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Film reviews are updated on Fridays. This section compiled by Marjorie Baumgarten (M.B.); with reviews by Hollis Chacona (H.C.), Steve Davis (S.D.), Robert Faires (R.F.), Marc Savlov (M.S.), Russell Smith (R.S.).
| Ratings: 5 stars As perfect as a movie can be 4 stars Slightly flawed, but excellent nonetheless 3 stars Has its good points, and its bad points 2 stars Mediocre, but with one or two bright spots 1 stars Poor, without any saving graces 0 stars La Bomba |
D: Wong Kar-Wai; with Michelle Reis, Leon Lai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Karen Mok, Charlie Yeung. (Not Rated, 97 min.)
Utopian futurists and apocalyptic doomsayers agree that modern urban culture is radically changing the interior lives of the men and women who inhabit it. It's hard to say which camp, if either, Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai (Happy Together) belongs in, but one thing is for sure: No one is better than Wong at evoking the intoxicating, emotionally dissociative power of life in our sprawling First World metropolises. Like most of his films since 1988's As Tears Go By, Fallen Angels focuses on rootless young folks who are torn between their addiction to the city's exhilarating head rush of light, sound, and sexual stimulation and their vestigial desires for the emotional refuge of committed love. In this movie, which was shot three years ago as a companion piece to Chungking Express, an ensemble of twentyish urban pilgrims again do a spasmodic dance of nocturnal roaming, solitary pining, and gratification of their jaded pleasure receptors. It's familiar stuff for those who've seen any of Wong's recent work. So is the visual setting created by director of photography Christopher Doyle -- a fathomless opium reverie of pooling reds and umbers, streaming white motion trails, and haunting music that seems to ride on walls of cold night air. It's easy to lose yourself in this world. And that is Wong's point exactly. None of these characters -- a hit man (Lai) and his sexually frustrated "agent" (Reis, aka Michelle Lee); a mute, slightly addled ex-con (Kaneshiro); a pair of moody, lovelorn sexpots (Mok and Yeung) -- are really happy, but neither are they ready to make the sacrifices of freedom and emotional intensity that might be required to gratify their deeper longings. Because of his hard-to-track narratives and obsession with the sensual aspects of filmmaking, Wong is sometimes characterized along with directors like Michael Rymer (Angel Baby) and David Fincher (Seven) as a maker of feature-length music videos. But whereas videos are all about scattershot, fragmentary impressions, Wong explores his visions with the serene patience of a man searching for images in a shifting cloud bank. Rather than trying to impose meaning on seemingly disjointed images and events, he focuses his gaze so deeply that the meaning emerges unbidden. This unstructured approach poses obvious challenges to actors, but often (as is the case with Fallen Angels) it results in superior work by competent actors like Kaneshiro and outright brilliance by established stars such as Reis and Lai. To a large extent, you're either on the bus with Wong's defiantly unconventional approach or not. However, if you're fed up with the stultifying, formula-driven character of today's mainstream films, give Fallen Angels a try. At the very least you'll be engaged, and if you're lucky you may just recapture some of your original wonder at the seductive power of movies. (4/10/98)
Dobie
D: Alex Zamm; with Carrot Top, Jack Warden, Larry Miller, Raquel Welch, Courtney Thorne-Smith. (Not Rated, 95 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. For his screen debut, prop-humor comedian Carrot Top stars in this comedy about an inventor who saves his company from the big-business barracudas. The fact that it's opening here in Austin at a second-run discount house is not an auspicious sign. Did distribution company Trimark learn nothing from the huge comic egg it laid last year with its Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Meet Wally Sparks? (4/10/98)
Discount
D: Brad Silberberg; with Nicolas Cage, Meg Ryan, Dennis Franz, Andre Braugher. (PG-13, 116 min.)
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Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Riverside, Tinseltown
D: Peter Jackson and Costa Botes; with Jackson, Sam Neill, Harvey Weinstein, Leonard Maltin, Jeffrey Thomas as narrator. (Not Rated, 53 min.)
Kiwi auteur Colin McKenzie is the most famous filmmaker you've never heard of in this wonderfully subtle "mockumentary" from the man behind Dead Alive and Heavenly Creatures. It's so subtle, in fact, that you'd hardly know anything was amiss were it not for one brief scene featuring a Russian records czar with the improbable name of Alexandra Nevsky and Leonard Maltin's slightly over-exuberant pontificatings that run throughout. As the film opens (it's preceded by an equally excellent 15-minute-long short called "Signing Off" by Robert Sarkies), the rotund Jackson is tramping about his neighbor's garden shed in which, he reveals, he's recently uncovered an astonishing cinematic find -- an old steamer-trunk full of film canisters marked with the name C. McKenzie. Jackson goes on to tell the history of how Colin McKenzie was the first New Zealand filmmaker. Born in 1888, McKenzie was creating and showing films in his backyard at the age of 12 by using a bicycle-powered projection system and film emulsion made from egg whites. In his quest for more information on this neglected auteur, Jackson enlists the aid of everyone from the aforementioned Maltin (who calls the discovery of McKenzie's epic Salome the equivalent of discovering, say, Citizen Kane) to New Zealand actor Sam Neill and Miramax head Harvey Weinstein (who promises to lobby for the inclusion of Salome in the next Academy Awards ballot). All of this is done with such straight faces that the jokes seem less like jokes and more like a new episode of John Pierson's Split Screen, and that's the magic of this cunning web of trickery -- it's sublimely silly and perfectly believable all at once. Still, the film manages some wild flights of fancy. We're told that one recently unearthed McKenzie reel documents the first successful airplane flight by New Zealand's Richard Pearse -- a full six months before the Wright Brothers soared at Kitty Hawk -- and the fact that the filmmaker's first talkie, The Warrior Season (made over a decade before The Jazz Singer), bombed at the box office because the actors were all Chinese and the director neglected to include subtitles. Ludicrous though it may seem, Jackson and Botes work magic with an absolutely amazing collection of faux McKenzie films, stills, and archival footage that are beautifully aged, grainy, and 100% realistic. Realism, indeed, is not only the hallmark of the filmmakers but also their subject, who recruited thousands of extras and trucked them off to the most remote part of New Zealand's rainforest to build a full-scale recreation of biblical Jerusalem for Salome. It's all an elaborate hoax, of course, but one of the most entertaining ones to come down the pike in a good long while, and if offers yet more proof -- if any should be needed -- that Jackson is a gleefully, deliciously deranged filmmaker. (4/10/98)
Village
D: Nick Broomfield; with Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love. (Not Rated, 99 min.)
Alas, despite the oceans of hype generated by Sundance's last-minute yanking of this film from its January lineup, Brit Broomfield's scathing documentary about the various conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Seattle's golden child, Kurt Cobain, is adrift in a sea of wild speculation and paranoid rantings. That's not to say it isn't wildly entertaining -- it is -- but you just might want to take everything here with a grain of saltpeter. Broomfield, a master of in-your-face interviewing (he sometimes comes across as D.A. Pennebaker's evil twin), has charted similar courses before, notably in Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam and Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer, but this time out the objects of his affliction are pop-culture icons on a much grander scale. Hours after Kurt Cobain's shotgun-disfigured corpse was discovered in April 1994, the conspiracy theories began to fly fast and furious, and they're still up there, messing with not only the heads of everyone in Seattle, but also Nirvana and Hole fans the world over. Broomfield, sound gear slung across his shoulders, gamely dives head-first into the muck and rakes for all he's worth. What he finds isn't of much substance, but it certainly makes for some interesting observations, not the least of which is that Courtney Love appears to be one of the world's most accomplished control freaks. No surprise there, but Broomfield uncovers harrowing, tape-recorded messages left on various journalists' answering machines by Ms. Love that play right into the fires of paranoia (there's one from Kurt, too, but he sounds so messed up that it's hard to take his threats seriously). Did Love have Cobain killed in an effort to secure his fortune before a possible divorce? That's the rumor making the rounds in Kurt and Courtney, and Broomfield interviews everyone from Love's estranged father ("I think she did it") to a Los Angeles private eye hired to sort through the wreckage of the couple's faltering marriage ("You bet she did it"). Also along for the ride are entertaining, anti-Courtney tirades from Rozz Rezebek, with whom Love shared a volatile relationship pre-Cobain, and assorted druggie hangers-on, who vouchsafe for Cobain's winsome, naïve innocence and Love's explosive temper. Of course, the bottom line is, "Did she or didn't she?" and Broomfield's film fails to offer much support either way. It's all backyard gossip with nary a shred of solid proof. The Seattle County Coroner's office long ago ruled Cobain's death a suicide, and that official pronouncement stands to this day. Kurt and Courtney is a goldmine for Cobain fanatics -- recordings of a two-year-old Cobain singing giddily, home-movie footage galore, and lots of dreary Seattle locations abound -- but as for clearing up the mystery (if there is any mystery), there's nothing new to be found. (4/10/98)
Arbor
D: John Duigan; with Jon Bon Jovi, Lambert Wilson, Anna Galiena, Tahandie Newton, Barry Humphries, David Warner, Patricia Hodge. (Not Rated, 96 min.)
A backstage drama brimming with hothouse menace, The Leading Man by John Duigan (Flirting, Sirens) is a piercing little movie that nevertheless fails to fully deliver on all its incipient intrigue. As the story's "leading man," rock star Jon Bon Jovi here continues his assured move into a middle-aged acting career (Moonlight and Valentino and the upcoming No Looking Back). He's well-cast as the American movie star, Robin Grange, who has come to England to work in the theatre (and, as implied by the circulating rumors, perhaps escape Hollywood's blackballing stain of having been discovered in bed with his producer's wife). Robin exudes the kind of smug sexual confidence that befits a man who (in a life-reflecting-art tribute to an action performed by one of his screen characters) is regularly asked to autograph his phone number on the taut inner thighs of his female fans. Robin now finds himself in the midst of a theatrical troupe beginning rehearsals on the new play by England's leading contemporary playwright Felix Webb (Wilson). Despite being a man whose livelihood and reputation is predicated on theatrical invention, Felix's personal life is the stuff of hackneyed melodrama. He's sexually involved with the troupe's ingenue Hilary (Newton -- Duigan's frequent leading lady), who has become exasperated with Felix's promises to eventually leave his wife and children. His wife, Elena (Galiena) is also fed up with his lies and his inattention to their home life. In no time at all, Robin manages to size up the situation (which Felix believed was a well-disguised secret) and makes the playwright a proposition: Robin will seduce Elena and thereby restore her confidence and keep her from dwelling on her husband's affair -- all for an unspecified favor to be repaid by Felix at some future date. The Leading Man is at its best when it's in its backbitingly funny All About Eve theatrical mode or during its more subtle domestic histrionics -- Elena snipping the coy forelock from her husband's head while he sleeps or the pained expression of the playwright while watching his ingenue kiss the leading man. However, the movie devotes so much attention to the details of the convoluted plot advancement, while steeping essential motivations in enough mystery that we never manage to believe that so many smart characters are capable of such dumb behavior. Nor do we come to understand why so many plot elements have been introduced only to be stripped of any ultimate significance. Still, the film's satisfactions are many: exquisitely observed little moments, a deliciously wry coda, and quietly etched performances of the entire cast, including the sturdy comic turns by the secondary players Barry Humphries (minus his Dame Edna drag), David Warner, Patricia Hodge, and Nicole Kidman in an unbilled cameo. The Leading Man is not quite the star attraction its name implies, but the film is nevertheless an engaging piece of entertainment. (4/10/98)
Arbor
D: Stephen Hopkins; with Gary Oldman, William Hurt, Matt LeBlanc, Mimi Rogers, Heather Graham, Lacey Chabert, Jack Johnson, Jared Harris. (PG-13, 122 min.)
Next time Dad suggests the family all pile into the space camper and head out for a 10-year jaunt to another galaxy, just look the old man in the eye and tell him to cool his jets: The family that flies together, dies together. Except maybe when your launch pad happens to be in Hollywood, since everyone who takes off from there gets to live happily ever after -- or at least live in a state of suspended resolution, bouncing directionlessly from planet to planet in an eventful yet fruitless search for a way back home. A metaphor for life? Nah, not really… just one more workmanlike recycling of an old Sixties television series, albeit with Nineties visual razzmatazz, dependable animatronics by Jim Henson's Creature Shop, and tip-of-the-hat cameos by some of the TV show's original stars (including Angela Cartwright, June Lockhart, and others). "There's a lot of space out there to get lost in," warns Professor John Robinson (Hurt) early in the film, but his grave observation seems more a promise of sequels to come than sobering philosophical caveat. And now that Lost in Space has earned the envious distinction of being the first movie in 16 weeks to knock Titanic from its #1 box-office berth, this new franchise's future seems, well, unsinkable. The fact that both chart-toppers are sagas about ships that go disastrously off course may be less a portent of Hollywood trends to come than the fact that mega-budget effects spectacles are now sure to be interpreted as the safest means of appeasing consumer demand. Such a reading ignores the rudiments of good storytelling as a factor in film excellence. Lost in Space exhibits little in the way of narrative urgency; ironically, its undemanding storyline may just be part of its secret of success. As the spaceship with our Swiss Family Robinson family of galactic explorers, stowaway villain (Oldman), randy but steadfast pilot (LeBlanc), and Forbidden Planet-issue Robot careens through space, the question is not whether they will survive, but how. Episodically eventful but utterly unsuspenseful, the film is a diversion that requires little attention and satisfies the film-going needs of a wide variety of viewers. The film sets up character attributes and situations without ever developing the elements into a cohesive two-hour-long plot line. This leaves viewers free to latch on to whatever aspects or tangents that appeal to their individual fancies. For me, these included those form-fitting cryo fetish suits the characters wear during the first 40 minutes, seeing indie world plaything Heather Graham performing as a no-nonsense scientist, watching helium-voiced Party of Five gal Lacey Chabert lusting after Friend Matt LeBlanc, and conceding that the creepy space spider attackers had already been outdone this year by the more commanding insect antagonists of Starship Troopers. Hardly a space-age Swiss Family Robinson, Lost in Space plays more like Robinson's Crew… So? (4/10/97)
Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown, Westgate
D: Harold Becker; with Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin, Miko Hughes, Chi McBride, Kim Dickens, Robert Stanton, Bodhi Pine Elfman, Carrie Preston, L.L. Ginter. (R, 111 min.)
A good Bruce Willis film is a lot like a big plate of meat and potatoes, and a bad Bruce Willis film is, well, a lot like a big plate of meat and potatoes. As the archetypal action hero Everyman, Willis has taken to expanding his palette in the past few years (notably with Pulp Fiction, which, granted, was more of a horizontal move than anything else), but Mercury Rising makes no such efforts -- it's vintage Willis, and as such, it's pretty much a bore. Willis plays Art Jeffries, an FBI agent at the end of his rope after a botched hostage situation goes kablooey right under his nose. Haunted by the deaths of two young militia members who were about to surrender, he's bumped to a desk-jockey position by his superiors, who feel he's far too much of a loose cannon in his current, dilapidated mindset. (You have to ask, though, when is a Bruce Willis character not a loose cannon? You could team this guy up with Mel Gibson's Lethal Weapon character, Martin Riggs, and outgun Hussein's elite Palace Guards in 30 seconds flat.) When he's called in to investigate the apparent murder/suicide of a lower-income mom and dad, he immediately smells a rat and begins to unravel a skein of cover-ups and federal obfuscation that revolves around the couple's autistic child Simon (Hughes), who has since gone missing. As it turns out in the wildly improbable world of Mercury Rising, the boy is a savant who has inadvertently cracked the NSA's famed "Mercury Code," a cryptography program designed to provide cover for all of America's deep-cover agents the world over. Headed by a scheming but utterly logical bureaucrat (Baldwin), the Feds are out to kill the little boy before anyone else discovers he's broken their code wide open. No matter that the boy has no idea what he's done -- conventional government spook thinking rationalizes that the tyke is a threat to national security (and, at the risk of sounding like a heel, makes a very convincing argument in the process) and therefore must be destroyed. As you might expect, much mayhem ensues, with Willis shuttling the kid from one safe house to another as the "just doing our jobs" government agents close in. Becker (The Onion Field, Sea of Love) has a terrific eye for action scenes, but Lawrence Konner and Mark Rosenthal's script gives him little to work with, and Mercury Rising ends up being nearly as exciting as watching the thermometer outside your kitchen window, "nearly" being the key word there. Willis is essentially playing his Die Hard character one more time, and even Hughes as the odd little autistic kid seems paradoxically hellbent on hamming it up. Not quite loud enough to be a seasonal blockbuster, Mercury Rising is instead more of a dull thud on the action film map, fodder for Willis fanatics, and not much else. (4/10/98)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown
D: Michael Lehmann; with Billy Crystal, Kathleen Quinlan, Gheorghe Muresan, Joanna Pacula, Zane Carney, Steven Seagal. (PG, 104 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Billy Crystal plays a second-rate talent agent who stumbles into a Shakespeare-quoting giant living as a caretaker in a Romanian monastery and thinks this giant is his ticket to greater heights in Hollywood. In films such as Heathers and The Truth About Cats and Dogs, director Michael Lehmann has demonstrated quite nimble and sardonic comic sensibilities, but be warned that Lehmann has also directed such duds as Airheads and Hudson Hawk. ()
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Roundrock, Tinseltown
D: Howard Deutch; with Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Christine Baranski, Barnard Hughes, Jonathan Silverman, Jean Smart, Lisa Waltz. (PG-13, 97 min.)
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Gateway, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Lincoln, Tinseltown
D: Ice Cube; with Cube, Lisa Raye, Monica Calhoun, Bernie Mac, Jamie Foxx, Chrystale Wilson, Adele Givens, A.J. Johnson, Tiny Lister. (R, 103 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Ice Cube makes his writing and directing debut with this humorous drama about the shady characters who populate a notorious gentlemen's club and one woman -- stripper by night/broadcast journalism student by day -- who's looking to get out. In his screen acting work, Cube has shown himself to be in possession of a great deal of natural talent. Here he buffets himself with a promising cast of newcomers and proven comic talents and the camerawork of Malik Sayeed, the cinematographer of Spike Lee's Girl 6, Clockers, and the soon-to-be-released He Got Game, and visual stickler Stanley Kubrick's second-unit DP on Eyes Wide Shut. ()
Highland, Westgate
D: Peter Medak; with Michael Madsen, Natasha Henstridge, Marg Helgenberger, Mykelti Williamson, George Dzundza, James Cromwell, Justin Lazard. (R, 95 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Surreal creep artist H.R. Giger's design for the original Species is here reprised in this sequel, which (judging from the trailers) also seems to offer a lot of human skin. Sil the alien is recreated from a lab embryo but now Sil is half-human and half-alien.Still, her primary instinct is to mate. Acotrs Peter Boyle and Richard Belzer also make cameo appearances in the film. Director Peter Medak recently directed TNT's The Hunchback, as well as the bitterly dark crime dramas, Romeo Is Bleeding, Let Him Have It, and The Krays. ()
Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown, Westgate
D: Shinya Tsukamoto; with Tsukamoto, Kahori Fujii, Koji Tsukamoto, Naoto Takenaka. (Not Rated, 90 min.)
Tsukamoto, who previously exploded modern Japanese cinema with the mind-bending Tetsuo: The Iron Man and its sequel Tetsuo: The Body Hammer is up to his old tricks once again, and all you can say is "Wow!" Like his previous work, Tokyo Fist is a tough nut to crack, plot-wise (it certainly doesn't help matters that the white subtitles often lie against white backgrounds, making them all but illegible), but even a single incomprehensible viewing is a powerful experience. It's like smashing your face into the whirling blades of some outlandish, multi-hued industrial razor-fan… and I mean that in a good way. With his rapid-fire editing, colorful blue and red lighting, and wonderfully bizarre camerawork, you get the feeling that Tokyo Fist wasn't processed in a film lab -- it was processed in a methamphetamine lab, possibly by a marmot on PCP. Tsukamoto himself plays Tsuda, a mild-mannered Tokyo salaryman who runs into old childhood chum Takuji (Tsukamoto's real-life brother Koji) and begins an expanded, ruinous love triangle -- the third corner of which is provided by Tsuda's girlfriend Hizuru (Fujii), with disastrous postmodern results. Since their youthful parting, Takuji has become a professional boxer, able to kick ass with a single digit and in possession of a temper and attitude to match. Inflamed over his rival's advances on his best girl, Tsuda himself takes up the sport at a gym, and tools himself into a deadly killing machine. Much of the rest of the plot is incomprehensible without repeated viewings, but then few Westerners go to Tsukamoto's films for their finely nuanced storylines. This is a film about sex and violence, and viewed as such it approaches the level of a masterpiece, albeit a distinctly surreal one. Tsukamoto's ongoing fascination with body mutation and the transgressive effects thereof closely mirrors the similar themes of Canadian auteur David Cronenberg; both twist the human body into horrific shapes and then sit back and let the psyche follow. Tsukamoto, however, is a master of low-level dread. Tokyo Fist isn't a quiet film by anyone's standards, but his use of skewed angles and gel-drenched pyrotechnics recalls Dario Argento more than anyone else. Still, originality is his hallmark. Rarely do you encounter this much crimson gore spattering the walls in what is essentially a boxing film gone over to the dark side. It's Raging Bull on acid, with a bit of tweaky F.W. Murnau thrown in for bad measure, all deafening chopsocky, oozing nostrils, giddy gallows humor, and stylized bad taste. Unlike anything else you've seen, Tokyo Fist is an impure pop marvel: sleazoid cinema for the thinking degenerate. (4/10/98)
Dobie
D: Robert Duvall; with Duvall, Farrah Fawcett, Todd Allen, John Beasley, June Carter Cash, Walton Goggins, Billy Joe Shaver, Billy Bob Thornton, Miranda Richardson. (PG-13, 133 min.)
The movies haven't portrayed the evangelical preacher in a very flattering light, suffice to say. Invariably, this man of the cloth is depicted as a hymn-singing, prayer-spouting charlatan who hypocritically breaks the commandments with a singular regularity. That's one reason that The Apostle is an astonishing work: It defies the stereotype. Its protagonist, Sonny Dewey, is not some gross exaggeration, but rather a flesh-and-blood human being with flaws, two critical ones being a wandering eye and a homicidal jealousy. After committing a very serious infraction against the laws of man and God, Sonny flees Texas for the wilderness of Louisiana, like some Biblical prophet. Changing his identity, in a quest to both lose and find himself, he christens himself "The Apostle" and seeks to start his own church, one that is based on a fundamental faith divorced from material trappings and other distractions. In the course of this journey, Sonny achieves a degree of redemption when he finally comes face-to-face with his past sins. The story scripted by Duvall in The Apostle is, in many ways, reminiscent of the work of Horton Foote, which is not surprising, given that Foote wrote Tender Mercies, the film for which Duvall deservedly won an Oscar. The themes are simple, the dialogue is sparse, the characters are everyday folk. And there is something so American about it all, from the roof-rattling tent revivals to the junked cars in front yards to the quiet desperation that people endure in their lives from day to day. In his capacity as screenwriter and director, Duvall is careful to avoid sentimentality and easy answers, which gives The Apostle a vibrant ring of truth. (This integrity may not become apparent until after the film is over; it's an observation that gradually sinks in, after replaying the movie in your head.) In the film's most moving scene, Sonny compassionately converts a man threatening to raze the church he's worked so hard to build, as the rest of the congregation looks on. It is a scene in sharp contrast to an earlier one in which Sonny resorts to physical violence in protecting his tabernacle against the same man, who's played by good ol' boy du jour Thornton. In many ways, The Apostle is the tale of Sonny's conversion as well, from a wrathful creature of the Old Testament to a man shaped by New Testament ideals. Of course, then there is Duvall, the consummate actor. Whether strutting like a bantam rooster for the Lord, fervently calling himself a "genuine Holy Ghost, Jesus-filled preaching machine," or humbly acknowledging the folly of his actions, Duvall inhabits the character of Sonny, completely disappearing into the man's skin. In interacting with other members of the film's fine cast (including the immensely watchable Richardson as a fleeting love interest), he creates a rapport that only enhances their performances. Duvall is a true original, who -- along with Hackman, Newman, and others -- proves that older is sometimes better. His The Apostle is a genuine labor of love that both literally and figuratively graces the movie screen. Say amen to that. (2/6/98)
Arbor
D: James L. Brooks; with Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Skeet Ulrich, Shirley Knight. (PG-13, 138 min.)
The title, As Good as It Gets, looms like an omen, telegraphing, correctly as it turns out, the impression that this movie would've, could've, should've been better. Make no mistake, As Good as It Gets' winning combo of big laughs and big emotions practically ensures that it will be crowned the feel-good hit of the holiday season. And not undeservedly… there's a lot to like here, primarily the performance of Jack Nicholson, whose work in this film is the finest he's done in years. Yet in between all the laughs and tears, it becomes painfully obvious that there's not a whole lot of story here to prop up the constant emotional yanking. The movie plays best as a series of scenes -- some of them very good -- that fail to coalesce into a solid storyline. Character motivation is for the most part absent, and, occasionally, shot coherence is so sketchy as to become mildly confusing and engender the awareness of something missing. That a cute dog and a sick kid are the two biggest devices for advancing the plot also gives a fair indication of this movie's over-dependence on formula. Producer, director, and co-screenwriter James L. Brooks usually has a better grip on how to temper all these wild swings of emotion, having been involved in creating such innovative television shows as Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Tracey Ullman Show, and The Simpsons, and directing Broadcast News and the multiple Oscar-winner Terms of Endearment. But As Good as It Gets lurches to and fro in a way that won't impede its quips and zingers but will confound anyone looking for the dramatic arc. The vicious one-liners that spew relentlessly from the mouth of Melvin Udall (Nicholson) may be the real glue that holds these scenes together. Melvin is a successful author completing his 62nd romance novel who also suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder. He lives alone in a New York City apartment, and has a pathological fear of germs and stepping on sidewalk cracks. He also unloads venomous verbal shots at anyone who comes within his radar. He is an equal opportunity insulter -- his remarks can be homophobic, racist, misogynistic, xenophobic… whatever the occasion requires. Exactly how and why such abusiveness should be a symptom of OCD is extremely murky (as is the narrative consistency of his many other symptoms), but the movie's task is to lead Melvin into becoming a better man. Despite himself, he befriends the dog of a neighbor -- a gay artist (Kinnear) who is senselessly beaten by intruders -- and gradually befriends the neighbor. He also manages to develop a shaky rapport with the only waitress (Hunt) who will serve him at the restaurant where he eats daily. Kinnear is steadily proving that he may yet have the soul of a decent actor, but the fabulous Helen Hunt is woefully ordinary here. One wonders if Brooks went through his Rolodex, and when his Broadcast News gal Holly Hunter wasn't available, just moved on to the next name in queue. There's also the unmentionable Hollywood folderol about men successfully romancing women several decades their junior. Not only does this waitress bestow her gratuities on this man old enough to be her father, but he's a guy who also comes with a whole laundry list of pathologies and bile. In fact, it may be this bile that makes As Good as It Gets so darn irresistible. Melvin, because he's not well and also has an amusing way with a phrase, can utter the unspeakable. He's not speaking for us, of course; it's his illness talking. And laughter, as we all know, is the best medicine. (12/26/97)
Alamo Drafthouse, Great Hills, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Tinseltown
D: Steve Gomer; with Shirley Douglas, Trevor Morgan, Diana Rice, Kyla Pratt. (G, 75 min.)
Well, Barney and I didn't quite have an "I Love You, You Love Me" lovefest during his Great Adventure in feature filmmaking, but neither did I come away from the experience agreeing with the backlash perception of the character as something of a modern antichrist. The Purple One is just a big flannel dinosaur with a goofy laugh, who imparts wholesome messages about indulging your imagination and respecting others. Given the target audience of two-to-five-year-olds, the subtext seems more or less appropriate and the packaging is… well, who am I to question such a marketing juggernaut? Storywise, there ain't a whole lot here, but its 75-minute-long story -- in which Barney and his three human playmates chase after a magic egg -- moves steadily enough that grown-up chaperones won't find themselves clawing the walls in exasperated boredom. I'm not arguing that the scenes move fluidly or cogently from one development to the next; in fact, it's all rather clumsy and routine. And just because it's possible to pass off such wobbly material on unsophisticated children who don't know any better, does not mean that such cynical filmmaking practices should be condoned. Nevertheless, there's a huge amount of pleasure here to be derived from hearing the spontaneous swell of tiny three-year-old voices joining Barney for a chorus of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" and "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." Isn't this really a rudimentary demonstration of what each of us comes seeking in the darkened theatre: that shared sense of total involvement -- we come to laugh or weep, and maybe even sing (or clap for Tinkerbell, or whatever the circumstances require)? By and large, Barney's Great Adventure will most probably find its greatest audience through home video (this may explain the elaborate nomenclature of Barney's Great Adventure: The Movie). Released only in a limited number of theatres nationwide, the producers clearly seem poised to position the dinosaur to meet market demands. The greatest market demand may be for stuffed versions of the new character introduced in the movie: the adorable Twinken. (4/3/98)
Gateway, Lakehills, Lakeline, Tinseltown
D: Joel Coen; with Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, John Turturro, David Huddleston, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sam Elliott, Ben Gazzara, Jon Polito, Tara Reid, Peter Stormare, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, David Thewlis, Flea, Torsten Voges. (R, 117 min.)
The Coen Brothers -- Joel and Ethan -- go for broke in The Big Lebowski, and we the viewers are the winners. With The Big Lebowski they take their now-familiar brand of absurdist mystery/crime/thriller -- writ visually large -- and turn the whole melange into a fresh new affair. It's paved with delightfully irregular and unanticipated bits of business that stimulate the viewer to stay fully alert, while renewing our faith in the sheer joy of watching movies. In its wonderful title sequence, The Big Lebowski quite literally announces itself as a tumbling tumbleweed of a movie, a go-with-the-flow yarn that intends to drift toward cohesion. And who better to star in a tall tale such as this than a go-with-the-flow character like the Dude (Bridges)? The Dude is a lazy, crumpled leftover from the Sixties whose laid-back daily routine has been pared down to the essentials: weed, White Russians, and bowling with his pals Walter (Goodman), a hotheaded and hazily militaristic vet full of half-baked ideas and an ability to bring any discussion back to 'Nam, and Donny (Buscemi), a dim but good-hearted schlub who always lags a beat or two behind any conversation. A case of mistaken identity causes some nasty goons to break into the Dude's ramshackle apartment, rough him up, and soil his rug. All the Dude wants now is his rug ("because it really tied the room together"), so at Walter's urging he follows the trail of the rug-pissers and thereby becomes embroiled in an intersecting mix of kidnapping, pornography, German nihilists, sultry women, gumshoes, missing money, and missing toes. It's almost enough to interfere with league bowling. But, oh, the characters the Dude meets along the way…. The film is populated with rich, colorful figures: David Huddleston as the Big Lebowski, a wealthy, pompous, wheelchair-bound corporate achiever; Philip Seymour Hoffman as his toady assistant; Julianne Moore as the idiosyncratically mannered artist Maude; Ben Gazzara as the porn entrepreneur Jackie Treehorn; and Sam Elliott as the Stranger, the cowpoke whose inexplicably omniscient voiceover narrates the Dude's story. Then there are all the secondary characters, any of whom could be excised from the story and never hurt the narrative flow. We are the ones who would be deprived of never having known them -- characters like Jesus, John Turturro's heart-arresting turn as the flamboyant Latin pederast bowler; David Thewlis' perversely twittering art-world friend of Maude's; and Smokey, the pacifist bowler played by Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Also punctuating The Big Lebowski are a couple of visually wild and elaborate fantasy/dream sequences, one of them a Busby Berkeley bowling/porn phantasmagoria more outsized and ambitious than anything the Coen Brothers have tried in the past. More like Raising Arizona with its crazy kidnapping plot than straight-ahead narratives like Fargo, The Big Lebowski is also very site specific. It is an L.A. movie, calling to mind the worlds of Raymond Chandler and The Big Sleep. All the film's details -- cinematography, costumes, music -- are note perfect. Some viewers have criticized the movie for being too much of a shaggy dog story, lacking a cohesive point or purpose. Yet to look for the point is to miss it entirely. Coen-heads hop aboard for the ride. (3/6/98)
Great Hills, Lincoln, Westgate
D: Alex Proyas; with Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O'Brien, Ian Richardson, William Hurt. (R, 100 min.)
You really have to feel for Alex Proyas. This guy wears bad luck like the grimy trenchcoats of his protagonists, only his zipper's stuck and he can't seem to shake the damn thing off. It's been four years since his stunning debut with The Crow, and by all accounts Proyas has spent much of the intervening time trying to come to grips with the tragic on-set death of that film's star, Brandon Lee. Proyas, who cut his teeth in the advertising and video world of MTV, has a remarkable visual aesthetic; it's no great leap to say he's right up there with Jacques Tourneur or Ridley Scott in terms of his eye for sordid detail (his only real contemporary rival is City of Lost Children's Jean-Pierre Jeunet). And Dark City, like its predecessor, is a stunningly visual smorgasbord of tenebrous eye-candy, all creeping shadows and urban malaise. Proyas' ability to make a twilight cityscape look menacing is like no one else's. But apart from the sensory input he throws at you, Dark City is a curiously unengaging experience. It's like the CD-ROM games Myst or Riven blown up to huge cinematic proportions while the critical ideas driving the play are left behind. For all its dark splendor, nothing much happens to make you squirm or gasp or weep, as in The Crow. It flatlines before it ever begins. The story seems ripped from one of Kafka's lesser nightmares: Everyman John Murdoch (Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub with blood seeping from his forehead. Suffering from amnesia, he doesn't know who or where he is, or what's going on (in this manner he functions as the viewer's surrogate throughout the film), but he soon runs into the mysterious Dr. Schreber (Sutherland), a paranoid, possibly dangerous physician newly graduated from the Peter Lorre School of Tics and Twitches. Schreber informs him that the city's inhabitants are the victims of some ongoing cosmic experiment being conducted by a race of black-clad, fedora-topped aliens called "The Strangers," who hope to unlock the secrets of humanity by mixing and matching people's memories. The city, it seems, is entirely a construct of these film noir bad guys, who have the ability to alter reality at will (a power Murdoch himself has picked up as well). Proyas also throws in the only American actress to ever adequately survive a Dario Argento film -- Jennifer Connelly -- as Murdoch's estranged wife, and William Hurt (suitably vague) as a Forties-style gumshoe out to solve a series of citywide serial killings. Actually, the whole film has a post-WWII feel to it, thanks in part to George Liddle's spectacular production design and Dariusz Wolski's gorgeous cinematography, but the actual time period is anyone's guess. So is much of the plot, though Proyas, who also penned the script, does his best to make things adhere to some internal logic I never quite figured out. Dark City looks like a million bucks (or rather, a million bucks gone to compost), but at its dark heart it's a tedious, bewildering affair, lovely to look at but with all the substance of a dissipating dream. (2/27/98)
Dobie
D: Gus Van Sant; with Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Stellan Skarsgard, Minnie Driver. (R, 126 min.)
Will Hunting (Damon) is a "Southie" -- a twentysomething kid from the rough-and-tumble neighborhoods of South Boston. By day he works construction with his best friend Chuckie (Affleck) and by night he works as a janitor, mopping the hallowed halls of M.I.T. When he's not doing that he's out drinking down at the local pub or engaging in the sort of street-tough shenanigans that gave Alex in A Clockwork Orange such a bad name. And when he's not doing all that, he's anonymously solving some of the toughest mathematical equations that M.I.T. professor Lambeau (Skarsgard) can pitch to his students. Will is a misplaced genius, "an Einstein," the kind of mental gymnast who comes along maybe once in a generation, if that, and when he gets nailed by the cops and stands facing some hard time, Professor Lambeau tracks down this wunderkind and packs him off to his old psychologist pal Sean McGuire (Williams), himself an ex-Southie from those same mean streets. It's here that Will opens up about his battered childhood, his mental prowess, and his seeming lack of ambition, and also where a steady war of wills begins to simmer, Southie vs. Southie. Co-written by real-life pals Affleck and Damon, Good Will Hunting is the sort of coming-of-age story that all too often bogs down in cheap, sentimental claptrap and budding-wisdom brouhahas, but Van Sant and a very, very solid cast keep the film from breaking up, at least until the final reel or so. Will's romantic interest, the pre-med Skylar (Driver) at first seems to be such a stock deus ex machina that you grit your teeth, waiting for the other shoe to drop, but Van Sant never lets it happen; she's not Will Hunting's clever, witty salvation, at least not in the classic, screen sense. That comes from William's McGuire, a crotchety, angry, seething psych professor who's trapped in the painful aftermath caused by his wife's death from cancer and his refusal to rejoin the living. He's Will's mirror image, and he knows it. It's the key to both their salvations. I've been wondering recently just who the hell Matt Damon is and why he adorns the covers of so many magazines when he's done so little film work thus far, but I have to admit, he shines in the role of Will. Will is 30% cocky bravado, 30% violent thug, and 40% bewildered mastermind, and Damon plays up a storm as he ricochets off Williams (in one of his best "serious" turns yet) and pals around with Affleck with the sort of ease you feel they share in real life. Things stumble a bit in the third act as emotional speeches flow like cheap red wine and Good Will Hunting threatens to spill over the dams of pathos, but it's never so much that Van Sant loses sight of the film's original intentions. Part character study, part redemptive drama, and all cheesy heart, it's Boston-baked melodrama, a little too gooey at times, but still pretty delicious. (12/26/97)
Arbor, Highland, Lake Creek, Tinseltown, Westgate
D: Curtis Hanson; with Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, James Cromwell, David Strathairn, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito. (R, 138 min.)
Kudos to director Curtis Hanson and co-screenwriter Brian Helgeland for whipping James Ellroy's seminal novel of 1950s Los Angeles police corruption and noir sexuality into recognizable shape for this distinguished film adaptation. Ellroy's original manuscript fell under the heading of "epic." With over 100 distinct characters and nearly that many plot twists, it was long considered unfilmable and it languished in development hell for years, nevertheless remaining one of the hottest unproduced properties around. Now it's here, finally, and well worth the wait. Spacey plays a smooth-talking LAPD detective named Vincennes, who moonlights as technical adviser on a high-rated TV cop show; as such, he's looked up to by the regular Joes on the beat, although some police officers resent his penchant for working celebrity busts alongside Sid Hudgens (DeVito), the smarmy editor of Hush-Hush magazine, a seamy Hollywood scandal sheet. Together with the straitlaced, rising LAPD star Ed Exley (Pearce) and the violent, emotionally confused detective Bud White (Crowe), Vincennes falls prey to a series of internal police scandals revolving around a recent massacre at the aptly named Night Owl Cafe on Hollywood Boulevard. As the body count mounts and the internal affairs intrigue spirals out of control, this trio of good cops/bad cops furiously works to cover its collective ass before the perilous house of cards that is the 1950s LAPD collapses atop them. You come away from the film with the distinct feeling that it should have been shot in high-contrast black-and-white; echoes of classic film noir crop up in almost every scene, but cinematographer Dante Spinotti's (Heat, Last of the Mohicans) lush colors and steamy atmosphere more than make up for that. Like the best dirty cop procedurals of the past, L.A. Confidential chugs along like an approaching thunderstorm, ratcheting up the dirty dealings and hazy suspense at an alarming rate until the final, hideous confrontation. Just when it seems things can't possibly get any worse for the fallen angels in blue, things do, and the film jacks itself up to another brutal level. Full of period locations, costumes, and one very clever Lana Turner gag, it's easy to see why Ellroy is so pleased with the film. It's tough enough adapting run-of-the-mill Michael Crichton books to the screen -- with a sprawling tome like Ellroy's, results such as Hanson's are downright miracles. (9/19/97)
Dobie, Gateway, Lake Creek, Westgate
D: Pedro Almodovar; with Liberto Rabal, Francesca Neri, Javier Bardem, Angela Molina, Jose Sancho. (R, 100 min.)
Let's squelch those troubling rumors right up front, shall we? Live Flesh (euphonious Spanish title: Carne Tremula) is a different kind of Pedro Almodovar movie, but the 46-year-old director has not followed the dismal path of other former enfants terribles who've embraced bloodless conservatism in the name of "maturity." He still shoots the hottest and most stylish sex scenes in the business, still works with a color palette drawn from 1960s Xavier Cugat album covers, still retains a fair measure of the bracing, "nothing is true, everything is permitted" satirical perversity of early hero Luis Buñuel. What's really different about Live Flesh is that, to a greater degree than ever, Almodovar seems fully engaged with the inner lives of his characters, regarding them as worthy of sustained exploration and even -- ¡en serio! -- compassion. The key players are Victor (Rabal), a handsome young misfit whose obsession with hard-eyed beauty Elena (Neri) has a lingering impact on the personal lives of two cops who, in an early scene, bust him for harassing Elena. During the arrest, one of the cops, David (Bardem), is accidentally shot and paralyzed from the waist down. Fate balances his misfortune by causing Elena to fall in love with him. Victor, meanwhile, takes the rap and goes to the slammer. After he's released, he sets up in a squalid tenement flat from which he patiently stalks (woos?) Elena to the violent chagrin of hubby David. Rabal, who for much of the film sports a crewcut rough-trade look similar to Antonio Banderas in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, isn't quite the magnetic presence that Banderas was. He's a bona fide talent though, and he nails the heartsickness of a character whose only durable possession is the ride-free-for-life pass he received for being born on a Madrid city bus. The other characters in Almodovar's ensemble are just as fascinating in their own ways. Bardem, in particular, stands out as an intelligent, passionate macho man who regards his younger rival with mingled fascination, loathing and the special terror of the prospective cuckold. Not least of Live Flesh's unexpected virtues is the insight with which Almodovar, long noted for his preoccupation with female culture and psychology, explores the dynamics of male-male relationships. Another pleasant surprise is the attention that Almodovar lavishes on pure storytelling. Possibly due to the story's origin as a Ruth Rendell novel, this is the most coherent, viewer-friendly narrative he's ever filmed. But again, maturity is a relative term when speaking of the man who, only a couple of movies ago, was playing rape scenes for laughs. The camp-obsessed, taboo-flouting punk of Law of Desire, Matador, and Kika may have toned down his act, but he still makes movies with a daring, distinctiveness, and exhilarating freshness that few can match. Whether Live Flesh proves to be a new road or just a brief detour, it's an impressive display of range from one of film's true maverick talents. (2/27/98)
Arbor
D: Richard Kwietniowski; with John Hurt, Jason Priestley, Fiona Loewi, Sheila Hancock, Maury Chaykin, Gawn Grainger. (PG-13, 93 min.)
Every one of us is a fool for love, even stuffy English writer Giles De'Ath (pronounced as Day-ahth, the character hastens to remind us). Brilliantly portrayed by John Hurt, whose every gesture and facial expression speaks volumes, De'Ath is a British dinosaur who regards the 20th century as anathema. He's described in a newspaper blurb as "an erstwhile fogey, now cult." A widower whose life is regimented by stringent order, he's the last person one might expect to find tangled up head over heels. But not only is he goofy in love, the unlikely object of De'Ath's exultation is a teen movie idol whom he's never met: Ronnie Bostock (Priestley), the hunky star of Hotpants College II. De'Ath discovers Ronnie quite by accident: Locked out of his apartment in the rain, De'Ath wanders into a movie theatre because he's heard that E.M. Forster's works are now onscreen. Instead he finds this Porky's-like trifle and is about to leave when the face of Ronnie Bostock glues him to his seat. From that moment on he's hooked: He's buying teen magazines as though they were porn and memorizing every sacred word (Ronnie's favorite author is Stephen King, his favorite musician is Axl Rose); he cuts out photos of "snoggable" Ronnie and pastes them in an album he sweetly labels "Bostockiana"; he seeks out Ronnie's other films (films with titles like Tex-Mex and Skid Marks), even though Sight and Sound describes them as having no redeeming social value. His obsession leads to his purchase of a VCR even though he can't tell the difference between a VCR and a microwave and once he gets it home he rudely discovers that he also needs a television to make it operate. Finally, De'Ath travels to the States and takes up residence in a no-tell motel located in the little Long Island town where Ronnie is reported to own a home. His hilarious attempts at sleuthing eventually lead him to Ronnie's live-in girlfriend Audrey (Loewi) and finally to the object of his dreams, Ronnie. De'Ath insinuates himself into the couple's household, flattering Ronnie by comparing Hotpants College II with Shakespeare and telling him what a huge star he is in Europe. De'Ath's love is all-encompassing but curiously non-sexual. Unfortunately, the film can figure no satisfying way to bring this whole situation to conclusion. But until that point, Love and Death on Long Island is the height of drollery, a cheeky ode to the liberating power of popular culture, and a fascinating look at an old dog learning some new tricks. Writer-director Kwietniowski makes his feature film debut with this adaptation of British film critic Gilbert Adair's cult novel of the same title, which of course owes a debt to Thomas Mann's novella of a slightly different title. Hurt hasn't had a role this delicious in quite some time and his turn here is a welcome delight. It's almost enough to fill an unsuspecting viewer with l'amour fou. (3/27/98)
Arbor
D: Randall Wallace; with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Gabriel Byrne, Gerard Depardieu, Anne Parillaud, Judith Godreche, Hugh Laurie, Peter Skarsgaard. (PG-13, 132 min.)
This new chronicle of the adventures of the king's musketeers, as directed by Braveheart scribe Randall Wallace, suffers from a severe case of over-earnestness and star-power overkill. It's agleam with sumptuous scenes of Versailles revelry but with hardly any of Dumas' dank wit and ear for epic tragedy. Wallace, instead, places things somewhere between the bravura silliness of Richard Lester's 1974 The Three Musketeers and an Actors Studio self-help group: There's so much unintentional mugging in this film I feared for my wallet. DiCaprio, as the tyrannical boy-king Louis XIV, is at the heart of the problem. Certainly he has the boy part down pat, and his haughtiness is unquestionable, but there's something about his flat, American tones which leave his portrayal of King Fop lying in the dust. Likewise his Phillipe, the king's twin and the titular man in the mask, whom he plays with a wide-eyed bluster more appropriate to a pre-Titanic Jack Dawson. Clearly he's not the man for the job here (and who is? my vote goes to Crispin Glover, if only to add the much needed -- and intentional -- oddball quotient the film sorely deserves). As for the musketeers themselves, what must have seemed a casting coup of mammoth proportions doesn't play nearly as well onscreen as it does in the mind's eye. Irons is suitably pious as Aramis, who spends his days praying in his room and advising the King in matters of state while simultaneously plotting against him. The same goes for Byrne as the conflicted D'Artagnan, now Captain of the King's musketeer regiments and thus sworn in allegiance to DiCaprio's power-mad teddy boy. Malkovich, however, is coming out of left field as Athos, who is spurred to treason when Louis sends off his son Raoul (Skarsgaard, doing an impeccable Malkovich, Jr. impersonation) to die in order to make time with the boy's lady love, Christine (Godreche). Of course, Malkovich always seems to be playing left of center, but here his clipped, monotone Midwestern accents trip him up, and his paternal stoicism is cartoonish. Depardieu, as the lusty, aging Porthos seems to be the only one having any fun with his role; when not bedding the scullery maids or finishing off yet another flagon of ale, he's grousing about the unfairness of growing old and dreaming of past glories, a grizzled lech with a faltering rapier. The film itself is a jumble of period images that swirl by with little meaning or resonance, a series of ornate parties, treacheries, and rescues. It lacks the inherent impact of Dumas' tale, and its emotional core seems tacked on and unfinished. It's all swash and no buckle. (3/13/98)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown
D: Steve Boyum; with Steve Van Wormer, Paul Walker, John Ashton, A.J. Langer, Robert Englund, Dennis Hopper. (PG, 94 min.)
I have to admit to not really being able to remember all of the Teenese from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or Fast Times at Ridgemont High or even Clueless (which has played at least 300 times on my VCR). So I'm not certain if it is the same language used in Meet the Deedles or a new vernacular entirely. Sadly, it all sounds bitchin' to me. Which is to say that, though the words may have changed, the cadence, pitch, and intent of the lexicon remains the same, giving this movie a feel that is at once radically, jammin'ly energetic, and tediously, terminally tired, I mean totally. The Deedles (Phil and Stew) are twins, a pair of latter-day Moondoggies whose love for the surf and wahines has gotten them expelled from school on their 18th birthday. Daddy Deedle is disappointed, and sends the boys packing into the Wyoming wilderness to be straightened out by his ex-Army buddy, a Rambo-like wildman who runs Camp Broken Spirit, a boot camp for languishing rich kids. But like Mr. Magoo, Stew and Phil (who suffer from mental myopia) also have an endless supply of inadvertent good luck. They escape survival camp and are mistaken for two new forest-ranger rookies brought in to rid Yellowstone of pesky prairie dogs before Old Faithful's billionth birthday celebration. Seems a dastardly Dudley Do-wrong (Dennis Hopper -- doing god knows what here) has a plan to divert Old Faithful's geyser onto his property and is using the prairie dogs to dig the tunnels for him. And the plot thins. There's a bit of romance (with the still engaging A.J. Langer from My So-Called Life) and a lot of X-treme Games-style stunts (motorized skateboarding, road luging, and white-water river surfing, to name but a few). But, there's an awful lot of dead time in this picture, and while it's a bit too sweet and innocent to utterly despise, there's nothing there to really like. Unless, of course, you're 11 years old and the scenery is beautiful and the stunts are daring and the boys are cute. And because I can remember, a long, long time ago, how I thought that being Gidget would the bossest thing in the whole world, I will compromise and set the Deedles' rating smack in the middle of my "0" and Tessa's and Cady's "3." After all, I'm a "blistering" mom and doing anything else would be "heinous." (4/3/98)
Great Hills
D: Sammo Hung; with Jackie Chan, Gabrielle Fitzpatrick, Miki Lee, Richard Norton, Karen McLymont. (PG-13, 106 min.)
By Jove, the old boy's holding up pretty well. Sure, Jackie Chan at 44 has lost a bit of the startling arachnid agility he flashed 20 years ago in Drunken Master and Snake in the Eagle's Shadow, but not all that much. For contrast, check out the lush corpulence of director Sammo Hung in his cameo role. A former kung fu badass of Chan's generation, Hung now seems to have defected to the George Foreman temple of martial arts discipline. But give Hung credit for this: He understands better than most of Chan's recent directors what audiences really want from the Hong Kong megastar's films. So to a much greater degree than Rumble in the Bronx, First Strike, and Once a Cop, the fight scenes in Mr. Nice Guy are all about Jackie and his innovative, ever-evolving kung fu style, not ensemble brawls in which he shares the glory and workload with hosts of younger protégés. I would assume that, by this point, everyone with violent objections to the encroachment of aggressive cuteness and whimsy into Chan's films -- a trend that's been underway for almost two decades now -- is already off the Jackie bandwagon. For everyone else whose interest in this genre didn't vanish after its brief eruption of mid-Nineties trendiness, there's as much good, frenetic fun to be had in Mr. Nice Guy as any action-comedy you're likely to see this year. Even after all the redundant praise Chan has drawn for infusing martial arts cinema with elements of slapstick, screwball comedy and Vincente Minnelli-style production design (check a late chase scene in which Chan and his pursuers pop in and out of a maze lined with bright blue doors), it's still a marvel to watch him do his thing. I won't waste space with a story summary. Let it suffice to say it's the kind of deal where bad guys commit scores of public assaults and murders in pursuit of a videotape that could finger them as criminals. (Tell a Jackie Chan fan his plots are a joke and the reply you'll get is, "Yes. And your point would be…?") Like countless Golden Harvest action movies before it, Mr. Nice Guy hews to a pat formula of amateurish first-take acting, cheapo special effects, Access TV-caliber film editing, and drop-dead brilliant fight sequences. This unevenness is always a bit grating. You wish Chan wasn't quite so content with fulfilling his audience's lowered expectations. Still, for all their technical shortcomings, his movies never fail to send me home with a big, sloppy idiot grin on my face and a fresh charge of endorphins lighting up my cerebral cortex. For me, that virtue alone will always be good for a quarter's worth of stars. (3/27/98)
Gateway, Tinseltown, Westgate
D: Richard Linklater; with Matthew McConaughey, Ethan Hawke, Skeet Ulrich, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dwight Yoakam, Julianna Margulies, Chloe Webb, Charles Gunning, Bo Hopkins, Luke Askew. (PG-13, 122 min.)
As pictured here, the real-life clan of bank robbers who were active during the post WWI-period and known as the Newton Boys were down-home Texas farmboys just looking to grab themselves some of the Twenties roar before it left them in the dust. A lovingly recreated period piece, The Newton Boys covers a five-year span from 1919-1924 during which time the gang had the dubious distinction of being the country's most successful group of bank robbers, capping their careers with a mail-train robbery whose estimated $3 million haul was the largest theft of its kind to date. Part Western, part crime story, and part true family saga, The Newton Boys blurs the standard generic boundaries in its quest to tell a uniquely American story about the ambitions of society's have-nots and the quiet passage of eras. Indeed the film opens up with an old-timey iris-out shot that recalls the look of movies from the early decades of the century, and concludes in marked contrast with a mesmerizing coda of actual documentary footage that includes the last of the siblings chatting up Johnny Carson amid the glitz of a 1980 Tonight Show appearance. All in all, the gang was an honorable bunch who never killed anyone, and their story tells more about the rationalizations these bank robbers make for their chosen profession, the ways in which technology advances in counterpoint to new criminal methodologies, and the ominous portents of corrupt justice systems and celebrity trials of the future. The themes are undeniably rich and they seize our imagination to a much greater degree than the characters themselves. The actors are all excellent (McConaughey delivers his best work to date, Ulrich and Hawke both shine, Yoakam is a break-out revelation -- of the gang, only the usually remarkable D'Onofrio seems less vivid than we might ordinarily expect); they seem believable as brothers (except, of course, for Yoakam, who plays Brent Glasscock, the nitroglycerin expert and squirrely Fifth Beatle to the four Newton brothers). As characters, however, these figures just don't seem to have enough meat on their bones to sustain our interest beyond the two hours it takes for the movie to run its course. Each character has a couple of traits to play but never emerges as a fully developed person. The women in the story (played by Margulies and Webb) fare worse, having little to do but play the "love interest." Nevertheless, The Newton Boys sparks to life in numerous other ways -- in its attention to period detail, in its elegant camerawork, in segments such as the breathtaking centerpiece montage that recounts a string of bank robberies, in the beguiling music score, and in the closing courtroom scenes that give a sense of the gang's interaction with regular folks and the institutions of state. What The Newton Boys lacks in dramatic definition, it more than compensates for with its underlying intelligence and visual luster. (3/27/98)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown
D: Bob Gosse; with Henry Thomas, Robin Tunney, Michael Parks, Stephen Lang. (R, 97 min.)
Call it "grunge cinema," "scuzz cinema," "Gun Crazy cinema," whatever you like: Two lonely, white-trash adolescents fall in love, shoot guns, commit crimes, and go on the lam, everything ultimately ending in tragedy. The territory charted in Niagara, Niagara is a familiar one, except that one of the characters has Tourette's syndrome. While the affliction makes the relationship between Seth and Marcie all the more doomed -- you know from the start that her violent, unpredictable outbursts will be their undoing -- it's more gimmicky than psychologically meaningful, although Tunney does well in conveying her character's matter-of-fact acceptance of her illness. (Indeed, Tunney's performance won the best actress award at last year's Venice Film Festival.) Meeting by chance while shoplifting, the couple hit the road in a beat-up station wagon, with frequent stops at liquor stores and pharmacies, as they attempt to pass off forged prescriptions for medicine that will control Marcie's increasingly erratic behavior. (A prolonged detour at a dilapidated shack owned by the grizzly, half-out-of-his-mind Parks upsets the movie's road-trip rhythm.) The love story in Niagara, Niagara is premised on a notion that Seth and Marcie belong together because they're both freaks in a way, unable to find anyone else. Whether that's a romantic sentiment or a cynical observation, of course, depends on your perspective. Regardless, you never feel the urgency of this union of lost souls; their meeting is more happenstance than fateful. With some irony, the film's title (one of the traits of Tourette's syndrome is the repetition of words) refers to the traditional American destination of young lovers, a spectacular place for honeymooners with their whole lives ahead of them. Of course, the Falls mark a coda for the pair here, rather than a beginning. In the end, the whole thing seems pointless because the excursion on which the movie seeks to take you is an unfulfilling one, a journey that hits a dead end even before it starts. (4/3/98)
Dobie
D: Gillian Armstrong; with Ralph Fiennes, Cate Blanchett, Ciaran Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, Richard Roxburgh, Clive Russell. (R, 131 min.)
People in glass churches shouldn't amount to great movie subjects, but all bets are off when it comes to Oscar and Lucinda. An eccentric, idiosyncratic story about glass, love, gambling, and Christian faith, Oscar and Lucinda is a high-wire kind of a movie -- you wait for its fragile glass structure to shatter or inevitably cloud up, but the film's roof beams keep poking upward toward loftier heights and fill the theatre with the intoxicating rush of ethereal air. Based on Peter Carey's 1988 Booker prize-winning novel (England's top literary award), Oscar and Lucinda was adapted for the screen by Laura Jones (Angel at My Table, Portrait of a Lady). In many ways, this period film about a couple of society's square pegs is familiar turf for director Gillian Armstrong (My Brilliant Career, Little Women), whose works are always populated with strong, self-confident female characters and the men who love them. Yet the visual and emotional delicacy of Oscar and Lucinda is also tempered by a strong comic and earthy streak. Set in Australia during the Victorian era, the film recounts the romance of Oscar and Lucinda, a pair of odd birds whose fate becomes forever entwined by a deck of cards and a transparent glass church. Their story begins with their childhood, introduced by an offscreen narrator (Oscar and Lucinda's future great-grandson) whose recitation has the richness of oral lore that has been passed down through the generations. Oscar (Fiennes) is the shy, awkward son of a severe preacher father. At a young age he asks God for a sign and leaves his father's stern influence, though his gangly body and deep-seated guilt make him a strange character well into his adulthood. While studying at Oxford for the ministry, Oscar discovers his knack for betting on horses. He's a steady winner who gives his earnings to the poor but when he recognizes that he has become obsessed by gambling, he flips a coin and decides to escape his temptation in the Australian outback. While traveling there, he meets Lucinda (Blanchett), an heiress of a Sydney glass works whose feminist mother raised her to become a "proud square peg." Lucinda also harbors a weakness for wagering on cards, and thus a love begins. Yet as they grow closer, Oscar becomes convinced that Lucinda is really in love with the Reverend Dennis Hasset (Hinds), a glass connoisseur who has been exiled to a remote settlement in order to squelch festering rumors of improprieties with Lucinda. Then, faster than you can say Fitzcarraldo, Oscar hatches a bet as to whether or not he can deliver a glass cathedral to Reverend Hasset in the outback. It's all a mad gamble, full of folly, fervor, and inspiration. It is a tale like none other, a romance all their own, a saga for their progeny. Fiennes has not been this mesmerizing in a role since Schindler's List and newcomer Blanchett's luminescence recalls nothing so much as Judy Davis' stunning international debut in My Brilliant Career. Keeping with the spirit of its lead characters, Oscar and Lucinda is a movie best met with a gambler's faith: You may not be certain what it means in the end, but its magnificent payoff is nevertheless a sure thing. (2/20/98)
Arbor
D: Boaz Yakin; with Renée Zellweger, Christopher Eccleston, Allen Payne, Glenn Fitzgerald, Julianna Margulies, Kim Hunter, John Randolph, Kathleen Chalfant. (R, 115 min.)
Not since Melanie Griffith strode among them in A Stranger Among Us a few years ago has Brooklyn's Hasidic community been so foregrounded in an American motion picture. Strangely, Griffith's untenable "goy in the hood" turn proved more respectful of that community's tightly knit gestalt than this new tale by Boaz Yakin (Fresh) about a Hasidic woman's rebellion against the patriarchal confines of her circumscribed life. Not that there isn't a good story to be told here -- it's just that writer-director Yakin's A Price Above Rubies fails to develop an emotionally believable storyline and dramatic setting. As Sonia, the film's protagonist, Zellweger is forced to make the most of her engagingly pouty facial expressions. Though we are rarely made privy to the turmoil Sonia is experiencing, it's enough that we see Zellweger's puffy pout to therefore assume that her character's been somewhere offscreen crying or otherwise venting her pent-up emotions. Her face is just about the only thing that helps lends credence to this shallow drama. Is Sonia a feminist rebel, a meshuginah head case, a religious transgressor? Yakin never seems quite certain, hinting at all three but never making a case for any particular theory. As the film opens, we view Sonia as a child with her brother Yossi, who tells her a bedtime story about an eternally wandering woman and then offers her a false ruby, which she instantly nails as fake. Yossi runs off for a midnight swim, never to return alive, but always to remain an apparition that flits through her perplexed imagination (something like that dancing baby that keeps beckoning Ally McBeal). Next we see her as a grown woman hysterically reluctant to hand over her newborn son for circumcision at his bris. Sonia has married a promising young scholar named Mendel (Fitzgerald), a kind young man who is a shining light in the eyes of the community and the esteemed Rebbe. But Sonia is always asking Medel impious questions like whether he loves her more than God, and if they can make love with the lights on. Sonia's brother-in-law Sender (Eccleston) notices the impetuous nature of his brother's wife and offers her a job as a jewelry buyer for his shady, all-cash operation. Sender is the closest thing to a villain in this story, schooling Sonia in his self-serving business ethics and luring her with the pleasures of quick, vigorous, up-against-the wall and on-the-table schtuppings. It's hard to discern what pleasure is being derived by the schtupee in these encounters but before long, Sonia is all hot under her Hasidic wig and long sleeves and is off and running on her quest to find her true self. The quest involves a far-fetched fling with a Puerto Rican jewelry maker (Payne), with whom she casts her destiny. What the film is missing is any sense of Sonia's evolution or thinking process. One minute she's a meek, housebroken housefrau; overnight, she's a hard-bitten businesswoman busting some dealer's chops. One minute she's trying to steal a smooch on the lips from her comforting sister-in-law (Margulies); never again does that lesbian lunge come into play. These confusing character shifts are perhaps indicative of the ideas that provided the original impetus for the movie. But the end result is one farblondget mess. (4/3/98)
Village
D: Mike Nichols; with John Travolta, Emma Thompson, Adrian Lester, Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Maura Tierney, Larry Hagman, Paul Guilfoyle. (R, 143 min.)
It's uncanny: the pasty, puffy physique; the graying blow-dried hair; the throaty drawl; the direct eye contact; the instincts of a born politician. But for all the detail captured by Travolta in his role as the Clintonesque presidential candidate, Jack Stanton, in Primary Colors, it's really more an impersonation than a performance. It -- like the movie -- eludes the integral question: "What makes Jackie run?" Based on the infamous bestselling roman a clef by "Anonymous" (otherwise known as journalist Joe Klein), Primary Colors tells the story of the improbable candidacy of a Southern governor running for President whose out-of-nowhere campaign in the primaries must constantly deal with one obstacle or another, all having to do with the character (or lack thereof) of the man running for office. Of course, as you might guess, his main problem is his penchant for extracurricular bedroom activities with women other than his ambitious and supportive wife (valiantly played by Thompson), who compromises her pride in the quest of power. (She's part Lady Macbeth, part Tammy Wynette.) There's no novelty in the plot contrivances in Primary Colors because you've seen it already ad nauseam on television, in the newspapers, seemingly everywhere. Consequently, the movie seems enervated; it never really rollicks like a good political satire. (The marketing department for the film's distributor, Universal Pictures, must have viewed the latest accusations of sexual impropriety against Clinton as both a godsend and a curse.) The behind-the-scenes perspective of the campaign trail will probably interest novices to the process, particularly the parrying and feinting in which candidates engage. But such rules of the political game are often as ridiculous as they are interesting, coming off like nothing more than an amusement for grown-ups. As the film's Candide, the polite and overwhelmed Henry Burton, Lester attempts to convey a character with a wavering moral center, but his role is too sketchy to carry the film toward some true meaning. As it turns out, it's Bates' turn as a hard-nosed, profane "Dustbuster" who uncovers who's got what on Stanton, her lifelong friend, that's really the meat and potatoes of Primary Colors. But by the time that the import of her role is revealed, you don't care one way or another how it all comes out because the Elaine May script has distilled everything into a mush of oversimplified ethics. It's clear then that the true colors of Primary Colors are black and white. (3/27/98)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Roundrock, Tinseltown
D: Millicent Shelton; with Malik Yoba, Melissa De Sousa, John Witherspoon, Fredro Starr, Cedric the Entertainer, Kellie Williams, Sticky Fingaz, Idalis De Leon, Downtown Julie Brown. (R, 90 min.)
The dumbing-down of African-American film comedies is part and parcel of the lowest-common-denominator factor in comedies of all stripes. But this debut effort from former video director Shelton and the Hudlin Brothers (House Party, Boomerang, Bebe's Kids) as producers is scraping the bottom of the barrel, both in terms of laughs and originality. The film's featherweight storyline -- budding Harlem rappers and assorted wannabes are packed off on a ramshackle bus to work on a Luther Campbell (2 Live Crew) video down in Miami -- is weak at best, and unwatchable at worst. Think Spike Lee's Get on the Bus made for the Puffy/Onyx set with wacky comic dialogue by a two-year-old weaned on Death Row Records, and you'll get the idea. De Sousa plays Leta Evans, an aspiring film director and recent graduate of the NYU film program who nails the thankless job as an intern to egotistical label head Bleau Kelly (D'town Brown). The next day, Evans finds herself in charge of a motley crew of gangsta thugs and horny teens going southbound to "hit the big time." Along for the ride are Yoba's Poppa, the group's parental figure and all-around swell guy in the 'hood; Brotha (Fingaz), a ladies man with too many ladies; Indigo (Guy Torry), who's just ripped off the cantankerous, Mouseketeer-coifed Peaches (The Lady of Rage); and longtime Hudlin Brothers' player Witherspoon and co-conspirator Cedric as the older-but-dumber bus drivers. From New York to Miami, the gags just keep flowing, but that's not comedy I'm talking about. Ride's sophomoric preoccupation with jokes revolving around the bus' broken down commode, flatulence, and the like is enough to put anyone off his dinner, but there's obviously a market for this sort of inanity -- some recent Eddie Murphy vehicles have proven to be goldmines for the scatologically inclined. The most fun Ride has to offer is a sporadic sort of "Spot that Rapper" game; the film has cameos by everyone from venerable MTV icons Dr. Dre and Ed Lover to VJ Idalis, and from Redman to none other than Snoop Doggy Dogg himself (who, as always, turns in a very credible performance as a mellower-than-thou Florida rapper with the languid, slow-burning stylings of a soggy spliff). Shelton keeps her camera moving about, but since most of the film takes place on a cramped bus, there's not much to do except sit back and let the woefully bad jokes flow over you like some sort of comic slurry. Saving grace? The soundtrack, which features killer tracks from Onyx, Nas, Black Caesar, Naughty by Nature, Al Green, and the Notorious B.I.G. But honestly, that's about it. (4/3/98)
Highland, Lincoln
D: Atom Egoyan; with Ian Holm, Sarah Polley, Bruce Greenwood, Tom McCamus, Gabrielle Rose, Arsinée Khanjian, Alberta Watson, Maury Chaykin, Brooke Johnson, Earl Pastko. (R, 110 min.)
In the course of life, horrible, tragic events sometimes occur. We all know this to be a fact of life, yet this knowledge doesn't make our acceptance of the truth any easier to bear. Human beings seek reasons and culprits and causes in order to make sense of our tragedies and restore reason to those who have entered the land of the unthinkable. Few people understand this better than attorney Mitchell Stephens (impeccably played by Ian Holm), who arrives in a small rural community in British Columbia that has just experienced a gut-wrenching disaster in which 14 children perish and many others become injured when their schoolbus inexplicably crashes into a frozen lake. Promising compensation and retribution to the grief-stricken parents if they allow him to represent them in a class-action suit, one might easily mistake Stephens for little more than a well-oiled opportunist, yet he understands their agony all too well. He struggles to make his peace with another kind of bereavement, a living death, in which his daughter has been lost to drug addiction. The Sweet Hereafter fashions a rich, haunting tale from this anguish, a tale whose exquisite illumination transcends the mournful details of its storyline. Adapted by Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan from the acclaimed novel by Russell Banks, the film represents a career breakthrough for the director. Up until now, Egoyan has enjoyed a reputation as a top-flight arthouse writer-director whose singularity of vision in such films as Exotica, Speaking Parts, and The Adjuster has also fostered a sense of his works as being somewhat remote and hermetic. With The Sweet Hereafter, Egoyan, for the first time, adapts someone else's source material and even though he brings much to the story that is clearly his own (which results in a decidedly "Egoyan film"), it's still a story that manages to touch a more universal nerve. As Mitchell Stephens goes from home to home, we, along with him, gradually piece together a patchwork of understanding from the details of ordinary lives. Egoyan layers the story of the Pied Piper into the film, a resonant analogy that was not in the book. He also discovers beautifully cinematic storytelling devices such as the way the story of the disaster is told by means of a fractured temporal structure and also the brilliantly unsettling carwash sequence that opens the movie. The performances are all subtle jewels as well; each actor carves out a fresh and unique character. I can think of no other movie that has dared to analyze grief and its aftermath with such naked honesty and precision, a film whose here and now so totally rebukes the notion of a sweet hereafter. With a clarity of purpose and vision, Egoyan casts his line as though he were an ice fisherman determined to plumb the unyielding surface fissures to find some life that bites back from the underside of the cold, impenetrable Canadian frost. (1/9/98)
Village
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)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown
D: Robert Benton; with Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, James Garner, Stockard Channing, Reese Witherspoon, Giancarlo Esposito, Liev Schreiber, Margo Martindale, John Spencer, M. Emmet Walsh. (R, 96 min.)
Twilight is a good title for this murder-mystery whose best attributes are not the caliber of its detective story but rather its forthright acknowledgment of mortality and aging. Writer-director Robert Benton, co-writer Richard Russo, and actor Paul Newman re-team for this private eye drama after their success in 1994 with Nobody's Fool. But unlike the unpredictability of that earlier film, Twilight's plotting is drably conventional and obvious. Still, put consummate pros like Paul Newman, Susan Sarandon, Gene Hackman, and James Garner up on the screen -- together -- and you're pretty much guaranteed to have something that's eminently watchable and enjoyable. Still, it's a shame that they're stuck in a none-too-credible story about blackmail, murder, and dangerous women in modern-day Los Angeles. Newman plays Harry Ross, a former cop turned private investigator turned alcoholic, who becomes embroiled in a long-simmering murder mystery when he agrees to help out his friends and benefactors (he lives in their garage apartment) Jack Ames (Hackman), a former screen legend, and his beautiful wife Catherine (Sarandon). Many dubious steps later, Harry is still uncovering information that should have been obvious to most anyone in the audience from the get-go. Nevertheless, watching Newman, Hackman, and Garner play men who are aware their time is growing short and who discuss their frailties and diminished capacities is refreshing film fare indeed. In many ways Twilight echoes some of the sentiments of Robert Benton's 1977 detective film The Late Show, starring Art Carney. Unfortunately, the film's younger characters are not written with anywhere near the degree of insight afforded the older characters. Twilight features some of the best young actors around -- Reese Witherspoon, Giancarlo Esposito, and Liev Schreiber -- but their actions and motivations are even more inscrutable and unbelievable than those of their elders. Though the plot elements fail to deliver in terms of suspense, the script contains many good one-liners and repartee. And with actors such as these to deliver the goods, we're inclined to overlook a lot. (3/6/98)
Arbor
D: Stuart Baird; with Tommy Lee Jones, Wesley Snipes, Robert Downey, Jr., Irene Jacob, Kate Nelligan. (PG-13, 136 min.)
Even hardcore sequelphobes have to admit it's a pretty cool idea: a The Fugitive-redux manhunt movie focusing on U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard, Jones' stoically relentless flatfoot character from the original 1993 megahit. But somewhere between concept and execution, director Baird (a career bench-warmer whose previous résumé is heavy on film and sound editing) has managed to lose much of the gusto, nerve-shredding tension, and robust character development that set The Fugitive apart from the rest of the action/suspense pack. Ironically, the problem may lie in Baird and screenwriter John Pogue's over-eagerness to give us what they think we want. Whereas The Fugitive was in essence a two-man play in which Gerard and Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) often appeared to share an almost psychic link, U.S. Marshals is all Jones' show. His quarry this time is Mark Sheridan (Snipes), an accused murderer of mysterious background and character whose internal life is as obscure as the contents of the sealed briefcases and boxes he's always lugging around. Unlike Kimble, whose innocence and decency are known from the beginning in The Fugitive, Sheridan is a total cipher to both Gerard and the audience until deep into this two-hours-plus film. Ergo, we can't be expected to give a rat's ass what happens to him -- and don't. More wasted acting talent (so to speak) is represented by 12-Step poster boy Downey, who plays an intelligence agent assigned to Gerard's team because Sheridan's victims were fellow DSS operatives. To an even greater extent than Snipes, he's basically furniture until the last 20 minutes or so. A further millstone that Jones and company must carry is Pogue's script which, like The Jackal and Mission Impossible, seems to drastically overestimate the mass action-movie audience's level of interest in computers, electronic surveillance devices, and other high-tech gewgaws. (Translation: Too much gazing into screens and not enough running, shooting, and leaping from high places.) What's truly amazing is that, even when forced to carry the entire movie on his back, Jones almost pulls it off. Like Robert Mitchum, Steve McQueen, the Eighties-era Rutger Hauer, Sean Connery, and a disparate handful of other thinking man's tough-guy stars throughout history, you almost don't need to provide him with a script. His ability to effortlessly convey masculine strength, humor, complexity, and a just-palpable dark side makes his mere presence in a movie sufficient reason to watch it. Stuart, say "Thank you, Mr. Jones. Thank you very, very much." Now climb down off that director's dolly and get your dilettante butt back into the cutting room. For my part, I'll leave you readers with a steeply hedged check-it-out recommendation for U.S. Marshals and two crucial words: Blockbuster Video. (3/6/98)
Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Tinseltown, Westgate
D: Frank Coraci; with Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Steve Buscemi, Allen Covert, Angela Featherstone, Matthew Glave, Billy Idol, Christine Taylor. (PG-13, 96 min.)
I can't help but think that retro-Eighties nostalgia trips like this one would be a lot more effective had we all not been rehashing the whole Eighties music thing since January 1, 1990. I was sick of the Eighties then, and by now I've gotten to the point where the very mention of the Thompson Twins or Kajagoogoo causes me to swerve my car into oncoming traffic. The Wedding Singer does little to alleviate this overkill situation, though it is a harmless and occasionally hilarious pop comedy good for a few bargain yuks. It's 1986, and Sandler plays Robby Hart, a failed rock & roller whose current career as a wedding singer isn't exactly what his fiancée (Featherstone) had in mind when she said yes. In a brilliant show of bad taste and even bigger, badder hair, she leaves him standing at the altar, which sends him into a vicious emotional tailspin that he then takes out on his bride and groom clients. Luckily, he quickly falls for Julia (Barrymore), a plucky, naïve wedding caterer who, unfortunately, is also about to marry the wrong person. As Glenn, her betrothed, Matthew Glave is a two-timing Wall Street slimeball, the kind of reptile that was an icon of Eighties materialism. Will Robby rescue Julia from her marital doom? Will the two of them finally act on their mutually lovestruck impulses before it's too late? If you have to ask, I'm demoting you to the remedial film class right now. Coraci and company pile on the Eighties touches as though this were some sort of Biblical epic and Boy George wrote the Ten Commandments. Everything from Dallas jokes to rubber bracelets, Michael Jackson gloves, and the Buggles make indiscriminate appearances. It's all a bit desperate, and by the time Billy Idol (he's alive?) appears in the film's final minutes, you're practically screaming for Nirvana to swoop down from the heavens and smite the whole mess with one big Sub-Poppy chord. Okay, it's not that painful, but really, there's only so much pastel pink and purple set design a guy can stand. Sandler is actually at the top of his game here; he plays Robby as a genuinely nice guy (with Fee Waybill's hair) who truly enjoys the fun-lite he brings to his wedded clients. He gets off on the whole idea of marriage and commitment, and he makes full use of that puppy-dog face and atonal snivel. He and Julia are a pair of naïfs lost in a world run by Gordon Gekko and his ilk. At times it borders on the abyss of perpetually cute, but a nicely contrived endgame á la The Graduate manages to cinch things up. Like the cinematic equivalent of cotton candy, it might make you yak, but it tastes pretty good going down. (2/13/98)
Barton Creek, Dobie, Great Hills, Tinseltown
D: John McNaughton; with Neve Campbell, Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Theresa Russell, Denise Richards, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Robert Wagner, Bill Murray, Carrie Snodgress. (R, 108 min.)
Dillon plays Sam Lombardo, the ladykiller-cum-boating instructor at a tony South Florida high school who finds himself accused of rape first by one leggy blonde student (Starship Troopers' Richards) and then another, darker one (Scream's Campbell) in this noirish sleazefest that plays like Basic Instinct meets Out of the Past and feels like Party of Five as directed by the Dark Brothers. McNaughton has come a long way since his personal high-water mark with 1990's Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, though you wouldn't know it from this teasey, cheesy mess. Still, like Henry, Wild Things is shot in a filter-heavy, smeary-lens fashion that makes the blinding Florida sunshine look positively grimy (how anyone ever gets a tan in this film is one of the great mysteries of the universe). After the accusations, Sam takes on a shyster lawyer (played to the hilt by a goony, thoroughly believable Murray), while local detective Bacon tries to sort it all out. The fun of Wild Things -- and there's a lot of it -- is in its never-ending game of cross and double cross: Who's scamming who is the tune McNaughton's playing, along with who's screwing who, and of course that old standby: Is that really Kevin Bacon's penis? It's stupid, asinine stuff when you get right down to it, but fun nevertheless. Director of photography Jeffrey Kimball has a ball coming up with ingenious new ways to make Campbell (who needs help) and Richards (who doesn't) look slutty. Dillon, who apparently hasn't aged since The Flamingo Kid, has finally mastered the fine art of cinematic lechery. Even Russell's smallish part as Richard's rich floozy mom has zip to it, although she still sounds for all the world like she's reading her lines off the Goodyear Blimp. In keeping with the noir sensibility, there's no moral in this film -- except perhaps the old saw about good girls going to heaven and bad girls going everywhere. On second thought, scratch that: Wild Things has no good girls, just horny ones and dead ones (and maybe horny dead ones if someone can get George Romero to do a sequel). Brainless and trashy in the extreme, it's also the most canny fun to be had in a while, if you're partial to a swampside Cheez-Whiz nosh. One very important note: When "The End" comes onscreen, stay seated -- the film continues to unfold, with even more outlandish plot twists to follow. I have a gut feeling Wild Things is going to end up on a lot of otherwise respectable critics' "guilty pleasures" lists, not least of all mine. (3/27/98)
Great Hills, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Riverside, Tinseltown
D: Alan Rickman; with Phyllida Law, Emma Thompson, Gary Hollywood, Arlene Cockburn, Sheila Reid, Sandra Voe, Douglas Murphy, Sean Biggerstaff. (R, 110 min.)
Sometimes the coldest season exhibits an austere beauty -- trees stretching bony limbs toward a somber sky the shade of lead, landscapes leeched of color, revealing sharp edges everywhere -- but it can be awfully tough to focus on winter's graces with an icy wind blowing on your neck and a cold ache deep in your bones. The chill is overwhelming; it obliterates all thoughts save those of getting warm. This intimate drama of eight Scots groping for warmth -- emotionally as much as physically -- in the midst of a bleak midwinter strives to project the majesty in the season, but much of the time it just blows cold, prompting you to think of little more than getting through this movie and baking under a heat lamp. Granted, a story set on a day so cold that the sea has frozen needs to exude a certain icy atmosphere -- and certain elements of the film succeed admirably in that: Seamus McGarvey's black-and-white cinematography captures winter's stark look, the pallor and deep shadows and crispness of outline, and Michael Kamen's score resounds with isolated, echoing notes from a piano, evocative of icicles dropping into an icy pond -- but in its story, The Winter Guest's chill overwhelms everything else. Playwright Sharman Macdonald and actor Alan Rickman, adapting Macdonald's stage play, weave a tale among four disparate pairs of villagers: Elspeth (Law) and her widowed daughter Frances (Thompson), who's still paralyzed by grief; Frances' teenage son Alex (Hollywood) and a young woman, Nita (Cockburn), who's attracted to him; two pre-pubescent schoolboys (Murphy and Biggerstaff) playing hooky; and two aged friends (Reid and Voe) going to the funeral of a stranger. The characters are sympathetic, and the actors do their bit to make them appealing as well -- Law is especially memorable as Elspeth, fussy and funny and stubborn and shrewd -- yet they seem frozen by a story, the outcomes of which are inevitable and transparent. Chekhov is reputed to have said that if a gun is introduced in a play's first act, it must go off before the final curtain. The Winter Guest extends that to the pistol below a young man's waist, and to cameras, too. Early on, it becomes all too clear that Thompson's Frances, a photographer who has not lifted her lens since her husband's death, will click the shutter before the credits roll, just as it's clear that Alex will snap Nita's picture, so to speak. These telegraphed climaxes rob the story of its drama as surely as winter steals the leaves from the trees, leaving us a film that's little more than a few chilly scenes of winter. Rickman's directorial debut isn't devoid of warmth, or austere beauty, for that matter, but it doesn't generate enough of either to compensate for the time it leaves us out in the cold. (3/20/98)
Village
CADDYSHACK (1980) D: Harold Ramis; with Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Michael O'Keefe, Bill Murray. Scatological golf comedy at its finest.... (R, 99 min.) @ Alamo Drafthouse; midnight, Thu (4/16).
GREASE (1978) D: Randal Kleiser; with John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, Jeff Conaway, Didi Conn. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of this cult-status musical, new enhanced color and digital sound have been added for this national re-release. Some girls call it Grease, others call it Lard. (PG, 112 min.) @Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown; Fri-Thu.
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) D: Jim Sharman; with Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien. Austin Rocky Horror fans have been dressing up and doing the "Time Warp" thing live for 21 years straight. Well, more or less straight. For more on the long-running, interactive movie/stage/camp experience, see the Austin group's website at http://www.kdi.com/~riffraff/queerios. (R, 95 min.) @ Wells Branch Discount Cinema; midnight, Fri-Sat.
ROLLER BOOGIE (1979) D: Mark L. Lester; with Linda Blair, Jim Bray, Beverly Garland, Roger Perry. Remember when roller disco was all the rage? Well, Linda Blair is probably relieved that you don't. This dated disco trash is co-sponsored by the Seventies theme club Polly Esther's, the new across-the-street neighbor of the Alamo, which will be offering discounted admission with a Roller Boogie ticket stub. The show opens with a collection of vintage trailers. (PG, 103 min.) @ Alamo Drafthouse; 12:15am, Fri-Sat.
AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY "The Women of Pre-Code Cinema":
I'm No Angel (1933) D: Wesley Ruggles; with Mae West, Cary Grant, Edward Arnold. The Austin Film Society's current season looks at Hollywood representations of female sexuality in the years before the Hays Production Code of 1934. Mae West slings innuendos here like there's no tomorrow (which the Hays Office proved there was). She plays a carnival gal who goes through a succession of gentleman friends. Showing beforehand is Betty Boop in "Dizzy Dishes." Admission is free. (NR, 87 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Tue, 6:30 & 9pm.
COMEDY CENTRAL SCREENINGS:
South Park Uncensored is screening as part of the Big Stinkin' International Improv and Sketch Comedy Festival (separate admission required). This medley of short comedy films, animation, and sneak previews of upcoming and/or censored Comedy Central TV shows features South Park's "director's cut" of "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe" and the "South Park Christmas Special," along with clips from Viva Variety, The Daily Show, and new series, The Bert Fershners. Also included is the premiere of "Escape From It's a Wonderful Life," a re-dubbing of the classic by new ComCent comedy troupe, the Upright Citizens Brigade. @Alamo Drafthouse; Fri-Thu, 7 & 9:45pm; except Tue, 10:30pm only.
FUNHOUSE CINEMA:
Wild Wheels (1992) D: Harrod Blank. In honor of the upcoming Art Car parade in Houston, the Funhouse series presents this fasinating and hilarious documentary about the crazy custom cars phenomenon as captured by Harrod Blank (Les Blank's son). Also showing with Wild Wheels is Frank Grow's "Red and Rosy," the degenerate gearhead short about a crashed-out drag-racing champion turned monstrous adrenaline junkie addicted to the blood of his fans. See related art cars story in this week's "Features" section. @Ritz Lounge; Mon, 8 & 10:30pm.
