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
HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK
D: Kevin Sullivan; with Angela Bassett, Taye Diggs, Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Pagan. (R, 125 min.)
Blessed is the romantic comedy that doesn't take the all-too-predictable cravings of the human heart as a license to kludge together a random handful of market-tested clichés and wait for the checks to start rolling in. So a big shout-out to producer Deborah Schindler (Waiting to Exhale) and rookie director Kevin Sullivan for making this movie so much better than it really needed to be. Even with Stella's success all but assured by its source material (a bestselling novel by Terry McMillan, who also wrote Waiting to Exhale), a truly gorgeous pair of lead actors, and a sumptuous tropical setting, the filmmakers go to obvious pains to add a bit of nutritive value to their sweet, frothy confection. Not so much in the area of originality; what we have here is a pretty conventional May-August love story in which an emotionally tapped-out 40ish businesswoman (Bassett) gets her vital juices flowing again via a deliciously inappropriate taste of young beefcake (Diggs) she meets during a Jamaican holiday. What really elevates this movie to the status of a future Lifetime Network classic is the care screenwriters McMillan and Ron Bass have taken to flesh out not only the lead characters but also supporting figures such as Bassett's lifelong sidekick (Goldberg, mugging and ad-libbing her way through one of the bawdy, wisecracking roles on which she owns a virtual patent) and her protective 11-year-old son (Pagan). Though most of the characters are genre archetypes, the addition of interesting backstory and a few charming throwaway scenes add satisfying depth to their relationships. Diggs, a stage actor playing his first major film role, demonstrates major heartthrob potential. As 20-year-old Winston, he's every straight woman's guilt-free fantasy fling: open-hearted, intelligent, well-bred, honorable and -- oh yeah -- built like a stack of glistening black granite. His repertoire of advanced love-man moves should be compiled into an instructional video for sexually frustrated high-school guys. And his appeal is likely to extend to male African-American viewers, who'll appreciate seeing one of their peers portrayed as something other than a promiscuous dog whose every waking move is dictated by General Johnson. But for all of Diggs' precocious charm, it's Bassett -- again demonstrating a knack for characterizations that are both glamorous and rich with Everywoman appeal -- who's the clear centerpiece here. With qualities of beauty and strength that seem to inspire rather than distance her female fans, she's by now obliterated any suspicion that her Oscar-nominated role in What's Love Got to Do With It was a flash in the pan. (And as an icon of middle-aged feminine mojo, she's also a gratifying answer to all these priapic old goats cavorting around in Bulworth, A Perfect Murder, Lolita, and Six Days Seven Nights, not to mention the inevitable Bill 'n' Monica pics that should be cropping up any day now.) The date movie of the summer has been a little late in coming this year, but it's here at last. And it is indeed a groove. (8/14/97)
3.5 stars (R.S.)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Riverside, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
New Review
AIR BUD: GOLDEN RECEIVER
D: Richard Martin; with Kevin Zegers, Cynthia Stevenson, Gregory Harrison, Nora Dunn, Shayn Solberg, Perry Anzlilotti. (G, 92 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. The first Buddy may have succumbed to cancer, but another sports-savvy canine has been drafted. As the "golden receiver" of the junior high football team, the new Buddy suits up to save the day for young Josh (Zeger), dogged by sadness about his mom's new veterinarian boyfriend. But when Buddy is kidnapped by Russian circus wranglers, it will take some help from Josh for the cunning canine to tackle opponents, clip criminals, and still make the winning touchdown. (8/14/98)
(S.H.)
THE AVENGERS
D: Jeremiah Chechik; with Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman, Sean Connery, Eddie Izzard, Fiona Shaw, Jim Broadbent, Eileen Atkins. (PG, 91 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Fiennes takes up John Steed's bowler, brolly, and inimitability; Thurman slips into Emma Peel's black leather and cool smarts in this 1990s re-invention of the trippy-cool 1960s television series. Connery also stars, trying on the black hat as evil Sir August DeWynter, who is trying to accomplish his nefarious ends through control of the world's weather. (8/14/98)
(M.B.)
Gateway, Highland, Lakehills, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown South
THE DRESS
D: Alex van Warmerdam; with van Warmerdam, Henri Garcin, Ariane Schluter, Ricky Koole and Rijk de Gooyer. (Not Rated, 103 min.)
Once, many years ago, I moved into a big old house. It seemed a fine house -- good location, decent roommates, cheap rent, and an airy room. I lasted a month. Oh, nothing ever went bump in the night there, but the house was imbued with a pervasive sense of despair that no amount of sunlight or cheery decor could dispel. Some time later, I learned that it had once been used as a private (no doubt unlicensed) nursing home. So, the world of The Dress, where inanimate objects act as receptacles, even conduits, of anima would, I thought, be a familiar if not entirely comfortable place for me. A bright and jaunty leaf-motif dress, designed in fury and fashioned from a swath of fabric conceived in anger, has a strange and tragic effect on everyone who comes into contact with it, especially the women who wear it. From an aging housewife whose unexpected fit of passion leads suddenly and inexplicably to her demise, to a young and romantically frustrated housemaid's bizarre dalliance with a perverted train conductor, to a bag lady for whom the dress becomes a shroud, the seemingly harmless frock unravels each life as quickly as it spins them all together in a mesmerizing, but disturbing, web of sex and violence and longing. Like a spider to a fly, Dutch director and writer Alex van Warmerdam (who also stars) invites us into his parlor with moments of intimacy and silliness, stuns us with tragedy and menace, then abruptly sets us free. Then, just as we are laughing nervously, wondering if we were ever really in any danger at all, we're seized again. In one particularly memorable scene, the lonely maid meets the lascivious conductor for a romantic tryst in a house that seems to be decorated with oversized Barbie furniture and objets d'art won on a midway. The absurd pink frilliness lends the scene an incongruously sinister quality which turns comically violent when the huge homeowner with even bigger hair turns up toting her equally oversized shotgun. But the comedy is a brief and deceptive reprieve. Van Warmerdam creates a bleak and disquieting landscape through which The Dress dances and floats, taunts and cajoles. Moments of whimsy crash up against angst, tenderness collides with degradation, levity slips into darkness. It's an unsettling world out of kilter, connected by a simple dress, hanging by a thread. (8/14/97)
2.5 stars HC
Village
RETURN TO PARADISE
D: Joseph Ruben; with Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Joaquin Phoenix, David Conrad, Jada Pinkett Smith, Vera Farmiga, Nick Sandow, Ming Lee. (R, 109 min.)
A sort of Midnight Express retooled for Gen-X sensibilities. Ruben, who made his mark as a superior director of above-average thrillers with 1987's harrowing The Stepfather, has since stumbled a bit (The Good Son, with Macaulay Culkin, wasn't a good sign by anyone's standards). Still, he's managed to pull a few hat tricks in the interim, although Return to Paradise misses the mark almost entirely. Collegiate expats Sheriff (Vaughn), doe-eyed Lewis (Phoenix), and architect-to-be Tony (Conrad) are vacationing in Malaysia, sopping up wine, women, sun, and the requisite hash just days before they're scheduled to fly back to the States. Lewis, for his part, plans on staying behind to help return injured orangutans to the wild, and after a drunken, hash-happy bender, the trio parts ways with hollow promises to stay in touch. Two years pass. Sheriff, now a cynical, scheming New York limo driver, picks up a slight, blonde fare one evening who informs him that the day after he and Tony left Penang, Lewis was arrested by the Malaysian authorities and, due to the hashish the trio carelessly tossed in the trash on the way out of town, charged with drug dealing, a capital offense. Having remained incarcerated for the past two years, Lewis' execution date is eight days away, and the only way to save his life is to have Sheriff and Tony return to Penang and share culpability. The blonde is Beth Eastern (Heche), Lewis' lawyer, and this Manhattan battle of wills -- will they or won't they? -- makes up the first half of Ruben's film. When Tony, engaged and with a promising career at his feet, agrees to return to save Lewis, Sheriff is obliged to go along for the ride, and Return to Paradise spends the next hour visiting the Penang hellhole where Lewis has slowly deteriorated -- mentally and physically -- over the past two years. There is, of course, the requisite trial sequences, and some mildly horrific shocks along the way, but Ruben and company fail to make any of this very interesting. Granted, Vaughn's character arc is a wonder to behold, but I can't help but think that these characters just aren't the sort of guys anyone's really going to give a damn about. Heche does her best to be earnest and pained in the face of her client's doom, but she's so naturally spritely -- that blonde bob screams "cuddles!" -- that the role soars clean over her head. Phoenix is well-cast as the starry-eyed dreamer fallen from grace, but his role is essentially one of hollow-eyed rants and lunatic charm. Vaughn, for his part, pulls off the thuggish Sheriff well enough, but by the film's crucial final reel, the only emotional tug you feel is the one generated by cinematographer Reynaldo Villalobos' breathtaking shots of the Malay peninsula. And then, of course, after this dark little misfire, you're never going to set foot over there anyway, so why bother? (8/14/97)
2 stars (M.S.)
Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
UNDER HEAVEN
D: Meg Richman; with Joely Richardson, Aden Young, Molly Parker, Kevin Phillip, Krisha Fairchild (R, 115 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Greed, betrayal, and romance become hopelessly entwined in writer-director Meg Richman's debut film, which made its Austin premiere at last years's SXSW Film Festival. Loosely based on Henry James' Wings of the Dove, Under Heaven updates the classic to the grungy club scene of modern-day Seattle. Cynthia (Parker) and her rocker boyfriend Buck (Young) are beautiful, in love, and flat broke. They conspire to finagle the ailing Eleanor (Richardson) into leaving Buck her grand estate, but their plan goes awry when both find themselves seduced and bound to the woman they hoped to swindle. (8/14/97)
(S.H.)
Arbor
Still Playing
ARMAGEDDON
D: Michael Bay; with Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Peter Stormare, Keith Davie, Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson, Ken Campbell. (PG-13, 150 min.)
It's big, it's stupid, it's pretty kick-ass. That's about all you need to know about Summer '98's loudest testosterone-fest, the second in a death-from-above double header that started off last month with the weak Deep Impact. As helmed by "bigger is better" wunderkind Bay, Armageddon ups the ante from that previous film by replacing Robert Duvall's hero-named-Tanner with Willis' hero-named-Stamper, gigantifying the incoming asteroid and wiping out more cities, faster, louder, wilder (particularly nice is the End of Paris, and, presumably, Euro-Disney). Bay wastes no time in getting to the action, leaving the planet just 18 measly days between discovery and impact (Deep Impact had near as many months). Alerted to the problem after a few "Volkswagen-sized" particles redecorate Times Square (in a nice comic touch, one of the asteroid's first victims turns out to be a street-corner Godzilla vendor), NASA director Dan Truman (a slimmed-down Thornton) hires the world's best deep-core oil drillers -- headed by crusty Harry Stamper (Willis) -- to rendezvous with the asteroid just shy of the moon, sink a supernuke in it, and blow it off course. Willis, who one of these days is going to get an Academy Award for Best Squint, is ideal for the role, though I had the feeling he was borrowing heavily from the Ed Harris character in James Cameron's The Abyss. (His whole team, in fact, seems recycled from that film, which in turn was recycled from World War II G.I. epics like The Fighting Seabees.) It should go without saying that supporting characters like Buscemi, Wilson, and Campbell are there for the ricocheting of one-liners, and that Liv Tyler's lips are the most emotionally expressive thing in the film. This is of little consequence in the summer blockbuster wars, in which storylines are lost and forgotten amidst the charred rubble of whatever metropolis "gets it" next and the quality of the effects is more important than the quality of the acting. Bearing that in mind, Armageddon has very impressive effects (not the least of which is making Steve Buscemi into a believable ladykiller). Bay hammers the linear narrative home with the indefatigable strength of John Henry pounding steel, never stopping for breath, and never allowing the audience time to ponder the various incongruities that pop up. His golden-lighted, amber-waves-of-grain patriotism (and there is much of it, usually in slow motion, always accompanied by elegiac music) begins to grate about 10 minutes into the film, but if you look at it as a bizarre comic element it's that much easier to stomach. No one in his or her right mind is going to take this juggernaut explode-o-thon seriously, of course, but as far as popcorn-grubbing eye candy with deafening sound and plenty of cheeseball Aerosmith tuneage (and progeny), it's great fun. And what other film this summer opens with Charlton Heston as the Voice of God intoning global doom? Not a one. (7/3/98)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
BASEKETBALL
D: David Zucker; with Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Yasmine Bleeth, Jenny McCarthy, Robert Vaughn, Ernest Borgnine, Dian Bachar, Trevor Einhorn, Bob Costas. (R, 103 min.)
Subtlety has never been David Zucker's (Airplane!) forte, and now teamed with the creators of South Park in this professional sports parody, the notion is completely killed off once and for all. Not that that's a bad thing. Fans of Parker and Stone's screechingly warped sensibilities will doubtless find Baseketball right up their alley, as will lovers of the gag-filled ZAZ films (Naked Gun, Hot Shots!). This, then, is a sort of meeting of minds for the bathroom-humor set, albeit with some new twists, most of which result from Parker and Stone's deliciously renegade onscreen presence. It's nice to know these guys are just as inventive in front of the camera as they are behind it. Parker plays Joseph "Coop" Cooper who, along with his childhood friend Doug Remer (Stone), has grown up watching the fall of professional athletic competitions via inflated salaries, free agencies, greedy managers, and the sort of generally unsportsmanlike misconduct that chokes the stadiums these days. He's always dreamed of being like his hero Reggie Jackson, but as Baseketball opens, the pair are just another sloppy twentysomething duo hard-pressed to make their rent. That all changes when they inadvertently create a new sports sensation in the form of baseketball, a driveway game for "guys that can't run and have bad backs" that combines the free-throw aspects of basketball with the innings of baseball. Before long, the game takes off nationally, a league -- with rules firmly in place that disallow the trading of players, overripe salaries, and so on -- is formed, and the fledgling sport goes national with Coop and Remer playing for the Milwaukee Beers. Enter Baxter Cain (Vaughn), a scheming club owner seeking to twist the game to his own nefarious ends, and Bleeth as Jenna Reed, the owner of a "Make a Wish Foundation"-type charity for ailing children and Coop's soon-to-be love interest. Along with teammate Kenny "Squeak" Scolari (Bachar), Coop and Remer must fight off the evil Cain, woo Reed, and, of course, save "Little Joey" (Einhorn). Unlike Zucker's previous one-note laff riots, Baseketball flows more from the amiable characterizations of its two leads, who are obviously as comfortable in front of the camera as they are making fart jokes behind it. In fact, what's so interesting about Baseketball is how much of a step above South Park this all is. I'm not saying it's better, just that it seems less crude, more slaphappy, than gag-happy. There are, to be sure, plenty of gross-outs; part of the baseketball rules involve "psyching out" the other team, and Parker (the cute one) and Stone (the horny one) do their best bathroom revelry here. It's not, say, Monty Python we're dealing with here, but the next rung on a very warped comedic ladder that began when the Marx Brothers were still in diapers. Sick, twisted, and very funny, Parker and Stone have arrived. Again. (7/31/98)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Gateway
BUFFALO '66
D: Vincent Gallo; with Gallo, Christina Ricci, Ben Gazzara, Anjelica Huston, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Corrigan, Rosanna Arquette, Jan-Michael Vincent. (Not Rated, 120 min.)
"Indie! Indie! Indie!" is the unspoken mantra behind enfant terrible Gallo's directorial debut (he was previously seen in Palookaville as well as a series of Calvin Klein ads), and though independent cinema in America has, at this stage, been almost completely co-opted by the major studios (and anyone who thinks Miramax isn't a major these days is kidding themselves), Gallo's battle cry makes for a fiercely humorous slice of unreality that soars even when it's crawling in the gutter and puking on itself. Gallo has recruited a stellar cast and then played them down into the depths of his tale's depravity so much that you hardly recognize Huston or anyone else. In a film populated by the hapless dregs of society, there are no star turns, and yet every character is cleverly portrayed, fully fleshed out and functional, and frequently downright creepy. Gallo is Billy Brown, a scrawny, pale wingnut who, with his flared floodpants, red faux-leather disco boots, and too-tight tube tops, looks for all the world like God's loneliest toothpick. As Buffalo '66 opens, he's fresh out of jail (featuring an extended, painful, semi-comic sequence which involves a desperate search for a bathroom) and on his way to his parents' house. Before going in the joint for a five-year stretch necessitated by a botched $10,000 bet on the Buffalo Bills, Billy told his parents he was married to a beautiful woman and worked a secure, government job. Lies, all lies, and upon his release, he promptly kidnaps Layla (Ricci) and forces her (well, sort of forces her -- she seems liable to go along with anything) to pretend she's his better half. After a protracted and Lynchian nightmare meeting with his family, the pair split up briefly while Billy goes in search of the Bills place-kicker who lost that long-ago bet for him. But the real crux of Gallo's film is the reconciliation with one's childhood, and, sentimental thug that Gallo is, the search for Love. Gallo populates the film with the oddest of oddballs, least of which is naif Billy. Ricci, batting .400, pulls off yet another delicious, subversive turn, while Gazzara and Huston are everybody's Hell Parents: Billy's mom has never forgiven him for being born during the Buffalo Bill's only Super Bowl win, and his old man (the title fits him like the sweaty white T-shirt he wears) couldn't care less about him. Comedy is birthed of tragedy, I know, but this is ... ouch. Gallo packs the film with odd, endearing flourishes that detract a bit from the storyline but add to the overall whole: his father, crooning an old love song to Ricci, Billy's mildly retarded buddy Goon (Corrigan, of all people) who only wants to be called Rocky, and the whole, hyper-seedy look of the picture that makes you want to scrub with bleach once you get home. In the end, it's a love story after all, but a peculiarly Gallocentric one -- cheap, nasty, but salvageable nonetheless. (8/7/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Arbor
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.)
Village
DISTURBING BEHAVIOR
D: David Nutter; with James Marsden, Katie Holmes, Nick Stahl, Steve Railsback, Bruce Greenwood, William Sadler. (R, 84 min.)
John Hughes meets Ira Levin at Carrie's high school. Dopey, histrionic fun from The X-Files alum David Nutter and Scott Rosenberg, writer of a real horror film -- last year's Con Air. Doubtlessly green-lighted following the success of Kevin Williamson and his minions, this paranoiac slab of hormonal overload positively drips with snide asides, though it's not nearly as cohesive (or witty) as the Craven/Williamson Scream franchise. It's instead on a par with such mid-Eighties bantamweights as Dead and Buried and My Bloody Valentine (the film, not the band), poking fun at teenage angst by way of a very sharp stick in the eye, kidney, and groin. What it more accurately resembles, though, is 1974's male domination fantasy The Stepford Wives (penned by Levin), both in its attention to suburban cliquehood -- in this case high school -- and its vision of a utopian elite where all the fistfights, fracases, and fun have been replaced by good table manners and well-coifed dos. Steve Clark (Marsden) is a strapping young lad who has recently moved to the Oregonian coastal town of Cradle Bay after the suicide of his brother in Chicago. Along with his younger sister, mom, and dad, Steve struggles to adjust to his new environment, which includes Cradle Bay High School, where the choice of cliques is endearingly clichéd. As described by newfound stoner buddy Gavin Strick (Stahl), the school is made up of the usual shoprats, skaters, stoners, and computer geeks, but more distressing are the Blue Ribbons, a loose cabal of overachieving MENSAniacs who make up the school's jock and preppie populations. According to the slightly-out-of-it Gavin, however, these future Young Republicans, until recently, were toke-happy freakouts like himself. Until they joined the Blue Ribbons, that is. Leave it to an Atom Egoyan regular to be at the crux of small-town America's mental health problems: Greenwood (The Sweet Hereafter, Exotica) is on board as school shrink Dr. Caldicott, whose radical experiments in teen-behavior modification have resulted in this cadre of hot-wired, kill-happy zombies who go in for such buoyant after-school specials as murder, rape, and grocery-store defenestrations. Only Sadler, as an equally weird school janitor with a fetish for Vonnegut, can save us now. The aptly named Nutter has a great time with all this bubble-headed trashiness, and though the script is wildly scattershot in its narrative, there's a certain charm to the film's outlandish sensibilities. This may be due in large part to the teen-dream perfection of Stahl and Holmes (Dawson's Creek), who plays white-trash bad girl Rachel, saviorette of Cradle Bay's artificially oppressed teen libidos. It's all goofily ridiculous, sure, but it's also more than a little fun, and for what it's worth, Disturbing Behavior garners an instant Drive-in Academy Award nomination for Best Use of a Pink Floyd lyric since The Wall. Take that, Molly Ringwald. (7/24/98)
2.5 stars (M.S.)
Highland
DR. DOLITTLE
D: Betty Thomas; with Eddie Murphy, Ossie Davis, Oliver Platt, Kristen Wilson, Raven-Symoné, Kyla Pratt, Richard Schiff, Peter Boyle, Jeffrey Tambor. (PG-13, 85 min.)
Charm offensive or offensive charm? It's getting harder to make the call as Hollywood continues its strategy -- exemplified by movies like Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, Billy Madison, Half-Baked, and the recent output of the Farrelly Brothers (Kingpin, Dumb & Dumber) -- of compensating for the dearth of good comedy writing with sheer dorky affability. Bristling with enough fart jokes, crass sexual innuendo, and low-grade profanity to make Rex Harrison (star of the original 1967 Dolittle) blanch, this PG-13 remake epitomizes the trend perfectly. With a middle-school class clown's lowbrow cunning, Dr. Dolittle's creators have zeroed right in on the key element of successful audience ingratiation, the benign and endearing lead character. Murphy, who owes his durable appeal to his flair for playing it both naughty and nice, fits the bill perfectly. His Dr. John Dolittle is a classical comic straight-man, a genial, unflappable traditional family guy à la Hugh Beaumont, who suppressed in childhood the only exceptional trait he ever had: the ability to talk with animals. When a knock on the head suddenly restores this long-lost ability, Dolittle's veneer of Cleaverish sangfroid shatters wide open. Suddenly, the air rings with the din of kvetching pigeons, drawling hound dogs, street-punk rats, and wisecracking guinea pigs (voiced hilariously by the likes of Chris Rock, Albert Brooks, Ellen DeGeneres, John Leguizamo, and Gary Shandling). To Dolittle's horror, the ability to walk with, talk with, grunt and squeak and squawk with these lower life forms draws him inexorably into their world and away from his carefully cultivated life as an upwardly mobile surgeon. Dolittle's humor, as I've noted, is hardly Wildean, even by comparison with the fairly lackluster '67 original, and will probably have no appeal at all to fans of the sweetly whimsical children's stories by Hugh Lofting. And yet, given that plentiful witnesses saw me sniggering my way through the preview screening, the critical high-horse stance is not an option. With an irresistible blend of disarming silliness, adorable critters, inspired gags (including allusions to movies like The Exorcist and Sling Blade), and the sheer personal appeal of Murphy and Symoné (as Dolittle's maladjusted younger daughter), there's no denying Dr. Dolittle's bullseye connection with the lowest common denominator. Hedged praise? Absolutely. One wishes -- fervently -- for a dose of the intelligent, genuinely witty kid-targeted comedy writing delivered by Terry Gilliam in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen or Ron Clements and Ted Elliott in Aladdin. But at the risk of serving as an enabler for Hollywood's dysfunctional tendencies, I have to say that, given a choice between the puerile but essentially innocent whimsy of Dr. Dolittle and the dimwitted nastiness of, say, Dirty Work, parents should be grateful for the Eddie Murphys and Jim Carreys of the world for at least providing a kinder, gentler option. (6/26/98)
2.5 stars (R.S.)
Gateway, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
EVER AFTER
D: Andy Tennant; with Drew Barrymore, Anjelica Huston, Dougray Scott, Jeanne Moreau, Jeroen Krabbé, Patrick Godfrey, Megan Dodds, Melanie Lynskey, Timothy West, Judy Parfitt, Richard O'Brien. (PG-13, 121 min.)
Legends of the screen, Barrymore and Huston, together for the first time… no, not the great Johns -- Barrymore and Huston -- not even Lionel Barrymore or Walter Huston. We're talking Drew and Anjelica, descendants of Hollywood legends, majesty in their own right. How appropriate it is that these two tackle another legend: the story of Cinderella. And not only do they revisit the centuries-old tale, their approach is nothing less than a re-animation of the story which turns the passive servant girl into a proactive heroine: She becomes a lowly charwoman who takes care of business instead of waiting for Prince Charming to supply the happy ending. And wonder of all wonders, the shoe fits -- not perfectly, mind you, there are some ungainly bunions and calluses that chafe against the glass slipper, but the fit is sufficiently graceful and reinvigorating to attract a new audience to keep company with it during this fresh stroll around the old stomping grounds. The tale is set in the 16th century and if there were any doubt as to the film's targeting of the same adolescent crowd that made William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet such a galloping success, just check out the diaphanous wings attached to the gown our Cinderella wears to the big ball and see if they don't remind you at all of the costume worn by Juliet to her big ball. In Ever After, Cinderella is cast as a French maiden by the name of Danielle (Barrymore), and we're introduced to her through a lagniappe of a wraparound story that stars Jeanne Moreau as the several-generations-removed descendant of Danielle, who has called the Grimm Brothers to her castle to set their storymaking straight. Realism supplants magic in this new version; gone are the pumpkins that turn into coaches and the mice that bippety-boppety-boo into coachmen. Indeed, the role of the fairy godmother is played here by Leonardo da Vinci (Godfrey) who, in a bit of a stretch, plays an enlightened third-party protagonist who uses logic instead of magic to help bring these two star-crossed kids together. Danielle, though circumstances have made her a servant in her own home, is a self-possessed lass -- articulate, well-read, and independent in thought and action. Her stepmother (played with delicious hauteur by Huston) is depicted less as an evil archetype than a venal woman of her times. The two stepsisters as well are played with delightful verve by Dodds and Lynskey (best known as Kate Winslet's sister in crime in Heavenly Creatures), and other charming characterizations are rendered by West and Parfitt as the king and queen and O'Brien as Danielle's scoundrelly suitor. Barrymore seems at heart too much of a "modern gal" to pull off the role of a 16th-century maiden with genuine believability, yet the whole of the piece also suffers frequent historical lapses. Still, the playful and well-meaning spirit of the film carries it through its shakier moments of awkward narration and inscrutably busy camerawork. Despite the unfortunately enfeebling, desaturated, excessively romantic, and downright cheesy look of its trailers, Ever After turns out to be a potent and imaginative retelling that proves Cinderella's timelessness defies carbon-dating. (7/31/98)
3.0 stars (M.B.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS
D: Terry Gilliam; with Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Gary Busey, Christina Ricci, Cameron Diaz, Ellen Barkin, Tobey Maguire, Michael Jeter. (R, 119 min.)
You know the feeling you get when you're the only straight person in a room full of people who are all ripped out of their gourds? That painful realization that you're over-the-counter while everyone else is under-the-table… way under? Watching the film version of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is something like that experience. Not very much fun to observe, yet altogether fascinating. All the naysayers who, over the years, have pronounced Hunter S. Thompson's counterculture classic to be "unfilmable" have now been proved wrong. Co-conspirators Terry Gilliam, Johnny Depp, and Benicio Del Toro have executed the book's transition to the screen almost flawlessly. That flawlessness, in fact, may almost be the problem. There's something about that extra layer of distancing that a book can offer and the screen can't, which in this case might account for why film viewers feel vaguely discomforted by an icky fifth-wheel sensation. The film is amazingly faithful to Thompson's presciently gonzo tome in which a journalist's assignment to cover a motorbike racing event outside Las Vegas turns into a twisted, first-person descent into the demented psyche of the unraveling American Dream. It's a journey fueled, of course, by a legendarily prodigious amount of drugs, extracts, and epicurean black-market imbibeables -- enough to turn Thompson's alter-ego Raoul Duke (Depp) and his sidekick attorney (Del Toro) into drooling, manic madmen, visionaries of the apocalypse but imbeciles of the immediate reality. The film's most stunning achievement is the veracity of its portrait of the hallucinatory drug state. It's use of state-of-the-art visual technology to create such illusions as winged bats, carpet patterns enveloping their human cargo, and hotel-bar patrons morphing into frightening lounge lizards (courtesy of Rob Bottin) is no less true and dazzling than its ability to capture such moments as the drug-addled paranoia, the twisted perceptions, the mescaline-induced puking, and the more-is-better credo in action. The camerawork by cinematographer Nicola Pecorini (making his feature filmmaking debut here) is a constantly amazing thing to watch, full of strange lenses and intoxicating movements that serve the material well. Also note-perfect are the performances of Depp and Del Toro, whose spooky renditions of their subjects are kinetically compelling wonders. And Gilliam, whose body of work as a director is a virtual testament to the belief that madness is indeed a salve for the soul, seems the perfect director for this "unfilmable" material. So why doesn't this movie work? I think it has something to do with the film's focus on the fictional character of Raoul Duke as the story's protagonist. As a "character" Duke assumes the proportions of a drug-addled buffoon. The movie obscures the key aspect of Duke as the "alter ego" for this wonderfully insightful observer known as Hunter S. Thompson. Even though the film faithfully quotes long portions of the book in continuous voiceovers, we get little sense of the writer and journalist who "shapes" this adventure into a thing of commentary. By focusing on the excess, the film loses Thompson's philosophical mooring in the belief in excess as a valid path to wisdom. And it's that wisdom which may be the untranslatable part of the book. It's what comes through when we read about all this stuff on the page, when we recognize that the experiences have all been sifted through the mental process that translates thought into expression. The immediacy of the movies may contradict the ideological conceit at the heart of gonzo journalism -- that being the idea of the observer creating a fiction that's more true than the movies. Ironically, the film may be a better tribute to the artwork of Ralph Steadman than the writing of Thompson. Steadman's garish illustrations have always been an undervalued element in most understandings of the book's success, and it's certainly this film's visual qualities that truly set it apart. At any rate, the movie is clearly intriguing in ways it may not have intended. Unfortunately, in ways that it probably did intend to engage, Fear and Loathing has much more bark than bite. (5/22/98)
2.5 stars (M.B.)
FULL TILT BOOGIE
D: Sarah Kelly; with George Clooney, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Juliette Lewis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Parks, Victoria Lucai. (R, 97 min.)
Sarah Kelly's absorbing documentary on the making of Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn breaks down the fourth wall between audience and performers and then proceeds to devour it whole with infectious glee and sublime panache. Chronicling the production of Rodriguez's drive-in vampire/gangster epic from conception to martini shot, Full Tilt Boogie is as much a sociology lesson on the politics of a major film shoot as it is a dry, sardonic comedy of errors and frayed nerves. Above all, though, it's manna from film geek heaven as a roster of semi-indie luminaries (in spirit if not in budget) such as Tarantino, Keitel, and the great Michael Parks (remember Then Came Bronson?) parade before Kelly's camera and offer their insights on the filmmaking process. Beginning with an outrightly hilarious bit of staged comedy from Dusk stars Tarantino and then-ER heartthrob Clooney as they wend their way through the backstage corridors on their way to the set, Full Tilt Boogie cuts from conversations with Rodriguez to Clooney's barrage of wisecracks and practical jokes, and from on-set crew interviews to the mounting threat of a I.A.T.S.E. strike against the film's non-union status. Politics threaten to bring a halt to the production: One memorable (if overly long) sequence has director Kelly and producer Rana Joy Glickman flying off to Miami to seek out their union nemesis in a scene reminiscent of Michael Moore's Roger & Me hijinks. Meanwhile, back at the Barstow, California shoot, the infamous Titty Twister biker bar catches fire in the wake of a particularly fiery pyrotechnic shot and nearly burns to the ground. And, of course, what would a desert shoot be without a dust storm? The travails of the filmmaking process -- both ordinary and extraordinary -- are captured by Kelly with witty aplomb. Where else could you see Tarantino point out that he "could sleep with any woman on this set" and get away with it? Well, okay, probably on any QT set, but you know what I mean. It's cinema vérité in the midst of one of the most chaotic shoots imaginable; the looks of relief on the faces of both cast and crew are palpable at film's end. Not that it's all work, mind you. Much of Full Tilt Boogie is given over to the more mundane aspects of filmmaking, such as on-set romances, the inner-workings of craft services, and the Great Grip Debate: drunken slobs or hardworking, indispensable technicians? Like Rodriguez's finished film, Full Tilt Boogie is a wild ride, full of the requisite peaks and valleys and precious few plateaus. And beer. Lots of beer. (7/31/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Dobie
HALLOWEEN: H20
D: Steve Miner; with Jamie Lee Curtis, Adam Arkin, Adam Hann-Byrd, Jodi Lynn O'Keefe, Janet Leigh, Josh Hartnett, LL Cool J, Joseph Gordon-Levitt. (R, 83 min.)
Has it really been 20 years already? It seems like only yesterday good-girl babysitter Laurie Strode battled it out with her inhuman, Captain Kirk-bemasked, butcher knife-wielding sibling Michael Myers and revolutionized the face of the American horror film. I remember driving through an overcast Albany one afternoon in '78 and pestering my dad to swing by the Loews and take in a matinee -- I was 12 and the suggestion carried little fatherly imperative that day, but I more than made up for it by spending much of the Eighties mooning over freshly minted scream queen Curtis in her post-Halloween roles (The Fog creeps me out to this day). And now, the final chapter, one hopes, on yet another sagging franchise. As if Halloweens 3-5 never existed (hardly a stretch), H20 catches up to a damaged version of its protagonist 20 years to the day after the events of the first film. (We know this is so because a subtitle proclaims that it's "October 31st, 1998," quickly followed by "Halloween." Duh.) Strode (Curtis) is now Keri Tate, a "functioning alcoholic" and principal of a smallish private high school sequestered outside a small Southern California town. She's also mother to 17-year-old son Josh (Hartnett), who in the fine tradition of teenagers everywhere, resents mom's asphyxiative apron strings. Guys, like girls, just wanna have fun, and when the opportunity arises to ditch the school camping trip and hang out with a trio of equally horny friends, Josh takes the bait and stays behind while mom hallucinates her evil brother at every available juncture, this despite the marginally reassuring presence of her romance-inclined counselor (Arkin). Michael, of course, is back in town, and without Donald Pleasence's Dr. Loomis around to keep him on a leash, suburbia's favorite boogeyman makes a beeline to the school and begins slicing, dicing, and julienning assorted victims as he moves towards Laurie and her son. Film geeks will chuckle over Curtis' real-life mom Janet Leigh in a cameo as Laurie/Keri's busybody secretary (if you're a real geek, you'll recognize her car and that snatch of Bernard Herrmann straight off), but H20, like the original, isn't a particularly humorous affair. For one thing, Laurie's character arc has bottomed out, resulting in a powerful heroine coming off as a paranoid lush. In the real world, I suppose, that's how things might have turned out, but the Laurie Strode of Halloween's 1 and 2 never struck me as a quitter. Miner strives to imbue the film with the requisite autumnal haze of the original but then gives up midway through and instead resorts to the standard stalk 'n' slash formulas. It's heartening to see a beloved character revived like this (at one point during the screening I attended, audience members actually stood up and cheered), but H20 -- for all its good, gory intentions -- is barely a shadow of the original. There's no frisson, no sense of the impossible here, though whether that's due to Miner and Company or simply the passage of time is up for debate. It's a fitting enough capstone for one of horror cinema's more memorable series, I suppose, but when it ended, I wanted to go peruse the original more than anything else. (8/7/98)
2.5 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
HANDS ON A HARD BODY
D: S.R. Bindler. (PG, 97 min.)
As engrossing as documentaries about manifestly "big" subjects (Triumph of the Will, A Brief History of Time) can be, I've always found even more delight in the ones about picayune-seeming phenomena and pursuits that gain an improbable aura of significance from the passion people pour into them. A classic example is Errol Morris' Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, with The Endless Summer, Pumping Iron, and Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey also popping quickly to mind. So, if surfing, bodybuilding, or mole rats can commandeer souls and spawn whole new schools of philosophy, why not a publicity stunt staged by a small-town car dealer? That's the premise of S.R. Bindler's marvelous little film, Hands on a Hard Body, winner of numerous festival awards including the audience award from the 1997 Austin Heart of Film Festival, that's just now seeing theatrical release. (The movie launches its world theatrical premiere in Austin this Friday.) Hands documents the 1995 edition of a yearly contest in which Jack Long Nissan of Longview, Texas gives a new hard body pickup to whomever can keep his or her hands on it the longest. Apart from short breaks at one- and six-hour intervals, contestants stand in place for up to four days at a time, often lapsing into hallucinations, laughing jags, and other erratic behavior around the 50-hour mark. Now, as a small-town native who's had his fill of specious, smirking "tributes" to down-home culture, I found this premise depressing as hell: a bunch of poor rubes suffering in 100-degree heat for a modest set of wheels that Michael Dell or Jim Bob Moffett could cover with glovebox change. Yet the wonder of Bindler's film is the way this random ensemble's foibles, quirks, and artless declamations work to ingratiate the contestants with the audience, not set them up as a geek show for urban hipsters' delectation. Interspersing live action at the contest with staged interviews held beforehand, Bindler and crew let the people who are the story tell the story. And a roomful of Hollywood screenwriters stoked on espresso and ginkgo biloba couldn't have dreamed up this cast. Former champ Benny, a self-styled Dalai Lama of hardbodyology, reels off malaprop-laden -- though often surprisingly insightful -- commentary. ("It's absurd, very absurd… it's a human drama thang." "I'm gonna just wait out the night and see what transgresses.") Ethereal Jesus freak Norma grooves blissfully to her stack of gospel tapes. Mellow J.D. sucks down unfiltered cigarettes and beams like a shitkicker Buddha. Gap-toothed Janice seethes with righteous fury at unpunished rule violations. Further obviating any doubt that we're meant to laugh with, not at, these people is the filmmakers' direct involvement in the drama. Speaking with obvious empathy to contestants, cracking up at their jokes, underscoring their powers of endurance with frequent shots of the sun and moon crossing the sky, Bindler's affection and respect for his subjects is unimpeachable. As with Fast, Cheap & Out of Control, the documentarian's receptive spirit makes us collaborators in -- not just observers of -- the peculiar quest we're seeing. We've been blessed with an amazing run of great documentaries over the past couple of years, and Hands on a Hard Body ranks with the very best. The cost-cutting measures endemic to DIY filmmaking are clearly reflected in bare-basics production techniques and the rather dodgy look created by blowing up an original Hi-8 video print. Yet a nigh-miraculous blend of high spirits, poignancy, gentle satire, and unpretentious insight into the nature of human aspiration make this one of the most impressive films you're likely to see this year. (7/10/98)
4.5 stars (R.S.)
Dobie
HENRY FOOL
D: Hal Hartley; with Thomas Jay Ryan, James Urbaniak, Parker Posey, Maria Porter, Kevin Corrigan. (R, 137 min.)
"Get up off your knees," barks Henry Fool (Ryan) to Simon Grim (Urbaniak) as he swaggers into Simon's basement at the beginning of the film and takes up residence. It is a directive that comes to characterize their relationship. Henry plays the mysterious, commanding, bombastic life teacher to Simon's reticent, bullied, and unassuming garbage man. The film is about the ironic influence the two men have on each other. It is a tale composed on an epic canvas, which is quite a departure for filmmaker Hal Hartley, whose distinctive vision has practically made all his films (The Unbelievable Truth, Trust, Simple Men, Amateur, Flirt) into their own unique genre. Until now, he has been a master of the hyper-real, depicting characters whose sense of isolation is profound and fairly impenetrable. With Henry Fool, however, Hartley has made his most dynamic and accomplished film to date. In no small measure this is because his new film is about the relationships between people, rather than the gulfs that surround them. Henry is a pontificating intellectual who believes that his notebooks containing his Confessions will revolutionize the writing establishment upon publication. Only thing is, they're never finished and he won't let anyone read them -- and there's also the ugly matter of some vile deeds in his past. But he generously gives the taciturn Simon a blank notebook to record his unspoken thoughts and what comes out is a cramped, scribbled stream of iambic pentameter. The words are so beautiful that they stimulate the mute cashier at the corner store to suddenly sing, turn his once-tormentors into his new acolytes, and causes his sister's period to begin a week and a half early as she types his long poem into the Internet. From there, it's instant fame for Simon as the student surpasses his questionable teacher, although their relationship continues through several more unexpected bends in the moral river. Though Hartley's ironic stance toward the world is still firmly in place, Henry Fool has a more darkly comic tone as questions of art, commerce, and talent are deftly explored. Parker Posey has one of her choicest roles as Simon's loud, promiscuous sister, and Camille Paglia even pops up at one point to provide commentary. Hartley's wry distance makes it hard to say for certain what it ultimately all adds up to, but links together smoothly enough as it unfolds. It's perhaps a little overlong with too much effort devoted at times to secondary characters and subplots. And be prepared for a couple of scenes of a grossly scatological nature that surpass anything found in the current spate of bathroom-humor comedies. Henry Fool is likely to make true believers out of Hartley's existent fans; to the newcomers there may be no better portal of entry. (7/24/98)
3.5 stars (M.B.)
Village
HOPE FLOATS
D: Forest Whitaker; with Sandra Bullock, Harry Connick Jr., Gena Rowlands, Mae Whitman, Michael Paré, Cameron Finley, Kathy Najimy. (PG-13, 114 min.)
Hope doesn't float in this film so much as it rises to the surface and then stagnates. This romantic drama has an engaging premise and starts off with a promising opening sequence but then slumps into a flat, familiar routine. Hope Floats tells the story of Birdee Pruitt (Bullock), a former small-town beauty queen whose husband has cheated on her with her best friend. Birdee learns the life-altering news during the film's compelling opening moments. Lured to the taping of a daytime TV talk show by the promise of a free makeover, Birdee is led blindfolded onto the set whereupon her best friend (Rosanna Arquette in an unbilled cameo) tells her of the affair with her husband. With her embarrassment beamed coast to coast on national television, Birdee retreats with her young daughter Bernice (Whitman) to her home town of Smithville, Texas (the neighboring Austin town where the movie was actually filmed). Birdee moves back in with her mom (Rowlands) and is faced with the dilemma of starting life anew. It's enough to make her hide under her bedcovers, but the encouragement of her kooky but wise mother and the needs of her wise but inexperienced daughter draw Birdee out into the world of the living. There's also the allure of Justin Matisse (Connick), the first boy Birdee ever kissed and who just coincidentally still happens to be single, hunky, and head over heels in love with her. There's very little drama or tension to impede their slow courtship. On a pure narrative level, it may be fair to wish for more grit to the romance but on an emotionally superficial level the teaming of Bullock and Connick is picture perfect. The two of them combine to make a very handsome couple. Individually, each of them has an ingratiating presence; together, they create a near irresistible force. Yet no conflict in the storyline warrants the 90 minutes they spend sniffing each other out before giving in to the big release we all know is coming. It's as though they're waiting to exhale or something. Perhaps it's this held-breath tendency that will be the hallmark of Forest Whitaker's directorial career. (Hope Floats is his follow-up to Waiting to Exhale.) He elicits undeniably good performances from his actors, but his visual sensibilities are perfunctory and border on cloying. Hope Floats' thematic undercurrent of small-town salvation is accentuated by the oh-so-pretty camerawork of Caleb Deschanel (The Black Stallion, The Natural). Plaintively slow dissolves encourage us to linger with the sights much longer than we would otherwise be inclined. If there were more developments in the plot, these country cornucopia moments might be less tiresome. (Some suggestions include the under-utilized introduction of Birdee's Alzheimer's-stricken dad in the retirement home and the inadequately explained presence of her nephew Travis.) Love, divorce, mother-daughter conflict, and one death all receive screen time in Hope Floats, but they occur as if on cue and without resonance. Hope floats and time passes. (5/29/98)
2.0 stars (M.B.)
Alamo Drafthouse, Discount, Showplace, Westgate 3
THE HORSE WHISPERER
D: Robert Redford; with Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Dianne Wiest, Scarlett Johansson, Chris Cooper, Cherry Jones, Ty Hillman, Catherine Bosworth. (PG-13, 164 min.)
I detect the scent of a golden statuette wafting in the breeze. Redford's adaptation of Nicholas Evans' bestselling novel is a countrified, monolithic thing of beauty -- gorgeous to behold despite the fact that its overlong two-hour-and-45-minute running time plays off Redford's weather-beaten golden boy good looks far too often for its own good. It's an homage to all things Redfordian -- the Big Sky country of Montana; the mercurial, saturnine beauty of the horses; and the redemptive power of love, patience, and the great outdoors. The film opens with a masterful sequence that sets the tone for the whole piece. On a snowy winter's morning in upstate New York, 14-year-old Grace MacLean (Johansson) leaves her parents' house to ride horses with her young friend Judith (Bosworth). The two girls discuss boys and ride through the back country until they encounter gravity while climbing a slope overlooking a rural route road. Judith's horse slips, throws her, and topples backwards down the slope into the path of an oncoming tractor trailer while Grace, astride her beloved horse Pilgrim, struggles to save Judith. Amidst the swirling snow, Judith is killed, Grace loses her right leg below the knee, and Pilgrim is terribly injured, his face a gory mess and his right front leg hideously torn. When Grace recovers, she's the shell of the girl she once was: bitter, angry, and terrified of the future. Her mother Annie (Thomas), a high-powered New York magazine editor (think Tina Brown of The New Yorker), refuses to have Pilgrim put down, and instead takes her wounded daughter and the damaged horse 2,000 miles cross country to visit Tom Booker (Redford), a "horse whisperer" who may or may not be able so save the spirits and bodies of both Grace and Pilgrim, while also teaching the city-bred Annie a thing or two about the meaning of life, love, and other single syllable heavy-hitters. Left behind in the city are Grace's father (Neill) and all pretenses of a normal life. Once the story moves to Montana, Redford opens things up, literally, as the screen image widens to take in all those shots of azure skies and sweeping vistas, and all the quiet, emotional avalanches to come. Apart from being a subtle treatise on the redemptive power of the human spirit, the film might as well also be a travelogue for God's country, so enamored of the snow-capped peaks and scudding clouds is the director. Redford, a screen icon if ever there was one, doesn't do too much here except squint and squat, though he does both with panache. And Thomas, as the brittle Brit who finds the meaning of true love beside the New Age horse doctor, is all pained expressions and tousled hair. However, it's the remarkable, affecting performance of Johansson (Manny & Lo) that propels The Horse Whisperer. She's a broken ray of sunlight cutting through the icy pines, and when the film lags with endless shots of the wise Tom Booker birthing a calf or some such, it's she who keeps things focused and alive in the midst of the film's pageant of unspoken truths. (5/15/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Discount, Showplace
LETHAL WEAPON 4
D: Richard Donner; with Mel Gibson, Danny Glover, Joe Pesci, Rene Russo, Chris Rock, Jet Li. (R, 125 min.)
To hell with Riggs and Murtaugh -- I'm getting too old for this shit. Gibson and Glover are back as those lovable LAPD screw-ups in this, director Donner's homage to cinematic white noise. Not only is the franchise growing hoary, by now it's become downright laughable, leaving Lethal Weapon 4 feeling more like a bad Fox sitcom than anything else. By now you know the standard-issue story: Detective Martin Riggs (Gibson), the hair-trigger, practical-joke-loving wild man is paired with longtime partner Roger Murtaugh (Glover), the doting family man, as meanwhile the city collapses around them and the forces of evil raise their pointy little heads. What's new? Not much: Riggs' Internal Affairs girlfriend Lorna (Russo, somehow still managing to draw life from her vaguely one-note character) is pregnant, as is Murtaugh's daughter (by rookie detective Lee Butters (Rock, wildly firing off comic rounds like a blind sniper with his hair on fire). Much confusion and homophobic jokes on the home front ensue in that department, but the real crux of the alleged plot centers on a gang of Chinese baddies who are smuggling slave labor into the L.A. basin. Led by the steely-eyed Jet Li, they're cookie-cutter parodies of the Yellow Menace at best, and Tex Avery-esque buffoons at worst. Murtaugh, ever the big-hearted putz, offers his home to a Chinese family he rescues, while his partner scrambles about blowing things up (as usual) and miscounting to three every time the aging duo prepare to make their move. The film isn't as bad as it is incomprehensible, a staccato series of action-piece setups and knock-downs that skitters from scene to scene with all the twitchy hilarity of a fibrillating speed freak. Alright, it is that bad. In the 12 years since the first film's release, the series has become increasingly more annoying, and this is the point at which it finally reaches critical mass. Gibson's much-admired glutes can't save him now, and Glover looks perpetually wearied, not so much running after the bad guys as wheezing like a rusty locomotive. Of course, Joe Pesci is back as the Human Whine Leo Getz, but the less said about that particular crime against nature the better. Not since Joel Schumacher turned the once-promising Batman franchise into a personal masturbation fantasy has a once-proud series devolved so awfully. Donner, I think, needs to stop hanging around the ghost of Don Simpson. The whole mess plays like a surreal Brady Bunch or Family Affair episode on dodgy drugs. Interminable, annoying, and just plain boring, Lethal Weapon should've bowed out at sequel number two. No, three. No -- ah, to hell with Riggs and Murtaugh -- I'm getting too old for this shit. (7/17/98)
0 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
MADELINE
D: Daisy von Scherler Mayer; with Frances McDormand, Hattie Jones, Nigel Hawthorne, Ben Daniels, Chantal Neuwirth, Kristian de la Osa, Stéphane Audran. (PG, 89 min.)
Madeline opens, not surprisingly, with a voiceover: "In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines …" With those familiar storybook words, the viewer (well, this viewer) must, by pure Pavlovian response, nestle down into her seat in anticipation of a story that will be as comforting and soothing as it is adventurous and exciting. That is Madeline's gift. The young French schoolgirl can slip the leash (falling off a bridge into the Seine, going to the hospital in an ambulance, pooh-poohing a tiger at the zoo) knowing full well that the ever-present, comforting refuge of those orderly straight lines will embrace her the minute she needs them. When his benefactress wife dies, grumpy old Lord Covington (known to the girls as Lord Cucuface) decides to shut down the school she supported and sell the lovely old house. Though she's the smallest schoolgirl of all, Madeline concocts a scheme to undermine the sale and, in the end, totally wins over Lord Cucuface. The doll-like Hattie Jones plays Madeline with the kind of on-demand brightness that makes you think someone must be standing behind the camera waving a candy carrot. She's cute, but too well trained. McDormand's performance, on the other hand, is completely ingenuous and pure Miss Clavel. At once intrepid and demure, this nun provides her girls with the sweet warmth of safekeeping without relinquishing a sense of wonder for the big, noisy world outside. The script, drawn here and there from Ludwig Bemelmans' classic series of children's books, has a weak central plot and a way-too-precious and contrived denouement. Madeline plays more like a collection of loosely connected scenes than a seamless narrative. But small matter, as the scenes are quite engaging and provide plenty of amusement. Especially those centering around a bumbling troupe of awkward acrobats who call themselves The Idiots. It's the cinematic illustrations, though, that give this story its charm. The school and its gardens, awash in muted greens, are impressionistic. The neighbors and Lord Cucuface's potential buyers are thrillingly bright and exotic. They provide a living mural of color and a melodious and multicultural cadence that give the tale a distinctly cosmopolitan flair. Despite the uneven script, Mayer (Party Girl) manages to fashion a world that perfectly captures both the muted, no-ghosts-under-these-beds haven of the school and the vivid, unpredictable carnival of life beyond its vine-covered walls. Both are perfectly lovely places. (7/10/98)
3.0 stars (H.C.)
Great Hills, Tinseltown North
MAFIA!
D: Jim Abrahams; with Jay Mohr, Lloyd Bridges, Olympia Dukakis, Christina Applegate, Billy Burke, Pamela Gidley, Jason Fuchs. (PG-13, 93 min.)
The cinematic equivalent of Cracked magazine, Mafia! never quite lives up to its MAD potential, instead shooting for the obvious, and releasing a steady stream of fart jokes and toilet humor that flows over the audience in a foul wave of lowest-common-denominator titters. Abrahams, who started out as part of the holy trinity of cinematic parody -- (David) Zucker, Abrahams, and (Jerry) Zucker -- with The Kentucky Fried Movie back in 1977, has since helmed the enormously successful and spot-on Airplane!, as well as the Naked Gun series and Hot Shots! Despite, or perhaps due to, his love of exclamatory titles, Abrahams and his writers have been able to keep their one-note comedy ball rolling for two decades now, but Mafia! signals the end. The story takes its structure and plot from Coppola's Godfather trilogy, Scorsese's Casino and GoodFellas, but curiously leaves out any of the gangster genre's more formative examples. I kept waiting for a White Heat gag to no avail. Mohr plays Anthony Cortino, the son of godfather Vincenzo (Bridges, looking remarkably spry -- this was his last film). Paralleling the Coppola films, Anthony is forced into taking over the family business after the death of Vincenzo (in an amusing homage to Brando's scene amongst the tomatoes), despite the protests of his wife Diane (Applegate). From there, it's on to Las Vegas and Casino territory, with plenty of flashbacks to catch up on evil brother Joey Cortino (Burke) and the host of lesser wiseguys who round out the film. Whereas the usual gag ratio in an Abrahams film is two or three per minute of screen time, Mafia! seems to cough up a genuine guffaw only once or twice every quarter-hour, which, as you can imagine, grows quickly wearying. On the face of it, the film seems uninspired, rushed, and cobbled together from leftover jokes that couldn't quite make it into the last Naked Gun episode. Watching grass grow is more humorous than this, and if you have a dead clown nearby, well, there's just no comparison. Mohr has a daft and clever comic wit about him, though. His quiet, not-quite-Christopher Walken voice is ready-made for zippy one-liners, and Applegate already proved her ditzy comic abilities on Fox's Married … With Children and in The Big Hit. This isn't nearly enough to sustain Mafia!'s 93-minute running time, and a long-overdue Jaws parody three-quarters into the film makes you wonder just how long Abrahams has been sitting on some of these gags. Best to go rent Police Squad! one more time. (7/24/98)
1.5 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Tinseltown North
MARIE BAIE DES ANGES
D: Manuel Pradal; with Vahina Giocante, Frederic Malgras, Amira Casar, David Kilner, Jamie Harris, Frederic Westerman, Nicolas Welbers, Swan Carpio. (R, 90 min.)
Tout le monde loves a good pout, and Marie Baie Des Anges does not disappoint. Neither the adolescent strutting of 15-year-old Lolita-in-training Marie (Giocante) nor the reptilian swagger of her young partner in crime Orso (Malgras) has much to say about anything other than the merest hint of teenage angst, but boy, do they look good doing nothing. Pradal's film plays like an homage to the nouvelle vague of Godard and Truffaut (and, at times, Rohmer), with Malgras nailing the essence of a youthful Jean-Paul Belmondo and Giocante carrying off the role of every French starlet since Jean Seberg. Still, Breathless this isn't. Pradal's sun-drenched Riviera locations add more to the film than the actual plot, which centers around these young hoodlums in love as they wander around the Bay of Angels, swim, tease American sailors, and generally slouch about as if they were young, French, and had nothing whatsoever to worry about. Orso, convincingly bitter at an old enemy, is on a perpetual hunt for a gun to settle scores, and Marie spends much of the film drawing leers from the local boys and the aforementioned group of Americans. Both young actors are debuting in Marie Baie Des Anges, and the production notes mention that neither came to the project with any sort of acting experience at all, which, frankly, is hard to imagine. They're terrific in their roles, but you have to wonder if they're acting at all. Pradal, wildly genuflecting before the altar of French cinema, lays on the pretense like there's no tomorrow (and in Marie Baie Des Anges, you kind of get the feeling that there might not be), tossing off bizarre, nonsensical edits, weird, disjointed storylines, and all manner of cinematic loop-de-loops until you're hard-pressed not to toss a flaming croissant through the screen and go join up with Le Pen. Still, the film has a preternatural charm. Approached without irony and perhaps a bit of silliness, Marie Baie Des Anges is pure goofball French cinema, visually namedropping the greats while simultaneously making light of their accomplishments. Whether this was Pradal's intention is unclear. I suspect he didn't set out to make the type of film that stirs up unruly giggles every 15 minutes, but the settings are so lush, the cast so inexplicably gorgeous, and the plot so very, very absent, that it works much better as a satire of the New Wave than it does as an homage. Senseless symbolism, guns, and gams do not a masterpiece make, but taken together they can still at least look pretty damn cool. (8/7/98)
2 stars (M.S.)
Village
THE MASK OF ZORRO
D: Martin Campbell; with Antonio Banderas, Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Stuart Wilson, Matt Letscher, Maury Chaykin, Tony Amendola, Pedro Armendariz, L.Q. Jones. (PG, 138 min.)
Theoretically, if you take into account some of Einstein's more esoteric theorems (parallel universes and all that), the tale of Zorro has already been filmed several thousand times over. Or maybe it just seems that way. First commited to pulp paper in 1919 by Johnston McCulley, the roguish character paved the way for Bruce Wayne and his ilk before dropping out of sight for a while in the mid-Seventies (1981's George Hamilton vehicle -- Zorro, the Gay Blade -- is notable only as a cultural comic anomaly, I believe). Regardless of what has come before, however, Campbell's new offering is a pleasantly vicarious slice of summertime falderol, innocuous in its presentation and often genuinely fun. It has the sexy, histrionic vibe of those old Republic serials updated for the Nineties, and would make a terrific double bill with Disney's vastly underrated The Rocketeer. Both films gaze back longingly to the daze of classic Hollywood heroics, and even Errol Flynn would have to admit that Banderas cuts a dashing figure as the revamped Zorro. Campbell, who directed the immensely entertaining Goldeneye, has an eye for outrageous action scenes and cliffhanger plotting; his directorial style has as much panache as the larger-than-life characters he works with, and his riotous sense of story serves him well. The Mask of Zorro begins with the fall of Zorro/Don Diego de la Vega (Hopkins, looking remarkably trim and fit and decidedly removed from Hannibal Lecter mode), as the evil Don Rafael Montero (Wilson) discovers his true identity, murders his beloved wife Esperanza (Julietta Rosen), takes the nobleman's infant daughter Elena (Zeta-Jones) as his own, and tosses the avenging swordsman in the dungeon. Twenty years later, de la Vega makes his escape, hooks up with vendetta-happy peasant Alejandro Murietta (Banderas), whose brother was murdered by one of Montero's henchmen, and embarks on the resurrection of Zorro, the people's hero, by patiently teaching the headstrong Murietta everything he knows about fighting, fencing, and, of course, females. Zorro, after all, is nothing if not romantic. As befits its serial pedigree, this new chapter in the Book of Zorro is rife with inspired, edge-of-your-seat plotting, betrayals, treachery, love, lust, masterfully staged swordplay, and many, many shots of the masked avenger rearing up on his trusty mount, silhouetted against the crimson Alta, California sky where the story is set. God knows it's hokum of the purest stripe, but Campbell, Hopkins, Banderas, and especially the alarmingly vivacious Zeta-Jones pull it off in spades. A popcorn movie of the highest order, it's full of garish, silly fun, extreme heat escapism, and nary a Bruce Willis in sight. (7/17/98)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
MULAN
D: Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft; with the voices of Ming-Na Wen, Eddie Murphy, B.D. Wong, Harvey Fierstein, Jerry Tondo, Gedde Watanabe, James Hong, Miguel Ferrer, Pat Morita, George Takei. (G, 90 min.)
Ink flows, graceful as a winding river, etching title credits onto a cinematic expanse of parchment. The credits fade, and out of the mist a great wall looms, perched severely, ominously on the mountain ridge, extending far, far into the horizon. So opens Mulan, as beautifully and austerely as a budding plum blossom framed against a forbidding sky. Disney's latest animated feature hearkens back to its heyday fare, a sweet and captivating tale that pits gentle, enduring goodness against dark, malevolent forces. Based on an ancient Chinese legend about a girl who masquerades as a soldier to replace her frail father in the war against invading Huns, the movie makes the most of its remarkable animation, an engrossing story, and a winning protagonist. Mulan is smart, brave, beautiful, and (it's about time!) not the least bit voluptuous. Her disguise as a boy is more natural to her than the whiteface, rouge, and restrictive costume she must don in her quest for a husband. When she fails to pass muster as a prospective bride, her disappointed father comforts her with the assurance that certain flowers merely bloom later than others. And bloom she does, not a fragile hothouse blossom in a cultivated garden, but a strong and hardy wildflower in a cold and dangerous wasteland. As lovely and evocative as the scenes of Mulan's girlhood are, the film's action sequences where she proves her mettle are a visual feast of truly great proportions. The wave of Mongol warriors cresting the snowy mountainside is a thrilling sight -- terrifying and mesmerizing and beautiful -- all perfectly reflecting the contrasts of darkness and light, of grace and power so intrinsic to Chinese art. Such loveliness makes the addition of the prerequisite anthropomorphic sidekick (in this case, a diminutive, jive-talking dragon named Mushu) a jarring, anachronistic addition to the mix. Mushu (Murphy) is of little help to Mulan, but he does have some funny lines and the kids will no doubt love him. Make no mistake though, this children's film is a work of art, replete with mood and history and images that convey a sense of place and time more deftly than any photo travelogue could. Once you've scaled the Great Wall in Mulan, you feel like you've breathed the chill air, felt the fog on your skin, shrunk a bit in the face of the sheer vastness of the land. You also have spent time with a wonderfully engaging heroine. This is 2,000-year-old Girl Power, and it packs a mighty but winsome wallop. (6/19/98)
4.0 stars (H.C.)
Great Hills, Lakeline, Tinseltown South
THE NEGOTIATOR
D: F. Gary Gray; with Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, David Morse, Ron Rifkin, John Spencer, J.T. Walsh, Regina Taylor. (R, 141 min.)
Another solid, cerebral actioner from Gray (Set It Off) that makes the most of black-male-rage icon Jackson and an equally impressive (if a bit chilly) Spacey alongside the late, great Walsh and 12 Monkeys' Morse. Jackson is Chicago P.D. hostage negotiator Danny Roman, who lands squarely in a world of hurt when he's framed both for the murder of his partner and embezzlement from the C.P.D.'s retirement coffers. Roman and the audience know that it's a setup from the get-go, because his partner clued him in to the embezzlement investigation just preceeding his untimely demise. When internal affairs, headed by Walsh's slimy Inspector Niebaum, takes an undue interest in the negotiator soon after the killing, Roman realizes he's being framed by the very men he's worked side by side with for years. He storms the offices of internal affairs, taking Niebaum, his secretary, Rifkin's Commander Frost, and a street-level thug hostage while a roomful of stunned cops look on. That Roman could traipse through a roomful of pistol-packing police while he's waiting for arraignment is one of several head-scratchers to be found here, but Jackson's performance raises what might otherwise have been just another cops 'n' robbers film to much greater heights. Ensconced in the 20th-floor I.A. offices, Roman begins to interrogate the bullish Niebaum (whom his partner implicated in the embezzling scam) and then calls in his own hostage negotiator to deal with the situation. Chris Sabian (Spacey) is the man, and though he works outside of Roman's territory, the two have a passing awareness of each other. Like Roman, Sabian is supposed to be the best negotiator on his team, and though he enters the fray unaware and essentially uncaring about the stakes Roman is playing for, the pair begin to gel as their negotiation styles collide. Roman, the hotshot daredevil liar, and Sabian, the earnest family man, are tacitly acting from two decidedly different styles, but both of them make their livings with -- and implicitly are defined by -- their abilities in the fine art of bullshitting. So who's kidding who ends up being the real mystery here. Gray keeps things interesting between the tense volleys of negotiation with glimpses and snippets of the corrupt cops' ongoing war of attrition against Roman. You never quite know who are the good cops and who are the bad until the final reel, though glimmers of the truth bleed out around the edges of Gray's film. Like Jackon, Spacey is a commanding screen presence; it's hard to imagine a more perfectly cast foil for motor-mouthed Danny Roman. Spacey's cool, laconic delivery is a mirror image of Jackson's hyper-charged mouth -- paired together it's like watching two sides of the same coin. The Negotiator falls short of greatness by a country mile; it's too chatty for its own good sometimes. But it's still a solid shoot-'em-up. And it's always nice to see Samuel L. Jackson work that mad mouth mojo. (8/7/98)
3 stars (M.S.)
Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Riverside, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
THE OPPOSITE OF SEX
D: Don Roos; with Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Galecki, Ivan Sergei. (R, 103 min.)
A nasty, offensive, and thoroughly enjoyable romp through the dark, embittered land of Bad Girl, U.S.A., Don Roos' directorial debut (he wrote Boys on the Side and Single White Female, as well as the script for The Opposite of Sex) is the anti-indie -- a post-PC broadside that manages to skewer everyone from gays to straights, the living to the dead, and never makes you laugh as hard as when it's being downright creepy. Ricci -- as a sort of post-pubescent Wednesday Addams whirlwind -- is 16-year-old Dedee Truitt, who flees her Louisiana home after the death of her abusive stepfather and promptly arrives on the palatial doorstep of her half-brother Bill (Donovan), an Indiana schoolteacher who has recently lost his longtime companion to AIDS. While Dedee is the antithesis of Christian charity (her ongoing narration warns viewers from the get-go that she "doesn't have a heart of gold" and she "isn't going to grow one" either), Bill is positively saint-like in his quiet, stoic generosity. Alongside his new, none-too-bright lover Matt (Sergei), he welcomes this virtual relative into his beautiful home and then by degrees comes to regret his hospitality. In quick succession, Dedee seduces Matt, gets herself pregnant by him, and lightens Bill of 10 grand on the way out of town to Los Angeles. None of this comes as a surprise to Lucia (Kudrow), Bill's ex-lover's semi-frigid sister, who spots Dedee for the predator she is right off the bat. Torn between his love for Matt and his impotent anger towards his conniving step-sister, Bill mopes, pines, and finally throws up his hands in dismay until -- presto! -- things get worse. Matt's queeny ex-flame Jason (Galecki, tackily pulling out all the stops), an ex-student of Bill's, threatens to frame him for scholastic sodomy (and then does) if he doesn't produce the missing Matt posthaste. Then it's off to the City of Angels for more mayhem, a few car chases, and some improbable sex courtesy of Lyle Lovett's Sheriff Tippett. As promised by the film's tagline ("You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be offended"), The Opposite of Sex has a little something to annoy everyone. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Roos' film is immensely entertaining. It's not just the glib emotional attitudes that are bandied about so frequently, but some great acting chops from Ricci (who somehow manages to make the scurrilous Dedee at least vaguely sympathetic) and Kudrow, whose emotionally denuded Lucia not only gets the film's best lines but also has the most complex character. It's a far cry from her usual featherhead-blonde roles, and she brings it to alarming, bitter life. Still, The Opposite of Sex is above all else a comedy. Black -- no sugar, no cream -- to be sure, and refreshingly free of PC pabulum. Even some third-act deus ex machina scrambling can't homogenize the film's darkly cynical punch. Tough as nails and twice as hilarious, it's a remedy for summer treacle. (7/3/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Dobie
OUT OF SIGHT
D: Steven Soderbergh; with George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, Ving Rhames, Don Cheadle, Dennis Farina, Albert Brooks, Steve Zahn, Catherine Keener, Nancy Allen, Isaiah Washington. (R, 124 min.)
Finally, a film adaptation of an Elmore Leonard novel that really captures that author's seedy, South Floridian love of small-time hoods and big-time losers. Granted, Jackie Brown mined similar territory some months back, but Soderbergh pares Leonard down to his essentials, playing around with the timeline à la Leonard, and just generally having a lighter, wackier time of it all 'round. It's gritty enough to stay true to the source material's comedy-of-despair ethos, yet solid enough to pack a punch, and in doing so it makes for one of the better heist movies in some time. Clooney, looking and acting way above par here, plays career thief Jack Foley, who in a lovingly realized opening scene finds himself in the Glades Correctional Institution after botching an endearingly simplistic bank robbery. Dismayed by the fact that he's not scheduled to see parole for three decades, Foley breaks out of prison and more trouble in the form of Deputy Federal Marshall Karen Sisco (Lopez), who just happened to be in the proverbial wrong place at the wrong time. With the help of partner Buddy Bragg (Rhames), Foley ditches Karen (but not before some serious brake-light rapport is established between the pair) and moves forward with his big plan to rob another ex-con -- inside trader Richard Ripley (Brooks) -- of a reported $5 million in uncut diamonds. Plans go awry (don't they always?) when hair-trigger Snoopy Miller (Cheadle) and stoner car thief Glenn Michaels (Zahn, doing his best Jim Breuer impression) cut themselves in on the action. A host of terrific bit players round out Soderbergh's film: Catherine Keener turns up as Foley's ex-squeeze Adele, Isaiah Washington appears as Snoopy's psychotic brother Kenneth, an uncredited Michael Keaton reprises his Jackie Brown role as FBI agent Ray Nicolette, and an uncredited Samuel L. Jackson plays a fellow con in the film's closing scene. Although Out of Sight's whipsawing storyline feels off-putting at first, as the flashbacks-within-flashbacks begin drawing to a head, Soderbergh's obvious glee at playing with linear conventions shines through. It's also readily apparent that the actors are enjoying themselves immensely; more than anything else, Out of Sight captures Leonard's sense of the indefatigable appeal of the downtrodden grifter. Clooney, with his cockeyed half-grin, sparks some real chemistry alongside the tempestuous Lopez, and Albert Brooks -- with his flagrantly shoddy hairpiece and all -- is a sublime hoot. Soderbergh's film has a Sixties pop art feel to it, from the European-styled one-sheet poster on down to his frequent use of freeze-frames and snazzy edits. Hardly a serious caper film, Out of Sight instead takes a lighter approach, effortlessly offering up as many unexpected chuckles as it does bullets. (6/26/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Alamo Drafthouse
THE PARENT TRAP
D: Nancy Meyers; with Dennis Quaid, Natasha Richardson, Lindsay Lohan, Lisa Ann Walter, Simon Kunz, Elaine Hendrix, Ronnie Stevens. (PG, 128 min.)
In the sunny, innocent years that preceded the scourge of adolescence, my good humor could be bought with an ice cream cone or a round of miniature golf, or, especially, a Saturday matinee. I think of them, fondly, as the Hayley Mills years. When I saw the first The Parent Trap, starring my idol, it never seemed even the tiniest bit odd that two thinking, caring parents would separate their twins at birth, each lovingly raising one without giving the slightest hint (or seeming thought) about the other's existence. At 8, I found the movie hilariously funny and heart-wrenchingly romantic and not at all dastardly or preposterous. So it was with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation that I (now a middle-aged mother and devoid of nearly all innocence) looked forward to this remake. Could it possibly measure up to the original? Lohan (Hallie/Annie) is spunky and cute as a button and her British accent puts Mills' attempt at hip California lingo to shame, but could she possibly replace those wide blue eyes, those Vaselined lips, that silly blonde bob? Unfortunately, my 11-year-old daughter and would-have-been movie companion was (ironically) off at summer camp and unable to attend the screening with me. My dependable, immediate litmus test would not be available. And, truth be told, though missed, she was not needed. The audience was filled with vocal, delighted children. Apparently, the story of two look-alikes who meet at summer camp, develop an immediate mutual animosity only to discover they are twin sisters, then scheme to switch identities in order to play Cupid for their divorced parents, stands the test of time. Though updated to include a successful working mother, a not-for-the-squeamish ear-piercing scene, and some pretty obvious product placement, The Parent Trap manages to work in a fair amount of classic material from the original. (The stick-clacking mountain-lion-prevention trick is every bit as funny today as it was 37 years ago.) Director Meyers and co-writer husband Charles Shyer (Private Benjamin, Father of the Bride) show the 1961 classic (and its baby-boomer audience) its due respect through a number of sly references to the original, and silly, sly, and fun Sixties references pop up throughout the movie, but it is plenty Nineties enough for the 12-and-under crowd. Quaid and Richardson glow as the likable, lovely to look at parents, Hendrix glints as the hard-as-her-long-red-nails gold digger who threatens the girls' family reunification plan, and Walter and Kunz shine as the grounded housekeeper and goofy butler. Lohan, well, she's no Hayley Mills, but The Parent Trap is still a big triple dipper of a cone. Vanilla and sweet, it's an overly generous helping that, if it doesn't make you sick, will put you in a good humor all day long. (7/31/98)
2.5 stars (H.C.)
Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Lincoln, Northcross, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
PI (p)
D: Darren Aronofsky; with Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart, Stephen Pearlman, Samia Shoaib, Ajay Naidu. (R, 85 min.)
Brilliant, surreal, and emotionally draining, this first feature from American Film Institute grad Aronofsky recalls such low-budget sci-fi epics as Tetsuo: The Iron Man and more traditional paranoiac suspense films (Adrian Lyne's Jacob's Ladder in particular, but also Polanski's Rosemary's Baby) and yet manages to be a wholly original animal. Gullette plays Max Cohen, a twentysomething theoretical mathematics genius, who spends his days cloistered away in his New York City Chinatown apartment searching for a connection between the numerical construct p (the division of a circle's circumference by its diameter, i.e. 3.14 ad infinitum) and the stock market. Convinced that there is a deliberate correlation between the patterns inherent in mathematics and the patterns found in all other aspects of life, Max delves deeper and deeper into the mystery, barricading himself inside his tiny apartment amidst a humming warren of computer equipment and intelligence (nicknamed Euclid). A chance meeting with a Hasidic math whiz named Lenny Meyer (Shenkman) puts him in touch with a bizarre Jewish religious underground cult that seeks to reveal the true name of God via mathematical computations, while on the other end of Max's dwindling social circle, shady representatives of a monomaniacal Wall Street consortium persistently hound Max to share his discoveries or face unspoken consequences. All of this is played out against Max's frequent bouts of hallucinatory, crippling migraines, and against the better judgment of his former mentor, the aged Sol (Margolis), who realizes that caution is the better part of wisdom. The mathematics background in Pi (p) is essentially a construct for Aronofsky to explore the limits of creativity and, finally, break down. Pi (p) asks big questions of its audience, but can also be viewed as a simple (if non-simplistic) suspense film, replete with dizzying chases, heated battles, and shady underworld figures. Director of photography Matthew Libatique invests the film with a heady, disorienting black-and-white palette; as in Max's figures, there is precious little gray to be found here, and the cinematography reflects the stark ideas and shaky desperation behind Max's quest. Gullette plays Max as a closeted cipher; he's the physical manifestation of too much time spent breaking reality down into algorithmic patterns. Gangly, pale, and with a high, receding forehead, he'd be creepy enough without all the mystical, revelatory goings-on, but amid the steadily mounting chaos around him, he imparts a kind of feverish, terrifying intensity -- he practically sweats barely contained anxiety. That's a good description of Aronofsky's film as well: the cinematic equivalent of a full-bore panic attack, sweaty palms, rapid heart beat, and all. (7/31/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Dobie
POLISH WEDDING
D: Theresa Connelly; with Lena Olin, Gabriel Byrne, Claire Danes, Adam Trese, Mili Avital, Daniel LaPaine, Rade Serbedzija. (PG-13, 101 min.)
First-time writer-director Theresa Connelly's Polish Wedding is a shotgun affair. This scattershot movie mixes drama and comedy into an uneasy blend that muddles the honesty of each perspective and leaves behind a messy taste. The film wants to showcase the transcendent supremacy of the blood ties that unite a tempestuous Polish family in working-class Detroit. Instead, what it depicts is a slavish commitment to the repetition of old patterns and mistakes. And whenever the film does have the opportunity to get inside the heads of its characters and decipher their thoughts and opportunities for the future, the story line devolves into comic silliness that ruins any chance to interrupt either the old destructive cycles or shed an appreciative light on the resilience of the past. All the marriages in the film's Pzoniak clan are the result of what could be interpreted as a bad Polish joke about family planning. Generation upon generation of knocked-up girls and reluctant boyfriends continue to tie the knot. The situation is no less common for young Hala (Danes), who nevertheless wants to retain her position as the virgin chosen to lead the procession in her church pageant. Like mother, like daughter. Mom Jadzia (Olin), who has four sons in addition to her daughter Hala, calls herself a queen and says that there is nothing more sacred than making life and making love. She is a sultry homemaker yet aloof to her hard-working husband Bolek (Byrne), though she also works as a cleaning woman and is having a rather indiscreet affair with one of her bosses. She is the linchpin of the story, yet as a character she makes very little sense. She talks of how childbirth has ravaged her body yet she has the body of the stunningly gorgeous Lena Olin. Her husband appears to love her and to keep his silence for fear of rocking the boat, yet she treats him like dirt despite hanging on to him with every fiber of her being. Her lover wants to whisk her away to Paris but she sees no reason why anyone would want to leave Detroit. The tension with her daughter comes from her understanding of their similarities, yet she moves hell and high water to make sure that Hala enters into a marriage much like her own. Then there is the matter of her closet full of homemade pickles which she sucks on with all the addiction of a nicotine fiend… that is, when her hands aren't busy "fluting her dumplings." Meant as a tribute to the filmmaker's ethnic heritage, Polish Wedding instead comes across as a confused blur that is often saying one thing but meaning another. Such confusion is a common part of growing up and growing apart. It takes clarity to turn it into art. (7/31/98)
2.0 stars (M.B.)
Arbor
SAFE MEN
D: John Hamburg; with Sam Rockwell, Steve Zahn, Paul Giamatti, Michael Lerner, Harvey Fierstein, Mark Ruffalo, Josh Pais, Christina Kirk. (R, 115 min.)
If Sam (Rockwell) and Eddie (Zahn) are the most misguided and talentless singing duo in all of Providence, Rhode Island (and they are), they are even more talentless and inept in their new line of work -- safe cracking. In this wryly hilarious new comedy by first-timer John Hamburg, a case of mistaken identity turns these two hapless stage performers into hapless criminals, although their deadpan equilibrium sustains them through the net failures they experience in each of these occupations. Sam Rockwell (Box of Moonlight, Lawn Dogs) and Steve Zahn (Out of Sight, That Thing You Do, subUrbia), two of the funniest and hardest-working young actors around, are fabulously cast in this movie that is as much about delivery and pacing as it is about the details of what transpires. If there is any justice in the entertainment world, one day these two actors will both be huge household names and the title of this early movie in which they starred together will be a tie-breaking question on Jeopardy. Though the movie's deadpan heart beats with Rockwell and Zahn, they are supported by a wonderful ensemble of comic actors, including Michael Lerner (Barton Fink, Eight Men Out), Harvey Fierstein (Torch Song Trilogy, Bullets Over Broadway), and Paul Giamatti (Howard Stern's nemesis, Pigface, in Private Parts). To describe too much of the plot, however, is to give away too many of the jokes. Dejected though not broken following a lifeless performance at a Polish social club, Sam and Eddie stop in at a neighborhood tavern where they are mistaken by Veal Chop (Giamatti) for two of his ace safecrackers. They become sucked into a plot that leaves them caught between Providence's two Jewish mobsters, Big Fat Bernie Gayle (Lerner) and Good Stuff Leo (Fierstein). Big Fat Bernie has a son, Little Big Fat, who is about to make his Bar Mitzvah, and Good Stuff Leo has a comely daughter who has a penchant for bad boys. And Eddie has a long-buried family tradition of larceny to grapple with. All of it is embedded in a body of little moments that thrive on such things as phony ass padding, gangster gift baskets, Lucite Stars of David, and one dead-on Say Anything gag. All in all, this summer has been a good season for adult comedies, and Safe Men furthers the R-rated comedy path carved out by There's Something About Mary and Baseketball. Safe Men opens up comedy's combination lock on safecrackers, Jewish gangsters, and abysmally bad singer-songwriters. (8/7/98)
3.5 stars (M.B.)
Arbor
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN
D: Steven Spielberg; with Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Edward Burns, Matt Damon, Barry Pepper, Adam Goldberg, Vin Diesel, Giovanni Ribisi, Jeremy Davies, Ted Danson, Dennis Farina. (R, 168 min.)
Weeks before its release, Saving Private Ryan had already been tagged as "the best film about war ever made." This from critics and veterans alike, and though I fall (thankfully) into the former category, the film is inarguably one of the most realistic depictions of what it must be like to engage in modern warfare. For once, believe the hype. It certainly doesn't hurt matters that Saving Private Ryan is helmed by icon/director Spielberg and many of his longtime collaborators, including director of photography Janusz Kaminski (Schindler's List, Amistad), and is populated by a brilliant ensemble cast headed by that other Hollywood icon, Tom Hanks. In Robert Rodat's script, Capt. John Miller (Hanks) is ordered to lead his squad of eight men through the madness of Omaha Beach and D-Day, then go behind German lines to rescue Pvt. James Ryan, the only surviving brother among four soldiers, and thereby scuttle a potential public-relations snafu on the home front. Miller and his men don't give a rat's ass for this unseen, unknown private they've been ordered to find, but they know -- or at least Miller knows -- that finishing the mission brings them all one step closer to home and hearth. Rounding out Miller's squad are some of the best character actors working today, including Sizemore's square-shooting Sgt. Horvarth, Burns' wisecracking Brooklyn dogface Pvt. Reiben, Diesel as the requisite Italian-American Pvt. Carpazo, Ribisi's medic Wade, newcomer Pepper as the squad's devoutly religious sharpshooter, Goldberg as the Nazi-baiting Jew, and Davies as the conscripted, unsure Cpl. Upham. Rodat and the actors steer clear of the most obvious clichés in squadron demographics, and instead, let their audience come to know them on their own terms. One by one, the men are introduced by mannerism and dialogue, very slowly emerging as fully developed characters who, by the end of the film, you feel as though you've known maybe your whole dreaming life, if not your waking. All these acting chops merge with Spielberg's brilliant recreation of the final countdown to V-E Day. Beginning with the Allied forces landing at Omaha Beach (which goes on for an unprecedented half hour), Spielberg proves again and again just why he's one of the most respected filmmakers alive. Never has there been such unmitigated carnage outside of combat documentaries: Awash in blood and strewn with staggering, limbless men jetting arterial gore, the Omaha sequence is a prolonged, relentless nightmare of death, agony, and stark, naked terror. And yet it's a gorgeous, achingly affecting and artistically rendered sequence as well, a ballet of bodies, an adagio of organs. Spielberg paints everything in desaturated, khaki tones; dirt clods hang suspended, jittering in the frigid air while bullets impact and bodies sag and fall like sad, untethered marionettes. On top of this epic, disturbing realism, of course, is Saving Private Ryan's genuine sense of loss and humanity; it's perhaps the most humanistic war film since J'Accuse or All Quiet on the Western Front. A bitter, bloody masterpiece with adrenalized emotions and hyper-realized images, this is perhaps as close to battle as any sane human being should ever hope to tread. (7/24/98)
4.0 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
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 midmorning 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.)
Discount, Village
SMALL SOLDIERS
D: Joe Dante; with Kirsten Dunst, Gregory Smith, Jay Mohr, Phil Hartman, Kevin Dunn, Ann Magnuson, Denis Leary, Dick Miller, and the voices of Tommy Lee Jones, Frank Langella, Ernest Borgnine, George Kennedy, Michael McKean. (PG-13, 108 min.)
It would be easy to reduce Small Soldiers to the story's lowest common denominators and call it Toy Story meets Gremlins, but this is a Joe Dante film, and nothing's ever that simple when it comes to Dante. One of the genre's leading fantasists, Dante's warped sense of humor -- gleaned, I think, working under the tutelage of Roger Corman way back on Hollywood Boulevard and Piranha way back when -- is coupled with his ongoing fascination with the diminutive (see the aforementioned Piranha, Gremlins, or Innerspace) and his genuinely unique sense of aesthetics. Unfortunately, Small Soldiers never quite rises to the level of Dante's previous work and the result makes the film feel like a transparent, though enthusiastically directed, marketing ploy: Coming soon to a Toys 'R Us near you. Smith plays Alan Abernathy, a young teen with a troubled past who one day signs for a shipment of military action figures -- the Commando Elite -- while taking care of his father's toy store. Although liberal dad (Dunn) is averse to G.I. Joes and the like, Alan feels he can sell the product while his father is out of town and make some quick cash for the financially strapped toy outlet. What he doesn't know is that the toys have been accidentally fitted-out with state-of-the-art military computer chips that give them the ability to think and act for themselves. Along with the Commando Elite arrive the hideous Gorgonites, a Todd McFarlane-esque gaggle of plastic toy mutants who are the Commandos' sworn enemies. When the rival toys begin fighting in earnest (actually the Gorgonites are programmed to "hide and lose," so it's the Commandos who are doing most of the fighting), they wreck the toy store, the neighborhood, and proceed from there. Meanwhile, Alan falls for the lovely girl-next-door, Christy (Dunst), and has to work up the nerve to straighten out not only his life but the future of the flesh-and-blood world as well. With Tommy Lee Jones and Frank Langella providing the voices of the opposing toy leaders (Major Chip Hazard and Archer, respectively) and the relatively stellar casting, you'd think Small Soldiers would be a far more rollicking ride than it really is. Too much of what goes on here seems rushed and poorly planned; the backstory involving the creation of these out-of-control Lilliputians is glossed over in a matter of minutes and even Alan's budding romance is in the end a simplistic script device. As in almost all of Dante's films, regulars Miller and Jackie Joseph (Audrey in the original Little Shop of Horrors) make appearances, but even that feels tacked on. And like Gremlins, I think, the escalating levels of violence in Small Soldiers will distress some parents who may be expecting Toy Story 2. Stan Winston's miniature and CGI effects are wonderful, but they can't conceal an obviously weak script in what is unfortunately a footnote to Dante's better work. (7/10/98)
2.5 stars (M.S.)
Barton Creek, Lake Creek, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
SMOKE SIGNALS
D: Chris Eyre; with Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer, Tantoo Cardinal, Cody Lightning, Simon Baker. (PG-13, 88 min.)
This feature debut from Eyre is also being billed as the first film written, directed, and co-produced by American Indians, but hanging it on the indigenous hook does Smoke Signals a disservice. At once poignant and slyly humorous, Eyre's film touches on the universal themes of loss, betrayal, redemption, and father/son relationships in ways that echo not only inside the reservation but outside as well. Beach plays Victor Joseph, a Couer d'Alene Indian in Idaho whose father Arnold (Farmer) quit reservation life and headed out in his prized yellow pickup truck 10 years back, when Victor was a young boy. Years before his departure, a tremendous fire swept through the house of Victor's friend Thomas Builds-the-Fire when an all-night Fourth of July party left most of the reservation -- including Arnold -- falling down drunk and unaware of the impending tragedy. Arnold saved young Thomas, but the boy's parents died, and since then Thomas has become the reservation outcast of sorts, grinning, bespectacled, socially inept, but with a mystical gift for telling wildly improbable stories to anyone who will listen. Flash forward to the present: News of Arnold's death arrives, and a stoic, handsome Victor decides to drive to his father's final home, in Arizona, to collect his truck and whatever else might await him there. The only problem? Not enough money for the journey. It's here that Thomas steps in, offering Victor his piggy bank in exchange for the chance to travel with him. Arnold did, after all, save the young Thomas, and Victor hesitantly agrees. What follows, then, is less road trip than voyage of discovery, that takes the unlikely partnership from the scrubby, hardscrabble reservation to the final resting place of their only real male authority figure, and beyond. Eyre's film, which has a screenplay by Sherman Alexie and is based on stories from his book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, isn't nearly as wearyingly downbeat as a capsule description might make it sound. Smoke Signals is alight with oddball nuances and wry observations: the reservation's radio station, KREZ, uses a broken-down van at the deserted crossroads to gauge the (nonexistent) traffic conditions, and Victor's mother Arlene (Cardinal) is a master in the fine art of flatbread-making. Subtle, lyrically haunting touches like these evoke a palpable sense of loss and the sub-poverty level of Native American life, but also unite the tribe -- broken by alcohol and abuse though they may be -- in long-held beliefs and rituals. It's Victor who teaches his inanely happy friend to "act like a real Indian," and Thomas who forces Victor to confront the ghosts of his past no matter how terrible they may seem. The cast is uniformly excellent in their roles, and Eyre's persistent use of long, trailing shots reinforces the story's elegiac tone. Simple and elegant, Smoke Signals is a delicious, heady debut that lingers long after the tale is told. (7/17/98)
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Arbor
SNAKE EYES
D: Brian De Palma; with Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise, John Heard, Carla Gugino, Stan Shaw, Michael Rispoli, David Anthony Higgins, Kevin Dunn. (R, 99 min.)
Snake Eyes is a gamble, a chancy proposition. Confined to a single setting -- a sprawling Atlantic City sports arena/casino -- and intricately plotted, it requires a good degree of concentration and a healthy suspension of disbelief to succeed. Question its logic too much, and the whole thing unravels. Snake Eyes comes up a winner, however, largely due to De Palma's bravura direction, which falls on a near-perfectly modulated point on the spectrum of his work: It's halfway between the dispassionate gleam of Mission Impossible and the empty flamboyance of Body Double. From the very beginning, David Koepp's cagey script runs at full throttle, reaching the film's pivotal scene in the first 15 minutes or so, in which a controversial Secretary of Defense is assassinated during a boxing match. De Palma provides the frenetic energy to propel the storyline to this point and the effect is dizzying, both literally and figuratively. His kinetic camera tracks, pans, and swoops with such an ominous purpose that your brain can't possibly make sense of it all, converging in a noisy, eye-filling climax: It's sensory overload that ends in a bang. A seemingly endless number of questions jump from synapse to synapse at high speed during this time: Why does the sexy woman with flaming red hair flee from her seat just minutes before the assassination? What's the scraggly-looking guy yelling at the pugilists during the fight? What's the bespectacled woman with the platinum blond wig saying to the Secretary mere seconds before he's hit by a bullet? From that point of impact, Snake Eyes becomes a reconstructive thriller in which the chaos is explained, clarified, and elaborated upon, much like another De Palma film, Blow Out, in which a movie sound technician pieces together the clues to (yet again) another high-ranking official's death that smells of conspiracy. Where Blow Out is informed by aural clues, however, the clues in Snake Eyes are visual in nature. Surveillance cameras, tracking sensors, and videotape devices play a significant role here in the quest for uncovering the truth. (In many De Palma films, technology's ability to reveal and elucidate is both a blessing and a curse.) As the corrupt, rogue policeman investigating the murder, Cage -- the guy was born to act in a De Palma movie -- acts as the audience's guide along the narrative's convoluted path and, to a less successful extent, as the movie's moral conscience. He's best when shaking down a drug dealer for cash in order to place a bet on the match or bellowing, "I am the King!" with the mock bluster of a man who's too sure of himself; he's not as watchable when confronting the conflict between being a good cop or a bad cop. But even though Cage and the movie begin to sag near the film's middle, Snake Eyes picks up the pace again in a disorienting finale that takes place during the onslaught of a hurricane that, despite its incongruities and confusion, is oddly satisfying. After it has ended, you may want to view it all over again, just to see if you can beat the odds and pick up on what you missed the first time around. (8/7/98)
3.5 stars (S.D.)
Gateway, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY
D: Peter and Bobby Farrelly; with Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz, Matt Dillon, Chris Elliott, Lin Shaye, Lee Evans, Jeffrey Tambor, W. Earl Brown, Markie Post, Keith David, Jonathan Richman, Brett Favre. (R, 119 min.)
When Peter and Bobby Farrelly titled their first film Dumb & Dumber it's as if they issued themselves a comic challenge: Always aim for the next level -- downward. However, this shouldn't be misunderstood as meaning that their new film There's Something About Mary isn't funny, frequently side-splittingly so. These fraternal filmmakers are specialists in lowbrow bodily-functions humor as well as defiant assailants of any subject matter that's marked "Fragile: Politically Correct." Where they branch out in There's Something About Mary is in their creation of sustained comic sequences, an advance over the strung-together assemblage of gags that propel the momentum of both Dumb & Dumber and Kingpin. The film's much described early sequence in which nerdy Ted (Stiller) never makes it to the prom with dream girl Mary (Diaz) because of an excruciatingly catastrophic accident with his pants zipper, is destined to become a classic bit of film comedy. In its antic craziness as more and more characters barge into the scene, Mary is reminiscent of the crazed, hellzapoppin' style of the Marx Brothers. More and more characters pop into the scene, the jokes fly ("Is it the frank or the beans?" Mary's solicitous dad keeps asking), and the audience winces hysterically with laughter. And then, when you think it's all gone just as far as it's able, the sequence layers on a sight gag so audacious that you suddenly understand that you're completely at the film's mercy. Though this sequence is the instant classic, a few others nearly equal its antic mischief and sublime buildup. And, really, they're much better left undescribed. At about two hours in length, however, Mary consists of more jokes than sustained sequences. A surprisingly large number of the laughs work, although, understandably, a good number of them also fall flat. You can bet that whenever the story slows down to advance the plot concerning its paper-thin characters, the film takes a noticeable dip. As the Mary at the center of it all, Diaz certainly exudes that irresistible "something" expressed in the title. In films such as My Best Friend's Wedding and A Life Less Ordinary, Diaz has shown herself to be a good comic sport who is game for just about anything. Here, it's no stretch to understand why, at the end of the movie, some half-dozen suitors have converged in her living room to throw themselves at her feet. Stiller is a deadpan hoot, although Dillon's scuzzball private dick is a bit too extreme for the circumstances. Able support work is provided by numerous players, among them Chris Elliott (who, regrettably has little more to do than be the butt of a skin-ailment joke); Lin Shaye (a Farrelly regular in her assigned role of wizened sexpot), and Lee Evans (the physical comedian who was so good in Funny Bones and Mouse Hunt and here milks his character's crutches for every joke they're worth). Special note must be made of cult musician Jonathan Richman, the minimalist romantic troubadour who is used here with snare-drum sidekick Tommy Larkins as roving minstrels who pop up (à la Cat Ballou) in various scenes to provide running ironic commentaries -- in verse. And speaking of songs, stick around for the closing credits during which the entire cast vamps to "Build me Up, Buttercup." The Farrellys won't be winning any good taste awards in the near future (their next film, reportedly, centers around Siamese twins), but, my oh my, they are modern kingpins of comedy. (7/17/98)
3.0 stars (M.B.)
Great Hills, Highland, Lakehills, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
THE TRUMAN SHOW
D: Peter Weir; with Jim Carrey, Ed Harris, Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Natascha McElhone, Holland Taylor. (PG, 104 min.)
Is The Truman Show really the subversive film that all the advance hype would have us believe or is it merely this season's new way of spelling Gump? Well, it's a little of both, though more of the latter -- a movie which couples a captivating premise with a naïve rube protagonist to create the illusion of having witnessed a penetrating study of American values and culture as seen through the eyes of one of its innocents. In The Truman Show life isn't a box of chocolates, it's a 'round-the-clock "reality" TV program which beams its nonstop signal worldwide. And Truman Burbank (Carrey) is its unwitting subject/hero/leading man. Without his knowledge, Truman has been filmed since the day he was born, and the execution of this high-concept premise is The Truman Show's most audacious trick. Truman's hometown of Seahaven, a pristine and visually adorable, planned, island community, is actually the world's largest soundstage and all the town's citizens are mere players on its stage -- each inhabitant is a Truman Show actor fitted with a discreetly hidden body cam. Despite his fake environment, Truman has somehow evolved into a "real" human being with "real" human emotions and it's that sense of veracity in action that keeps the world hooked on the soap opera of his life. Of course, a man in a control booth is running the show. The godlike producer/director/mastermind/wizard of Seahaven is a character of intriguingly complex motives named Christof (Ed Harris, in one of the best performances of his career). At its best, The Truman Show is a compendium of trenchant and funny observations about modern consumer culture, the homogeneity of a world united by its satellite dishes, and the extent to which autocracy can serve artistic ends. Written by New Zealander Andrew Niccol, The Truman Show shares similar thematic concerns with Niccol's other notable project, Gattaca, the futuristic cautionary tale about the limits of individuation and totalitarianism, which he wrote and directed. The Truman Show is funnier however, and not just because of Jim Carrey's presence. The movie assumes a disconcerting stance that intentionally teeters between comedy and Twilight Zone-like nightmare. It's unusually provocative and challenging for a Hollywood movie and, surprisingly, allows the audience to piece things together without too much external direction. However (and this is something you don't hear me say too frequently), the movie could stand to be a little longer. It has too many loose ends and too many logically unexplained phenomena that can only be rationalized away with generalizations about the all-encompassing control that typifies the Seahaven production. Why is it that after 30 years in Seahaven, Truman is only now noticing Klieg lights that fall from the sky and weather patterns that follow his precise footsteps? Is Seahaven breaking down something like a Mir space shuttle that's been in orbit too long? Also, for all the talk of Carrey's toned-down dramatic performance here, it is, though serviceable, still awfully broad and hammy (as is Linney's, yet as Truman's wife it should be said that she's always aware that she's playing to a hidden camera). His behavior is that of an insanely cheerful overgrown kid -- too exaggerated to be believable as the world's most famous "real" person and too limited to convey the psychological turmoil he experiences as he begins to suspect that the whole world revolves around him. Always amazing to look at, conceptually compelling, and entertaining, The Truman Show still seems to promise a bit more than it delivers. (For an earlier take on this ominous plotline of a person who suspects that the whole world is privy to a film of her life, find a copy of Paul Bartel's 1965 knockout short film, "The Secret Cinema," which was later made into an Amazing Stories episode.) The question you have to ask yourself about The Truman Show is the same one you have to ask of most network television broadcasting: Would you ever want to see it again in reruns? (6/5/98)
3.0 stars (M.B.)
Arbor
WHATEVER
D: Susan Skoog; with Liza Weil, Chad Morgan, Frederic Forrest, Kathryn Rossiter, Marc Riffon, Dan Montano, John G. Connolly. (R, 112 min.)
Troubled suburban teenhood - it's rich narrative subject matter at least as old as the movies. It's hard to add much that's new to the film genre that has bred such timeless classics as Rebel Without a Cause, Over the Edge, and most recently, Welcome to the Dollhouse. Yet writer-director Susan Skoog has found a large measure of success in her first narrative feature outing, Whatever. Set in the early 1980s, Whatever captures a strong sense of realism as it focuses on two female best friends caught between the end of high school and the rest of their lives. With almost frightening clarity, Skoog's film spotlights that precipice of time in which teens become so acutely aware that the actions they take in the present will have consequences that affect the rest of their lives. Also, her film departs from the standard coming-of-age pack in its particular focus on 17-year-old girls and its vivid re-creation of their specific concerns. Anna (Weil) is a high-school senior in an anonymous Jersey town, who desperately wants to grow up and grow out of her situation. She shows promising artistic talent but her passive-aggressive attitude keeps getting her in trouble at school, be it for smoking or incomplete homework assignments. She also has to grapple with the how and when of losing her virginity (of course, with the wrong boy), and she has her hands full at home with a pesky little brother and a single mom who dates a horrid troll out of desperation. Her best friend Brenda (Morgan), on the other hand, would need a slide rule to rediscover her virginity, lost so long ago in a serial daze of uninspiring encounters. The movie is best when it sticks to the observational, as in the startling opening sequence which shows the unsatisfying and unromantic sex act as experienced by Brenda. (In this, the film echoes the jarring opening of Sarah Jacobson' s female-centric Mary Jane' s Not a Virgin Anymore.) Unfortunately, Whatever also wanders along episodically and piles on more dramatic baggage than it can withstand. Brenda, too, comes from a desperate home situation that adds a completely unnecessary subplot to the film. And Anna's attempt to win a scholarship to Copper Union -- New York City's prestigious art college -- is aided by an over-the-top Frederic Forrest as hip-daddio high-school art teacher. Although the central performances of Weil and Morgan are subtle and compelling, most everyone else around them comes across as strained and disruptively unconvincing. The no-nonsense visual style keeps things anchored and despite its dramatic lapses, Whatever comes across as a potent dose of reality. It's as good a look as we've ever seen onscreen of that bleak, reactionary "whatever" passivity that derails so many teens. (8/7/98)
3 stars (M.B.)
Dobie
THE X-FILES
D: Rob Bowman; with David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson, Martin Landau, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Blythe Danner, Mitch Pileggi, William B. Davis, John Neville, Terry O'Quinn, Jeffrey De Munn. (PG-13, 122 min.)
An enigma wrapped in a conundrum sealed in a plain brown vapor-lock baggie that -- wonder of wonders! -- actually makes a fair amount of sense. In the five years since creator Chris Carter brought his conspiracy-laden, UFOlogist's dream-come-true television show to the upstart Fox network, the ongoing saga of FBI agents Fox Mulder (Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Anderson) -- he of the credulous wisecracks and she of the pragmatic, slightly chilly disdain -- has amassed a cult popularity to rival that of The Fugitive (or, perhaps more accurately, The Prisoner). Any way you slice it, though, Carter's paranormal, paranoid brainchild was predestined to make the leap to the big screen someday, and now that that yawning crevasse has been summarily bridged, the show seems poised for a revitalization of sorts. The series' early, basic plot lines -- Mulder and Scully investigate a mysterious circumstance, one or the other is put in jeopardy (usually in the dark), and the other arrives in the nick of time (always with a flashlight) -- have given way to the convoluted "mythology" stories, a twisted skein of conspiracy theorist ejaculate that has almost single-handedly devoured most of the Internet's remaining bandwidth. In pre-release hype, Carter and director Bowman (who has helmed multiple TV episodes) promise that "the truth," that precious commodity so often alluded to but so rarely outed, would, indeed, find its way onto the big screen. That's not really the case, but you can't blame Carter for fudging a bit -- it's as much a part of his nature as Mulder's closet porn fetish. What audiences will get is essentially a glitzy, expanded episode, albeit one with gobs of high style, gorgeous cinematography courtesy of Ward Russell, tremendous use of sound, and a few nifty revelations. For non-fans, the story manages to hold its own, being neither inexplicable nor too obvious. Briefly, it concerns the devastating terrorist bombing of a Dallas federal building, which may or may not be linked to a quartet of unexplained civilian deaths, and a mysterious virus, which may or may not be linked to global government duplicity and associated with an ancient, non-terrestrial race. You can be sure that all of this ties in to the Kennedy assassination and the ever-fluctuating price of Tamagotchis in Sheboygen, though Carter has yet to make that clear. Almost all of the series regulars turn up, notably Davis' Cigarette-Smoking Man, Pileggi's Chief Skinner, and the trio of techoids known as the Lone Gunmen, as well as a new "Deep Throat" in the form of Landau. The X-Files' saving grace has always been Carter's slyly subversive sense of humor, and that's in full effect here, leavening the earth-shaking (literally) proceedings with an occasional dose of wry, Duchovnian smarm. Neither the revelatory orgasm promised nor the stillborn confuse-o-thon feared, The X-Files cinematic debut is solid, workmanlike stuff, and enough to keep the legions of X-philes sated until next September. And since I realize some of you are dying to know, no, Mulder's butt remains, as always, fully clothed. (6/19/98)
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Great Hills
Revivals
BLOOD FEAST (1963) D: Herschell Gordon Lewis; with Connie Mason, Thomas Wood, Mal Arnold, Lyn Bolton, Scott H. Hall, Toni Calvert. Gore-meister Herschell Gordon Lewis is often credited with having created the first splatter movie ever when he made Blood Feast. This low-budget, drive-in quickie has a loose plot about a madman who tries to revivify a long-dead Egyptian princess by ripping tongues and other body parts from still-living victims. Pickled tongue sandwiches are the Alamo's featured menu item. (NR, 75 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Fri-Sun.
TIME BANDITS (1981) D: Terry Gilliam; with Sean Connery, Shelley Duvall, John Cleese, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Michael Palin, Ralph Richardson, Peter Vaughan, David Warner. Six dwarves whiz through space and history in this cheeky cult favorite directed by one of the film world's truly original visionaries, Terry Gilliam. (PG, 116 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Thu, midnight.
GONE WITH THE WIND (1939) D: Victor Fleming; with Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Thomas Mitchell, Hattie McDaniel. As God is my witness ... it's back. This re-release boasts a new Technicolor dye-transfer process that promises ravishing colors but has proved to be highly contentious among the film restoration crowd, who have charged that the new process muddies the colors' gradations and textures. Sound-wise, things have been enhanced digitally, and the film has also been restored to its original 1.33.1 format. Some people can't wait for another opportunity to catch GWTW on the big screen, but miss it now and I bet that you'll only have to wait another year before it's back in the theatres for a 60th anniversary re-release. (NR, 238 min.) @Arbor, Highland; Fri-Thu.
PARAMOUNT SUMMER FILM CLASSICS:
The Apartment (1960) D: Billy Wilder; with Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston. In this multiple Oscar-winner, Jack Lemmon plays a mousy, bachelor company man who loans his apartment to five of his bosses for the conduct of their extracurricular amorous affairs. He receives the key to the executive washroom but falls in love with the delightful young Shirley MacLaine. (NR, 124 min.) @Paramount; Fri.
Badlands (1973) D: Terrence Malick; with Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates. This moody, romantic drama is based on the Starkweather-Fugate serial murders, but through inventive storytelling, stunning photography, and note-perfect performances, Terrence Malick's film has become an enduring American classic.
(PG, 95 min.) @Paramount; Thu.
Days of Heaven (1978) D: Terrence Malick; with Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz. Cinematographer Nestor Almendros deservedly won an Academy Award for this evocatively stunning collaboration by writer-director Terrence Malick and the four principal cast members. It tells the story of a love triangle and the ramifications of finally getting what you want. (PG, 95 min.) @Paramount; Thu.
Lolita (1962) D: Stanley Kubrick; with James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Sue Lyon.
Given all the hoopla surrounding this month's Showtime television debut of Adrian Lyne's 1997 adaptation of the notorious Vladimir Nabokov novel that stars Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain, the timing couldn't be better for this revival of Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation. Marred by its cultural restraint though intriguing for just the same reason, the lead performances are, nevertheless, stunning gems. (NR, 152 min.) @Paramount; Tue-Wed.
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. 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. Down these Mean Streets walked the future of American film. (R, 110 min.) @Paramount; Sat-Sun.
Paths of Glory (1957) D: Stanley Kubrick; with Kirk Douglas, Raplh Meeker, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready. Kirk Douglas fights the military system in this grim depiction of French army politics during World War I. Kubrick's film has often been cited during the recent weeks' discussion of Saving Private Ryan as an example of another great movie that depicts the harsh realities of war. (NR, 86 min.) @Paramount; Tue-Wed.
Raging Bull (1980) D: Martin Scorsese; with Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent, Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, John Turturro. Scorsese's black-and-white biopic of boxer Jake La Motta's life is regarded as one of the top films of the Eighties. De Niro won an Oscar for his work here and the film also thrust Pesci and Moriarty into the limelight. (R, 128 min.) @Paramount; Sat-Sun.
Some Like It Hot (1959) D: Billy Wilder; with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe, Joe E. Brown, Goerge Raft. "Nobody's perfect," declares the rubber-faced Joe E. Brown to his fiancée Jack Lemmon at the end of this just-about-perfect comedy about mistaken identities. Director Billy Wilder and writing partner I.A.L. Diamond are at the top of their form here, as is Marilyn Monroe. (NR, 119 min.) @Paramount; Fri.
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 22 years straight. Well, more or less straight. So if you've been searching for the way home to Transylvania or are merely curious about perusing a weekend excursion, this show is your winning ticket. In the meantime, you can check out the Austin group's Web site:
http://www.kdi.com/~riffraff/queerios. (R, 95 min.) @ Wells Branch Discount Cinema; midnight, Fri-Sat.
Film Series and Other Screenings
AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY "Summer Free-for-All":
It's Always Fair Weather (1955) D: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen; with Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Dolores Gray, Michael Kidd. This great CinemaScope musical features several classic numbers (the ash can dance and Cyd Charisse's dance, in particular) and plays like an On the Town, Part 2 in that it centers on three World War II buddies who meet 10 years after the war and discover they have little in common. (NR, 102 min.) @Texas Union; Tue, 7pm.
ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE "Poetry Slam Double Feature":
Slam (1987) D: Marc Levin; with Saul Williams, Sonja Sohn, and Bonz Malone. When small-time pusher Ray Joshua (Williams) gets thrown in the slammer, he discovers not grunting thugs but tough, budding poets. Director Levin depicts these inmates as possessing a native sense of poetry - its rhythm, its emotional impact, its use as a tool for self-reflection and self-expression - and in doing so, makes a wholly original (and refreshingly optimistic) spin on the American criminal system. After the film won raves at Sundance and Cannes, it was picked up by Trimark Pictures for distribution later this year.
(R, 100 min.)
SlamNation (1998) D: Paul Devlin. Devlin navigates through the 1996 National Poetry Slam in Portland, Oregon, a ferocious battle of rhythm, rebellion, and rhymes. Tracking primarily the New York team, the film is perhaps a harbinger of things to come at this week's Austin competition. (NR, 90 min.) @ Alamo Drafthouse; Tue, 8pm
IMAX THEATRE (San Antonio):
Everest (1998) D: Greg MacGillivray, David Breashears, Stephen Judson; narrated by Liam Neeson. This new Imax film showcases the splendors of Mt. Everest and was filmed 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, and conventional 35mm theatrical screenings each evening. For more info and reservations, call 800/354-4629.@Imax Theatre in San Antonio; Fri-Thu.
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