of comics like Don Knotts and the Three Stooges has such a goofy bumbler been hurled into outer space. It's all solid mayhem-in-a space-capsule fun, but I'm betting that this type of humor plays better with the young kids than with their adult chaperones who harbor vivid memories of the actual mayhem that can be caused by a single faulty O-ring or the voluminous close calls that can be sustained by one mere Mir. It's hard to believe that NASA actually cooperated with the makers of RocketMan, given the film's unflattering portrait of the self-serving decision-making process at the space agency and the flawed chain of command. Granted, the film's events appear none too realistic, from its hasty decision to send the genius goofball Fred Randall (Williams) on the first human mission to Mars to the numerous laws of space and physics that are broken in the name of comedic license. Let's just say that there are no rocket scientists aboard this space shuttle. There is a live monkey, however, which is used to little comic or narrative advantage. There are also good supporting players: Jessica Lundy as the love interest and what passes for the mission's scientist (she trains the monkey to collect space rocks); the solid and versatile William Sadler, who plays the ship's commander; dependable character actor William DeMunn as the rotten apple of the ground command; and one of the hardest working men in show business, Beau Bridges, as the rock-steady brains and heart of the ground operation. But it's Harland Williams who stands to gain the most from this comic caper. The film provides a grand showcase for this comedian's rubber-faced contortions, talented mimicry, and doofus dalliances. Williams' goofy face is one we're certain to see much more of in the future. In regard to one of the newest measuring sticks for judging kids' comedies -- the quality of the always-essential fart gags -- RocketMan pushes the scale another few notches. Airtight and umbilically attached space suits provide an original set-up for RocketMan's flatulence humor. For those whose brain circuitry doesn't fire off immediate red flags against a mirth-on-a-space-mission comedy, RocketMan may offer up an hour and a half of fun. Fact-bound party poopers may want to abort. (10/10/97)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Movies 12, Roundrock
D: Jean-Jacques Annaud; with Brad Pitt, David Thewlis, B.D. Wong, Mako, Jamyang Jamtsho Wangchuk. (PG-13, 136 min.)
Forget the trailers: Seven Years in Tibet is emphatically not another of those sprawling, inert, beached-whale travelogue movies à la Out of Africa. Nor is it a jerry-rigged contrivance serving no other purpose than to showcase Brad Pitt's otherworldly pulchritude. In fact, this adaptation of Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer's autobiographical book may find even the straightest women and gayest men repelled by Pitt's willingness to play Harrer as every inch the arrogant, preening shitheel he seems to have been. The story begins in 1939 when Harrer leaves his pregnant wife to fend for herself while he indulges himself in a long Himalayan climbing expedition. But shortly after he reaches the mountains, war breaks out and Harrer, a National Socialist Party member, is shunted into a British POW camp. After several escape tries, he and expedition leader Peter Aufschnaiter (Thewlis) succeed and find sanctuary in Lhasa, the holiest city of Tibetan Buddhism and the home of the Dalai Lama. Here, long exposure to the pacifistic, ego-effacing Tibetan people helps him effect a halting but complete refurbishment of his blinkered, Nazi-brat soul. Annaud (The Lover, The Name of the Rose, Quest for Fire) may be, with all due respect to Stanley Kubrick, the most talented adapter of literary source material in recent film history. Seven Years confirms his mastery by doling out a perfect ratio of moving interpersonal drama and visual enchantment. (The images are almost physically overwhelming, and you'll swear you can feel the icy winds knifing through Lhasa's narrow streets.) In the film's classical structure, a trio of antagonists push Harrer toward his spiritual rebirth. Peter, played with typical grit and finesse by Thewlis, helps him build from scratch a working concept of friendship. Debate with a morally pliable young court minister (Wong) crystallizes his sense of principle. And, most important, the teenaged Dalai Lama (Jamyang, a remarkable young actor) helps Harrer grasp the sad absurdity of human vanity. In the past, I've been an irrationally hard sell on Pitt, but his performance here -- unmannered, wide-ranging, and effortlessly controlled -- buries any remaining doubt that he's one of his generation's best actors. Working with Thewlis, who also belongs on that short list, only enhances the effect of his terrific work. Words (mine anyway) don't do justice to the rich, knowing, subtly humorous quality of this film. Though most of its key dramatic turns occur in its characters' minds, the unfolding story seems to radiate from the screen like sunlight, filling the viewer with a deep, almost sensual pleasure. This experience is the bedrock foundation of Annaud's film, and it completely obviates any taint of cheap sentimentality in a conclusion that yanks unapologetically on the heartstrings. Ready-made blurbage: If you see only one big, sumptuous, Arthouse Lite movie this year, make it Seven Years in Tibet. (10/10/97)
Arbor, Barton Creek, Highland, Lake Creek, Movies 12
D: Masayuki Suo; with Koji Yakusho, Tamiyo Kusakari, Naoto Takenaka, Eriko Watanabe, Akira, Emoto. (PG, 136 min.)
Shall We Dance? is, at heart, something like a modern-day Cinderella, a story in which the protagonist is an overworked Japanese accountant with no social life and the glass slipper is a ballroom dancing shoe. Although many have commented on the film's subtle criticism of Japan's social rigidity, Shall We Dance? is best viewed as simply a movie about a guy who finds a little meaning in his life. For Mr. Shohei Sugiyama, life is a monotonous drone: rising early to eat breakfast, crunching numbers all day at the office, riding home at night on the train, barely communicating with his wife and daughter at home. This day-to-day routine takes a turn, however, when one night on the train he sees a beautiful woman in the second-story window of a dance studio. Soon, she becomes the highlight of his day, and eventually he works up the courage to meet her and ends up signing up for dance lessons. Because dancing is considered shameful in Japanese society, Mr. Sugiyama keeps his new pastime a secret from his family and co-workers, though anyone who'd bother to notice would detect something different about him -- he has pep in his step. Some of the funniest and sweetest scenes in Shall We Dance? are those in which Mr. Sugiyama conscientiously practices his dance steps; whether sitting at his desk or waiting on the train platform, it's obvious that, for the first time in a long while, he's actually enjoying himself. While the film has its sentimental moments, it's amazing that it's not bathed in bathos, given its underdog storyline. Indeed, the screenplay by steers clear of the treacly pratfalls that have marked similarly themed movies. Here, unrequited love evolves into mutual respect, scorn doesn't necessarily turn into admiration, and Mr. Sugiyama doesn't go from a clumsy beginner with two left feet to an accomplished Fred Astaire who wins his first ballroom competition. Also, the film's supporting characters are fully fleshed out by the film's end, even those who appear to be nothing more than caricatures in the first instance. (As the seemingly ridiculous Mr. Aoki, the officemate of Mr. Sugiyama who shares his passion for dancing to the extreme -- he fancies himself the Japanese incarnation of smoldering Latin sensuality -- Naoto Takenaka cuts a credible figure, both in his character and on the dance floor.) There's lots to like about this movie, but the best thing is the elated feeling with which it leaves you. Like the breathtaking number from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical The King and I, from which the film takes both its title and inspiration, Shall We Dance? will sweep you off your feet. (8/8/97)
Dobie
D: George Tillman, Jr.; with Vanessa L. Williams, Vivica A. Fox, Nia Long, Michael Beach, Mekhi Phifer, Brandon Hammond, Jeffrey D. Sams, Gina Ravera, Irma P. Hall. (R, 115 min.)
Soul Food is another way of saying: Family values, African-American style. The film is a warm and comic melodrama about family ties and the tribulations of sticking together. When family matriarch and fount of perpetual wisdom Big Mama (Hall) falls ill, her loving family begins to unravel. The story is told from the point of view of Big Mama's grandson Ahmad (Hammond), who shares a particularly close relationship with his grandmother. Sunday dinner at Big Mama's is the ritual that holds this clan together, but the dinners come to an end with Big Mama's illness. Her three daughters, despite their love for each other, bicker as always. In episodic fashion, Soul Food follows the melodrama of each sister's marriage, cutting back and forth among the stories in a way that allows us to feel warmly toward them all yet never too intimate. The dramas and crises are fairly rote and familiar stuff. And even if there might be surprises in store, Ahmad's voiceover narration repeatedly jumps in to remind us that no, no, no, there's still a heap of trouble ahead. What Soul Food lacks in narrative originality and flourish it nicely makes up for with wonderful performances by a large ensemble cast. What these actors bring to the characters makes us regret all the more that the various storylines are so rudimentary and unsatisfactorily developed. Amazingly, despite the presence of characters that we'd like to know better, the movie still feels overlong at just under two hours and terribly repetitive. Soul Food is certainly digestible fare but somewhat lacking in nutritional value. (9/26/97)
Great Hills, Lincoln
D: Jonathan Nossiter; with David Suchet, Lisa Harrow, Larry Pine, Jared Harris, Joe Grifasi. (Not Rated, 93 min.)
Late morning hush. Sweet waking dreams. Traffic lights presiding silently over empty streets, and a day's respite from the oppressive gravity of purpose. For most of us, Sunday is the essence of freedom. But for Oliver (Suchet) and the rest of the guys at his dingy homeless shelter in Queens, it's just another meaningless 12-hour slog between waking and the 8 o'clock lock-in. "The days engulf me," admits paunchy, middle-aged Oliver, a once prosperous IBM salaryman reduced to living on the streets. "It's as if every day is Sunday." But everything changes one morning when he meets Madeleine (Harrow), a married English actress whose career has free-fallen from the Royal Shakespeare Company to bit parts in bad horror movies. She mistakes Oliver for a famous movie director named Martin Delacorta and he, emboldened by her quirky but undeniable sexual allure, plays along, eventually following her home and having sex with her on the floor of her apartment. So begins one of the oddest, most affecting movie love stories of the year. In this suprising 1997 Sundance grand jury prize winner, director Jonathan Nossiter conjures improbable magic from the seemingly incompatible elements of documentary realism, earnest social protest, relentless symbol-mongering and, most importantly, a breathtaking tenderness toward his characters that reminds us how absent that vital quality is from most popular art. Over the course of one day, Oliver and Madeleine bare their respective souls through a strange game in which they pretend Oliver really is Delacorta, and that he's living at the shelter to research a movie. This lie, which we're never sure the somewhat unbalanced Madeleine fully acknowledges as such, provides a way for both to make the most painful confessions while retaining a certain protective distance from their reality. Adding to the uneasy power of the narrative are a vague sense of looming danger (in part from Madeleine's neurotically frazzled husband) and puzzling bits of information that repeatedly change the way we perceive both of the lovers. Willful artiness rears its head at fairly regular intervals. Why does Nossiter have the weather change in almost every scene -- snowing one minute, then sunny, then overcast again? What's the symbolic import of all those mangy potted plants Madeleine is collecting? Could it even be that Oliver actually is some kind of artist? In the end, none of those annoyances and unanswered questions really matter. The performances by Suchet (previously best known as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in the PBS teleplays) and Harrow (The Last Days of Chez Nous) are so brave and so naked and the compassionate, inquiring humanity of the script so fully involving that most viewers will reach out to match Nossiter's faith with their own. Virtues like these should carry Nossiter far beyond the end of his infatuation with stylistic contrivance. (10/31/97)
Village
D: Kim Henkel; with Renee Zellweger, Matthew McConaughey, Robert Jacks, Tonie Perenski, Lisa Newmeyer, Joe Stevens, John Harrison, Tyler Cone. (R, 86 min.)
Once upon a time (back in 1995), this movie was titled The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it starred a couple of "unknown" actors named Renee Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey. The Austin-lensed film played a few festival dates (SXSW among them) and it was eventually picked up for distribution but then... well, it's a blurry story of delays and complications, which over the years have become so tangled that chainsaws themselves could not cut a clear swath through the overgrowth. Yet, somehow, after all this time, the film is finally playing in limited release (about 20 cities), albeit with a new title, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation and some retooling that has trimmed some 15 minutes off the original running time. As it stands now, the film is a knowing horror picture that builds on our knowledge of the three Chainsaw predecessors but also keeps its tongue firmly planted in its cheek at all times. Writer-director Kim Henkel penned the original Chainsaw and this effort shows that he still has a felicitous grasp of the things that cause us to shudder in dread. There are also most of the familiar conventions of the horror film: prom night, meat hooks, and of course, chainsaws. But this time out we also discover that Leatherface (Jacks) is a sensitive cross-dresser, that his tightly wound brother Vilmer (McConaughey) is the real threat in the family, and that the backwoods clan is in some kind of dastardly cahoots with respectable-seeming businessmen. The performances here are uniformly fun, from the over-the-top Vilmer and his mechanical leg contraption that jerks his unwilling limb in uncontrollable Dr. Strangelove-like motions, to Vilmer's exhibitionist girlfriend Darla (Perenski) who lends a comedic air to all she does, to the determined pluck of prom-night heroine Jenny (Zellweger), to the plaintive demeanor of the beskirted Leatherface. Events are a bit choppy throughout the picture and it's hard to imagine that such continuity lapses are the sole fault of the low budget and pre-release trim. (One of the things excised was an entire sequence that depicted Jenny's home life and demonstrated that family dysfunction crosses many thresholds.) Bits and pieces of the story will, on occasion, leave you scratching your head but it, nevertheless, moves rapidly enough to keep you scurrying to keep pace with the new business at hand. The film is also fueled by an all-Austin music soundtrack. Even though The Next Generation moniker makes the film sound like it ought to be a Star Trek sequel, there's no mistaking this film's lineage. (10/17/97)
Dobie
D: Oliver Stone; with Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, Nick Nolte, Powers Boothe, Billy Bob Thornton. (R, 125 min.)
Seconds after the first few frames unspool, U-Turn declares itself as an Oliver Stone movie, no help needed from the flickery, peyote-dream credits. Yet for all its unmistakable visual trademarks (hypersaturated colors; mad-scientist tinkering with film stocks and editing technique; sudden presentation of enigmatic, troubling images), this is also the most radical departure Stone has ever made in terms of basic sensibilities. Using the already pitch-dark modern noir style of Red Rock West as a starting point, Stone pushes his story of murder, veiled motives, and sexual double-cross into realms of surreal excess that make John Dahl look like Ron Howard by comparison. The plot revolves around efforts by a hard-luck schmo (Penn) to get his car fixed in a podunk desert town and deliver some money he owes to hoods who are threatening to chop off one finger for every day he's late. But while his car is in the dubious "care" of a hideous redneck mechanic (Thornton, in a gloriously over-the-top performance), he falls into an absurdist hell in which random misfortunes and actively hostile local characters (portrayed in memorable cameos by stars ranging from Claire Danes to Jon Voight) conspire to thwart his every move. As the final stroke, he loses his cash. To earn it back, he accepts a murder-for-hire proposal from a jealous rich man (a grizzled, suitably creepy Nolte) who's plotting to kill his vixenish younger wife (Lopez) for her life insurance money. What makes this all so un-Stonelike is the flagrantly -- even exuberantly -- nihilistic tone of the story. Naysayers who've accused Oliver Stone of being oppressively earnest and moralistic will be astonished at U-Turn's energetic trashing of all major Western concepts of meaning, reason, and narrative convention. Some of this probably owes to the fact that this is the first major feature of Stone's career in which he takes no writing credit; the screenplay is by John Ridley from his novel Stray Dogs. But signs emerged in the reckless satiric tone of Natural Born Killers and ambivalent moral judgment of Nixon that Stone was growing dissatisfied with the righteous declamation of earlier films such as JFK and Born on the Fourth of July. The transition is complete with U-Turn. With a perverse, heedless glee, Stone recycles portentous images and themes (Native American sages, crows, stark desert landscapes) from his own back catalog in conjunction with troubling subject matter like incest and suicide to create expectations of profound moral issues being addressed. Then, with the subtlety of a vaudevillean pie-hurler, he trashes the whole setup, only to repeat the process again and again throughout the film. The ghastly humor of the final scene confirms Stone's intent: This is all an elaborate, cosmic farce, not an Olympian missive about the meaning of life, human nature or anything else. It's a cinematically stunning joke, and filled with remarkable performances (Lopez, in particular, taps her inner resources deeper than ever before) and a delightfully humorous and inventive score by Ennio Morricone, but a joke nonetheless. It seems that, midway through an ever-evolving, resolutely independent career, Oliver Stone has grown comfortable with that. Has his audience? We'll find out soon enough. (10/3/97)
Alamo Drafthouse, Dobie, Great Hills