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Film Reviews
Film reviews are updated on Fridays. This section compiled by Marjorie Baumgarten (M.B.); with reviews by Hollis Chacona (H.C.), Steve Davis (S.D.), Robert Faires (R.F.), 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 |
Recommended
TITANIC
D: James Cameron; with Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Danny Nucci, David Warner, Bill Paxton. (PG-13, 197 min.)
Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic, if you haven't heard yet. The costliest film ever made is also one of the best, unlike the second costliest, Kevin Costner's ill-fated Waterworld (and just what is it with aquatic overexpenditures these days, anyway?). Reams have already been written on James Cameron's wild cost overruns, so I'll spare you that and say right off that every penny spent is up there on the screen. Like the doomed vessel from which it takes its tale, Cameron's film is a behemoth, svelte, streamlined, and not the least bit ponderous, even with its lengthy three-hour-and-fifteen-minute running time (the film is practically as long as the sinking of the Titanic itself). DiCaprio is charmingly rakish in the role of lower-class scoundrel-cum-artist Jack Dawson, who wins his way onboard the HMS Titanic during a card game moments before the ship sets sail on its maiden and funeral voyage from England to New York City. Once onboard, he meets Rose DeWitt Bukater (Winslet), a 17-year-old first-class passenger, who is engaged to the wealthy, utterly pompous Cal Hockley (Zane). In short order, Rose and Jack fall in love, he sketches her in the altogether, and Cal, predictably, grits his teeth and scowls meaningfully. Just over halfway into the film, the oceanliner grazes the fatal iceberg that will, 80 minutes later, send it plunging into the icy depths. It's a matter of historical record that 1,500 passengers perished that night due, in no small part, to the fact that there were less than half the necessary lifeboats on board. Cameron, who is inarguably the greatest living action director working today, milks this for all it's worth and does a splendid job, cutting between Rose and Jack's ill-timed romance and the fate of the ship in general. His crosscutting between those two stories and several other, minor subplots is the stuff film courses are made of. At his core though, Cameron, for all his Terminators and True Lies, is a savagely sentimental romantic, and it's this interplay between the lovestruck steerage lad and the first-class dream girl that fires everything else about the film, including the modern-day wraparound that features Cameron favorite Bill Paxton as a salvage engineer intent on plundering the Titanic's silted corpse. I've always had trouble getting past DiCaprio's spirited self -- he seems unable to fully vanish into any role other than that of himself, though he comes very, very close under Cameron's iron thumb. Winslet, on the other hand, is so perfectly cast that it's as though she's a brand new face, and not the Hollywood superstar she's currently becoming. The two of them play wonderfully off of each other, as do the host of lesser players (notably David Warner as Cal's conniving valet and Bernard Hill as the ship's captain), resulting in a monster of a film in which, for once, the astonishing special effects are overshadowed by the characters onscreen. Just barely, though. Cameron's dialogue has never been as good as his direction, which makes for a few stilted clunkers along the way, but the unstoppable flurry of Action! Romance! Etcetera! sweeps them away like so much driftwood. It's obvious this is Cameron's bid for historical relevance, and though it may fall short of the Lawrence of Arabia mark he was aiming for, it's still by far and away a grand, gorgeous, breathtaking spectacle. (12/19/97)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown
MOUSE HUNT
D: Gore Verbinski; with Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, Christopher Walken, Maury Chaykin, Eric Christmas, Annabelle Gurwitch, William Hickey, Michael Jeter, Vicki Lewis. (PG, 98 min.)
It's interesting that this dark and energetic auto-bahn of a comedy from DreamWorks SKG (the K is for Jeffrey ìI Used to Run Disneyî Katzenberg) has at its center an evil mouse -- evil mice never having been Disney's forte (in fact it only took writer Harlan Ellison one mis-timed crack about Mickey to get him permanently banned from the studio some years ago). Mouse Hunt's rodent isn't evil in a bad way, mind you, just with a touch of malice aforethought. When you get right down to it, this is actually Home Alone with a rodent in place of Macaulay Culkin, which does little for Culkin's already ratty rep since Mouse Hunt is head and tiny ears above anything John Hughes has ever churned out. Lane and Evans play Ernie and Lars Smuntz, siblings who inherit a dilapidated (and improbably valuable) mansion when their father (William Hickey in his last screen role) passes away. Dear old dad also leaves them in charge of his once-great string factory, which quickly becomes a financial burden. In hopes of selling off the house, they set about renovating it only to discover its lone occupant -- The Mouse -- enjoys things status quo. What follows is some of the most inventive, wanton, hilarious slapstick, pratfalls, and all-around mayhem I've seen in a long, long time. Land and Evans bounce off each other with visible comic glee. They're obviously strip-mining territory first plundered by Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (at one point, a flustered Lane gives a pair of buxom beauties the old necktie waggle), but Mouse Hunt is so spastically inventive that it's more of a homage than outright theft. Walken makes a rare comedy appearance as the deranged exterminator Caesar, who quickly finds there is no such thing as a better mousetrap, while Lewis is nicely rapacious as Lars' gold-digging wife April. The real stars of Mouse Hunt, though, are the animatronic and computer-generated mouse effects by Stan Winston and Rhythm & Hues, respectively. There's a real rodent in there somewhere, but the effects are blended so seamlessly (along with a dangerous feline, the aptly named Catzilla) that the little furball takes on a life of his own. Kudos also to Linda DeScenna's (Blade Runner) wonderfully dreary, Forties-period production design, which makes everything here look as though it hadn't been dusted since the turn of the century. Kids and adults both will howl at Lane and Evans' Rube Goldberg-esque shenanigans, as they struggle to keep dignity in the face of encroaching mousy malfeasance (though some brief, bawdy humor may soar right over Junior's head). Absolutely one-hundred-percent ridiculous, this is comedy of a higher order, and more maniacally inspired than almost anything released in years. (12/19/97)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Gateway, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Roundrock, Tinseltown, Westgate
New Review
AMISTAD
D: Steven Spielberg; with Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou, Matthew McConaughey, Morgan Freeman, Pete Postlethwaite, Nigel Hawthorne, Stellan Skarsgard. (R, 155 min.)
Amistad is a disappointment if the standard for judging Steven Spielberg's new film is the state of mute, stumbling devastation that Schindler's List inspired in its viewers. The story it recounts, an 1839 slave rebellion aboard a Spanish ship bound for New England, is a historical obscurity, not an epochal horror on par with the Holocaust. We never stand close enough to evil to stare into its dead eyes or feel its moist breath against our faces. Though we get a few glimpses of ghastly brutality aboard the packed, airless ship we're appalled less by the atrocities themselves than the practical -- even pious -- arguments by which they're later rationalized. This is by no means a passionless film, though. Cinque, the rebel leader, is played by former model Hounsou, a mountainous figure who speaks in a gutteral roar and seems to embody the rage and confusion of an entire exploited continent. He's an overwhelming presence, just barely skirting comic-book superhero imagery at times, who also excels in scenes that require him to express subtler emotions either wordlessly or in untranslated Mende dialect. Most of the widespread critical carping about this film seems to focus on the series of hearings which air out the politically charged issue of who owns the slaves. These courtroom scenes are undeniably repetitious, static, and, until the end, focused on technicalities of maritime and international law. (Weirdly, the killings aboard the Amistad aren't the issue. Since the rebels are functionally equivalent to livestock they can't be charged with committing murder; the only question is whether anyone has a valid claim on them.) McConaughey, as a real estate lawyer named Baldwin who argues on behalf of abolitionists Theodore Joadson (Freeman) and Lewis Tappan (Skarsgard), has also drawn more than a few raps for his low-keyed performance. But in the overall framework of the story, both his restraint and the tedium of the judicial proceedings buttress a vital point: In the period being dramatized, the economic considerations of slavery overwhelmed the moral ones. Baldwin is fighting this battle on the agreed-upon turf of property law. Only after being repeatedly thwarted by a politically craven President Van Buren (Hawthorne) do the abolitionists turn to an advocate (Hopkins, as former President John Quincy Adams) who dares raise the ultimate issues of innate rights and human bondage. Hopkins, overcoming bad makeup, floridly scripted lines, and John Williams' bombastic Weep, you bastards! musical score turns in some of his most masterful acting ever as the worn-out old statesman stoking the inner fires one more time in support of that ìtroubling and annoyingî document known as the Declaration of Independence. The grandeur of these sentiments, and their expression by Hopkins, really turns the balance in favor of Spielberg's flawed but worthy film. However imperfectly, he has crafted another eloquent reminder that although goodness lives with a perpetual sense of weariness in its battle with the self-renewing power of evil, it can never retreat, never sleep. (12/19/97)
3.0 stars (R.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Riverside, Tinseltown
FOR RICHER OR POORER
D: Bryan Spicer; with Tim Allen, Kirstie Alley, Jay O. Sanders, Michael Lerner, Wayne Knight, Larry Miller, Marla Maples. (PG-13, 120 min.)
For Richer or Poorer juxtaposes the simple, pure life of the Amish with the glittering, indulgent excesses of wealthy Manhattanites. Watching it, you can't help but ponder great anthropological questions. For instance, why is it that rich, spoiled women walk around with their arms extended, wrists limp, and fingers splayed? Is it to illustrate helplessness in the face of any distasteful domestic chores or is it to display to the fullest their immaculate manicures and truly fine jewelry? And why should the Amish restrict themselves to wearing black or gray when a nature-inspired fashion palette of austere aubergines and rustic russets would so enrich their lives without making them any less plain? These and other telling observations of life are brought to the fore as rich New York socialites Brad and Caroline Sexton (Allen and Alley) are forced to flee the city when their empire and status are threatened by a gun-brandishing IRS investigator. An accident en route leaves them stranded in the Amish community of Intercourse, Pennsylvania where, faster than a Clydesdale-drawn buggy, the couple find themselves posing as Emma and Jake, the distant cousins of the Yoder family. The Yoders (every Amish person in this movie is named Yoder) have come to Intercourse to help with the harvest and receive, in return, some marital counseling -- a felicitous coincidence, as the Sextons' marriage is in precisely the same shape as their finances. What happens, of course, is that the Sextons discover the pleasures of an honest and simple life -- rising at 4am, scrubbing floors, and eating schnitz pie. And, without all that wealth and luxury to confuse them, they discover that they really love each other! Allen's silly putty face gets a real workout as he struggles with the confounding perplexities of Amish life. Alley transfers her current TV series bimbo to the big screen without even the slightest alteration. Filling out the rest of the type cast are the ubiquitous Wayne Knight (Seinfeld's Newman) as the larcenous accountant and Larry Miller, the stand-up comic who seems to have made a career out of playing idiotic officers of the law. This is a soundly unfunny, roundly implausible movie that purports to extol human values and expose the underbelly of materialistic life. Except for a nasty little turn by Marla Maples as the Queen of Victorious Divorces, and some lovely, bucolic scenery, For Richer or Poorer is not even remotely interesting. Instead of a sweet and funny look at the simple life, it is a long, boring look at the life of simpletons. (12/19/97)
1.0 stars (H.C.)
Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Riverside, Tinseltown, Westgate
SCREAM 2
D: Wes Craven; with Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jamie Kennedy, Laurie Metcalf, Elise Neal, Jerry O'Connell, Jada Pinkett, Liev Schreiber, Lewis Arquette. (R, 120 min.)
Has it only been one year since director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson reintroduced the joys of the slasher film to the American moviegoing public? It has, but it may feel like longer, thanks to this fall's tide-me-over Williamson-directed shocker I Know What You Did Last Summer. In Williamson's Scream 2 script, the concept of the sequel takes a beating -- as in the original his characters and their dialogue are witty and almost overly hip to the conventions of the slasher genre. Here's Pinkett speechifying on the role of minorities in horror films (there aren't any), here's Kennedy listing The Rules that sequels must abide by (more gore, more bodies), here'sÖ you get the picture. This gleeful willingness to play with the obvious conventions is what gave the original its wild pop-culture kick, and both Craven and Williamson wisely stick to the tried-and-true formula in the sequel, the only hitch being that since this is a sequel it's bound to fall prey to some of the snags the characters are so earnestly discussing, and it does. Despite Williamson's knowing turnabout on the whole sequel issue, Scream 2 lacks the visceral, punchy feeling of realization the first film engendered in its audience. No longer are these wisecracks as fresh as they once were; once again, there's more than enough material in here for several film-school theses on self-reflexive, cutting-edge filmmaking. The joke is the joke, only this time out it's a tad more obvious. Scream 2 reunites the surviving cast members of the first film, places them in a collegiate situation, and then lets a copycat serial killer loose in their midst. It's one of the film's strong points that once again, there's absolutely no telling who the killer might be until the final, bloody scene. Williamson is one of the best scenarists in the business, and he keeps his dialogue crisp and rolling (one of his favorite tricks here -- and one of the funniest -- is his penchant for having one character's comments blur over into ìourî reality; for example, Gellar's character is at one point overheard discussing the latest episode of Party of Five, which, of course, stars her Scream 2 co-star Campbell). Likewise, Craven's take-no-prisoners direction; it's tightly edited, riveting, and giddily showy. A scene during which two characters are depicted on opposite sides of a soundproofed, glassed-in engineer's booth is ecstatically disturbing, and Scream 2's film-within-a-film (the aptly-titled Stab, featuring Heather Graham and Tori Spelling) is sublimely ridiculous. It's one of the better sequels to come out in years, and although it doesn't pack the emotional wallop of the first film, it's still head and shoulders (and punctured eyeballs) above most of what's out there. (12/19/97)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown, Westgate
TOMORROW NEVER DIES
D: Roger Spottiswoode; with Pierce Brosnan, Michelle Yeoh, Jonathan Pryce, Teri Hatcher, Judi Dench, Desmond Llewelyn. (PG-13, 119 min.)
Spottiswoode, current altar boy for the revered 007 movie franchise, has boldly gambled on saving the redundancy-mired series by reinventing one of its most sacred elements: the Bond Girl. Michelle Yeoh, familiar to Hong Kong movie fans as the diminutive, razor-wire action goddess from the Heroic Trio and Police Story series, is radically unlike any of the pillowy vinyl love dolls who've preceded her in this role. But goodgodalmighty is she a welcome change! As Chinese Col. Wai Lin, Bond's uneasy collaborator in his latest world-saving adventure, she becomes what none of his other female costars have been: a true sidekick and rival, not just a receptacle for his gin- and vermouth-infused bodily fluids. Bond (Brosnan) hooks up with Wai while pursuing a power-mad media baron named Elliot Carver (Pryce) who's trying to start a war between China and the Western alliance. Using his foreknowledge of the events, Carver (a chimerical blend of Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates) plans to dominate the breaking story with his worldwide satellite news network. That's right; in our post-Cold War era, ìthe mediaî is now a global menace beside which the supervillains of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. are lowly bush leaguers. Before Yeoh's arrival on the scene, Tomorrow cruises on languid autopilot, breezing past the inevitable touchstones of exotic opening titles, socko action intro, Q's new gadgets, etc. It's far from unenjoyable, but the dank shroud of the overfamiliar lies heavy over all, kind of like watching an Elvis concert circa 1976. Brosnan, visually perfect as he is for the role, can't break through the gathering ennui alone. Though he's able to register a few emotions previous Bonds couldn't or wouldn't (boyish glee for one), he lacks a certain vital spark. He's just a bit too debonair, I guess I'm saying. Almost as troubling -- and this is said in total deference to the virility of spy cinema's ultimate mack daddy character -- he sometimes runs like a girl in those slick-soled Italian shoes of his. Yeoh changes the whole dynamic, though. With her electrifying physicality, no-bull persona, and athletic eroticism (a fully clothed shower scene after one long chase scene is one of the sexiest moments in any Bond movie), she adds a hot gush of estrogen energy to every frame she's in. Her presence opens new stylistic vistas for Spottiswoode, who stages some gonzo action dustups that Ringo Lam or Stanley Tong might appreciate. Best of all, even pretty boy Brosnan looks and behaves like a different man around her. By the end of the film, he's flailing around, caked in sweat and blood with his hairy pecs bristling from a ripped shirt. Spent shells are flying from his machine gun, blood squibs are erupting in crimson symphony and a sort of idiot action bliss suffuses everything. And when he and Yeoh (yes, it's pronounced yow) finally exchange the traditional end-credits kiss, you may even find yourself actively looking forward to the next installment in this revitalized series. (12/19/97)
3.0 stars (R.S.)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown
Still Playing
ALIEN RESURRECTION
D: Jean-Pierre Jeunet; with Sigourney Weaver, Winona Ryder, Dominique Pinon, Ron Perlman, Gary Dourdan, Michael Wincott, Kim Flowers, Dan Hedaya, Brad Dourif. (R, 109 min.)
Vastly superior to David Fincher's studio-gutted Alien3, this fourth outing still falls short of both Ridley Scott's hair-raising original and James Cameron's balls-out, war-in-space Aliens. Much of the problem here lies with Jeunet's unpleasantly sterile direction; though the film looks terrific, there's little emotional core, and when the assorted victims begin bleeding, it's sometimes difficult to care one way or the other. Set 200 years after the conclusion of the previous film, Alien Resurrection begins with the cloning of Chief Warrant Officer Ripley, who, you may remember, we last saw stylishly pirouetting into a large vat of molten goo in an effort to destroy the alien within and thereby save the universe (again). The new, improved Ripley is a different animal entirely, though she still resembles the old model at first glance: She's the best of both species -- fearless, tireless, and with a dramatically improved basketball game. The military space station she has been born into is conducting experiments with the aliens, hoping to breed them in captivity for use in nefarious, covert operations. When a transport ship and its crew (played by Ryder, Wincott, and Jeunet regulars Pinon and Perlman) docks at the station with a batch of frozen ìexperimentsî to unload, they find themselves caught in a wildly escalating situation involving -- unsurprisingly -- aliens run amok (as in his previous Delicatessen and City of Lost Children, Jeunet's vision of the future is bleak indeed -- nobody ever seems to learn anything from previous run-ins with the aliens). Gore and acidic alien blood flow in rivers as Ripley and Ryder try to stave off the encroaching critters and wipe them out (again) before the ship can autopilot its way back to earth. Joss Whedon's script gamely tries to muck about with the topical ethics of cloning, and delves deep into the wellspring of motherhood and Oedipal conflicts, but at its heart the film is essentially another shoot-'em-up aboard the grimy confines of a big, dark ship. Weaver essays the new hotmama Ripley with wry, good humor -- you can tell she's having a ball playing this unstoppable die-cast she-wolf, and both Perlman and Pinon are goofily fun as the boisterous, profane space smugglers, as is the perpetually apoplectic Hedaya (certainly he's more interesting here than in the recent A Life Less Ordinary). Still, with little or no backstory on these poor folks, there's not much to engage your interest when they start losing limbs. It's a minor triumph of style over substance, and although no one has as much style as Jeunet, the base horror of the aliens (they swim now, by the way) seems relegated to the past. It's not scary, but it sure does look good. (11/28/97)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown, Westgate
ANASTASIA
D: Don Bluth and Gary Goldman; with the voices of Meg Ryan, John Cusack, Angela Lansbury, Kelsey Grammer, Christopher Lloyd, Hank Azaria, Bernadette Peters, Kirsten Dunst. (G, 94 min.)
Anastasia, the first feature-length offering from the new Fox animation studio, may not beat Disney at its own game, but it sure won't be for lack of trying. This sumptuous-looking film clearly spared no expense in its visual rendering; its optical flourishes and attention to detail aim for the Disney gold standard and, for the most part, come pretty darn close. The vocal talents are all solid and the songs by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty are pleasant enough, although on first listen there doesn't appear to be any breakout hit in the bunch. (One unfortunate song early in the film during which comical Russian workers sing of the deprivations of the post-revolutionary period is needlessly tasteless, however.) Where this animated feature's two-dimensionality becomes most visible is in its storyline -- a sanitized confabulation about the history of the Russian Revolution and a formulaic cartoon plot about a teen searching for a sense of belonging and unconditional love. Whether Anastasia's amnesiac would-be princess garners many enduring fans beyond its target demographic of young adolescent girls remains to be seen. The movie relies heavily on Wizard of Oz-ish ìThere's no place like homeî sentiments and the Cinderella-like yearnings for more fitting destinies. In this tale, however, our princess earns her crown not through the kiss of a handsome prince or the fit of a glass slipper but through something more akin to the modern psychological process of ìrecovered memory.î During a several-minute-long preamble, we're shown the origins of the Russian Revolution and the source of Anastasia's plight. The culprit is Rasputin (Lloyd), who, for the purposes of this story, is an evil sorcerer solely responsible for unleashing all the country's pre-revolutionary social unrest. Even once he's dead, Rasputin obsessively follows Anastasia's progress, not through a crystal ball like Oz's Wicked Witch but through the fortune-telling glass of a reliquary devotional. Of course, recent discoveries and the advent of DNA testing has proved the fraudulence of the whole historical Anastasia phenomenon in which a parade of young girls tried to convince the Dowager Empress that each was the rumored palace refugee Anastasia -- the rightful heir to the felled Romanov dynasty and fortune. Back in 1956, the story won an Oscar for Ingrid Bergman in a live-action drama and, indeed, the heart of this animated tale remains that of a young girl's search for her family roots. Such warm-and-fuzzy concepts better lend themselves to agreeable rhyme schemes and cute animal companions than tough words like ìCommunist,î ìBolshevik,î and ìRomanov.î Still, this Anastasia is a feisty little heroine, often delightfully un-regal and un-ladylike. She's almost enough to make you forget the words of ìThe Internationale.î (11/21/97)
3.0 stars (M.B.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Roundrock, Tinseltown
BOOGIE NIGHTS
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 ìthe family.î Still, most of these hesitations are fodder for post-screening rumination. Boogie Nights will keep you going 'til morn. (10/31/97)
4.0 stars (M.B.)
Arbor, Barton Creek, Dobie
DEVIL'S ADVOCATE
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 conclusionÖ 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 ìso bad it's goodî 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)
2.0 stars (M.S.)
Lincoln
EVE'S BAYOU
D: Kasi Lemmons; with Lynn Whitfield, Samuel L. Jackson, Jurnee Smollett, Debbi Morgan, Vondie Curtis Hall, Meagan Good. (R, 107 min.)
One startling line, spoken in the opening minute by a calm-voiced young female narrator, deeply sets the story's hook: ìThe summer I killed my father, I was 10 years old.î With her audience's full attention assured, first-time director Kasi Lemmons then proceeds to unravel a spellbinding, powerfully seductive tale that blends Southern Gothic magical realism and disturbing family drama with the flair of a born storytelling genius. Lemmons' self-penned script concerns a family of slaves' descendants who by the 1960s have risen to middle-class prominence in a small Louisiana town called Eve's Bayou. The father, Louis Batiste (Jackson) is a complex character, loving and responsible as a parent and provider, but also a shameless philanderer whose nightly ìhouse callsî to local women are an open secret around town. Louis' flagrant tomcatting steadily undercuts his marriage to beautiful, cultured Roz (Whitfield) and adds an uneasy layer of psychodrama to his relationships with daughters Cisely (Morgan) and Eve (Smollett). Cisely, a rebellious adolescent with a big-time Electra Complex, resolves to monopolize daddy's cheating heart with feminine wiles while her psychically gifted younger sibling concludes that black magic, not sweetness, is required to change his ways. Like Tennessee Williams, whose better works have already been cited as inspiration for this film, Lemmons is able to tap the romantic mystique of the old South while largely skirting the inherent dangers of camp and cliché. For all the Spanish moss, hoodoo-voodoo, and ambient female hysteria in Eve's Bayou, there's also a remarkable amount of deep psychological truth here about the dark complexities of relationships between men and women, and between parents and children. The acting is strong across the board, with Jackson especially impressive as a man of infinite contradictions, many of which remain unresolved until the end. Smollett, a remarkable young actress with all of Anna Paquin's native talent and less of her annoying showiness, is equally terrific as Eve. But the most impressive showing is by Lemmons. A modestly successful actress previously best known for playing Jodie Foster's roommate in The Silence of the Lambs, nothing in her career to date has hinted at the masterful and fully mature directorial talent she displays in this fresh, original first film. In a movie year already highlighted by the emergence of bold new talents like Neil LaBute and Paul Thomas Anderson, Kasi Lemmons is further cause for celebration. (11/14/97)
3.5 stars (R.S.)
Village
EYE OF GOD
D: Tim Blake Nelson; with Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson, Hal Holbrook, Nick Stahl, Richard Jenkins, Maggie Moore, Mary Kay Place. (R, 85 min.)
Does God keep watch over Kingfisher, Oklahoma or is this desolate little oil-busted town as godforsaken as it appears? First-time filmmaker Tim Blake Nelson makes no bones about his concerns in this bleak Bible Belt portrait, a story he adapted from his own stage play. Strong and haunting performances sustain this structurally unconventional narrative that dovetails two distinct storylines and several time frames. The film's fragmented narrative structure helps create a spare, stripped-down feel and fosters unmet expectations that Nelson's mysterious storytelling tricks will yield to ultimate cohesion once the elements finally converge. Despite the fact that the film's whole never quite equals its parts, Eye of God provides a fascinating ride and evocative glimpses of ordinary people in the throes of crisis. One storyline has to do with troubled youth Tom Spencer (Stahl, the kid from Mel Gibson's Man Without a Face) who is found one night covered in blood and wandering aimlessly down a country road. He has witnessed a crime of such brutality that he cannot speak, not even to the kindly sheriff played by Hal Holbrook (whose voiceover about the meaning of the story of Abraham and Isaac opens the film). The film's other story focuses on Ainsley (Plimpton), a young woman who marries her prison pen pal Jack (Anderson) following a quick courtship upon his release. Sweet and trusting, the solitary Ainsley is swayed by the tenderness and devout sincerity of reborn Christian Jack. Overlooking his unwillingness to name the crime for which he was committed, Ainsley is taken with his Promise Keeper-like avowal of marriage, faith, and family. With an almost foregone inevitability, Ainsley and Jack's dreamland disintegrates. Plimpton, however, is at her finest here, forgoing her usual street savvy persona for this characterization of a sweet, dim daughter of the heartland. And Anderson (TV's Nothing Sacred) is equally effective as the story's unpredictable narrative factor. The film's supporting characters are all memorable too, flush with small details and regional specificity. Yet the film's forced structural mysteries and the overly literal dependence on its spiritual theme burden Eye of God with weights it cannot comfortably bear. Such narrative conceits are the type of mortal flaws that keep this otherwise powerful drama all too earthbound. (12/5/97)
3.0 stars (M.B.)
Dobie
FAST, CHEAP & OUT OF CONTROL
D: Errol Morris; with Ray Mendez, Rodney Brooks, George Mendonça, Dave Hoover. (PG, 82 min.)
To say that Errol Morris is the most original talent working in the field of documentary filmmaking today is merely one inadequate means of describing the brilliance of his new feature film Fast, Cheap & Out of Control. For Morris is not so much a documentarian as an essayist, one who employs the methodology of outwardly-focused nonfiction filmmaking to make extremely personal objects of self-expression. Nowhere has this been more true than in his new film, which uses studies of four discrete individuals as the raw material for a broader contemplation of the ontology of human achievement -- in all its glory and folly. At least, that's one of the things that Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is about. There are many, many other themes -- ideas that reveal themselves in the flash of an edit; commonalities, contrasts, and discoveries that rise from the synaptic hurly-burly of Morris' literal three-ring circus. For, as Morris has described it, Fast, Cheap is the ultimate ìlow-concept film,î one that resists all possibilities of a one-line summary. Ostensibly, Morris has gathered four different ìweird animal stories,î both in terms of the obsessed men who grapple with and against nature to create their life's work and also the strange creatures they tame. Morris' eccentric subjects include George Mendonça, a topiary gardener who has painstakingly devoted his life to trimming one garden of hedges and trees into the shapes of animals; Dave Hoover, a lion tamer who idolizes the legendary circus performer Clyde Beatty; Rodney Brooks, an M.I.T. scientist who has designed large insect-like walking devices that can operate free of human instruction; and Ray Mendez, who studies the life cycles and social structures of the tiny, hairless, underground mole-rats. Patterns emerge as Morris cross-cuts between each of these men's tales and then blends in footage from old circus and adventure movies as well as the stupendous camerawork of longtime Oliver Stone cinematographer Robert Richardson, whose combination of film stocks and processing (everything from fine-grained to grainy 35mm, 16mm, Hi-8, infrared, color, and black-and-white) creates a rich palette of tones and images from which to choose. Also helping out in this regard are the contributions of editors Karen Schmeer and Shondra Merrill, and the elliptical music score by Alloy Orchestra member Caleb Sampson. Quixotic ambitions and practical instincts merge with ancient myths and futuristic notions in this highly expressionistic documentary essay. Morris may stir up more concepts than one mere film can comfortably contain, but Fast, Cheap & Out of Control is no ordinary movie. For 82 minutes, we are happy to be awash in Morris' contemplations and are simultaneously sparked into contributing more of our own. For a brief while the universe seems to have found a certain serenity and a glorious respite from the ubiquitous pace of ìfast, cheap, and out of control.î (11/14/97)
4.5 stars (M.B.)
Dobie
FLUBBER
D: Les Mayfield; with Robin Williams, Marcia Gay Harden, Christopher McDonald, Raymond J. Barry, Ted Levine, Wil Wheaton. (PG, 93 min.)
The odds are that the uninspired remake Flubber won't appeal very much to either of its target audiences: Disney-weaned baby boomers with fond memories of Fred MacMurray in a flying jalopy in The Absent-Minded Professor, or fidgety eight-year-olds with short attention spans who want nothing more than to be entertained every minute. As in the original movie, Flubber is about the distracted Professor Phillip Brainard, who discovers a magical substance of green goo with hyperkinetic properties and christens the stuff ìFlubberî (i.e., ìflying rubberî). While the Professor sees his discovery as the means for generating cash to save his near-insolvent college, there are others who want to use it for their own selfish ends. Meanwhile, a romantic rivalry brews between the Professor and a fellow colleague over the Professor's ex-fiancée, whom he left standing at the altar one too many times (he is an extremely forgetful man). Also, a flying robot contraption named Weebo, who is the Professor's personal secretary and confidant, struggles with how to tell her boss of her unrequited crush on him. With the exception of the Weebo storyline, which has its tender moments, not much else in the film sticks to the ribs. Sure, there's a bizarre computer-generated sequence of numerous Flubberites dancing the mambo to a snazzy Danny Elfman score, and the basketball game in which a Flubber-assisted team triumphs is rousing. With the exception of the handful of scenes in which the Flubber does its stuff, however, the youngsters will no doubt be bored by it all. (Even the patented, Home Alone-styled physical abuse of the film's benign bad guys -- flying bowling balls slamming against foreheads, and the like -- probably won't impress this jaded generation.) As the Professor, the remarkably restrained Williams is more cuddly than mad, though on more than one occasion, you sense that this usually manic actor is just aching to let a string of stream-of-consciousness ripostes fly. That, in fact, sums up the overall impression that this amiable but lackluster movie leaves. If only it were a little crazier, a little more willing to let loose, Flubber might be a movie truly enjoyed by the kid in us all. (11/28/97)
2.0 stars (S.D.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown
THE FULL MONTY
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 ìfull frontal nudity,î which is the hook these out-of-shape, rhythmically impaired males hope will inspire the womenfolk of Sheffield to show up for ìHot Steelîës 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 ìpoofsî 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 ìHot Stuffî 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)
3.0 stars (R.S.)
Arbor, Lakehills, Village
GATTACA
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 ìIn-validsî 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, ìnormalî 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)
4.0 stars (M.S.)
Dobie
GUMMO
D: Harmony Korine; with Nick Sutton, Jacob Reynolds, Chloe Sevigny, Darby Dougherty, Jacob Sewell. (R, 95 min.)
Gummo holds a natural curiosity value for admirers of Larry Clark's 1995 film, Kids (and there are quite a few of us, though we tend not to advertise our enthusiasm). The writer of that abominably powerful ode to modern-day teenage wasteland was Harmony Korine, a street kid with a mournful Johnny Thunders face who, at 23, is parlaying his notoriety into a shot at directing his own feature film. Now I realize my confessed appreciation for Kids will thoroughly bugger my credibility in describing Gummo with phrases like ìappalling,î ìgratuitously cruel,î and ìexploitative,î but the unmitigated repulsiveness of this film pretty much rules out all subtler options. Gummo's secondary focus (the primary being Korine's sophomoric epatez-la-bourgeoisie impulses) is Xenia, Ohio, a rural, white-trash hellhole that has never fully recovered from being leveled by a tornado in the Seventies. Just a few of the bizarre local-color situations our lad marshals with empty-headed glee include: a husband pimping his retarded wife; an albino confessing her lust for Patrick Swayze; a bunny-eared kid playing an accordion on the toilet; and a dwarf being amorously pawed by a maudlin, sloppy-drunk Korine. Xenia is a real place, but the menagerie of freaks, mental defectives, slatternly rednecks, and idle teen punks that people this film is wholly a figment of Korine's febrile imagination. Evidently, these cretinous small-town morlocks -- including the main two characters, a couple of feral metalheads who make money by killing cats and selling them to a Chinese restaurant -- are meant as some kind of statement about Xenia's abandonment by the same god who capriciously destroyed the burg a quarter-century ago. Who knows? My guess is that Korine simply regards this benighted sump of gun-crazed, glue-sniffing, daughter-humping squalor as a nifty setting for his puerile gross-out humor and dimestore dadaism. Yo, Harmony, the battle to legitimize shocking themes, surrealistic whimsy, and unapologetically scabrous content in film has already been fought and won by generations of your artistic betters: Luis Buñuel, Werner Herzog, Todd Haynes, even David Lynch. To honestly build upon that legacy calls for you, the director, to bring some fresh intellectual or conceptual goods to the table. But to settle for assembling two reels full of images designed solely to offend your viewers accomplishes only that and nothing more. What's the point? If you were standing in front of me, I'd be tempted to kick your bony ass and hold your head in the john until you apologized for wasting 88 minutes of my time. Better still, I believe I'd turn you over to my cat-loving mom and let her give you the what-for. Thus enlightened, maybe you'd then consider putting your undeniable but rapidly dissipating talent for provoking useful controversy to some good end. Gummo! Give me a fucking break, man. (11/28/97)
0 stars (R.S.)
Dobie
HOME ALONE 3
D: Raja Gosnell; with Alex D. Linz, Haviland Morris, Kevin Kilner, Rya Kihlstedt, Marian Seldes. (PG, 103 min.)
John Hughes seems to have copped to a profound truth. Critical judgment aside, the durability of his Home Alone series will determine whether he spends his dotage sailing in Barbados or bagging groceries in a Tampa Minit Mart to pay the wastewater hookup fee for his RV. The modest artistic success of his early Eighties teen comedies is a remote memory now. And with even the once-hardy National Lampoon's Vacation series in an advanced necrotic state, the last healthy cash cow in his corral is this ongoing series featuring resourceful tykes left alone to repel the onslaught of slapstick villains. For the third installment, Hughes returns as sole screenwriter and has clearly invested a lot more creative effort in his work than in recent projects such as Baby's Day Out and Dennis the Menace. With original star Macaulay Culkin lost to puberty and megalomania, Hughes has stripped the vehicle down to its frame and started over. There's an all-new cast, headed by McDonald's commercial graduate Alex D. Linz as Culkin equivalent Alex Pruitt. The bad guys are no longer buffoonish street hoods but a sophisticated quartet of international high-tech thieves trying to recover a radar-blocking gadget hidden in a toy car that has fallen into Alex's possession. Relatively speaking, Hughes pulls out the stops here, even attempting (to what end I can't imagine) a bit of rudimentary character development in the crooks. He's rounded up an attractive, interesting group of faces, and first-time director Gosnell perfectly replicates the bright, cheerily antiseptic FAO Schwarz catalogue look that's the visual trademark of his employer's films. Gosnell displays a nice grasp of the camera's role in high-energy comedy of this type. A camera mounted on a radio-controlled car is used to especially good effect, creating numerous inventive shot angles. Hughes' use of music is, as always, clever and effective. And loath though I am to aid in stoking the Hollywood sequel mill, I have to admit laughing pretty often -- albeit through clenched teeth -- at the inventively sadistic series of Rube Goldbergian traps young Alex sets for his assailants. Hughes, whose chief contribution to film history may not be his fervid adolescent-identity quests but the outrageous brutality of his physical comedy, keeps the laughs and groans coming by laying the lumber (not to mention barbells, flowerpots, bathroom fixtures, and crowbars) to his baddies in scene after mayhem-filled scene. Adults will probably start punching the Indiglo buttons on their watches well before the end, but based on the preview crowd's response, my guess is that Home Alone 3 will light up your preteen kids' nervous systems like a big, gluey double-fistful of Screaming Yellow Zonkers. Which, one supposes, is basically the whole point here. (12/12/97)
2.5 stars (R.S.)
Gateway, Highland, Lakehills, Lakeline, Northcross, Roundrock, Tinseltown
I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER
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 ìone year later.î 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 ìleap 'n' shriekî 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)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Alamo Drafthouse, Great Hills, Lakeline, Tinseltown
THE ICE STORM
D: Ang Lee; with Kevin Klein, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, Tobey Maguire, Jamey Sheridan, Adam Hann-Byrd, Elijah Wood, Henry Czerny. (R, 102 min.)
The emotional deep freeze experienced by a group of characters in New Canaan, Connecticut over the 1973 Thanksgiving holiday weekend is the subject of The Ice Storm. The aptly named film, adapted by producer-turned-screenwriter James Schamus from the novel by Rick Moody, gets so many of the outward trappings and small period details so wondrously right that the sheer accumulation of ìcorrect touchesî threatens to obscure the thinness of the story and the off-putting empathetic void which these characters inhabit. The WASPy sterility of their upper-middle-class lives is, in part, what the movie posits as the problem, but in so doing The Ice Storm never much allows the audience to warm up to its characters. The absence of heat is this drama's fatal flaw. The performances are terrific, nevertheless, as the movie goes about the task of paralleling the stunted emotional lives of the adults and children of two neighboring families while Watergate, wife-swapping, and drug experimentation dominate their social arena 10 years following the demise of Camelot. Trodding through this familiar Updike/Cheever suburban turf is Kevin Klein as family man Ben Hood, who is having an unsatisfactory adulterous affair with his neighbor Janey Carver (Weaver). Janey's husband Jim (Sheridan) is frequently away on business but Ben's wife Elena (Allen) has grown increasingly suspicious. Ben and Elena's daughter Wendy (Ricci) is sexually experimenting with both the Carver boys (Wood and Hann-Byrd), while her brother Paul (Maguire) is enamored with a rich girl from his prep school. All these micro-dramas coalesce and come to a head during the course of one long evening that also plays host to the area's worst ice storm in 30 years. Sometimes, as in the case of the ice storm, the movie's intentions are overly literal and obvious; yet most of the time we are left to infer meaning from slight triggers and cues. This is because, by and large, these are characters who are too genteel and over-pedigreed to say (or always even know) exactly what they mean. For example, Ben's way of discussing the facts of life with Paul is to advise him not to masturbate in the shower because it wastes water and electricity. Or when Janey catches Wendy playing ìshow me yours, I'll show you mineî with her youngest son, her alarmed impulse is to lecture Wendy about Margaret Mead and the Samoans. By following his award-winning Sense and Sensibility (which was produced and co-written by longtime collaborator James Schamus) with this American period piece, director Ang Lee (Eat Drink Man Woman) is fast proving himself a cultural chameleon. But with The Ice Storm, Lee seems to have emphasized the details of cultural accuracy over the rudiments of telling a gripping drama. (11/14/97)
2.5 stars (M.B.)
Arbor
THE JACKAL
D: Michael Caton-Jones; with Richard Gere, Bruce Willis, Sidney Poitier, Diane Venora. (R, 124 min.)
About the best that can be said for The Jackal is that it does full justice to the concept of a cinematic battle of wits between Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. This remake of Fred Zinnemann's well-regarded Day of the Jackal (1973) not only fails to match the modest entertainment value of Frederick Forsyth's workmanlike source novel, but actually moves into late contention for the title of 1997's most tedious movie. Planet Hollywood co-owner Willis, looking every bit the fat and prosperous restaurateur, is the title character, a sort Demi-god (as it were) among hit men. Hired by a Russian-based gangster to kill the FBI director, he's pursued by an American G-man (Poitier), a Russian military policewoman (Venora), and the good guys' secret weapon, an Irish Republican Army sniper (Gere), who's giving them the benefit of his terrorist savvy in exchange for a chance to get out of prison. One benefit of letting a hyphen-surnamed Scotsman with strong art/highbrow mainstream credentials (Caton-Jones' highest-profile films are Scandal and Rob Roy) helm an action movie is that we're spared many of the genre's muscle-headed clichés. The downside, though, is that there's not much visceral excitement here either. The story is heavy on talk -- stultifyingly dull talk at that -- and seems to neither gain nor lose intensity as it follows the Jackal through an excruciatingly prolonged series of preparations for the hit. It doesn't even work as a detective procedural. Most of the deduction is done by nameless FBI spooks who periodically burst into rooms to report the latest developments on the case. The accumulating malaise leads viewers to crankily ponder questions such as why a supposedly ultra-discreet hit man would discuss his mission on a cell phone, even blithely answering as ìJackal.î And why, after charging the Russki Godfather $70 million to do the murder, would he then be forced to buy his own fake ID and machine-gun tripod from low-level black marketeers? But then, better to obsess on these points than to pay close attention to the acting, which is often stunningly awful. Gere (who, it must be said, has by far the most vacuous lines in the film) is painful to watch as he grimaces, winces, and robotically postures in halfhearted efforts to conjure up some semblance of dramatic affect. Poitier mainly knits his brow and blusters, while the panda-like Willis shuffles nonchalantly through a series of laughable disguise changes, reminiscent of nothing so much as Chevy Chase's Fletch with an assault rifle. The general cluelessness extends even to the musical score, which is dominated by a weirdly inappropriate mix of faux-industrial and pop electronica sounds. The Jackal may not be the worst movie out there now, but with theatres full of more appealing choices, I'd recommend giving this dog a wide berth. (11/14/97)
1.5 stars (R.S.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Tinseltown, Village
JOHN GRISHAM'S THE RAINMAKER
D: Francis Ford Coppola; with Matt Damon, Claire Danes, Danny DeVito, Jon Voight, Mary Kay Place, Danny Glover, Mickey Rourke, Virginia Madsen, Roy Scheider, Teresa Wright. (PG-13, 137 min.)
For all we know, John Grisham may have filing cabinets full of unoptioned screenplays in which wealthy corporate and legal interests effortlessly crush scrappy underdogs who naïvely believe their passion for justice can overcome the bad guys' money, power, and treachery. But as Grisham cultists already know, The Rainmaker does not in any way screw with the formula that has yielded some of the most popular books and movies of the Nineties. Director Francis Ford Coppola, who established his towering reputation with an adaptation of another pulpy pop novel, hasn't exactly uncorked another The Godfather here. He has, however, rediscovered his old flair for identifying and embellishing a good story -- whatever its source -- and parlayed it into his most satisfying film since 1988's Tucker: The Man and His Dream. The Rainmaker's basic outlines are similar to A Time to Kill. A wet-behind-the-ears young lawyer named Rudy Baylor (Damon) risks his budding career by helping a poor, jerked-over client (Place) fight evil interests represented by an arrogant and unprincipled superlawyer (Voight). It's not quite the Matthew McConaughey-Kevin Spacey confrontation all over again; The Rainmaker's criminals are slimeball insurance executives, not murderous rednecks, and Damon's character is even greener than McConaughey's was. The basic situations and ideas remain the same, though, including his lawyer protagonists' development of emotional as well as pecuniary relationships with his clients. Also typical of Grisham is a blunt concession of his former profession's dark side balanced by an argument that lawyers are, in balance, not quite the bipedal cockroaches of popular mythology. As in much of his best work, Coppola does a masterful job of cooking a large, detail-packed story down to its vital human essence. Where a Sidney Lumet would serve up bombastic speechifying, and broad, napalm-laced satire, Coppola focuses on small, revealing idiosyncrasies in his characters and their funky Memphis environs. The acting is solid, from big guns like Voight and DeVito (as Damon's raffish, ambulance-chaser mentor) to lesser lights like Damon, who turns in a surprisingly authoritative performance in a role that, one imagines, was offered to others before him. Scheider and Rourke are savory as, respectively, a Luciferian insurance mogul and a roguish lawyer/racketeer named ìBruiserî Stone. At almost two-and-a-half hours, The Rainmaker feels a bit flaccid at times, and a marginally interesting subplot about Rudy's entanglement with a young, abused wife (Danes) could vanish unmourned. But Coppola's patient, graceful storytelling artistry, the subtly evocative cinematography by John Toll (Braveheart, Legends of the Fall), and the primal emotional punch of Grisham's basic ideas make The Rainmaker a determined cut or two better than we had any reason to expect. (11/21/97)
3.0 stars (R.S.)
Arbor, Lake Creek, Roundrock, Tinseltown, Westgate
KISS OR KILL
D: Bill Bennett; with Matt Day, Frances O'Connor, Chris Haywood, Barry Otto, Andrew S. Gilbert, Barry Langrishe, Max Cullen, Jennifer Bennett. (R, 96 min.)
A punchy, clever film noir from Australian director Bennett, Kiss or Kill spins a new twist on the age-old cliché of grifter lovers on the lam. Nikki (O'Connor) and Al (Day) run a convenient scam on lonely businessmen, with the curvaceous Nikki insinuating herself into their hotel rooms, knocking them out with the old sedative-in-the-champagne trick, and then taking them for all they're worth. One night something goes wrong, and the couple are left with a corpse and a briefcase in which they discover a videotape starring local football hero Zipper Doyle (Langrishe) and an underclothed adolescent boy. The couple flee with the tape in hand, though due to a few missteps (such as Nikki calling up Doyle to give him her opinion on his sordid hobbies) both Zipper and the local constabulary are on their tail, sending the pair deeper into the Australian bushlands. Frantically trying to elude the homicidal Zipper (who has absolutely no qualms about settling the score via his .38), they shack up at a series of progressively dingier motels and fly-by-nights, where Nikki's perilous mental facade begins to crumble, placing both of them in dire jeopardy. Day and O'Connor are enormously likable as the lovestruck psychos. O'Connor's ditzy Nikki is alternately frightening in her psychoses (flashbacks reveal her mother's violent death before her young eyes) and oddly charming; it's no wonder she's such an accomplished scam artist. Day plays Al relatively straight, acting as the conscience and moral center (what there is of it) of the pair. The remarkable thing about Kiss or Kill -- and the reason that such a cliché-ridden set-up seems so fresh -- is Bennett and cinematographer Malcolm McCulloch's breathlessly nontraditional pacing and editing techniques. Staccato jump-cuts abound, and Bennett uses flurries of hand-held camerawork to draw the viewer into the immediacy of Al and Nikki's rough-and-tumble world. Much of the film was improvised, and in that sense it calls to mind nothing so much as Jean-Luc Godard's early masterpiece Breathless, itself a nouvelle-noir touchstone. With an eclectic supporting cast of oddball characters and fewer stereotypes than you might expect (Possum Harry, an aboriginal tracker called in by the detectives late in the film, is a nice touch), Kiss or Kill manages to rise above the wash of noir clichés that surround it. Proof positive that even though Robert Mitchum may no longer be with us, film noir continues onward, upward, into the dark. (11/28/97)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Village
KISS THE GIRLS
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 ìforbiddenî 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)
2.0 stars (R.S.)
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL
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 ìepic.î 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)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Dobie, Great Hills, Tinseltown
A LIFE LESS ORDINARY
D: Danny Boyle; with Ewan McGregor, Cameron Diaz, Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo, Dan Hedaya, Stanley Tucci, Ian Holm, Maury Chaykin. (R, 103 min.)
From the trio that brought us Shallow Grave and Trainspotting (director Boyle with producer Andrew Macdonald and screenwriter John Hodge) comes this woefully botched tale of that unholy, clichéd triumvirate: love, kidnapping, and angels. Hodge actually wrote this script before the other two films, so that may have something to do with the deadly, dated feel of the materialÖ but perhaps not much. A Life Less Ordinary fails on so many levels it's nearly a textbook case of What Not to Do. The always sympathetic McGregor plays Robert, a blue-collar schmo who reacts to A Very Bad Day by taking his boss' daughter Celine (Diaz) hostage and lighting off to parts unknown. Celine hates her father to begin with, so it's not much of a kidnapping; she gives him tips on how to hustle the ransom and save his bewildered backside again and again. Meanwhile, the pair are being stalked by Lindo and Hunter, who play a pair of killer angels sent to force the unwitting couple to fall in love or be killed, or maybe both (it's hard to tell). Add this to Diaz and McGregor's utter lack of chemistry and toss in Boyle's penchant for confused and confusing magical realism, and you've got the biggest disappointment since New York, New York. None of the leads seems to know much about what's going on here, and as a result, neither does the audience. It's almost as though the filmmakers had cobbled together a series of vignettes left over from previous works, and then forgot to stitch them together. McGregor's ongoing dreams of a bizarre game show he participates in and Diaz's otherworldly knowledge that she shall ìsave his life with an arrowî raise further questions about what the hell is going on here. Unfortunately, there's no clear response from the film. Even the film's soundtrack -- always a high point in Boyle's films -- is a messy, uncalculated thing, abruptly popping up when it should be quietly throbbing along and then vanishing when it ought to be shrieking and cacophonous. Literally everything about A Life Less Ordinary is amiss, from casting on down to story. Its reach exceeds its grasp in the grandest of terms, and what you're left with is a muddled, soggy, and ultimately boring picture that goes nowhere, does nothing, and resolves all those loose ends not one iota. If this were some scattershot debut from an unknown, it would be easy to dismiss, but it's not -- it's from three of the most talented men in modern cinema (four if you count McGregor, and you really ought to), and a stumble like this stings. Better to rent Trainspotting (yet again) and hide until this dog vanishes from view. (10/24/97)
.5 stars (M.S.)
Dobie
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE
D: Jon Amiel; with Bill Murray, Peter Gallagher, Joanne Whalley, Richard Wilson, Alfred Molina, John Standing. (PG, 95 min.)
Whither Bill Murray's career? The pockmarked comedian's last substantial role was in Groundhog Day some four years ago (Mad Dog and Glory, made that same year, doesn't count seeing as absolutely nobody remembers it). Since then he's been virtually off the map. Murray has always struck me as an acquired taste -- while other early Saturday Night Live cast members such as Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtain have mastered the art of mediocre films and episodic television, Murray has stuck to his creative guns, more or less, which has caused his career to sputter. This new comedy from the director of Sommersby is hardly up to the actor's usual wry, smarmy wit; it's all broad slapstick and double-entendre triple takes, more Dudley Moore than Bill Murray. Here he plays a bumbling naïf, Wallace Ritchie, who arrives unannounced in London on his birthday to pay a call on his banker brother James (Gallagher). Much to his chagrin, James is hosting an important dinner party that night, and instead hustles Wallace off to enjoy the nightlife in the form of the ìTheatre of Life,î a bizarre, audience-participation guerrilla theatre group not unlike that seen in the recent Michael Douglas thriller The Game. Wallace, however, answers the wrong phone call at the wrong time and instead unknowingly becomes involved in a convoluted plot to blow up UN representatives at a banquet. As Wallace stumbles blithely along with gun in hand (he thinks it's fake) and the body count rises (he thinks they're actors), both Russian and British assassins and spies track his every move in the mistaken belief that he's some sort of American super-agent. Along the way, he manages to connect romantically with a leggy spy (Whalley) and dodge enough firepower to bring down 007. Both Amiel and Murray have broken down the gates of the ham factory here: The Man Who Knew Too Little is less a standard comedy than it is a classic British farce, and Murray is acting with all the stops out, mugging shamelessly, and using those wicked eyebrows and monstrous widow's peak to fine effect. Unfortunately, the film's overall silliness drags it down. There are only so many variations on the mistaken identity theme than you can pull out of material like this, and Amiel, it seems, is not the person for the job. Granted, when Murray's firing on all cylinders, he's unlike any other comic working today. Here, he's Cary Grant's dumber brother by way of Hitchcock (the film's title is a direct Hitchcock allusion), the Wrong Man who muddles through nonetheless. It's not Murray's best work by a long shot; it's far too broad for his seamlessly unctuous, wheedling comedy, but it is a painless enough way to kill 90 minutes or so, if that's what you're aiming for. (11/14/97)
2.0 stars (M.S.)
Great Hills
MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL
D: Clint Eastwood; with John Cusack, Kevin Spacey, Jack Thompson, Alison Eastwood, Lady Chablis, Irma P. Hall, Paul Hipp, Jude Law. (R, 154 min.)
Eastwood's film, adapted from John Berendt's phenomenally bestselling ìnon-fiction novel,î is as entertaining and outrageous a confection as its source material, half Southern gothic and half Our Town on goofdust. Cusack plays John Kelso, a stringer for Town and Country magazine who arrives in the verdant squares of Savannah, Georgia to interview socialite Jim Williams (Spacey) and document the man's annual Christmas party at the resplendent and palatial Mercer House. However, when Williams' violent live-in lover Billy (Law) is mysteriously murdered in the small hours following the party, Kelso decides to forego his 500-word puff piece in favor of undertaking a novel about the case and, by association, the people of Savannah in general (he himself refers to the town as being ìlike Gone With the Wind on mescalineî). As Williams suavely languishes in the pokey (of all our modern leading men, only Spacey can rot in jail with such sexy/cool savoir-faire -- a tossed-off scene in which he attempts to place an overseas phone call to Sotheby's while being harassed by a hulking, hollering inmate is howlingly funny), Kelso roams Savannah, gathering material not only for his book but also for Williams' defense attorney Sonny Seiler (Thompson). In short order he meets Williams' neighbor Joe Odom, a piano-playing, whiskey-drinking (everybody drinks in Savannah) bon vivant with a penchant for hosting his own wild nights at the home of whomever he happens to be house-sitting for at the time; Mandy Nichols (Alison Eastwood), a forthright and stunning young Southern belle who gladly assists him in puzzling out the Williams case; the voodoo priestess Minerva (Hall); and the Lady Chablis (herself), a boisterous transvestite-chanteuse who takes a shine to Kelso and serves as the fiery, outrageous soul of Eastwood's film. There are many amazing things in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, not the least of which is the fact that these are all real Savannah citizens being portrayed here -- conclusive proof, as if any were needed, that truth is indeed stranger (and more perversely humorous) than fiction. Screenwriter John Lee Hancock has done an admirable job of condensing Berendt's novel, eliminating some of the novel's lesser characters and altering the ending in favor of imbuing a more final note to the proceedings. Eastwood Sr., for his part, manages the wonderful ensemble cast remarkably well, especially for someone more inclined toward action and Western films (Bird and Bridges of Madison County excepted), but the real star here is the scene-stealing Lady Chablis, who deserves special recognition for her brash, saucy, utterly effervescent portrayal of herself. Unlike anything else out there right now, Midnight is a wholly original creation, crossed with shadows and light and the everyday madness of Savannah and its remarkable citizens. (11/21/97)
4.0 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Tinseltown
MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION
D: John R. Leonetti; with Robin Shou, Talisa Soto, Brian Thompson, Sandra Hess, Lynn Red Williams, Irina Pantaeva, Reiner Schoene, Musetta Vander, Marjean Holden, Litefoot, Deron McBee, James Remar. (PG-13, 93 min.)
More ìsensory bombardmentî than ìmovie,î Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is the franchise's follow-up film to its phenomenally, and unexpectedly, successful 1995 feature, which itself was based on an extraordinarily successful video game that has also spawned numerous television, theatrical, and animated spin-offs. Handily seizing the number-one position in national ticket sales during its first weekend in release, the critic-proof sequel is quickly proving that the box-office clout of Joystick Nation is no fluke. It also doesn't hurt matters that the PG-13 film, whose target audience consists of young boys of all ages, is nicely positioned between the month's two big R-rated action spectacles, Starship Troopers and Alien Resurrection. The movie is nothing more than a perpetual chain of elaborately choreographed (by returning star Robin Shou) fight sequences that mix live-action foregrounds with complexly layered digital effects and are linked together by the most flimsy and laughable of plot elements. Often all that's needed to get from one battle sequence to the next is for a character to dissolve into a poof of razzle-dazzle digital flash and transmogrify into some other shape, location, or situation. Other times characters morph more conventionally or are simply beset upon by hammer-headed, Visigoth-like entities and have no option but to fight back. But not to worry: There's no blood, broken bones (but for the occasional snapped neck), or bruises. One good example of the way the film rejects the burdens of storytelling and plot development lies in the film's basic premise. The sequel begins right where the first one left off: A band of fearless human fighters defeat the evil warlords from Outworld and close the portals that separate the two worlds, thus ensuring the safety of Earth for another generation. They begin to rejoice only to have the sequel begin with the portal being rudely ripped open by Outland emperor Shao-Kahn. The explanation? That which closes can also open again. But there's no time to even bat an eye at such lame rationales. The attack is on and the assault never lets up for the next 90 minutes. In this, the aural bombardment is equal to the visual. MK2 is, hands down, the noisiest movie of the year. Perpetual sound and music accompany every second of screen time, as in-your-face as the action and equally impossible to ignore. It's this bid for the viewers' primal stimulation centers -- and nothing more -- that makes MK2 function on terms more closely associated with vibrators than movies. Add to this the adolescent male focus on mud-wrestling females (I kid you not) and crotch shots of the various fighting beauties and you have something that makes no pretense of being anything other than what it is. You know that when an acting joke like Christopher Lambert won't even return for the sequel, some fragile line has been crossed. Sure, it's fun to witness the centaur, the four-armed Sheeva, and the other digitized thingees. The movie appeals to the same impulses that also compel us to revel in extreme sports and American Gladiators (whose Sabre, aka Lynn Red Williams, even has a role in this picture). And someone should study the certain connection between a film like this and attention deficit disorder. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation is a fascinating phenomenon; it's just that I'm having a hard time thinking about it in terms of a movie. (11/28/97)
0 stars (M.B.)
Barton Creek, Tinseltown
SEVEN YEARS IN TIBET
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)
3.5 stars (R.S.)
Village
STARSHIP TROOPERS
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 ën' 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 (ìThe goddamn bugs whacked us, Johnny!î; ìYou're some kind of a fat, smart bug, aren't you?î). The lethal beasties, ranging from ottoman-sized thrips to gargantuan beetles and slugs to shrieking swarms of razor-jawed ìarachnidsî 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)
3.0 stars (R.S.)
Alamo Drafthouse, Barton Creek, Gateway, Lincoln, Tinseltown
THE WINGS OF THE DOVE
D: Iain Softley; with Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roache, Alison Elliott, Charlotte Rampling, Elizabeth McGovern, Michael Gambon. (R, 103 min.)
The Wings of the Dove is yet another in a long line of recent films that seem as though they should carry the Merchant/Ivory banner, but don't. Is this the inevitable backlash against Joel Schumacher and Batmans I-V? I like to think so, but I suppose it doesn't matter. Any film without a gun in the first act is a rarity along the lines of tasty government cheese; we should be thankful. Adapted from Henry James' 1902 novel, The Wings of the Dove is one of those stories that gets tagged with the annoying label of ìtimeless.î Nonsense -- the only reason James is being brought to the screen so frantically of late (Washington Square, et al.) is that the national supply of Jane Austen is running thin, and we have to have something without Bruce Willis up there. James' tale follows the apparently doomed love of Kate Croy (Bonham Carter), society matron-to-be, and ne'er-do-well journalist Merton Densher (Roache). It's turn-of-the-century London, and proper young ladies don't go about consorting with such lesser creatures as writers. Though Kate will have none of it, her stern and exceedingly wealthy Aunt Maude will have none of it either, and expressly forbids the nascent relationship to go a single step further. Never underestimate the wiliness of young girls in love. At a society ball hosted by her aunt, Kate meets American heiress Millie Theale (Elliott), who has encamped in London while waiting to die from some dreadful and unnamed illness. In Millie, Kate sees everything she desires to be: wealthy, yes, but also spontaneous, loving, and ribald. When the beautifully peaked Millie takes a shine to Merton, Kate and her beau hatch a plan that, essentially, allows the dying American to fall in love with Merton -- and possibly vice versa -- in the hopes of securing a place in her sizable will and therefore breaking free of the constraints of Aunt Maude. It seems a perfectly horrible plan at first glance, but Millie give intimations that she knows what's going on all along. She just wants one last true love before the grave, and to hell with how it comes about. Director Softley is a master stylist; from the popcorn techno-thrills of Hackers to his freshmen take on the Beatles in Backbeat, he's among the best when it comes to creating whole worlds out of thin celluloid, and The Wings of the Dove is no different. Achingly gorgeous in almost all respects, the film soars in its period depiction of turn-of-the-century London (and later in Venice, as well), from costuming to cinematography on down. Carter, Roache, and especially Elliott give their all, and though the feisty, feminist Kate may seem a purely modern creation, it's James' all the way. Condensing a 500-page novel into a two-hour span tends to result in some things being left out, and occasionally Softley's film feels rushed. There are questions left hanging that never quite get resolved to anyone's satisfaction, but the director -- and cast -- almost manage to override them with the sheer beauty on the screen (not to mention a particularly un-Jamesian nude scene toward the end. It's not quite Howards End, but then neither is it Clueless, and for that I'm thankful. (11/21/97)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Arbor
Revivals
THE LITTLE MERMAID Last month, Disney hauled out this 1989 chestnut for a two-week run in an unsportsmanlike play to steal some of competitor Fox's Anastasia thunder; now Disney figures that this underwater gang is not yet oversaturated and has brought them back for one more splash. (11/14/97) @ various theatres; Fri-Thu.PULP FICTION (1994) D: Quentin Tarantino; with John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth Amanda Plummer, Maria de Madeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken, Bruce Willis. Anyone who's caught some of the TV-friendly edit of this modern classic that's been playing recently on network television knows all too well the reasons why it should only be seen in its original screen glory. Nineties cinema has hardly any more electrifying example than Pulp Fiction, and what with Tarantino also being in town for the Austin premiere of Jackie Brown, who knows what kind of strange juju this Pulp Fiction screening will invoke. Part of the Alamo's Tarantino/Jackie Brown month. (R, 154 min.) Preceded by You'd Better Watch Out (see special screenigs for description). @Alamo Drafthouse; Thu (12/18)-Sat(12/20)
Film Series & Other Screenings
AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY "Musicals: A Pure Cinema": New York, New York (1977) D: Martin Scorsese; with Robert De Niro, Liza Minnelli, Lionel Stander, Georgie Auld, Barry Primus, Mary Kay Place, Dick Miller, Diahanne Abbott. Start spreading the news... this weekend brings the rare opportunity to see this frequently (and unjustly) dismissed Scorsese film on the screen where its outsized story and visuals belong. Scorsese's tribute to the studio musicals showcases a bittersweet love story between De Niro as an ahead-of-his-time saxophonist and Minnelli as a big band vocalist. They meet on V-J Day, marry, have a baby, split up, make music, make love, and make history. Shot with a grand narrative and visual scope and loving homage. (PG, 164 min.) @Dobie; Sat, 11am.
CHASING THE DREAM: (1997) D: Jeff Fraley and Harry Lynch. A bull-riding documentary. (10/17/97) (NR, 60 min.) @ Iron Cactus (Sixth & Trinity), every Tue, 8 & 10pm.
YOU'D BETTER WATCH OUT: (1996) D: Scott Beale. Police Navidad! Screening before Pulp Fiction is this documentary short about renegade Santas from various chapters of the Cacophony Society who took Portland, Oregon by storm in 1996. Discover more about Portland Santacon '96 at http://www.laughingsquid.com/santa. @Alamo Drafthouse; Thu (12/18)-Sat(12/20), 11:30pm.
PROJECT INCOGNITO: (1997) D: Thomas Pallotta and Bob Sabiston. Short film/documentary series of digitally animated interviews completed for MTV by The High Road director (and Delta-9 webmeister) Thomas Pallotta and Bob Sabiston. Pallotta will be on hand to present the work and discuss the process of digital filmmaking. @Ritz Lounge; Sat, 8-9pm.
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