Film Reviews
Film reviews are updated on Fridays. This section compiled by Marjorie Baumgarten (M.B.); with reviews by Hollis Chacona (H.C.), Steve Davis (S.D.), Robert Faires (R.F.), Marc Savlov (M.S.), Russell Smith (R.S.).
| Ratings: 5 stars As perfect as a movie can be 4 stars Slightly flawed, but excellent nonetheless 3 stars Has its good points, and its bad points 2 stars Mediocre, but with one or two bright spots 1 stars Poor, without any saving graces 0 stars La Bomba |
Recommended
TWENTYFOURSEVEN
D: Shane Meadows; with Bob Hoskins, Danny Nussbaum, James Hooton, Darren O. Campbell, Justin Brady, Jimmy Hynd, Karl Collins, Johann Myers, Anthony Clarke. (R, 96 min.)
Hoskins returns to form after toiling in the fields of poor career decisions with this grittily likable meditation on dispossessed British youth chafing against the yoke of Thatcherism. Hoskins plays Alan Darcy, a working-class stiff with dreams of renovating his unnamed town's decrepit boxing club and turning it into a youth hangout. Stuck with memories of his own past fisticuffs glories, the rotund, unceasingly affable Darcy sees this as his one big chance to make a difference in his community and maybe save a few lost souls in the bargain. Among the kids who grudgingly line up to learn the correct way to throw a left hook are Nussbaum's gangly Tim, a born leader with a hair-spring trigger and the drugged-out Daz (Campbell) who'd prefer to let it all slide away into a comfortable miasma of downers. While the story may at first glance seem woefully clichéd and excessively nostalgic (although no firm date is given, it's all firmly rooted in a mid-Eighties economically bankrupt haze), Meadows is a masterful director; many cast members were hand-picked, non-acting street kids, but Meadows has them working like old hands here, firing off dodgy barbs and getting on like old mates. Finest among them is Nussbaum -- even his quiet, contemplative moments onscreen seethe with the barely restrained explosive energy of a peeved football hooligan, though the entire group is refreshingly abrasive and half-cocked. Hoskins, for his part, turns in a brilliant, career-resuscitating performance here. Darcy drags his busted, rusty dreams around behind him like Marley's ghost, but his stubborn pride refuses to let him sink into the alcoholic stupor that has obviously claimed so many of his contemporaries. When he hits on the idea of the boxing club (with financial backing from a local loan shark), the twinkle in his cherubic eyes lights up his whole girth, making him look like some merry prankster on a mission from God. Of course, there's trouble ahead, there always is, but even when Darcy senses the wolf in the fold, he's still prepared to go the distance. Hoskins' edgy turn is backed by Meadows' stunning black-and-white camera work (by cinematographer Ashley Rowe), which at once softens the grotty, urban proceedings and highlights the resourceful, doomed events onscreen. Many films (and doubtless many more yet made) have tackled the impact of Thatcher's boisterous home policies on the disaffected British working class, though few have done it with as much heart and soul as Meadows. Love, hate, lager, and boxing: What more could you ask for? (5/8/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Arbor
New Review
BLACK DOG
D: Kevin Hooks; with Patrick Swayze, Meat Loaf, Randy Tavis, Gabriel Casseus, Brian Vincent, Brenda Strong, Charles Dutton, Stephen Tobolowsky. (PG-13, 89 min.)
Patrick Swayze does some "dirty driving" in this routine trucker tale. There hasn't been a good truck-driving movie on the horizon since the glory days of CB radios and convoys. Black Dog does nothing to alter that situation. It's the kind of movie that gives good trucker movies (i.e., Jonathan Kaplan's White Line Fever, Sam Peckinpah's Convoy, Steven Spielberg's Duel and Hal Needham's first Smokey and the Bandit) a bad name. A butched-up Swayze plays Jack Crews, an unlicensed trucker hauling an illegal shipment of AK-47s from Atlanta to Newark, New Jersey. Jack used to be one of the best truckers around but then he pushed too far and saw the Black Dog -- the apparition reportedly seen by sleepy truckers at the end of the line. Jack's run-in with the Black Dog caused the death of two individuals. Now, after serving two years in prison, Jack has been released, minus his license to operate a rig. All he wants at this point is to do right by his wife and young daughter. But the bank is trying to foreclose on his house and his boss wants him to drive just this one illegal shipment, so what's an earnest, well-intentioned guy to do? Director Kevin Hooks demonstrates his massive versatility as he switches from the airplane action of Passenger 57 to the truck theatrics of Black Dog. The script by William Mickelberry and Dan Vining woefully slides by on auto-pilot and sports some of the worst dialogue this side of Quest for Fire. Lots of trucks get blown up real good (especially when colliding with trains or hurtling off cliffs). Swayze maintains a stolid, low-key presence throughout but it seems, well, too stolid and low-key for someone caught in the eye of this death run. Randy Travis has a tongue-in-cheek good time with his role as a trucker who writes tuneless country songs in his abundant spare time. Meat Loaf, on the other hand, as the gospel-spouting bad guy and sputtering loon, plays a character more tired than yesterday's meatloaf. The usually reliable Charles Dutton and Stephen Tobolowsky are utterly wasted as the squabbling FBI and ATF chiefs in charge of the mission. Black Dog is best kept on a short leash. (5/8/98)
0 stars (M.B.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
DEEP IMPACT
D: Mimi Leder; with Robert Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maimilian Schell, Morgan Freeman. (PG-13, 123 min.)
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The first of this summer's dueling comet films, Leder's Deep Impact takes the high road and offers up more tearful reunions than actual fireballs and more egregious, sappy dialogue than you can shake a tsunami at. How does the world end? Not with a bang, but with a sniffle. Leder brackets the earth's demise around three sets of characters: Wood's 14-year-old Leo Beiderman, who first sights the offending celestial object while out star-spotting with his high school astronomy club; Leoni's Jenny Lerner, an ambitious MSNBC journalist with plenty of familial issues; and Duvall's Spurgeon Tanner, the old-guard astronaut picked to head up a U.S.-Russian team sent to intercept and possibly destroy the comet before it wipes out the summer blockbuster season as we know it. Leder (and co-screenwriters Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin) move things along at a stately pace -- we're 30 minutes into the film before the world is alerted to the impending crisis, but even then, there are still 10 months left before impact. Deep Impact uses the time to set up a "what if?" scenario that includes everything from the building of massive, underground bunkers that will preserve 200,000 of the best and brightest Americans (alongside an 800,000-strong lottery drawing) to the media's reaction to the largest story of all time, and from young love blooming in the face of overwhelming catastrophe to estranged families returning to the nest as the Eastern seaboard is engulfed in a 2,000-mile-per-hour tidal wave that makes James Cameron's Abyss wave look positively tedious. Still, this is a film about people (James Horner's lush, painfully obvious score keeps reminding you of that), and as it moves from one crisis to the next (i.e., Will Leo's newfound girlfriend make the lottery? Will Jenny forgive her philandering father?), the sheer weight of all the Melrose-esque storylines threatens to crush the forward momentum of the action saga at the heart of the tale. By far and away the slowest-moving disaster film since Irwin Allen's passing, Leder here trains her lens perhaps too closely on her characters in lieu of the action. It doesn't help matters that despite the close, personal attention to characterization, there's virtually no character development, or none that you wouldn't find outside of a TV Movie of the Week. Somber and reflective, the film seems leaden and moribund. Even Freeman's stilted, Jesse Jackson-esque speechifying ("lifeÖ will go on") is comically trite, evoking more chuckles than tears. So weighty, so serious, so very deadly dull, Deep Impact is a panacea for all those who complained about too many damn explosions in their summer action diet. Now you know: Be careful what you wish for. (5/8/98)
2.0 stars (M.S.)
Gateway, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Westgate
DEEP IN THE HEART (OF TEXAS)
D: Stephen Purvis; with Kenneth Cranham, Amanda Root, Marco Perella, C.K. McFarland, Tim Mateer, Jo Carol Pierce, Karen Kuykendall, John Hawkes, Ameerah Tatum, Lou Perryman, Janelle Buchanan, Amparo Garcia, Rodney Garza, Lucy Nalle. (Not Rated, 90 min.)
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2.0 stars (M.B.)
Dobie
WOO
D: Daisy von Scherler Mayer; with Jada Pinkett, Tommy Davidson, Duane Martin, Dave Chapelle, LL Cool J, Foxy Brown. (R, 80 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Party Girl director von Scherler Mayer trades in that film's "It Girl" star Parker Posey for this year's model -- Jada Pinkett. This new romantic comedy follows Pinkett and Tommy Davidson who, after being set up on a blind date, have a disastrous but unforgettable night in Manhattan. John Singleton is the executive producer.
(M.B.)
Lincoln, Riverside, Tinseltown South
Still Playing
THE APOSTLE
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)
4.0 stars (S.D.)
Village
BARNEY'S GREAT ADVENTURE: THE MOVIE
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 isÖ 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)
1.5 stars (M.B.)
Gateway, Lakehills, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
THE BIG HIT
D: Che-Kirk Wong; with Mark Wahlberg, Lou Diamond Phillips, Christina Applegate, Avery Brooks, Bokeem Woodbine, Lela Rochon, China Chow, Elliot Gould, Antonio Sabata, Jr. (R, 94 min.)
More aptly titled The Big Miss, this grade-Z action parody looks like a second-rate John Woo cast-off (Woo and longtime partner Terence Chang produced it, alongside a slumming Wesley Snipes) and feels like something out of Lloyd Kaufman's Big Bag o' Troma Rejects. Wahlberg makes a stunningly bad career move as Melvin Smiley, a Long Island hit man who just wants to be loved, so much so that he can't seem to break up with either his uncomically Jewish fiancée Pam (Applegate) or his mistress Chantel (Rochon). Things come to a head when, desperate for cash in order to keep Chantel happy, he takes a moonlighting gig with his buddies and ends up kidnapping Keiko (Chow), the goddaughter of head honcho Paris (Brooks, of Deep Space Nine). From here on out, it's one long, long, long chase to avoid slaughter by his old henchman Cisco (Phillips), who's turned tail and is out to save his own skin by flaying Melvin's. Confused yet? Ah, but this is just the first 20 minutes, grasshopper. Incidental comedy comes and goes in The Big Hit like artillery at a Triad block party, but very little of it connects. Thankfully, director Wong has a firm grasp on the action, and plenty of skillfully over-the-top shoot-outs litter the film like spent shell casings, but all action and an incomprehensible plot make for one strange hybrid. This almost feels like one of Sammo Hung's early comedy misfires, although it enjoys a bigger budget and the added bonus of Elliott Gould as a Passover lush. Mark Walhberg's adenoidal monotone works to good effect in The Big Hit's first 30 minutes or so, but a running gag involving a late video store rental and his character's wanton inanities quickly make one wish for surcease from this emerging master of unfunny comedy. Phillips, Woodbine, Brooks, and all the rest of Wahlberg's crew turn their acting up to "11" and then rip the knobs off. Never have I seen so much ham in a film with so many overtly Jewish characters, nor would I care to again. Christina Applegate, so good in Gregg Araki's Nowhere, reverts here to her Married With Children mode, while, in the background, Lela Rochon seems to screech every other line, drawing out her consonants in ways that'd make Urkel proud. A genuinely freakish melange of bad acting, godawful production design, and one of the most convoluted plots of the Nineties, The Big Hit is for masochists only, and hardcore ones at that. (5/1/98)
0 stars (M.S.)
Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Westgate
THE BIG LEBOWSKI
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 wayÖ. 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)
4.5 stars (M.B.)
Arbor, Dobie, Westgate
THE BIG ONE
D: Michael Moore. (PG, 96 min.)
Michael Moore is fast becoming all things to all people. He is seriously in danger of becoming the new American ShmooÖ you remember, that adorable, bottom-heavy, blobby thing in Li'l Abner that would shape-shift into anything that's sure to please its human host. Well, Moore is hardly quite that ego-less, but his routine as America's roving populist gadfly is a great act. In 1989's Roger & Me, we came to recognize him as that peskily dogged inquisitor of elusive corporate CEOs (namely GM's Roger Smith) and the quick-reflexed political satirist cum performance artist. In The Big One (which refers to Moore's idea for a new, more descriptive name for the United States), Moore more or less picks up where Roger & Me left off. Halfway through a 47-city book tour in 1996 to promote his bestseller Downsize This! Random Threats From an Unarmed America, Moore enlisted a small, down-and-dirty film crew to join him in his travels across America. In every city, Moore finds some corporate injustice to expose, some company bigwig to humiliate (though the reality is that his encounters are primarily with lower-echelon company flacks and security guards). Still, he has a knack for these guerrilla-style raids. In one city he'll be on a mission to speak directly to the corporate head of the Payday candy bar factory or Johnson Controls, where workers had just received layoff notices. In another, he's bonding with Borders bookstore clerks who are trying to form a union. In perhaps his biggest coup, Nike CEO Phil Knight invited Moore to come by while in Seattle, and their meeting provides the film's climax. We also witness a kinder, more gentle Moore than we've seen in the past, talking with fans, hugging a distraught woman who's just been pink-slipped, and impishly suffering the tribulations of a jam-packed book tour and the schoolmarmish local handlers that the publisher sics on him in each new location. Moore here also seems more the comedian, a satirist who knows a good barb when he sees one and finds laughter as essential to life as political analysis. Of course, with all the big bucks and celebrityhood that has come Moore's way since the phenomenal success of Roger & Me, Moore can probably afford a little more generosity of spirit. Still, it's hard not to become annoyed with his peripatetic demagoguery, stirring the masses one day but then moving on down the road before the brass tacks begin to penetrate. Being a professional rabble-rouser may lack definition as an occupational description, but it sure lays the groundwork for some spirited filmmaking. Certainly, much of The Big One is recycled material seen before in Roger & Me and TV Nation, but Moore now seems ready to accept his place as a popular entertainer. And though the film tends to ramble as the cameras follow Moore to and fro, we don't necessarily mind because The Big One knows how to put on a good road show. (4/24/98)
3.5 stars (M.B.)
Arbor
THE BUTCHER BOY
D: Neil Jordan; with Eamonn Owens, Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Alan Boyle, Aisling O'Sullivan, Sinead O'Connor, Ian Hart, Milo O'Shea. (R, 105 min.)
Deeply tragic yet savagely funny, The Butcher Boy is an audacious account of a troubled and violent childhood. Set in a small rural town in Ireland in the early 1960s, the story was adapted for the screen by director Neil Jordan and author Patrick McCabe from McCabe's original novel. It tells the story of 12-year-old Francie Brady (Owens) as a kind of portrait of the madman as young boy. Blending aspects of Dickensian social perspective and magical realism, The Butcher Boy shows us the world as experienced by Francie (indeed, the film is carried along by the boy's disconcerting voiceover narration, which is by turns ironic, naïve, and vicious). The boy is both a sympathetic figure, a product of his environment, and a stone cold killer, who seems all the more frightening in light of the current American epidemic of childhood violence. Told from Francie's perspective, the film is an episodic chain of events, none of them carrying any more weight than the others. It's a boy's coming-of-age saga that owes as much to Huck Finn as it does to A Clockwork Orange. As the film opens, we get to know the young Francie: He lives with his alcoholic father and suicidal mother, and jokes and plays with his friend Joe (Boyle), with whom he play-acts a rich fantasy life based on bits and piece of (primarily American) popular culture. TV shows such as The Lone Ranger and The Fugitive, comic book superheroes, space alien movies, Atomic Age news reports, and iconographic wall hangings of the Madonna, JFK, and a happy honeymoon photograph portrait of his parents -- these are some of the unfiltered images slopping around in Francie's brain. The boy's still wearing short pants as his family begins to disintegrate and he becomes fixated on the town's pretentious Mrs. Nugent (Shaw) as the source of all his troubles. Some malicious mischief causes him to be sent away for the first time -- to a school where he is abused by one of the priests -- and when he returns home he begins working in a slaughterhouse. One by one, he's deserted by all those he's ever loved, while his irrational animosity toward the totemic Mrs. Nugent grows. Around this time he also begins having conversations with the Madonna (played by Sinead O'Connor). Far more events than can be related here occur along the way to The Butcher Boy's horrific climax. But through it all we witness it from Francie's perspective as he tries to earn what he facetiously calls the "Francie Brady's Not a Bad Bastard Anymore Award." After Jordan's last two big studio productions -- Interview With the Vampire and Michael Collins -- it's great to see the director back on more disquieting turf, the sort that has suited him so well in such films as Mona Lisa, The Company of Wolves and The Crying Game. The Butcher Boy is bracing and disturbing material, alleviated only by a devilish gallows humor, but it cuts right to the heart of murderous mayhem. (5/1/98)
3.5 stars (M.B.)
Dobie
CITY OF ANGELS
D: Brad Silberling; with Nicolas Cage, Meg Ryan, Dennis Franz, Andre Braugher. (PG-13, 116 min.)
For many cinephiles, the notion of an Americanized remake of Wim Wenders' haunting film about an angel that aspires to become human, Wings of Desire, is nothing short of blasphemous. Although some may debate whether Wenders' film is indeed great, few would disagree with the assessment that Wings of Desire is a work imbued with a sense of greatness. Its lush black-and-white images of angels watching over us everywhere, consoling a troubled humanity, is indelibly comforting, one of the closest things to poetry ever achieved on film. So, the question is: Is City of Angels a faithful reworking of Wings of Desire, or a misguided bastardization of it? Unfortunately, it's more of the latter. While the storyline is more or less the same -- witnessing the mysteries of the human race, a celestial spirit yearns for mortal experience -- the emphasis in City of Angels is more on simple romance than lofty questions of eternity. Set in Los Angeles rather than Berlin, the film's first half appropriates a few of the visual and aural concepts of Wenders' work, although the sight of angels resting on a freeway exit sign, as opposed to perched atop the Reichstag eagle, is a less arresting one. But eventually, rather than ponder philosophical issues to which there are no easy answers, it takes a familiar story of self-sacrifice and gives it a high-concept spin: Angel gives up his ethereal existence to be with the woman he loves. While you can argue that Wenders' film is too talky and ponderous, there's the sense that City of Angels trivializes its predecessor's themes, particularly in the way that the love story traditionally plays. You know the drill; it's as old as the Greeks: Angel meets girl, angel loses girl, angel gets girl, tragedy ensues. Maybe it's the unshakable memory of his performances in movies such as Moonstruck, Raising Arizona, and Face/Off, but Cage's attempts to register a beatific saintliness here is often spooky. The first physical meeting between Cage's Seth and the object of his desire, the heart surgeon Maggie, occurs in a hospital hallway after visiting hours. Wearing a long black overcoat, speaking in a hoarse whisper of a voice, and making little to no sense in his conversation, this modern-day Gabriel looks and acts more like a deranged stalker than a heavenly being -- how is it that she trusts him, finds herself so mysteriously drawn to him? Any sane person would have called Security immediately. But even if you accept this plot contrivance, the consummation of this union of souls isn't very emotionally involving -- it lacks that transcendence you associate with stories in which love knows no bounds. Watching this film disintegrate into something close to being hackneyed, you ultimately wish that Seth had never chosen to fall to earth to take human form. It's a tumble from which City of Angels never fully recovers. (4/17/98)
2.0 stars (S.D.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
DANCER, TEXAS POP. 81
D: Tim McCanlies, with Breckin Meyer, Peter Facinelli, Ethan Embry, Eddie Mills, Patricia Wettig, Eddie Jones, Alexandra Holden, Wayne Tippit. (PG, 97 min.)
There are so many captivating characters, so many funny moments, and so much sweet affection in this movie, its ending comes as a sorrowful leave-taking. You're tempted to wave goodbye to it (if you have a hankie to wave, so much the better) and linger in your seat long after the lights have come up. John, Keller, Squirrel, and Terrell Lee are four fast friends who are fixin' to graduate and make good on their childhood pact to get the heck out of Dancer, Texas, thereby decreasing their hometown's population by five percent. Their plans are to head out to L.A., believing that their small-town woes will disappear once they're west of the Rockies. Most of the townspeople know better, of course -- some hold their counsel, some relate long and (hilariously) tragic tales about the fate of similar odysseys, and still others make book on how many, if any, of the four will actually leave. And, indeed, as the film progresses, it looks as if the skeptical bookie will prosper. Faced with imminent departure, each boy struggles with the childhood vow, and just who will take that westbound bus is uncertain. The hours that unfold between graduation and the estimated time of departure tell a loving and funny tale of small-town life distilled into the creak of a porch swing or the dust from a speeding car on a lonely highway, a tale of opportunities that beckon and ties that bind. Writer/director Tim McCanlies proves that rural wit is not an oxymoron. A wonderful script is matched by a terrific cast. Meyer (Keller) and Mills (John) are particular standouts. Keller is eager to leave and angry at his friends' defection, but he is Dancer's Everyman, a restless native son who is (and makes us) acutely aware of why they would choose to stay. Mills is simply big, big star material. Though John is the quietest of the four boys, Mills' slight frame and scrubbed face emit something powerful and pure, with a connection to that vast land that goes far beyond his years. His John is an anathema to L.A., a young man you'd like to meet. Patricia Wettig (thirtysomething) has a scene-stealing turn as Terrell Lee's mama. She captures a quality peculiar to rich Texas women: the ability to be icily brittle and sashay down the street at the same time. The film is filled with such performances -- fond and funny and never condescending. Shot entirely in the Fort Davis area, Dancer, Texas is a gorgeous picture that makes wonderful use of the West Texas landscape. We can breathe the air, squint at the sun, and feel dwarfed by the towering buttes and endless sky. And, sitting in traffic on I-35, I feel like getting the heck out of Austin and heading straight for Dancer, Texas, where the deer and the antelope and a bunch of warm and witty characters roam. (5/1/98)
4.0 stars (H.C.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Tinseltown South
DANGEROUS BEAUTY
D: Marshall Herskovitz; Catherine McCormack, Rufus Sewell, Oliver Platt, Moira Kelly, Fred Ward, Jacqueline Bisset. (R, 115 min.)
When Dangerous Beauty grows up, it wants to be a Merchant/Ivory film. Too bad puberty is still such a long way off. Based on Margaret Rosenthal's biography of 16th-century Venetian courtesan and poetess Veronica Franco, director Herskovitz (thirtysomething) dives deep into Venice's fabled, watery past and comes up with a gilded trunkload of hoary romance novel clichés, disastrous casting choices, a coolly calculating score (by George Fenton), and a sullied thematic logic that's more than simply annoying, it's insulting to boot. McCormack plays Franco, who is tutored by her mother (Bisset) in the ways of the courtesan as a means of providing family support. Due to the questionable nature of the family's means and her lower station in life, she's unable to marry the man she loves -- the handsome senator Marco Venier (Sewell, of Dark City) -- and instead spends her time as a sort of kept woman of the Venetian elite. Certainly, at that time, the only way for a woman to learn of the world, to read books, and to grow intellectually and artistically according to her inclination was as a courtesan. (Your average scullery maid was forbidden to even learn how to write her name.) Once installed in the palaces of the wealthy, Franco quickly becomes everyone's favorite party girl. More than that, though -- she's learning the secrets of kings, generals, and bishops, becoming fluent in various languages and the secret machinations of the 16th-century power structure. Mankind's innate fear of strong, intelligent women and their sexuality becomes her undoing as first her one true love -- for whom she would abandon her financially rewarding lifestyle -- goes off to war. Following that, the Plague descends; then the Inquisition arrives in town to burn assorted witches and heretics, of which she is considered one. McCormack is lovely to look at; her face has a ruddy carnality that plays well to the camera, but her Franco is far too broadly drawn. Her passion for lovemaking is frequently, crudely demonstrated, as when she deep-throats a banana or leers suggestively; she's a caricature, a cartoon, Disney gone blue. Sewell is much better suited to the role of impetuous, lovable rogue (scamp, maverick, scalawag, all of the above) Venier, but Jeannine Dominy's woefully scatty script plays him the fool (and in quick succession Franco, and then us). And what in the world is Fred Ward doing here as Marco's wealthy, handicapped father? Rarely do you come across a more ludicrous casting choice. Worse, Herskovitz constantly badgers us with emotional signposts and overwhelming, obvious pathos. Cry here, laugh here, sob here, and so on. Visually, cinematographer Bojan Bazelli keeps everything in a golden haze; Dangerous Beauty resembles nothing so much as a Penthouse photo spread. Perhaps not coincidentally, I kept expecting romance novel posterboy Fabio to appear, but no such luck. "I can't believe it's not butter!" Believe it pal -- it's cheese. 100% Grade-A American. (3/6/98)
1.0 stars (M.S.)
Village
GOOD WILL HUNTING
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)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Alamo Drafthouse, Arbor, Lake Creek, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Westgate
HE GOT GAME
D: Spike Lee; with Denzel Washington, Ray Allen, Rosario Dawson, Milla Jovovich, Ned Beatty, Hill Harper, Bill Nunn, Jim Brown, Zelda Harris, Lonette McKee. (R, 136 min.)
With He Got Game, the director most capable of delivering Hollywood's first truly great hoop drama squares up at the three-point line and takes a big, no-conscience shot for all the marbles. The result? Well, neither a brick nor an extension of Malik Hassan Sayeed's gorgeously filmed visual symphony of nothing-but-net jumpers that opens the movie. Among several factors that keep this nervy, ambitious film from delivering the emotional slam dunk promised by those dazzling images, one of the most puzzling is Lee's failure to play to his strength. For all his superfan's intimacy with b-ball culture, he focuses less on the sport's fascinating mystique than on generic recapitulation of how celebrity culture seduces and devours young minority athletes. The two key players are ultrastud schoolboy hoopster Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray Allen of the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks) and his dad, Jake (Denzel Washington), who's in prison for accidentally killing his wife. Jake catches a break early on when the jocksniffing New York governor offers to furlough him out and trim his sentence if he can wheedle Jesus (whose name is, regrettably, milked for every lame biblical play on words you can imagine) into playing for his alma mater. With the upstanding but harried youngster already ducking swarms of human parasites -- agents, coaches, journalists, and his conniving girlfriend -- who all claim to have his best interests at heart, the sudden reappearance of his less-than-beloved Pops is just one more cause for suspicion and bitterness. With brilliant recent documentaries like Hoop Dreams and Soul in the Hole having already covered similar situations with the force of great fictional drama, it behooves Lee to dig for still deeper revelations. Instead, due to an apparently conscious decision to reduce every character and situation to generic archetypes (even the colleges wooing Jesus have names like Big State and Tech U) in search of mythic universality, he ends up telling us nothing we don't already know about how money, hype, and celebrity mania trash the virginal purity of sports. Playing a role deliberately written not to strain his limited acting range, the neophyte Allen hangs in respectably, though there's only so much variety one can inject into four or five readings of the line, "You're not my father, man!" And Washington stretches impressively in a role that calls for rough, inarticulate workingman's torment rather than the debonair suavity for which he's known. But despite the affecting father-son storyline and Lee's ability to deliver scenes that sizzle with an indie-film freshness and vitality few mainstream directors even try to match, too many other scenes (including the finale) are bombastic groaners that rampage across the line separating big-heartedness and schlock. To rate such a wildly uneven film essentially forces an aggregate, rather than general evaluation. There's just too much to cover with one clean toss of the critical net. But then, that's Spike Lee as we've always known him. Sometimes brilliantly on target, sometimes way off, but never afraid to take the big shots that safer, more risk-averse filmmakers pass off when the artistic stakes are high. (5/1/98)
3.0 stars (R.S.)
Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Riverside, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Westgate
KURT AND COURTNEY
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)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Village
LOST IN SPACE
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 reallyÖ 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 CrewÖ So? (4/10/97)
2.0 stars (M.B.)
Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Roundrock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Westgate
MAJOR LEAGUE: BACK TO THE MINORS
D: John Warren; with Scott Bakula, Corbin Bernsen, Dennis Haysbert, Takaaki Ishibashi, Jensen Daggett, Eric Bruskotter, Bob Uecker, Ted McGinely. (PG-13, 97 min.)
Back to the MinorsÖ yeah, that sounds about right for this third installment in the Major League film franchise. This time out Tom Berenger has bailed, and so too Charlie Sheen. But perhaps most grievously, also on the missing list is Major League auteur David S. Ward (for it can now be said without a doubt that Ward was the one responsible for imbuing the series with any heart or team spirit. The Cleveland Indians have been traded in for the Minnesota Twins, but otherwise returning for duty are Corbin Bernsen, Dennis Haysbert (as the goofy voodoo ballplayer), Takaaki Ishibashi (as the goofy Japanese ballplayer) and Bob Uecker (as the goofy announcer). Scott Bakula, for his part, brings an easygoing charm to the proceedings, acting as though he's really comfortable with the project and not just marking time until another TV project comes along. Story-wise, it's the same old story. A minor-league pitcher whose arm is shot receives an offer to manage the Twins' Triple-A team. Of course, he doesn't snatch it right up because he has to think about the offer and whether or not he wants to stay in baseball (he has so many other opportunities). But of course he stays in the game and turns a band of inept misfits into a winning outfit (by making them believe in themselves). Then they have to test their mettle once again when the nutty major-league owner (McGinley) challenges them to a competition. Guess who wins. No surprises, no home runs, no outs, no one on base. Just another silly excuse to round the bases once more for a new crop of 10-year-old movie-going veterans. (5/1/98)
1.0 stars (M.B.)
Lakeline
MEN WITH GUNS
D: John Sayles; with Federico Luppi, Damian Delgado, Dan Rivera Gonzalez, Tania Cruz, Damian Alcazar. (R, 126 min.)
One of the most original filmmakers working today, John Sayles never takes the easy way out when he can take a more interesting -- if convoluted -- one. From Matewan to City of Hope to the brilliant Lone Star, Sayles has proven himself time and again a master of story, structure, character, and conflict, and this new addition to Saylesiana is no different. Alright, I take that back -- Men With Guns is different, in its use of magical realism, repeated flashbacks, and the fact that it's almost entirely in Spanish, but it's still very much a John Sayles film, from its frequent use of deeply layered symbolism to its lush photography and deep, abiding emotional core. Luppi (perhaps best known as the old man in Cronos) plays Humberto Fuentes, an aging physician in a large, unnamed Latin American city who is approaching retirement. Some time before, he trained a group of young doctors as part of an international program to provide care to the poor and disenfranchised who reside deep within the heart of the jungles and the tiny, economically ravaged communities that dot the southern landscape. When he runs into one of his former students -- now supplying drugs to the city's youth -- he decides to embark on a cross-country quest to discover what happened to his former charges. Despite the protestations of friends and family, he sets out to Rio Seco to find his first contact, Cienfuegos. Once there, he is told by an old peasant woman that the doctor was killed by "men with guns." Who are these men, why are they carrying guns, and, more important, why do they seem to control the whole landscape into which Dr. Fuentes has ventured? No one he encounters seems to have an answer that fits the question, though these men with guns appear to be everywhere, and as his trip wears on, Dr. Fuentes realizes that his students may all be dead. Along the way, he hooks up with an engaging street urchin, Conejo (Gonzalez), a broken priest (Alcazar), a hot-tempered ex-soldier who at first steals his tires and then acts as a guide (Delgado), and finally a young mute girl who has been raped by the men with guns. Sayles fashions a journey of exploration through the impenetrable jungle in search of truth, but comes up with a symbolic indictment of Men With Guns everywhere: the soldiers, the usurpers, the madmen who rule not only this unnamed province of the mind but also the real world. Sayles is calling into question everything from politics to religion here, and though some of the symbolism is obscure (not to mention the magical realism), it's a deeply moving, deeply personal film. Luppi is gripping as the fading healer, and the brilliant cinematography by Slawomir Idziak (Blue and more recently Gattaca) is wrenching in its lush, fuming beauty. Marred at times by occasional stretches in which the forward momentum of the story wanders off course to inspect the jungle and such, Men With Guns is still a powerful, riveting film, packed with subtle discourse and brimming with passion. (4/17/98)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Village
MERCURY RISING
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)
1.5 stars (M.S.)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Tinseltown North
LES MISERABLES
D: Bille August; with Liam Neeson, Geoffrey Rush, Uma Thurman, Claire Danes, Hans Matheson, Reine Brynolfsson, Peter Vaughn. (PG-13, 129 min.)
I should confess up front that after a cursory high school reading of the classic novel and a late-Eighties viewing of the Broadway phenomenon, this is actually my first brush with a cinematic version of Victor Hugo's sprawling, melodramatic epic. That said, this version by director Bille August (Pelle the Conqueror) holds together extremely well; it's full of rich, dark hues and excellent overall casting that's highlighted by a bulky Neeson as the convict-turned-mayor-turned-redemptive archetype Jean Valjean and Rush as the grimly determined, obsessive-compulsive Inspector Javert. August is a master of distinctive shots and glowering close-ups (Thurman's woebegone Madonna/whore Fantine is almost always seen in grimy, gritty detail) and production manager Ales Komarek makes the most out of the film's Czech, Polish, and French location work. For those unfamiliar with Hugo's tale, Les Misérables begins outside of Paris in the early 19th century, when the recently paroled convict Valjean receives a new lease on life from an aging priest who parts with his silver in order to return his charge to the hands of God. Ten years later, Valjean has set himself up as the respected mayor of the community of Vigau, when his old nemesis Javert arrives in town as the new police chief. Javert recognizes and denounces Valjean, but not before the mayor falls in love with the lovely Fantine, a penniless streetwalker who soon dies of consumption. Having given his word to Fantine that he would seek out and protect her only child, the young Cosette, Valjean flees Vigau, locates Cosette, and raises her as his own daughter while hiding in a Parisian convent. Here, Cosette grows from a chipper street urchin into Claire Danes, and eventually falls for rabble-rouser Marius (Matheson), a handsome student intent on revolution. As Paris teeters on the brink of another internal disaster, Javert reappears just in time to finally arrest the saintly Valjean. That's not the final score, of course, but it's as much as I feel safe in revealing to all three of you who are new to the subject and period piece. August takes no prisoners: His Paris of 1812 and the July 1832 revolution is finely realized, crammed to bursting with scullery maids, wenches, and befouled extras. Likewise, his smooth tracking shots that snake through the subterranean sewers and the narrow, cobbled alleyways. And true to its source, August's version aroused not a few fusillades of sniffling from the audience around me. Condensing a massive tome like Les Misérables into a cohesive 129-minute film is a labor of love in any case, and August succeeds with remarkable, powerful results. (5/1/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Barton Creek, Highland, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
THE NEWTON BOYS
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)
3.5 stars (M.B.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lakeline, Tinseltown North
THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION
D: Nicholas Hytner; with Jennifer Aniston, Paul Rudd, John Pankow, Alan Alda, Nigel Hawthorne, Tim Daly, Allison Janney, Steve Zahn. (R, 112 min.)
The prevailing, cynical joke in some circles of single heterosexual women is that the only men worth marrying are already married or gay. The romantic comedy-lite The Object of My Affection comes close to perpetuating that myth in its depiction of the complicated relationship between a pregnant social worker, Nina (Aniston), and her gay roommate and best friend, George (Rudd). The problem is that Nina's feelings for George are more than platonic, a development in their domestic arrangement that George cannot confront directly. Of course, the notion of a thicker-than-blood affinity between two such people isn't out of the ordinary -- think as recently as Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett in My Best Friend's Wedding -- but when sex, commitment, and babies enter the picture, things get knotted. Wendy Wasserstein's screenplay for The Object of My Affection, which is based on Stephen McCauley's novel, is situationally contrived; from Nina and George's first meeting, to the way they come to live together, to the way they decide to raise Nina's child, the storyline lacks credibility. Why don't these two reasonably intelligent people realize what they're getting themselves into before it almost destroys their friendship? (Of course, it's always easy to be objective about others' relationships, isn't it?) Just when the film starts to demonstrate some wisdom about the age-old dichotomy of s/he who loves and s/he who is loved, it resorts to clichéd melodramatics as the brewing conflict between Nina and George finally comes to a head. As likable as Aniston and Rudd are, their respective movie presences have not yet developed to the degree that they can overcome the shortcomings of The Object of My Affection. So, for the most part, the movie just plods along, occasionally funny and usually so-so. To its credit, however, it doesn't perpetuate another prevailing, cynical joke in some circles of single heterosexual women: The love of a good woman is all a gay man needs to "straight"en him out. (4/24/98)
2.0 stars (S.D.)
Great Hills, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
THE ODD COUPLE II
D: Howard Deutch; with Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Christine Baranski, Barnard Hughes, Jonathan Silverman, Jean Smart, Lisa Waltz. (PG-13, 97 min.)
Thirty years later, Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison (Lemmon and Matthau) are back together. In Neil Simon's original script, they're still the same old cantankerous dichotomists (Felix the neatnik, Oscar the slob), feuding over the bedding, the car, and everything else, but as directed by John Hughes protégé Howard Deutch (Pretty in Pink, Grumpier Old Men), they're beginning to slow down, and much of the melancholy of Gene Saks 1968 version is lost in a whirlwind of libido jokes and half-baked comic setups that go nowhere fast. Originally thrown together by the vagaries of divorce, Oscar and Felix are this time reunited when their children -- Hannah Ungar (Waltz) and Bruce Madison (Silverman) -- decide to get married. Felix is still living in New York, but Oscar has moved to Florida, poker buddies and all, and continues his existence as an AAA-league sports announcer in that more hospitable climate. Meeting up at LAX, the pair rent a car and head out to the wedding with predictable results. The main body of Deutch's film relies heavily on the lowbrow comic shenanigans he honed while working for Hughes -- it's the same sort of amicable feuding that worked so well in Grumpier Old Men, but this time it comes across as obligated instead of spontaneous. I suppose we should be thankful that Deutch doesn't play the sentimentality card as often as he could, but nonetheless something is lacking. Simon's original play -- and Saks' original adaptation -- were rife with dark undercurrents and melancholia. Here were two guys whose spouses had kicked them out into the heart of the big city to fend for themselves: not kindred spirits by a long shot, but warring camps brought together out of necessity, learning to fend for themselves and each other. Sure, it was a comedy, but there was much more to it than that. However, this new take on things reduces the pair to simple cookie-cutter constructs. There's precious little dynamic tension here, unless you consider the duo's geriatric antics tension-headache inducing. The cardboard, road-trip storyline is pure cliché, too, but somehow Lemmon and Matthau manage to pull out some great gags -- acid one-liners, mostly -- that keep you laughing. It's a film hardly worthy of their respective talents, but at the same time it is tremendously entertaining in spots: Oscar and Felix's almost-coupling with a pair of Thelma and Louise-types at a dingy roadhouse saloon, missing luggage, missed turnpikes, and so on make for light comic relief that works much better than it should. If you think of TV's Tony Randall and Jack Klugman when someone mentions The Odd Couple, Saks' film original with Lemmon and Matthau is by far the better work, and highly recommended. Deutch's sequel takes the gritty NYC bite out of these two, and replaces it with toothless comic pratfalls and little else. (4/10/98)
2.0 stars (M.S.)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Roundrock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
PAULIE
D: John Roberts; with Gena Rowlands, Tony Shalhoub, Cheech Marin, Bruce Davidson, Jay Mohr, Trini Alvarado, Buddy Hackett, Hallie Kate Eisenberg, Matt Craven. (PG, 87 min.)
There's something vaguely disturbing about Paulie. Is it Jay Mohr's double-billing, as both con artist Benny and the voice of Paulie, the speechified parrot of the title? Well, yes. Perhaps it's utterly subjective on my part, but for the life of me I'll never be able to separate the comedically talented Mohr from his vocal coup de grace, which is to say his alarmingly spot-on impersonation of Christopher Walken. Seriously folks, Rich Little has nothing on the younger Mohr, who mimics Walken's turns in The King of New York and True Romance verbatim without a touch of schtick. Anyone who saw his pas de deux avec Walken on Saturday Night Live (or even Late Night With David Letterman) knows what I mean. The phrase "separated at birth" comes readily to mind when discussing the pair, though hopefully not for long. That personal quibble aside, it should be noted that -- first and foremost -- Paulie is a kids film, one of the first in what appears to be a burgeoning sub-genre within the fledgling DreamWorks SKG. A quick review: DSKG's first film, The Peacemaker, was an adolescent boy's fantasy of post-Cold War nuclear hi-jinks; their second -- the clever Mouse Hunt -- was a Grimm fairy tale by way of D-Con and Roald Dahl; and this newest -- Paulie -- is a heartworming tale of love, loss, and redemption, all seen from a parrot's point of view. Not a bad track record for what appears to be more or less a Nineties updating of Chaplin and Pickford's early-version United Artists Studios. Still, Paulie falls flat in its labored plotting and heavy-handed morality. It puts one in mind of Disney's mid-Sixties live-action farces, but minus Kurt Russell's nascent charm. When janitor Mischa (Shalhoub) takes a job at an unnamed university animal lab, he encounters a conversational parrot who proceeds to tell him his life story, involving, among other travails, his separation from young Marie (Eisenberg), whose speech impediment he hopes to help. When her family moves from New Jersey to California, Paulie must conquer his fear of flying (sans Erica Jong) and track down his one true friend -- often in the face of bitter enemies. Yes, it's a metaphor for growing up, taking responsibility for one's actions, and so on, but surprisingly, director Roberts gives it all an even keel. The youngish audience I saw the film with seemed to hold rapt attention on Paulie's plight despite the frequent wooden one-liners. Mohr, for his part, thankfully holds off in his Walkenesque abilities, and instead turns in a moderately moral-inducing vocal performance that touches on everything from self-reliance to the importance of being, ah, "earnest." Hardly perfect by anyone's standards, Paulie is instead a convenient, unprepossessing time-waster for Saturday afternoon kiddies. Adults may choose to take an extended popcorn break every now and then, but everyone under 13 seemed to be having a ball. (4/17/98)
2.0 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lakeline, Northcross, Roundrock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
THE PLAYERS CLUB
D: Ice Cube; with Lisa Raye, Jamie Foxx, Bernie Mac, Crystale Wilson, Monica Calhoun. (R, 103 min.)
Grab those hankies and bottomless popcorn tubs, fellas; there's a new entry in the burgeoning field of pastie-whirling stripper flicks cum social commentaries. Pardon me if I sound a tad cynical about the motives behind this directing-writing debut from L.A. hardcore rapper Ice Cube. It's just that these movies (lump TPC in with the likes of Striptease and Showgirls) are so blatantly intended as virtual lap dances for guys who like their onanistic fantasies served with Skittles rather than buffalo wings that any other response would seem naïve. That said, Cube still earns a Breast of Show by -- as they say in the rap biz -- keepin' it real. His heroine, a bodacious yet initially innocent shoe clerk named Diamond (Raye), seems like a person we've met before. Her jump from ringing up Manolo Blahniks to grinding onstage in a funky downtown rut-room is a believable extrapolation of words many frustrated, underemployed women have spoken: "Screw this, man! If I'm gonna humiliate myself at work maybe I should at least do it at the strip joint and make myself some money!" More respect is due the director for portraying the "girls" as regular people with kids, boyfriends, parents, and college exams to study for. By contrast, the women of Showgirls seemed more like soulless fembots writhing in a gleaming celestial masturbatorium -- a definite hindrance to both credibility and lust appeal. I'm also partial to Mr. Cube's avoidance of moral judgment regarding the "anything for da long green" ethic alternately espoused and condemned by his characters. Honestly, serious intent aside, the truest reference points for this aimless and amiable story are raunchy guy-comedies such as Mo' Money and House Party, along with blaxploitation classics like The Mack. By far the most enjoyable scenes arise from a farcical side plot involving efforts by the club's rascally owner (Mac) to dodge his well-armed creditors. Violence, suffice to say, gets equal billing with sex. A ballistic arsenal of D-Day proportions gets squeezed off, often at close range, but miraculously nobody dies. Likewise, few of the gruesome, face-crunching fight scenes leave physical traces more lasting than Elmer Fudd's cartoon mishaps. The only truly disturbing moment is an incongruously vicious rape that is played out of view. This is probably all for the best. Any content that really aspired to greater gravity would surely have been nullified by the shocking dearth of acting talent on hand. For all her hella slammin' looks, Raye is a direly limited actress. And apart from Mac's uproariously gonzo raving and Wilson's campy gusto as the club's evil lesbian alpha stripper, this would be a lock for worst-acted film of the year. Still, within the realm of salacious funny-boner movies, the coming summer will surely deliver far worse than The Players Club. Unsettling thought, that. (4/17/98)
2.0 stars (R.S.)
Highland, Riverside
PRIMARY COLORS
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)
2.5 stars (S.D.)
Great Hills
SLIDING DOORS
D: Peter Howitt; with Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hannah, John Lynch, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Douglas McFerran, Zara Turner. (PG-13, 105 min.)
Don't let the title fool you. Sliding Doors has nothing in common with the obstreperous aluminum patio portals in soulless suburban houses. Quite the contrary. This lovely little British movie is filled with the mystery of those noiseless, invisible thresholds around us -- the blind luck of love, the random strike of tragedy, the slippery digressions of deceit. In a finely realized and multi-layered first film, writer-director Peter Howitt treats us to a clever and urbane exploration of the monumental repercussions of tiny twists of fate. Helen (Paltrow) has just been fired from her PR job, and on her way home, dual scenarios are played out. In the first, Helen bumps into a little girl on the steps of the subway and misses her train, delaying her homecoming and affording her philandering lover a narrow escape. In the second scenario (after the footage literally rewinds and begins again), the little girl is whisked out of the way and Helen slips through the closing doors of the train, thereby encountering the charming, jocular commuter James (Hannah), and interrupting Jerry's mid-morning tryst. From that pivotal moment of missing or catching the train, the film follows two parallel, but very different, narratives. (Helen #2 cuts and bleaches her hair in a post-betrayal metamorphosis, and so that we'll know just which Helen we're seeing.) The brunette Helen labors on in her relationship, suspicious (Jerry is not the cleverest of Casanovas) and weary (she cannot find another PR position and must take two menial jobs to support them both). She grows paler and more remote in each scene while the blonde Helen, freed by her anger and courted by James, grows more vibrant and joyful (she is, after all, having more fun). But, we find out as the stories unfold, even parallels do not follow straight tracks. The wonderful script is matched by an engaging cast. Paltrow's chameleon beauty dazzles as the dual Helens, wanly aloof one moment and coltishly exuberant the next. Lynch manages to make dirty dog Jerry as endearing as he is exasperating -- a contrite and sweet-faced basset hound who gets into the garbage again and again even though he really does know better. More winning still is Hannah's performance. In a movie literally filled with wonderful surprises, his James is an unexpected gift -- the kind you stumble upon when the fates are smiling. Poorly wrapped and easy to overlook, he's Sliding Doors' reminder of all the hidden treasures out there. If you don't have one yet, you simply haven't happened upon the right door. Yet. (4/24/98)
3.5 stars (H.C.)
Arbor, Lakehills, Tinseltown South
THE SPANISH PRISONER
D: David Mamet; with Campbell Scott, Rebecca Pidgeon, Steve Martin, Ben Gazzara, Ricky Jay, Felicity Huffman. (PG, 112 min.)
Writer-director David Mamet is up to his old tricks again. In fact, if the title were not already taken, he might have named this film House of Games. As it is, he named this new film The Spanish Prisoner, a term described as the moniker for "the oldest con in the world." Mamet seems intent here on creating a labyrinthine Hitchcockian thriller, along the lines of The Man Who Knew Too Much or North by Northwest. Campbell Scott makes an excellent Jimmy Stewart-style Everyman -- seemingly a patsy ripe for duping. But the key word here is "seeming," as the film takes great pains to point out on numerous occasions. Mamet sets up the situation in a way that encourages the viewers to consider all the angles. Good guy, bad guy; is she or isn't she? We're invited to mull every possibility, as though the mental game of trying to uncover the magician's sleight of hand is the real endgame and the fluffy rabbit is mere window dressing. And to a certain degree that's true. However, The Spanish Prisoner seems an almost purely theoretical exercise, with Mamet as the con man whose sole goal is to make us believe anything he wants. It feels rather manipulative and makes us feel a bit too conscious of the trickery at hand, especially given all the film's explicit warnings that things are rarely what they seem, and conversely, that things are usually exactly what they seem to be. And with Campbell Scott practically walking through this whole thing with a "kick me" sign on his back, he's the perfect foil for all this push me/pull me action. Add to this structural artifice the calculated clip of Mamet's unique dialogue blocking, and the result is a work that never lets us escape the knowledge that it is a work of pure fabrication. The Spanish Prisoner is populated with constructs rather than a sense of flesh-and-blood characters. We never fear for any of these characters or worry whether the crop duster is going to mow them down. Nevertheless, taken for what it is, The Spanish Prisoner is actually quite a lot of fun. The performances are all solid, and the cat-and-mouse storyline is always a diverting amusement. (And who ever suspected that David Mamet had a script in him that could pass PG muster?) But for such a lot of supposedly smart people, these characters do an awful lot of dumb things. (5/1/98)
2.5 stars (M.B.)
Arbor
SPECIES II
D: Peter Medak; with Michael Madsen, Natasha Henstridge, Marg Helgenberger, Mykelti Williamson, George Dzundza, James Cromwell, Myriam Cyr, Justin Lazard. (R, 95 min.)
Mars needs women! (Or, at the very least, a better method of conception.) This bracingly inane sequel to 1995's surprise hit Species operates on the classic more-is-better conceit, this time featuring more stillborn dialogue, more preposterous plotting, and loads more gore (courtesy of Steve Johnson, who can still make a pregnant woman's distended belly explode like nobody's business). Henstridge's legions of salivating fans will unfortunately be nonplused to learn that the only thing this sequel offers less of is that actress's much-anticipated nude scenes, with only one climactic rutting in the final reel. Instead, the fleshy action film revolves around returning Mars Mission commander Patrick Ross (Lazard), who is just back from that angry red planet with a snootful of fizzy alien DNA cluttering up his already randy bloodstream. A boldly paranoid metaphor for AIDS, or a boldly silly metaphor for high school libidos run amok? Your guess is as good as mine, but in the end the point is moot: Species II is formulaic sex and violence devoid of even a smidgen of originality. When Ross and his two co-crew members touch down back on Big Blue, he receives a hero's welcome, and the promise from his Senator father (Cromwell, a long way off from Babe here) that, "Someday, son, you're going to be the president." Ross couldn't care less about his political future, though; he's too busy giving it up to the evil within and schtupping every woman in sight, popping tentacles like some wild Japanese anime demon and ushering in his ominously silent, newborn progeny in the barn out back. Henstridge's Sil, meanwhile, has been cloned from her dead self and renamed "Eve" -- half human, she's been part of an ongoing biological government experiment, cloistered away in a Biohazard 4 room and attended to by a group of all-female scientists headed by Helgenberger's Dr. Laura Baker, who understands intuitively that Eve -- like, um, Spock on a nasty Romulan Ale bender -- is half human and half green-blooded, pointy-eared sex machine. When Ross and Eve finally come into close proximity, Eve's alien mating instincts take over and the H.R. Giger-designed effects go into horrific overdrive, which, of course, can only lead to one thing: the arrival of Madsen's security expert Press Lennox (!), a comically burly ex-NSA thug with a penchant for laser-sighted hand cannons and some of the worst lines in recent film memory. Then it's on to a stilted clash of the titans as Eve and Ross duel it out and goo gets more screen time than anything else. Shoddily plotted and unimaginative, Species II is a slapdash effort at best, creepily unaffecting and minus the T&A this sort of film so desperately hinges on. (4/17/98)
1.0 stars (M.S.)
Discount, Tinseltown North
STILL BREATHING
D: James F. Robinson with Brendan Fraser, Joanna Going, Celeste Holm, Ann Magnuson, Lou Rawls, Angus MacFadyen, Toby Huss, Paolo Seganti, Michael McKean, Junior Brown. (PG-13, 109 min.)
Fletcher McBracken (Fraser) is a sweet, dreamy young man who suffers the same curse that his father and his father's father suffered. Each has been fated to envision the woman of his dreams, and then set off to find and win her. Fletcher spends his spare time cutting up magazine pictures and gluing a collage of features into some semblance of his destined love. The wall in his house is covered with them. It's a desultory pastime, though, one in which Fletcher only halfheartedly believes, so the collages are never quite right. But his grandmother, Ida (Holm) who was herself a chosen one, helps him persevere until one night his destiny is revealed in a vision and he can assemble truer pictures. Armed with his surreal collages, Fletcher sets off in search of his beloved, a quest which takes him to Los Angeles (by way of China, sort of). That his true love is a jaded, cynical beauty of the walking-wounded variety puts the whole crusade into jeopardy. Roz Willoughby (Going) has turned the tables on life as she has experienced it. Her vocation of conning men out of their money is not stealing, but a form of divine retribution. A perfect career choice, she can use her art expertise, not to mention her considerable charms, and never risk the thing she fears most -- emotional entanglement. Going is perfect as the tightly reined Roz. Her whole being is closed and off-limits, her face a lovely, impenetrable mask. Unfortunately, it stays that way. Going never softens, her eyes stay hard and guarded. The mask changes expression and speaks the right words, but it is a mask all the same and there is no reflection of romance in it. On the other hand, Fraser is positively rubber-faced. He confuses dreaminess with bewilderment, substituting half-witted grins for beatific contentment. There is too little chemistry between Roz and Fletcher and without more, the alchemy is evanescent. Only Celeste Holm fits the picture. Her Ida is aglow with a warm, eccentric magic -- the kind that smells good and fills you with an abrupt ease. The notion of Still Breathing is sweet and lovely, and possesses moments of breathtaking beauty -- Fletcher turning a projector on Roz, using her skin as a sensuous, reflective screen; a miniature cairn constructed in the palm of a hand; Ida playing an easy, affectionate Chopin on her tuba. Adding to the charm is a marvelous and evocative soundtrack that completes rather than overwhelms the images. The picture has the power to enchant, it just can't sustain the spell. Still Breathing is not without wonder, but when you're trying to weave magic, the incantation has to be exactly right. (See related story in this week's "Screens" section.) (5/1/98)
3.0 stars (H.C.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY
D: Carl Schenkel; with Casper Van Dien, Jane March, Steven Waddington. (PG, 80 min.)
Van Dien, late of Starship Troopers, is back in what appears to be another unintentional satire in this umpteenth variation on Edgar Rice Burroughs' formidable series. Unfortunately, the late, lamented Johnny Weissmuller had more charismatic chutzpah in a single digit than Van Dien has in his whole abflexed frame. The film opens promisingly enough with a title crawl informing us that the story is picking up after John Clayton, Lord of Greystoke Manor (aka Tarzan) has returned to his ancestral manse to take his rightful place in the British upper crust. Engaged to his true love Jane (March), he's about to cross the threshold when his old jungle friends telepathically contact him from darkest Africa. It seems there is trouble afoot, and without as much as a by-your-leave, John catches the next steamer to the continent and is back in the veldt faster than you can say "contrivance." Upon arriving, he finds himself up against a legion of vicious, greedy white men, led by the wholly unscrupulous Nigel Ravens (Waddington), who is intent on discovering and ransacking the lost city of Opar -- all the while putting down as many natives and forest-dwellers as possible. Everyone in this film is either diabolically evil or annoyingly just, with precious little middle ground. It's black versus white, right against might all the way down the line, making this one of the most exasperatingly dull outings since John Derek decided to showcase wife Bo's aureola in white clay back in 1981. With Jane's arrival in the land of the Opar (and just how did she get there, anyway?), the film gives the Ape Man a sort of double-jeopardy situation, fighting to protect his gun-toting bride and the Oparians while shedding slacks in favor of that old standby, the rustic loincloth. March is lovely to look at, but her acting chops remain on a par with Van Dien's, and together they're as insufferable a pair as you'd ever want to endure. Thankfully the monosyllabic "Me Tarzan, you Jane" vocalisms have been cast aside in favor of the King's English, but then it doesn't help matters that the script seems to have been penned by Cheetah while in the midst of a banana daiquiri bender. Schenkel can only keep things interesting for so long with some nicely expansive shots of the African interior, but when it comes to choreographing action, he's all non-opposable thumbs, resulting in a slight Tarzan with wooden acting, petrified action, and all the fun of a elephant-leg end table. (5/1/98)
0 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Highland, Riverside, Tinseltown North
TITANIC
D: James Cameron; with Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Frances Fisher, Bernard Hill, Jonathan Hyde, Danny Nucci, David Warner, Bill Paxton. (PG-13, 197 min.)
Romeo and Juliet on the Titanic, if you haven't heard yet. The costliest film ever made is also one of the best, unlike the second costliest, Kevin Costner's ill-fated Waterworld (and just what is it with aquatic overexpenditures these days, anyway?). Reams have already been written on James Cameron's wild cost overruns, so I'll spare you that and say right off that every penny spent is up there on the screen. Like the doomed vessel from which it takes its tale, Cameron's film is a behemoth, svelte, streamlined, and not the least bit ponderous, even with its lengthy three-hour-and-fifteen-minute running time (the film is practically as long as the sinking of the Titanic itself). DiCaprio is charmingly rakish in the role of lower-class scoundrel-cum-artist Jack Dawson, who wins his way onboard the HMS Titanic during a card game moments before the ship sets sail on its maiden and funeral voyage from England to New York City. Once onboard, he meets Rose DeWitt Bukater (Winslet), a 17-year-old first-class passenger, who is engaged to the wealthy, utterly pompous Cal Hockley (Zane). In short order, Rose and Jack fall in love, he sketches her in the altogether, and Cal, predictably, grits his teeth and scowls meaningfully. Just over halfway into the film, the oceanliner grazes the fatal iceberg that will, 80 minutes later, send it plunging into the icy depths. It's a matter of historical record that 1,500 passengers perished that night due, in no small part, to the fact that there were less than half the necessary lifeboats on board. Cameron, who is inarguably the greatest living action director working today, milks this for all it's worth and does a splendid job, cutting between Rose and Jack's ill-timed romance and the fate of the ship in general. His crosscutting between those two stories and several other, minor subplots is the stuff film courses are made of. At his core though, Cameron, for all his Terminators and True Lies, is a savagely sentimental romantic, and it's this interplay between the lovestruck steerage lad and the first-class dream girl that fires everything else about the film, including the modern-day wraparound that features Cameron favorite Bill Paxton as a salvage engineer intent on plundering the Titanic's silted corpse. I've always had trouble getting past DiCaprio's spirited self -- he seems unable to fully vanish into any role other than that of himself, though he comes very, very close under Cameron's iron thumb. Winslet, on the other hand, is so perfectly cast that it's as though she's a brand new face, and not the Hollywood superstar she's currently becoming. The two of them play wonderfully off of each other, as do the host of lesser players (notably David Warner as Cal's conniving valet and Bernard Hill as the ship's captain), resulting in a monster of a film in which, for once, the astonishing special effects are overshadowed by the characters onscreen. Just barely, though. Cameron's dialogue has never been as good as his direction, which makes for a few stilted clunkers along the way, but the unstoppable flurry of Action! Romance! Etcetera! sweeps them away like so much driftwood. It's obvious this is Cameron's bid for historical relevance, and though it may fall short of the Lawrence of Arabia mark he was aiming for, it's still by far and away a grand, gorgeous, breathtaking spectacle. (12/19/97)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
TWO GIRLS AND A GUY
D: James Toback; with Robert Downey, Jr., Heather Graham, Natasha Gregson Wagner. (R, 84 min.)
Ah Spring, when a young man's fancy turns to thoughts ofÖ duplicitous, conniving, scheming, cheating, lying love. Toback once again directs Downey, Jr. (first time was in The Pick-up Artist in 1987) in this stagy paean to Nineties sexual mores, love, lust, and other crimes of the heart, but unfortunately, it's all a wash, and not nearly as interesting as the weekly heartbreaks of the Friends crew. As the film opens, two young women -- Carla (Graham) and Lou (Wagner) are standing on the sidewalk outside a Soho loft. Engaging in polite chitchat to pass the time, each reveals that she is waiting for her boyfriend to show up in order to surprise him upon his homecoming. The catch? Carla and Lou's lovers are one and the same guy, the wolfish actor and bon vivant Blake (Downey), who's about to get the surprise of his life. After reaching their mutual discovery -- and with Blake still nowhere in sight -- they break into his second-story loft and begin swapping horror stories. Blake, obviously, has been stringing both of them along with the same foods, stories, and ultimate pronouncements of True Love. Alas, it's all a sham, as Blake finally arrives home to find his worst fears realized and his tongue cleaving to the roof of his woefully dishonest mouth. This sets in motion 60-plus minutes of intellectualizing the male (and female, at times) libido and the need (or lack thereof) for honesty in a relationship. At first, the two women want nothing more that to beat the living daylights out of this hideous cad, but after a bottle of liquor passes between the two, they begin to downplay the grousing and allow their combined sexuality take over. The real question is this: What is Toback saying here? That it's alright to cheat on your lovers? Or is his point more along the lines of the genetic impossibility of monogamy between two human beings? No real answers are forthcoming. The script -- much of which was improvised over the course of the film's short, sharp shoot -- touches on everything from bisexuality to wanton desires to forgiveness in the face of overwhelming infidelities to Mormonism. (Despite the film's now-infamous 15 trips to the ratings board in order to bring one particular scene down from an NC-17 to an R, the film hardly deserves its dangerous reputation.) Both Graham and Wagner (daughter of Natalie Wood) are terrific, but it's Downey who predictably steals the show. In light of his recent prison-stint and ongoing narcotics troubles, it's almost painful to watch his character agonize over his "secret life" and "ceaseless lies" onscreen. One shot of him flipping out as he rants at his reflection in the bathroom mirror and moans about "getting it together" is so literal it's shocking to watch. But that has more to do with the reality of the actor's life than Toback's film, which, it should be said, is, in the end, not much. Were this staged as a play, the drama might catch some live-audience frisson, but in theatres it's just too remote. The emotions are turbocharged and the topic is eternally relevant, but that's not enough to save Two Girls and a Guy from being a whiny, snoozy bore. Nice poster, though. (4/24/98)
1.5 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Highland, Village
THE WEDDING SINGER
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)
2.5 stars (M.S.)
Alamo Drafthouse, Dobie
WILD THINGS
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)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Dobie, Great Hills, Tinseltown North
Revivals
BILL & TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (1989) D: Stephen Herek; with Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin. In danger of flunking out of history class "most heinously," these teenage goofballs go time traveling for some "awesomely bodacious" speakers. Presented in a mint archive print. (PG, 90 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; midnight, Fri-Sat.
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.) @Showplace 6, Westgate 3, Discount 8; Fri-Thu.
MEAN STREETS (1973) D: Martin Scorsese; with Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, David Proval, Amy Robinson. Young Martin Scorsese is at the top of his game here in this landmark work, which also put Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel on the map for good. Never in his later films did Scorsese move the camera with such wild abandon, and this character study of a couple of second-generation Little Italy hoods still packs a wallop. Caught between the piety of religion and the damnation of the streets, Keitel's Charlie and De Niro's Johnny Boy are the templates for all future Scorsese characters to come. This revival is a special 25th anniversary presentation for which new 35mm prints have been struck. Down these Mean Streets walked the future of American film. (R, 110 min.) @Dobie; Fri-Thu.
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POLTERGEIST (1982) D: Tobe Hooper; with Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Beatrice Straight, Dominique Dunne, Oliver Robins, Heather O'Rourke, Zelda Rubinstein. Co-written and co-produced by Steven Spielberg, this spectacularly creepy ghost story is the ultimate fable about the consequences of mindless land development. (PG, 114 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; midnight, Thu (5/14).
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.
SCREAM 2 (1997) D: Wes Craven; with Neve Campbell, David Arquette, Courteney Cox, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Elise Neal, Jada Pinkett. On December 17, 1997, the Chronicle wrote: "Scream 2 may not pack the emotional wallop of the first film, but it's still head and shoulders (and punctured eyeballs) above most of what's out there." Must be why it's now primed for re-release. (R, 120 min.) @ Highland, Tinseltown North; Fri-Thu.
Film Series and Other Screening
AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY "The Women of Pre-Code Cinema":
Scarlet Empress (1934) D: Josef von Sternberg; with Marlene Dietrich, John Lodge, Louise Dresser, Sam Jaffe. The Austin Film Society's current season looks at Hollywood representations of female sexuality in the years before the Hays Production Code of 1934. Following last week's presentation of Blonde Venus, the Film Society presents another pairing of La Dietrich and her Svengali, von Sternberg. Here she plays the legendary Catherine the Great in a film supposedly based on her diaries. The von Sternberg touch drapes everything in visually lush tones and provocatively veiled imagery. Showing beforehand is the Betty Boop cartoon, "Snow White." Admission is free. (NR, 110 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Tue, 6:30 & 9pm.
AUSTIN FILMWORKS:
Spring Term Student Shorts (1998) D: Various. Twelve video pieces and three 16mm shorts will be screened in this presentation of the final projects of the spring term Production One and Production Two classes at instructor Steve Mims' Austin FilmWorks. The potential for finding something great here is always high. For more info call 467-0731. @Dobie Theatre; Sat, 11am.
FUNHOUSE CINEMA: Space Junkies: Weightlessness continues Funhouse Cinema's three-week space travel mini-fest (and art exhibit by Waxahachie artist Andy Emmons at Alternate Current Gallery) with this Polish documentary that includes recently declassified footage chronicling the hidden history of the USSR space program, the cosmonauts' adventures in extended orbit while the Soviet government collapsed far below them, and such tidbits as the details of zero-gravity urination. Showing along with it is one of my favorite movies on earth, Georges Méliès' 1902 classic "A Trip to the Moon." No doubt the first fantasy film ever made, this magical short film never loses its power to intrigue and fascinate. (NR) @Ritz Lounge; Mon, 8 & 10:30pm.
IMAX THEATRE (San Antonio):
Everest (1998) D: Greg MacGillivray, David Breashears, Stephen Judson; narrated by Liam Neeson. The anticipation for this new Imax film showcasing the spendors of Mt. Everest is heightened due to it having been shot during the fateful 1996 expedition when several mountain climbers died. (NR, 44 min.) All seating is assigned and may be purchased in advance. Other daily shows include Alamo: The Price of Freedom, Whales, The Magic of Flight, and conventional 35mm theatrical screenings each evening. For more info and reservations, call 800/354-4629.@Imax Theatre in San Antonio; Fri-Thu.
S.O.S. ALLIANCE & SAVE BARTON CREEK ASSOCIATION BENEFIT: The Horse Whisperer (1998) D: Robert Redford; with Redford, Kristen Scott Thomas, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Neill, Dianne Wiest, Chris Cooper. Robert Redford directs and stars in this romantic drama based on the popular book. The advance screening is a benefit for these two local environmental groups. Movie tickets are $25 and are on sale at the Alamo Drafthouse and Waterloo Records. Tickets for the reception, which features music by Don Walser & His Pure Texas Band, are also $25. For more info call 477-2320, ext. 47. (PG-13, 164 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Thu, 6 & 9:15pm.
THE TEXAS DOCUMENTARY TOUR: American Cowboy (1997) D: Kyle Henry. This SXSW Film Festival hit focuses on the life of gay rodeo star Gene Mikulenka, who during the course of the picture loses his prized horse to colic, asks his boyfriend to marry him, harasses and embraces the dogged film crew following him, and comes out to his friends and family. Filmmaker Kyle Henry will introduce the film and conduct a Q&A afterwards. See related story in this week's "Screens" section. The Documentary tour is co-sponsored by the Austin Film Society, the UT Department of RTF, The Austin Chronicle, and SXSW Film. (NR, 52 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Wed, 7 & 9:30pm (tickets for both shows go on sale at 6:30pm).
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