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Film reviews are updated on Fridays. This section compiled by Marjorie Baumgarten (M.B.); with reviews by Hollis Chacona (H.C.), Steve Davis (S.D.), Robert Faires (R.F.), Marc Savlov (M.S.), Russell Smith (R.S.).
| Ratings: 5 stars As perfect as a movie can be 4 stars Slightly flawed, but excellent nonetheless 3 stars Has its good points, and its bad points 2 stars Mediocre, but with one or two bright spots 1 stars Poor, without any saving graces 0 stars La Bomba |
D: John Madden; with Gwyneth Paltrow, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Simon Callow, Antony Sher. (R, 113 min.)
"The play's the thing," proves Shakespeare in Love as it presents the imaginary events that led to the creation of the playwright's timeless romantic drama, Romeo and Juliet. The setting is 1593, back before Shakespeare went down in history as the esteemed Bard of Avon. As we are introduced to him here, Shakespeare is just another scribbling London hack, who is suffering a bad case of writer's block on his new play, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter. The movie's grand conceit is this mixture of fact and fantasy, using some of the known biographical material of the playwright and his age to imagine how he came to write one of Western literature's most enduring romantic epics. The result is a frothy romantic comedy that is equally nourished with truisms of historic lore and modern sensibility. In much the same way that Baz Luhrmann made Shakespeare accessible to a whole new generation a couple of years ago with his pop operatic William and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare in Love takes the text and the trappings of the Elizabethan drama and embroiders them into a thoroughly modern romantic comedy, along the lines of When Bill Met Viola … or Annie Hall. The script by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard is similar in structure to Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, in which the author takes a couple of Hamlet's sideline characters and reworks the whole drama from their perspective. In Shakespeare in Love, the authors use a blend of historic information, imagined events, and stray bits of literary luminescence to depict a love affair that might have occurred in the life of William Shakespeare. It's flighty, improbable stuff, meant not to be a historical restorative but a modern tribute to the scribe whose words have launched a million sonnets. Certainly, the more the viewer knows about the life and writings of Shakespeare, the richer the viewing experience will be, for the film is saturated with amusing detail and poetically licensed snatches of dialogue. Yet such knowledge isn't necessary to the enjoyment of the story; it's a 1593 love story that works on its own terms. To some degree, it's a classic backstage romance (with shades of a classic Shakespearean mistaken identity), as Viola (Paltrow) secretly dons male attire in order to appear on the no-females-allowed Elizabethan stage and falls in love with the besieged playwright Bill Shakespeare (Fiennes). We learn much about the state of the dramatic arts during this period as real characters such as Christopher Marlowe and theatre owners Philip Henslowe and Richard Burbage mix with the usurious money lenders, vain actors, morality police, and tavern whores. As the lovers, Fiennes and Paltrow (whose beautiful swan neck provides the perfect adornment for those elaborate Elizabethan collars) are an enchanting pair. The film's other performances are all terrific too. Geoffrey Rush and Ben Affleck get to demonstrate their deft comedic chops and Judi Dench rules the roost as the imperious Virgin Queen. (The last time Dench paired with director John Madden, it was for her highly acclaimed turn as Queen Victoria in his Mrs. Brown.) The set design and costuming are all also thoughtfully re-imagined. The end result is a delightful, though a smidge too long, reminder of one of the reasons we so enjoy going to the movies: perchance to dream. (12/25/98)
Arbor, Dobie
D: Robert Rodriguez; with Elijah Wood, Jordana Brewster, Clea DuVall, Laura Harris, Josh Hartnett, Shawn Hatosy, Piper Laurie, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Jon Stewart, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Usher Raymond. (R, 110 min.)
One of these days, somebody's going to build a full-fledged drive-in theatre here in town for the express purpose of showing Robert Rodriguez's films. Think of it: lawn chairs in the back of your 4x4, a six-pack of Shiner Bock, and Rodriguez's movies non-stop from dusk 'til dawn. Until that happens, though, we're just going to have to make do with catching the local auteur's work at the multiplex. Co-written by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson and George Huang, The Faculty is pure Rodriguez, jam-packed with action, suspense, humor, horror, and plenty of cinematic homages. While it may suffer a bit from excess character clutter (nearly 10 major characters throughout), it's nonetheless a slam-bang, sci-fi actioner, relentlessly paced and edited, with a pounding soundtrack and some ingenious aliens courtesy of Berni Wrightson and KNB Effects. Wood plays Casey, the introverted class misfit at Ohio's Herrington High School. When he chances upon a bizarre, slug-like life form while shooting pictures on the football field one day, Casey unwittingly uncovers a plot by aliens to infect the school's faculty and, eventually, the whole planet. This sly spin on the high school caste system (think The Breakfast Club by way of Invasion of the Body Snatchers) is pure Williamson; the script is rife with knowing dialogue and genre in-jokes, and it's a hoot to play "spot the allusion." John Carpenter's The Thing is hilariously echoed in a scene in which Casey and his classmates Zeke (Hartnett), Stokely (DuVall), Mary Beth (Harris) and others must prove their humanity by snorting vials of diuretic No-Doz, while lesser genre highlights such as Night of the Kreeps are given their due as well. Rodriguez's film takes off like a rocket and never lets up from the get-go. The deadly faculty itself -- football coach Willis (Patrick), Principal Drake (Neuwirth), English teacher Miss Burke (Janssen), and Piper Laurie's Miss Olsen -- are a wonderfully creepy crew, morphing into slimy, Lovecraftian horrors and sprouting multi-tendrilled shadows at every turn. If anything, Rodriguez packs too much of a good thing into an already crowded film. Just as one hair-raising horror dies down, two more take its place. It's a rush, yes, but sometimes I caught myself wishing for a breather of sorts. Still, no one around these days edits with such sublime accuracy as Rodriguez. A master of the smash-cut, The Faculty is overflowing with the director's "I'll try anything once" spirit, and that's what makes the film such witty, freaky fun. Besides, any film that can make the high school experience even worse than I remember it is aces in my book. (12/25/98)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Maya Angelou; with Alfre Woodard, Mary Alice, Mpho Koaho, Al Freeman Jr., Esther Rolle, Wesley Snipes. (PG-13, 111 min.)
More than once the great poet and activist Maya Angelou has lambasted Hollywood's ghettocentric vision of black culture. And it's fair to assume her desire to free her people from the cramped confines of Def Jam's Dead Presidents Got the Hookup II the House Party Friday in Da Hood played a large part in her decision to direct her first movie at age 70. Yet while no coochies are popped and nary a cap is busted in anyone's ass during Down in the Delta, it's still every bit as tired and formulaic as any recent Jamie Foxx vehicle. Granted, viewers who don't mind trading originality for a few positive black images will find plenty in this story of a poor, dysfunctional Chicago family rediscovering its down-home roots. Its characters are solidly based in reality -- or at least familiar archetypes. Elderly matriarch Rosa Lynn (Alice) is the stern, Bible-thumping rock of the family. Daughter Loretta (Woodard) is basically decent, but too much of a drunken wastrel to care for herself, much less her autistic daughter Tracy. Then there's Loretta's bright young son Thomas (Koaho), a Save the Children poster boy who's wavering between his artistic muse (photography) and local gangstas who are recruiting him on as a junior associate. Sensing imminent disaster, Rosa Lynn packs all three off to the old family farm in Mississippi, where she hopes a summer's exposure to the plow-mule work ethic of Uncle Earl (Freeman) and some dramatic revelations about their family past will cure their destructive city-bred pathologies. As you've surely gathered, this is a film about affirming the verities: Knowing one's history; taking care of family; keepin' on keepin' on in the face of hardship. All swaddled in a warm, cozy package of nostalgic rural imagery and relentlessly upbeat soundtrack music. I suspect you already know if you like this kind of thing (heads up, fans of Soul Food and How to Make an American Quilt). You know whether the emotion-rich performances such films tend to feature -- Woodard and Koaho, in particular, are exceptional here -- make up for the one-dimensionality of their characters. My own feelings for the genre are admittedly lukewarm, but in this case I'm basing my final verdict on a belief that even movies with a no-bones mission to inspire and evangelize should at least acknowledge how damnably hard it is for people to change their lives. To kick hard drugs, to believe in oneself after countless screwups, to see a point in hope when you're riding an 0-for-a-lifetime losing streak -- these things take time, determination, and a lot of luck. Down in the Delta, like a gratingly platitudinous self-help tape, sugarcoats the complex one-step-back, two-steps-forward nature of personal and social progress. And like the drugs and booze it condemns, it provides a warm rush of euphoria, but no real answers. (12/25/98)
Great Hills, Lincoln, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Ron Underwood; with Bill Paxton, Charlize Theron, David Paymer, Regina King, Peter Firth, Nareen Andrews, Rade Serbedzija. (PG, 114 min.)
Like Gus Van Sant's recent remake of Psycho, this Disney retread of the classic 1949 fantasy film raises the question: Why? Obviously, recent advances in the field of special effects make for a more realistic depiction of the titular giant ape, but the film loses something in the updating. Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen's lovingly rendered stop-motion Joe Young has been replaced by Rick Baker's too-realistic animatronics and the computer wizardry of Industrial Light & Magic, leaving the original's sense of wonder in the dirt. It looks like a million bucks, sure, but this Joe Young, expressive though he may be, is a far cry from the original's campy fun. Paxton plays Gregg O'Hara, a California zoologist scouring darkest Africa hoping to cash in on reports of a mythical giant ape. What he finds is Theron's Jill Young, a vivacious, fiercely protective naturalist who's busy fighting off the poachers who'd rather have Mighty Joe Young sold off in pieces to the highest bidder. Fifteen-feet-tall and possessed of childlike facial expressions (everyone in the film seems to rely on an ongoing childlike naïveté from time to time), giant Joe Young is a genetic anomaly, a silverback gorilla with above-average intelligence. Both Joe and Jill are orphans -- their mother was killed by the unctuous Strasser 12 years earlier. When Strasser returns to capture the now-fully-grown Joe, Gregg convinces Jill that the only safe haven for her oversized friend is back in California in a wildlife preserve especially manufactured to contain the hulking ape. Once there, both Joe and Jill begin to brood amidst the stifling constraints of the modern world. It's not long before Joe Young earns the Mighty in his name and breaks free, running amok in downtown San Diego and causing all manner of havoc while Gregg, Jill, and Strasser race against the clock. Director Underwood has a sure hand with the action sequences here, but not much else. Shots of a CGI Joe loping through the veldt are breathtaking, but they still look computer-generated. Academy Award winner Rick Baker's animatronics are another matter. The cable-controlled Joe is as expressive as a real gorilla, but all the special effects in the world can't save Mighty Joe Young from screenwriter Ruth Rose's leaden dialogue and an ending so hamhanded that it appears to have been lifted part and parcel from It's a Wonderful Life. Paxton, as always, is thoroughly engaging, and Theron is coming into her own as an actress, but the bottom line here is that the film lacks the original's goofy good humor. Less effects and more humanity are in order before this remake can even get within spitting distance of the original. (12/25/98)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Tom Shadyac; with Robin Williams, Monica Potter, Daniel London, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Peter Coyote, Michael Jeter, Bob Gunton, Harold Gould, Irma P. Hall, Harve Presnell, Richard Kiley. (PG-13, 115 min.)
Let's confess my biases up front: God help the doctor who comes near me wearing a bulbous red clown nose, and God help the movie doctor who wants me to believe that a few good belly laughs are nature's best medicine. Now, I know that laughter is undeniably good for the soul and good for the constitution, and that doctors are generally too dependent on their scalpels and potions and protocols. In my lifetime, I have experienced doctors who have been sweethearts and doctors who have been jerks, but the only thing that has mattered in the long run was their skill. Patch Adams, which is based on the true experiences of Dr. Hunter Adams as recounted in his book Gesundheit: Good Health Is a Laughing Matter, is predicated on the notion that treating a patient involves so much more than merely treating the individual's symptoms. As the title character, Robin Williams picks up the doctoring game pretty much where he left off in Awakenings. Still playing a character based on a real person/doctor, Patch Adams shares many of the same iconoclastic attributes of Awakening's Dr. Oliver Sacks. This movie begins in 1969 as Adams commits himself to a mental hospital, where he discovers that his true calling is to help people as a medical doctor. At the age of 39, he enrolls in medical school where he easily aces his courses but riles under the system's harsh paternalism and unwavering educational traditions. Instantly, he defies the power structure, and is punished for his "excessive happiness." These are the kinds of black-and-white polarizations that Patch Adams sets up and maintains throughout. The members of the medical hierarchy are all close-minded slaves to the past; Patch and his friends are the saviors of the medical profession, the true healers of the sick. Patch is willing to dress in a clown costume, gorilla suit, and angel wings, or dunk a dying woman in a pool full of noodles (don't ask) in order to bring happiness to the ill. (I'd like to see him billing the HMOs for such treatments.) And Patch is unwilling to wait until his third year of medical school in order to have contact with real patients, so he sneaks into rounds and onto the wards. Though Patch's methods are disputable, there is little intrinsically wrong with his thinking. Where the movie really errs is in its failure to place the story in any kind of historical context. Patch Adams' thinking is an outgrowth of the turbulence of the late Sixties and early Seventies; his renegade approach to medicine had parallels in all other areas of life, be they cultural, political, educational, or professional. The mood in the land was to "question authority" and find new structures. But as directed by Tom Shadyac and written by Steve Oedkerk, the team who collaborated on Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and The Nutty Professor, this new movie is a variation on Patch Adams: Clown Physician. Robin Williams lends his increasingly annoying manic dramatic persona to the fore, creating another character out of sheer force of enthusiasm instead of motivation. Monica Potter reprises much the same thankless girlfriend role she played in Without Limits. Audiences may find this pap brimming with heart and sympathy for the little guy, but as prescriptions go, Patch Adams is pure placebo. (12/25/98)
Gateway, Highland, Lakehills, Lakeline, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Susanna Styron; with Harvey Keitel, Andie MacDowell, John Franklin Sawyer, Scott Terra, voice of Martin Sheen. (PG-13, 90 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Based on a 1978 short story by William Styron and adapted for the screen and directed by his daughter, Shadrach is a coming-of-age tale about a 10-year-old boy in 1935 Virginia. Life, death, slavery, and financial circumstances are examined in the context of the story about the 99-year-old slave named Shadrach who has returned to his old plantation home (now farmed by a cast-against-type Harvey Keitel and Andie MacDowell) to be buried. (12/25/98)
Village
D: Chris Columbus; with Susan Sarandon, Julia Roberts, Ed Harris, Jena Malone, Lynn Whitfield, Liam Aiken. (PG-13, 124 min.)
Motherhood is a perpetually dangerous place, filled with dread and fear and necessary losses. By their very nature, our children must depend on us, reject us, abandon us. But we cannot, ever, abandon them. And if, for some reason, we must leave them, it is our profound responsibility and unerring instinct to ensure their continued well-being. It's a rich vein, and director Columbus is given all the right machinery with which to mine it. Unfortunately, his shiny product is more silverplate than sterling. Stepmom is the tale of two adversarial mothers, one a birth mother who is as passionate about, and committed to, her maternal toils as any driven career woman, and the other a stepmother-to-be, a successful young photographer who is thrust prematurely into full-blown, reluctant motherhood. The film's characters, a wealthy lawyer (Harris), his gorgeous young girlfriend Isabelle (Roberts), and his stunningly competent ex-wife Jackie (Sarandon) are straight from a layout of Town and Country, all glossy and composed. They live a lush life -- in a Manhattan loft, a Hudson Valley country home -- their lives rich with gorgeous props, perfect lighting, and extravagant detail. But all that cosmetic shine dulls the intense, heartrending humanness of the story. Jackie, for all her russet earth-motherness and exaggerated civility can't help but detest her glamorous successor, and Isabelle's earnest efforts just make her more irritating. The children resent the interloper, especially 12-year-old Anna who turns her considerable adolescent venom and contempt on her vulnerable stepmother at every opportunity. Jackie quietly, deliciously feeds the fire until she is given a diagnosis that forces her to view Isabelle as her children's savior rather than her own competitor. Save for the stars' extraordinary big-screen charisma and an astonishingly effective performance from young Malone as Anna, these characters are too remote, too pretty, and too unrealistic to move us in any lasting way. Short term, however, Stepmom delivers. Saying goodbye, facing the ultimate maternal fear, is trenchant, if familiar, stuff and Stepmom fairly drips with it. While fully recognizing the film's heavy-handed manipulation, it's actually fun to surrender to the gut-wrenching sensations, to fly through the cycle of the seasons and emotions that are so artistically painted on the screen (closing, of course, with the obligatory, heartwarming Christmas scene). Watching Stepmom is like walking past a grand house at night, its curtains open and lights ablaze. We pause, curiously involved in the tableau unfolding within. We can gawk at the decor, marvel at the dresses, get momentarily caught up in the visible actions of the people inside. But because we are so utterly removed from that milieu, our interest flags, our walk resumes, and the moment slips away. (12/25/98)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Tony Kaye; with Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Fairuza Balk, Stacy Keach, Jennifer Lien, Elliott Gould, William Russ, Avery Brooks, Beverly D'Angelo. (R, 118 min.)
Why Tony Kaye was so eager to have his name taken off this film (and replaced with "Humpty Dumpty") is a question only Kaye can answer, and not very well if the recent spate of elliptical interviews with the eccentric British advertisement auteur can be relied upon. Certainly, American History X isn't the travesty Kaye has taken to labeling it. Neither is it the revolutionary redemptive tale filled with Oscar-caliber performances certain members of the media have tagged it as. Instead, it's a violent, sober cautionary tale, strictly middle-of-the-road when it comes to its much-ballyhooed politics and grimly obvious in its telling. And as for the dead-on portrayal of neo-Nazi skinheads, well, it's no Romper Stomper. Norton plays Derek Vinyard, a former skinhead in Venice Beach who, as the film opens, is released from prison after serving a three-year stretch for killing two gangbangers who tried to steal his car. On that same day, Derek's younger brother Danny (Furlong), a budding neo-Nazi himself, has turned in a Hitler-praising school report to his much-aggrieved teacher (Gould). When Danny's principal (Brooks) gets wind of the affront, he gives the boy another assignment: "Write about your brother," he says, and tell us what you think of him, and what you think of his circumstances. This leads to an ongoing series of black-and-white flashbacks that recount how the older Vinyard came into his own as a Nazi skinhead, and how he, along with local hate-monger Cameron (Keach), founded one of the largest white supremacist gangs in Southern California. The hitch is that Derek's incarceration has changed him utterly. He's no longer interested in the swastika or hanging out and beating up minorities; his time in the joint and the shaky friendships and enemies he made there have left him with a newfound distaste for his old ways. All he wants now is to get out and get his family -- and especially Danny -- away from the corrupting influence of the local skins. Kaye's device of alternating the present-day color footage with the black-and-white flashbacks awkwardly breaks up the forward motion of the narrative. And while the film's ending isn't exactly telegraphed, you know something terrible's going to happen: It's that kind of film. Still, Norton acts up a storm here, infusing his bile-filled speechifying with a zealot's harsh glare, and later, seeming to hunker down within himself as he waits for the unavoidable backlash. Furlong is in full sullen-teen mode, as befits his character, and only Balk, as Derek's histrionically eager skinhead moll, is used to ill advantage. Kaye, for what it's worth, can frame a shot with the best of them, but American History X fails to incite much more than respect for the art of its cinematography and the occasional gasp (the film contains one of the most shocking incidents of character-driven violence in recent memory -- I lurched in my seat and suddenly had need to redefine my personal definition of "jaded"). It's rough stuff, but not revelatory, bitter yet unenlightening. (11/13/98)
Arbor
D: George Miller; with Magda Szubanski, James Cromwell, Mary Stein, Mickey Rooney, and the voices of E.G. Daily, Danny Mann, Glenne Headly, Steven Wright, Adam Goldberg, Roscoe Lee Browne. (G, 95 min.)
It befits the director of Mad Max and The Road Warrior that this sequel to his Academy Award-nominated Babe is a far more boisterous affair than its predecessor. Whereas audiences' initial introduction to the helium-voiced sheep-pig centered around the benign characters of Hoggett's farm, Miller broadens the scope considerably by transplanting the action to the metaphorical City (with its skyline sporting not only the Statue of Liberty, but also the Eiffel Tower, the Hollywood sign, and the Sidney Opera House), making for an altogether more rollicking affair. You know this isn't the same old Babe when the film's first reel has plump Mrs. Hoggett being strip-searched by the Drug Enforcement Agency. If the first film was a gentle parable for children and adults alike, then Babe: Pig in the City -- its brash city cousin -- is a surrealistic, occasionally grim tale of valor in the face of terrifically bad odds. With occasional flashes of Orwell's Animal Farm and some set design that looks strangely cribbed from The City of Lost Children, it is easy to see why the filmmakers had difficulty securing that all-important G rating. Miller opens his film moments after the close of the first, with the sheep-pig Babe (E.G. Daily) basking in his newfound glory, with farmer Hoggett (Cromwell) at his side. The adulation and notoriety soon take second place to more pressing concerns when the farmer is accidentally injured, leaving his wife Esme (Szubanski) to manage the farm. After that, it's not long before a pair of cadaverous bank men come calling to inform the Hoggetts they are about to lose their land. In a desperate effort to secure some cash flow, Mrs. Hoggett and Babe set out to make a guest appearance at a faraway fairgrounds, though a series of missed connections leave them stranded in The City. There they check into an animal-friendly hotel and, while Mrs. Hoggett is thrown in jail (after skirmishing with security guards who appear to be extras from Mad Max), Babe allies himself with a group of city-bred animals including a Fagin-esque orangutan and his hipster chimpanzee cronies (headed by a cool Steven Wright). Much chaos ensues -- far too much to go into here -- but suffice to say that yes, it all works out in the end. No surprise that; the real question is whether kids are going to like this loud, tumultuous menagerie of a film. Despite the odd scene of injured animals and breakneck suspense, this is still a children's film, though it's much more Willy Wonka than Mickey Mouse. Miller's non-stop pacing and sense of the absurd is operating on all cylinders, and though younger kids might shy away from some of the adult gags (of which there are many), that hard-won G rating is in place, barely. You couldn't have gotten a more pleasantly bizarre film if Salvador Dali himself had directed, which says a lot for Miller's rabid talents. Fans of the original (myself included) may be temporarily put off by this sequel's kinetic clutter, but at its heart it's still the same pinkly porcine tale of pig power and PETA-friendly anima. (11/27/98)
Arbor
D: Jonathan Demme; with Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton, Kimberley Elise, Beah Richards, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Albert Hall, Irma P. Hall. (R, 172 min.)
The funny thing about the present is how quickly and doggedly it becomes the past. The past is always nipping at our heels, chasing us into the future, and shadowing our present. And the present is little more than the total accumulation of the past merged with the unwritten potential of the future. The damned thing about the past, however, is how it can catch up to you in the present and bite you on the ass. For Sethe (Winfrey), the former slave in this film version of Toni Morrison's prize-winning novel Beloved, the past is "the tree on her back." It's a richly metaphoric image for the weight of her history and its tangled branches into her future; it's also the literal shape of the permanent scars lashed into her back by the wretched hand of slavery. Set mostly in 1873 in rural Ohio outside Cincinnati, Beloved is a story about how the cruelties of the past continue to impinge on the present, about how the ugly consequences of slavery do not vanish by presidential proclamation. It's storytelling at its most irresistible, a sinewy saga that seamlessly snakes the boundary lines separating ghost tale from family epic and historical drama from psychological subjectivism. At nearly three hours running time, the movie covers a lot of turf though it infrequently ventures past the front gate of Sethe's home at 124 Bluestone Road. Flashbacks are essential to the way Beloved tells its story, explanatory snatches of the past are expertly insinuated into the narrative through deft editing maneuvers and subtly altered film stocks. Supernaturalistic flourishes reside side by side with naturalistic detail. Her house, says Sethe, "ain't evil, just sad." Bit by bit, we learn proud, self-reliant Sethe's history: the details of the plantation-life horrors that drove her to commit a desperate act of violence, and the joyous embrace of the future that her mother-in-law's sermons in the backwoods inspire. To tell too much here would pre-empt the pleasure of uncovering the story's mysteries on their own terms. Though rest assured that the mysteries are not all horrific explications of the twisted legacy of slavery but also include buoyant demonstrations of the transcendent powers of love. The performances of all the central and secondary characters match the passionate intensity of the film's behind-the-scenes collaborators: notably, director Jonathan Demme, DP Tak Fujimoto, production designer Kristi Zea, editors Carol Littleton and Andy Keir, composer Rachel Portman, vocalist Oumou Sangare, and writers Akousa Busia, Richard LaGravenese, and Adam Brooks. Winfrey enriches her well-documented lifetime of accomplishments with this strong, stripped-of-Oprahness performance that astutely dodges the traps of sentimentalism to create a character more hauntingly evocative. Glover, as far as I'm concerned, can do a dozen more Lethal Weapon movies if it means he'll pause every so often and do work as moving, intelligent, and ingratiating as what he does here. Elise's assured, emotionally varied performance as Sethe's daughter Dakota (she's the only character who undergoes any significant transformation in the story) promises that she is a newcomer from whom we'll be seeing much, much more over the coming years. And as the story's ghost girl Beloved, Newton seethes with a feral intensity that's an unsettling combination of frightening Exorcist child demon and endearing wild-child mannerisms and naïveté. It's true that Beloved comes packaged with "Oscar" written all over it, and with such obvious pre-sells it's always wise to be cautious. Yet it's no understatement to call Beloved one of the best movies of the year. (10/16/98)
Village
D: John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton; with the voices of Dave Foley, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kevin Spacey, David Hyde Pierce, Denis Leary, Phyllis Diller, Madeline Kahn, John Ratzenberger, Bonnie Hunt, Edie McClurg, Alex Rocco, Roddy McDowall. (G, 94 min.)
In 1998's mano-a-mandible clash of digital an(t)imation features, this breakneck-paced, understatedly clever, Disney/Pixar release wins in a split decision over DreamWorks' previously released Antz. Split because, whereas most grownups would agree that Antz boasts a more sophisticated quality of wit, A Bug's Life strikes a better overall balance of adult- and kid-friendly entertainment. As with Antz, the animation is stellar, though not necessarily in terms of startling innovation. (After all, this is an era when you can't make it through an Ace Hardware commercial without being subjected to CGI Weedeaters quivering spasmodically amid tangerine nebulae with the Chemical Brothers doinking maniacally in the background.) No, where Pixar really excels is in creating a seamless, through-the-looking-glass experience in which the 3D feel of computer animation -- its chief aesthetic distinction -- sucks you deeply into a surreal alternate reality. The characters, however, are classic Disney in style and attitude, creating an intriguing effect of old wine in a new bottle that should be accessible even to those who've been slow to warm to computer animation. Like its predecessor, A Bug's Life wastes little of its creative juice in the story department. Its plot is based upon the oft-recycled theme of a sweet-natured dreamer (a young ant named Flik, voiced by Kids in the Hall ex Dave Foley) whose innovative thinking makes him first an outcast, then a hero. When one of Flik's screw-ups gets his ant brethren in trouble with a gang of grasshopper hooligans led by the sinister Hopper (Kevin Spacey), he goes looking for insect mercenaries to fight them. Instead, he goofs again and accidentally hires a motley crew of circus bugs consisting of a preening master-thespian mantis, a glamorous gypsy moth, a cranky ladybug (Denis Leary), a dimwitted beetle, and sundry other dimwitted, craven insectoid troupers. The outcome, of course, is preordained from the earliest scenes, but the story's a ton of fun anyway. From the pure entertainment standpoint, ABL's nonstop action helps it avoid the slack moments that marred Antz. The dialogue, kiddie-accessible though it is, is plenty intelligent for adult enjoyment. And cinephiles can even amuse themselves spotting allusions to movies as diverse as Blade Runner, Microcosmos and The Wild Angels. Further proof of A Bug's Life's sneaky-smart charm is the end credit sequence, a series of fake "outtakes" that wittily remind us we're dealing with a medium in which not only live action but cameras themselves are unnecessary. At the screening I attended, one or two of the tiniest tots were reduced to tears by a noisy closing battle scene, but in general, A Bug's Life is as ideal a piece of family entertainment as you're likely to find. Eight pincers up -- way up. (11/27/98)
Gateway, Highland, Lakehills, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Thomas Vinterberg; with Ulrich Thomsen, Henning Moritzen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Paprika Steen, Birthe Neuman, Trine Dyrholm, Helle Dolleris, Bjarne Henriksen. (R, 101 min.)
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Could it be the stench of all those Klingenfeldt family skeletons tumbling from the closets during the course of the family patriarch's 60th birthday celebration? Christian Klingenfeldt (Thomsen) is too modern a fellow to be compared with Shakespeare's melancholy young Hamlet (though he does share many of the prince's attributes and troubles); however, Vinterberg's pivotal character in The Celebration could well have stepped directly out of a long day's journey in a Eugene O'Neill family melodrama by way of the discreet charm of a Luis Buñuel social gathering. This Danish film is an alternately funny and harrowing look at a family crisis, a meltdown that blends the needs of the truthsayers with the instincts of the let's-bury-our-heads-in-the-sand-and-pretend-none-of-this-is-happening types. "I already suffer from depression," one of the cousins is heard to wail while fumbling for his pills as all hell breaks loose. Generations of the Klingenfeldt clan and friends of the family have gathered at the family's country estate/hotel on the occasion of patriarch Helge's 60th birthday. His three children -- Christian, Michael (Larsen), and Helene (Steen) -- have returned also, but the gathering is thick with the absence of Christian's twin sister Linda, who was buried just a few weeks prior to this reunion. When Christian raises his glass to say a few words about his dead sister and toast his dad, appalling intra-familial accusations rush from his mouth. The targets and guests politely turn a deaf ear, but Christian continues his charges throughout the evening. But still, the liquor flows and the food courses keep coming. The kitchen staff has stolen all the guests' car keys, so as in any good farce, there is no possibility of exit. The family's blanket insensitivity to the sordidness of Christian's accusations is compounded by the shameless racism they display upon the arrival of Helene's black boyfriend. Despite the social depravity exposed by the situation, these troupers carry on with the utmost decorum. Shot with a hand-held video camera, The Celebration has an intimate, spontaneous feel that befits the subject matter. Vinterberg's decision to film in this manner was ordained by his participation in Dogma 95, the manifesto of a film movement he helped found along with director Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves, The Kingdom). The Dogma 95 collective wrote a "Vow of Chastity" that listed 10 rules of purist filmmaking by which its directors were to abide. Chief among them were such things as shooting only on location without additional props, costumes, or sound recording, using only hand-held cameras, rejecting genre efforts and works not existing in the present, and renouncing the auteur concept. The primary goal of the Vow, however, seems to be its utter rebuff of the cinematic status quo and its desire to shake the foundations of filmmaking to their very core. Though The Celebration abides by these concepts (except for the "confession" of his transgressions from the Vow that Vinterberg includes with the press materials), they are happily conditions that suit the subject matter perfectly. And, ironically, through this anti-auteurist effort, Vinterberg, cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, and the unflappable cast have created a virtuosic work. (11/20/98)
Village
D: Bennett Miller. (PG-13, 76 min.)
From atop his perch on the upper deck of New York City's Gray Line tour buses, Timothy "Speed" Levitch sees it all, and says it all. Like some omniscient chronicler of the city's life, he daily weaves a mind-bending spiel for the tourists who end up on his bus, seeking to "rewrite their souls and to redo every day that they lived thus far before they came onto the double-decker bus." You get the feeling Levitch accomplishes that formidable task more often than he realizes. Combining the wry, outrageous wit of a modern-day Oscar Wilde with a healthy dose of NYC angst and a veritable photographic memory concerning everything you'd ever want to know from a tour guide, he feels more like a fictional construct than a real, flesh-and-blood citizen. Levitch has NYC coursing through his veins like some magical drug, and his ongoing love affair with the city translates directly to the audience. If you've never been there, The Cruise will send you rushing to your travel agent to book a flight into JFK, and if you're a native, the film will reaffirm that with which you first fell in love. Miller, a 31-year-old NYU film grad, is obviously passionate about the city he calls home as well; it shows in the lush black-and-white images that illustrate the film (which was shot not on film at all but on digital video) and in the painstaking attention to detail. Whether it's the unforgettable image of Levitch caressing the base of the Brooklyn Bridge in a flurry of lovely synaptic overload or gleefully spinning around and around in the courtyard between the World Trade Center's twin towers, Miller knows how to draw not only a portrait of this epic town but also one of its most endearing figures. Shot over the course of three years, The Cruise follows its wild-maned, adenoidal-voiced subject through the ups and downs of his daily grind at the tour company (his dismay at eventually having to be made to wear a uniform is one of the film's comic highlights). In between work and protracted bouts of couch-surfing, Levitch wanders the city and enthuses on everything from architecture to history to all manner of persons, famous and otherwise (he seems to have a special place in his heart for Thomas Paine). This, according to Levitch, is "the cruise," the act of living and moving through life with an exploratory, open mindset. Rarely will you find anyone with such a gaping maw of intellect as Levitch, who alternately comes across as a hippie-esque naïf, street scholar, and poet. Miller has somehow, inadvertently by his own admission, managed to capture the essence of the human throng, in all its maddening, scintillating permutations. It's a tour unlike any you have ever taken. (See related interview in this week's "Screens" section.) (11/27/98)
Dobie
D: Shekhar Kapur; with Cate Blanchett, Christopher Eccleston, Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes. (R, 124 min.)
With style, passion, and intelligence, Elizabeth answers the question lurking silently amid mounting slag heaps of cheesy Princess Di memorabilia: What is this thing we have about royalty? What primal need does their apparently superfluous presence satisfy? According to this gripping story of Queen Elizabeth I's rise to power, it's our need to see and touch the divine here on earth. And never was that need more real than in 16th-century England, when a combination of foreign military threats, debilitating Protestant-Catholic conflicts, and a bitter dispute over the line of royal succession had reduced the tiny island nation to a state of near-chaos. As we all know, it was Elizabeth, the so-called "virgin queen," who laid the foundations of a future British Empire by crushing all enemies from within and without, and by pushing for the creation of an Independent Church of England. But as Shekhar's film vividly illustrates, this was a virtually miraculous accomplishment for the young queen, who had to contend not only with her own political naïveté but also the stigma of being both Protestant and the fruit of King Henry VIII's scandalous liaison with Anne Boleyn. Cate Blanchett, who made an indelible impression as Ralph Fiennes' soulmate in Oscar and Lucinda is, if anything, even better here as the future embodiment of all things British. Despite the florid trailers' emphasis on bodice-ripping romantic imagery, Elizabeth is above all a political thriller. And the real essence of this story is the harrowing on-the-job training of an intelligent but woefully unprepared young lamb tossed into a slavering wolfpack of cold-blooded enemies (some disguised as friends and lovers) whose dearest wish is to eat her alive. Blanchett's pale, oddly compelling face is a record of every ghastly Pyhrric victory, every bitter disillusionment, every hard-won insight along the way. Each step toward her royal destiny means giving up a little more of her human essence. By the end, when she literally becomes a flesh-and-blood icon, the ambivalence of her triumph makes this scene one of the more subtly heartbreaking moments I've seen in any recent film. The excellence in casting goes deep, including not only Geoffey Rush's magnificent performance as the queen's Machiavelli-quoting chief advisor, but a searing turn by Christopher Eccleston as the fanatical, traitorous Duke of Norfolk. Former Truffaut mainstay Fanny Ardant makes a vivid impression in as a sexy, madness-tinged Mary of Guise. And Joseph Fiennes acquits himself well in his demanding, morally ambiguous role as a boyfriend of the young Elizabeth who ends up as ballast jettisoned during her ascent. Elizabeth has just one meaningful fault, common to many filmed historical dramas: Events that happened over many years have been crunched into an unmanageably (and inaccurately) short timeline, junking up the narrative and doing disservice to history. But just as I was happy to forgive this flaw in great films like A Lion in Winter, I'm also pleased to cut slack for the similarly admirable Elizabeth. If movies like this are your cup of mead, I'm betting you'll feel the same way. (11/20/98)
Arbor, Dobie, Highland
D: Tony Scott; with Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Regina King, Loren Dean, Jake Busey, Barry Pepper, Gabriel Byrne, Lisa Bonet, Jason Lee, James Le Gros, Jack Black. (R, 127 min.)
Love him or hate him, Tony Scott only steals from the best. Enemy of the State is littered with echoes of previous thrillers -- everything from The Conversation to The Parallax View and from The In-Laws to Scott's own True Romance. Instead of coming off as shameless plundering, however, Scott, debuting director of photography Dan Mindel, and writer David Marconi (The Harvest) have woven a kicky, knockout thriller that ingeniously taps into the current climate of paranoia surrounding personal privacy in the Information Age. It's a conspiracy theorist's wet dream, and one that's likely to kickstart any number of spirited, after-show discussions on such topics as the resuscitated Communications Decency Act and other hot-button cyber-topics. Smith plays suave Washington, D.C. union attorney Robert Clayton Dean, who finds himself the target of a massive and deadly smear campaign by the National Security Administration when he unwittingly comes into possession of crucial evidence against State Department agent Brian Reynolds. Unaware that his every movement, conversation, and private moment is being surreptitiously tracked and recorded by Reynolds' rogue team of techies (led by a smarmy Jack Black, far afield from his Tenacious D comedy antics), the innocent, naive Dean desperately searches for a way to fight back, and eventually finds one in the mysterious spook Brill (Hackman, essentially updating his role from Coppola's aforementioned The Conversation). Since this is the fifth pairing of Scott with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, the requisite action is never far away -- essentially the film is one huge, extended chase sequence -- but for all its rapid-fire editing and ominous dialogue, Enemy of the State longs to be more cerebral than the average explode-a-thon. In many ways it succeeds, mostly due to the impossibly charming performance by Smith and Hackman's bulldog acting chops. There are functioning ideas amongst all the relentless muzzle-flash, and though much of the story's "logic" can only charitably be called "fuzzy," the film still aches to be taken seriously. Whether or not you'll fall for it depends on how rabid a techno-theorist you are, but Scott and company get an A for effort. Scott has taken to peppering his productions with big names in small parts (remember Brad Pitt in True Romance?) and this is no exception: Byrne, Le Gros, and Lee all have cameos of sorts, but none seem to have lived up to his potential. Unlike True Romance, though, Enemy of the State boasts precious little comedy -- it's a thriller straight through to its sleek, millennial-fever heart, an onrushing, giddily paranoiac roller-coaster ride with bad brakes, clever dialogue, and a reach that only occasionally exceeds its grasp. (11/20/98)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
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)
Dobie
D: Erik Skjoldbjaerg; with Stellan Skarsgard, Marie Bonnevie, Bjorn Floberg, Sverre Anker Ousdal. (Not Rated, 97 min.)
So far, "film blanc" is still more of a cute little movie-critics' conceit than a bona fide movie genre. However, this terrific Norwegian psych-thriller does share with films as diverse as Smilla's Sense of Snow and Fargo an odd, disorienting feel caused by seeing dark deeds take place in broad daylight against a backdrop of stark, dazzling winter landscapes. Insomnia is the first shot out of the box for young Norwegian director Erik Skjoldbjaerg, and it's a real stunner. Not so much a murder mystery as a Crime and Punishment-style story of guilt-driven emotional breakdown, it draws heavily upon the classic noir tradition of blurring lines between the moral positions of the "good" and "bad" guys. The hero is Jan, a Swedish cop known equally for his brilliant detective work and shaky ethics. So renowned are his sleuthing skills that when Norwegian police hit a wall in investigating a teenage girl's murder (the killer has scrubbed her entire body to eliminate clues), they hire him as a special consultant on the case. True to form, Jan quickly devises a clever trap for the suspect. But while chasing the perp, he accidentally shoots and kills his own partner, then compounds the ghastly error by trying to hide his guilt. This decision appears to be typical of Jan, a weak-willed character for whom the low road is the default path in most moral quandaries. Once the cover-up is on, the story's focus shifts away from Jan's pursuit of the killer to his own slow crackup in the face of a guilty conscience and the growing suspicions of fellow detective Ane (Marie Bonnevie). As the walls close in on Jan (at least in his own mind), he lies sweating in bed, denied sleep by the relentless midnight sun pouring through and around the flimsy curtains of his hotel room. The genius cop makes mistake after disastrous mistake: crude sexual advances at an underaged witness; lies to cover previous lies; even a covert pact with the main suspect himself. This is a masterful performance by Skarsgard (Breaking the Waves, Good Will Hunting), one that ably demonstrates his skills as one of the world's finest character actors. Under the pitiless glare of around-the-clock sunlight, without the escape of sleep, Jan is forced to see himself clearly for the first time, and Skarsgard shows us in minute detail how shattering this experience is for his character. Skjoldbjaerg's flair for creating atmosphere, powerful though never showy or artificial, reinforces the claustrophobic feel of enveloping dread that's only slightly relieved by a surprising yet plausible ending. See this movie -- but be prepared to miss a little sleep yourself. (12/11/98)
Village
D: Troy Miller; with Michael Keaton, Kelly Preston, Mark Addy, Joseph Cross. (PG, 96 min.)
The holidays tend to bring out the treacle in all of us -- not a bad thing by any means, really -- but this corny bit of hokum is so eager to please that it comes off with all the wallop of a low-thrown snowball to the giblets, eliciting pained moans and grimaces in place of promised holiday cheer. Keaton (in his seventh pairing with co-producer Mark Canton) plays Jack Frost, a Colorado bar-band rocker with dreams of major label success. On Christmas Eve, Frost gets the opportunity of a lifetime: A major record label loves his group and promises him a record contract if only he'll leave behind his family on Christmas Day to play the exec's party in Denver. Frost, who's already made a mess of his parental and spousal obligations by missing the umpteenth hockey game of his son Charlie (Cross) and failing to fix the kitchen sink for wife Gabby (Preston), decides to give it a go, and then, halfway there, has a change of heart, necessitating a risky drive back home in the inclement Rocky Mountain weather. Needless to say, he never makes it, and after a poorly edited shot of his careening car, the film cuts to the dreaded "One Year Later" intertitle. Charlie is understandably down in the dumps on the anniversary of his father's demise, so much so that he can't even bring himself to retaliate against the vicious jeers and the clods of hardpack that the local bully sails his direction. While sharing some quality time (they're watching Stevie Ray Vaughan's Couldn't Stand the Weather, and how's that for some grim symbolism?) with dad's old bandmate Mac (Addy of The Full Monty), Charlie decides to build a snowman in his front yard. Taking along Jack's battered old hat and scarf, his son builds a decent approximation of dear old dad, sheds a tear or two, and then tramps off to bed, only to be awakened by his reincarnated snowman/dad at 2am. Chagrined, father and son learn to live, love, and weep together, though why this new version of Jack Frost feels inclined to hide his frigid identity from his wife is anyone's guess. In short, there is absolutely nothing in Jack Frost that hasn't been done better before. Keaton seems to be telephoning in his lines from some other planet (odd pauses that don't quite fit litter his dialogue like squirrel spoor in a new-fallen snow), Cross has all the Plasticine appeal of a tree ornament, and Preston just plain looks and acts bewildered, plastering a perpetual, goonish grin across her face in favor of any solid emoting. Worst of all, Jack Frost sports some truly awful special effects courtesy of the usually brilliant Jim Henson's Creature Shop. Be it the use of faux snow that looks like the dog ends of previously owned Q-Tips or the successively worse series of blue-screened visuals, the film is shoddy from frame one. Sunlamp, anyone? (12/18/98)
Great Hills, Lakehills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Roberto Benigni; with Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini, Giustino Durano, Sergio Bustric, Marisa Paredes, Horst Buchholz. (PG-13, 114 min.)
Life Is Beautiful is the drama every comic probably wishes he had made. This Italian "concentration-camp comedy" believes that the powers of humor and joy are strong enough to overcome any adversity, even that of the Nazi Holocaust. Now, we all know this not to be true, the numbers certainly bear us out on this point. But the fact of the matter is that humor and joy sure can't hurt in the face of overwhelming odds. Proclaiming that "life is beautiful" is kind of like saying that the glass is half full; it's an attitudinal choice to side with the positive because the only other option is the inevitability of negativism and defeat. It is within this life-affirming context that the controversy surrounding co-writer, director, and star Roberto Benigni's movie needs to be examined. A high-profile award winner, Life Is Beautiful won the grand jury prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival, eight Donatellos (Italian Oscars), and many other prestigious awards. It has also come under attack for its soft-focus, unrealistic presentation of life in the death camps. Both the popular acclaim and the alarmist criticism are deserved. Roberto Benigni is a clown, and an irrepressible one at that. In this defining work of his career he uses those unique clowning skills and comic imagination to create not a documentary portrait of the consequences of the Nazi Final Solution but a testament to the magnitude of the human spirit. In so doing, Benigni obscures most of the harsh realities and logical consequences of the situation, and though there is a degree to which such narrative license is unforgivable, we must also appreciate that by privileging history's impermeability we are also limiting its possibilities for inciting the poetic imagination. What Benigni does in Life Is Beautiful is use the Holocaust as a backdrop for telling a heartfelt story about a father who protects his son from the gas chambers by the use of the only weapons at his command: his quick imagination, outlandish buffoonery, and scrappy determination. In the real camps such tactics would not have had a chance in hell. Within the fiction of the movie, we are witnesses to the plight of a lone man whistling bravely in the dark. In addition to its questionable subject matter, another difficulty the film has to surmount is the way its mood abruptly turns on a dime after the first hour. Opening in 1939, we see signs everywhere of fascist rule, but the story focuses on the young man Guido (Benigni) and his arrival in the Tuscan town of Arezzo to seek his fortune as a waiter who wants to open a bookshop and the meeting and wooing of his future bride Dora (Benigni's wife, Braschi, who has starred in most of his films). The first hour is a slapstick paradise. Benigni is an inheritor of the Chaplinesque tradition and Life Is Beautiful owes obvious debts to The Great Dictator. Though in such films as Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law and Night on Earth and Benigni's own Johnny Stecchino and The Monster, I never was terribly moved by the effusively inexhaustive talents of Italy's favorite comedic son. However, I must say that I was unexpectedly beguiled by Benigni's clownish powers to amuse during Life Is Beautiful's thoroughly anti-authoritarian first hour. Then, within just a few moments, he wins the girl, they glide through a doorway and it's suddenly five years later on the eve of their son's fifth birthday, and we discover that Guido is Jewish and he and his son are being herded off to the camps, in which location the movie spends its second hour. And though Guido's tactics for promoting his son's survival are most unlikely to have been successful in the real world (if we dare call concentration camps the real world), and the film's harshest truths are depicted offscreen or in implied tropes, and some of the worst Nazi commandant behavior is only a few clapboards removed from Hogan's Heroes, still … the movie manages to incorporate all these things into a moving yet unsentimental story about the beauty of maintaining one's wits while stumbling blindly in the insane no man's land that lies beyond wit's end. (11/6/98)
Arbor
D: Richard LaGravenese; with Holly Hunter, Danny DeVito, Queen Latifah, Martin Donovan, Elias Koteas. (R, 102 min.)
Her pupils and irises indistinguishable orbs of liquid brown, Holly Hunter possibly has the most intent and focused gaze of any actor in films today: They're the eyes of a determined but often tortured soul. During her moments of confession in Living Out Loud, it's those eyes that speak volumes, even more than the subtle, piercing dialogue provided by director-screenwriter LaGravenese, here making his debut behind the camera. Unfortunately, there's not much of a story to go with Hunter's engaging performance and LaGravenese's words; when it comes to its narrative, there's something missing in Living Out Loud. The film begins with Hunter quizzing her husband, a successful doctor, in an elegant New York City restaurant about a woman with whom he had been seen. Suspecting something, she won't let him off the hook, as he tells her that the other woman is only a work colleague. Finally, when she asks the approximate age of this colleague, he answers with such specificity that she instantly knows the truth. It's a great moment that sets the stage for her character's fall and rise as she learns to make a new life after divorce. Along the way, she befriends a down-on-his-luck elevator operator, who's romantically interested in her, and a nightclub singer with a penchant for picking the wrong men. These are strange bedfellows for a woman living on the Upper West Side, but fitting for a movie whose theme celebrates tearing down the walls that keep us from fully experiencing life. (Woody Allen's Alice did the same thing, using the same type of character and milieu, and -- quite frankly -- did it better.) At first, Hunter's character constantly idealizes situations, imagining how they should be because she finds reality awkward and unsatisfying. But as she grows into her own skin and does things that she never had the opportunity to do before -- kiss a complete stranger in a darkened room she mistakes for a bathroom; imbibe mind-altering substances and dance the night away in a chic lesbian bar; hire a hunky masseuse to give her an erotic rubdown -- the need to fantasize becomes less so. If only the development of her character and the narrative were structured in a way that made the movie feel less episodic, you'd find yourself really drawn to this oddly appealing movie about personal liberation. If anything, it's good to see Hunter in a role befitting her after being lost in questionable acting choices in Crash and A Life Less Ordinary. And it's even better to see those fantastic eyes put to good use once more. (11/13/98)
Village
D: Martin Brest; with Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Claire Forlani, Jake Weber, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeffrey Tambor, David S. Howard. (R, 174 min.)
A loose retelling of 1934's Death Takes a Holiday, this updated version adapts a fuller, firmer attitude toward other-worldly romance as well as a near-three-hour running time. With Hopkins onscreen for much of it, it's not as dreary as you'd expect, and even the angelic Pitt, as an anthropomorphized, blonde-banged Death, is surprisingly tolerable in an admittedly difficult role that could have just as easily descended into unwitting farce. Brest (Scent of a Woman) opens the film with a sequence in which Susan Parrish (Forlani) -- young, M.D. daughter of Hopkins' wealthy media magnate William Parrish -- runs into a nameless but utterly charming young man (Pitt) in a New York coffee shop. During the course of a five-minute flirtation the spark arcs, and the two near-strangers part, never to meet again. As it happens, the handsome stranger is struck by a car and killed moments later. As luck, or fate, or, more accurately Death should have it, the stranger is reborn, after a fashion, as Death itself appears at the Parrish family mansion wearing the stranger's flesh. He's here to take the senior Parrish off to the great beyond, but before he does, he'd like to find out a bit about the living. "You will be my tour guide," he tells an understandably stunned Hopkins, and before long Death, under the moniker of Joe Black, is attending Parrish Communications board meetings, wrapping his tongue around gob after gob of peanut butter (a delicacy, we are led to believe, absent from the netherworld), and falling in love with daughter Susan. At first it's difficult to understand why anyone would need three hours to tell this pleasant fable, but to his credit, Brest fleshes out the film with a subplot involving a corporate takeover (unnecessary but absorbing nonetheless) and assorted other tricks; Meet Joe Black flows nicely, and the whole of the film is bathed in some of the most sumptuous cinematography (courtesy of Like Water for Chocolate's Emmanuel Lubezki) of the year. The film, however, belongs to Hopkins, pure and simple. He commands your eye when he is onscreen, and when he's off you're subconsciously waiting for him to reappear. As the noble media baron and devoted family man, he's stuck with lines that would surely crumple in any other actor's mouth but here manages to make them sound good, even great, by sheer virtue of his being Sir Anthony Hopkins. Pitt is in a realm that approximates his lunatic role in Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys, but toned down considerably. His Death is an egocentric spirit engaged in learning a smidgen of humility (and humanity), and though the role frequently borders on the comic, it rarely sloshes over into the absurd. Only once (when Death, his facial muscles lost in the act of making love) did the males in the packed screening audience audibly squirm (which perhaps says more about the males than Pitt's acting). Too often derided as a vacuous pretty boy, Pitt brings a wan, insouciant charm to the Grim Reaper, while Hopkins, as ever, anchors everything around him. It's an elegiac love story from beyond the grave, as appealingly simple as it is emotionally complex. (11/13/98)
Great Hills
D: Gary Ross; with Tobey Maguire, Reese Witherspoon, Jeff Daniels, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, J.T. Walsh, Don Knotts. (PG-13, 123 min.)
Pleasantville is indeed a technical marvel to behold, rich with sophisticated computer technology that deftly combines full-color and black-and-white images all in one shot. However, the movie's simplistic storyline does not match its stunning visual accomplishments: Pleasantville's story is drawn from a palette that's strictly limited to black-and-white. Terrific performances by all the key cast members also help mask the fact that the movie's central hook -- two Nineties teens who are trapped in the staid, colorless world of a Fifties family sitcom and infect the said town, Pleasantville, with all sorts of newfangled, daring notions about self-expression and self-fulfillment -- is never developed beyond its obvious symbolism and ramifications. In fact, the only obvious note that the film surprisingly failed to include would be that of Cyndi Lauper power-ballading about seeing "true colors shining through." And even then, something like the Stones' "She Comes in Colors" might have been more appropriate and certainly more literal-minded for Joan Allen's scene as the Mom who discovers the joy of masturbatory sex (and though discreet, it's the one surprising sequence in an otherwise solidly PG-13 film). Pleasantville is too content to settle for the same kind of easy escapism that its modern protagonists long for. David (Maguire) is hooked on reruns of his favorite Fifties TV show, Pleasantville, as an obvious refuge from the real-world pressures of his parents' unhappy divorce and the steady reminders of a future with low job expectations, safe sex precautions, and bleak projections of famine and ecological devastation. During a tug of war with his twin sister Jennifer (Witherspoon), the remote control breaks and an oddball TV repairman (the serendipitously cast Don Knotts) mysteriously appears on their doorstep to provide them with a new zapper that strangely transports them into the actual world of Pleasantville. This alternate universe is a Fifties time warp in living black-and-white: firemen only exist to rescue cats from trees and all basketballs shot by varsity ballplayers automatically swoosh through the hoop. When David and Jennifer introduce sex, emotion, and spontaneity to Pleasantville, the town comes apart at the seams. First someone's tongue turns red, then others start to notice flashes of color, words suddenly appear in previously blank books, and a tree bursts into flames (the "burning bush" coincides with the discovery of orgasm). Next thing you know, folks are listening to Dave Brubeck and admiring Picasso and D.H. Lawrence. A girl seduces her boyfriend with a red apple (really!) and Mom's not there with dinner on the table when Dad comes home from work. J.T. Walsh in his last screen role leads the town in a mob reaction to the "Coloreds" who have invaded town. The last third of the movie devolves into too much illogical detail about the town's reactionary response. (If hate is as strong an emotion as love, why aren't these rioters also shedding their placid black-and-white exteriors for unsuppressible color combos?) Yet it feels curmudgeonly to dwell on the film's dim plotting when the film's performances are all so strong and endearing and the sight of a smudge of color breaking through the gray pancake makeup is so breathtaking to behold. First-time director Ross is an old hand at this kind of magical adult parable, having scripted Big and Dave. To have selected such a technically difficult project for his first directing job must say a lot about his commitment. This time out, his characters get to see the roses bloom. Next film he does, I bet they'll stop to smell them too. (10/30/98)
Village
D: Brenda Chapman, Steve Hickner, Simon Wells; with the voices of Val Kilmer, Ralph Fiennes, Sandra Bullock, Danny Glover, Jeff Goldblum, Steve Martin, Helen Mirren, Michelle Pfeiffer, Martin Short, Patrick Stewart. (PG, 99 min.)
DreamWorks executives are hoping that their new animated feature The Prince of Egypt will be the chosen one that will lead the young studio into the promised land. Like their source material, the Book of Exodus, the studio may have invented a movie with enough moxie to wake it from its second-class status, yet the studio may be forced to wander a few more years in the desert before finding a work with enough purity of spirit to pass into animation's holy ground. Indeed, The Prince of Egypt accomplishes extraordinary feats of animation. The movie's pictorial realism and illusions of three-dimensionality are landmark progressions in the art of animation. Watching the movie is a genuinely thrilling experience, as such things as the harrowing hairpin turns of chariot races and the teeming spectacle of purely invented cast of thousands are balanced with such delicacies as the fine details of human images and physical motion. Plus, there are no overly cute animals or singing/dancing inanimates (although I suspect that if anyone truly thought they could get away with a Burning Bush song-and-dance routine without appearing disrespectful -- or somethng like a God of Hellfire Arthur Brown knockoff, then we'd all be tap, tap, tapping at heaven's door right now). The astonishing realism of The Prince of Egypt's imagery, however, calls into question the supposition that this four-years-in-the-making illusion is the pinnacle of animated artistry. However, now that cartoons have been shown to be capable of aping the look of a live-action movie, we should ask ourselves what this advancement has accomplished and whether something unique to the art of animation has been lost along the way. It seems to me that animation's most salient characteristic is its ability to defy all human rules of nature, logic, and physics. Making an animated feature look and behave like a live-action narrative film seems a goal with intrinsically dubious merits. Of course, these are questions for the long haul, questions that are not meant to denigrate the majesty of The Prince of Egypt's images -- and there is majesty in some of them -- but rather guide us in a discussion of the state of the art form. As breathtaking as many of this film's precision images are, I have to admit that my favorite sequence is the film's most unrealistic, as the hieroglyphic pictographs come to life and dashingly tell the whole saga of Egyptian power and Hebrew enslavement and quite inventively tell the story of lifetimes literally spent up against the walls. Apart from the animation techniques, The Prince of Egypt also raises fascinating questions about subject matter and marketing. The filmmakers have chosen to retell "the greatest story ever told," a story whose efficacy has been tested through the millennia. Yet in its drive to become all things to all people the story has lost most of its religious context. The God of The Prince of Egypt is more of a master illusionist, an alchemist who can turn a staff into a snake or the Nile into a river of blood, the capo di tutti of all the special-effects artists who ever were. The filmmakers should be given credit for retaining the Old Testament's version of a vengeful God, one who can smite first-born male children and wreak other plagues and devastation on those not in his favor. Yet to this god, the sole sin of the Egyptians is their commitment to slavery and not their unwillingness to renounce polytheism for monotheism. It ends up being a very secular version of ancient events, one that has much less religious baggage attached to it. Calculating universal acceptance is even more difficult in a situation such as this, in which most marketing tie-ins would seem crass and sacrilegious (Ten Commandments Mad Libs, or Holy Tablet Etch-A-Sketches, anyone?). Thus, we see as the main marketing ploy a series of tasteful musical tie-ins. These "music inspired by the movie" CDs and TV specials, not incoincidentally, make the most of the film's voice talent. DreamWorks has gathered for the movie and for these extracurricular projects an amazing collection of voice talent that complement the film's stunning technical achievements. In all, The Prince of Egypt may not rank as one of the great wonders of the world, but it sure ain't no pyramid scheme either. (12/18/98)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lake Creek, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Gus Van Sant; with Vince Vaughn, Anne Heche, Julianne Moore, Viggo Mortensen, William H. Macy, Robert Forster, Philip Baker Hall, Anne Haney, Chad Everett, Rance Howard, Rita Wilson, James Remar, James Legros. (R, 105 min.)
"Norman … Is That You?" The time has come to abandon the question of why Gus Van Sant did it. Because he could and because he wanted to should be reasons enough. It's easy to understand the curiosity, the challenge of the task, and the attraction of the ultimate methodology for getting inside the head of an artist so admired. It's even fitting, thematically, that Van Sant should want to shadow a director like Alfred Hitchcock, for whom doubling, doppelgangers, and mistaken identities were dominant narrative constructs. Van Sant used the carte blanche he earned from the success of the bland and prosaic Good Will Hunting to return to his artier and more experimental roots with this highly publicized and modestly budgeted "re-creation" (Van Sant's word) of Hitchcock's 1960 movie sensation Psycho. Unleashed to the public without advance screenings (since that's the way Hitchcock did it, a marketing conceit that might be more believable if things like admission prices and the film's budget were also rolled back to 1960 rates), the only question that should matter now is how well the re-creation succeeds. The answer is: alright, to a point. As an exercise it's always intriguing, but as a contemporary thriller the 1998 Psycho is hardly a white-knuckle ride. To some degree, that's because the plot is already well-known to us; but still, so much of the movie's thrill has to do with our appreciation of the devious finesse with which the filmmaker manipulates our emotions. But even here, a great deal of the genre's techniques and ploys seem routine and even clichéd in today's context. Van Sant's and Universal's hopes of luring a young, unacquainted-with-Hitchcock audience with this contemporary but faithful remake seems like a tough sell due to this generation's greater familiarity with the conventions of the slasher genre. Granted, the original Psycho is where a lot of these conventions caught fire, so this re-creation becomes almost a study of their efficacy and power. So what becomes very weird are the few moments in which Van Sant varies from his slavish re-creation. Why, for instance, in the most famous of all sequences -- the shower sequence -- does Van Sant cut away to a subjective shot of gathering clouds, à la My Own Private Idaho? Other updates make more sense (like the Walkman-wearing sister, Norman Bates masturbating while watching Marion through the office peephole, the sound of couples noisily making love in the next-door hotel room of lovers Marion and Sam, or the naked butt shot of Viggo Mortensen climbing out of bed), but don't really add anything new to our appreciation of the story. And why, when he was updating scenes, did Van Sant and writer Joseph Stefano (who also penned the original screenplay from Robert Bloch's novel) elect to leave in the obsolete touch in which the sheriff's wife rings up the old-fashioned rural telephone operator? But for William Macy's, the performances add little depth to these pre-established characters. Anne Heche seems lost, stuck in a fruitless search for the motivations driving this character from another era that no amount of tangerine-colored undergarments can solve. As Norman Bates, Vince Vaughn makes us better appreciate how much Anthony Perkins brought to the original project. It's clear now that he owned the role and that he shares equally with Hitchcock the credit for making Psycho the memorable creep show it is -- and was. Maybe it's just that Oedipally-fixated cross-dressers are way too commonplace in this day and age of tell-all television. Or maybe it's best to just let sleeping psychos lie. (12/11/98)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Tinseltown North
D: Igor Kovalyov and Norton Virgien; with the voices of Elizabeth Daily, Christine Cavanaugh, Cheryl Chase, David Spade, Whoopi Goldberg, Lisa Loeb. (G, 85 min.)
No one appreciates a clever and charming children's cartoon more than a parent who feels she will go totally, irrevocably berserk if she hears Scooby Doo say "Ruh-roh" one more time. The Rugrats can count among its ardent fans many grateful parents and a surprising number of channel-surfing adults who are caught and held by the Nickelodeon show's sweet, sly wit. Each half-hour show features two short segments that are bright, quick, and snappy, driven by silly flights of fancy and engaging characterizations. With the same cast at their beck and draw and a truly brilliant TV Passover special under their belts, it seemed as though the cartoon's producers (husband and wife team Gabor Csupo and Arlene Klasky) were ready for the big screen. Or maybe not. Despite a few funny moments, and some richly colored and fluid animation, The Rugrats Movie simply cannot sustain the frenetic charm and imagination of the shorter TV segments. Particularly ill-advised are the musical numbers that seem artificial and de rigueur despite some pretty heavy musical artillery (Elvis Costello, No Doubt, Laurie Anderson, and Iggy Pop to name but a few). The movie simply has too much contrived narrative to be much fun. The Rugrats' charm lay in the babies' whimsical, rug-level perspective and fanciful misperceptions. On TV, an overstuffed garbage can becomes a UFO, but in the movie a snarling wolf is a snarling wolf and though there is suspense in that, it's not the wildly freeform adventure we've come to expect from the rugrats. The Rugrats Movie has traded in imagination for storytelling. The destination has become more important than the ride. On the bright side, we still have Tommy Pickles, the ebullient one-year-old with an appetite for adventure; Chuckie, his nasally pessimistic sidekick; Phil and Lil, the intrepid fraternal twins; and the queen of mean, Angelica, a truly terrible two-year-old who uses her superior height and verbal capacity to manipulate babies and parents alike. (We don't get nearly enough of Angelica, who is on a quest to retrieve her precious Cynthia fashion doll which has fallen into Dil's iron grasp. It's not clear whether this is the Hot Tub Cynthia or the Camaro Cynthia or any one of the many Cynthia dolls which are Angelica's most prized possessions.) The babies' adventure in the movie is spawned by the arrival of another Pickles baby, newborn Dil, whose presence upsets the balance of attention and causes the babies to try to return him to Bob. (A baby is a gift from a Bob, they heard their grandparents say.) The ensuing adventure has a few giggles and a warm, sweet ending, but The Rugrats Movie is more like a pleasant Sunday drive in a big smooth sedan than the TV show's riotous joyrides in a fast, shiny convertible. (11/27/98)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Northcross, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Sam Raimi; with Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton, Bridget Fonda, Brent Briscoe, Gary Cole, Becky Ann Baker, Chelcie Ross. (R, 123 min.)
"Simple" is a misnomer of epic proportions. In horror stylist Sam Raimi's first mainstream thriller, everything is gratingly complex: the tangled skein of emotions that make the backbiting in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre look downright antiquated, Bill Paxton's unstoppable descent into the world of the felonious, and Billy Bob Thornton's heart-and-soul portrayal of the sly idiot brother. It ain't brain surgery, but oh my goodness, it certainly isn't simple. Paxton plays rural Minnesota family man Hank, an upright citizen patiently waiting for his day to take over management at the local feed store. His loving wife Sarah (Fonda) sports a convex tummy and worries about the state of their financial affairs. Hank's brother Jacob (Thornton), on the other hand, is a few planks shy of an outhouse and longs only to renovate the family farmhouse and take up where mom and pop left off, much to Hank's consternation; he knows the hideous toil it takes to manage the modern American farm, and he knows just as well there's no way brother Jacob is fit to tackle that task. While out in the woods one snowy afternoon, this placid, middle-American setup comes to a screeching halt when Hank, Jacob, and Jacob's hickoid friend Lou (Briscoe) accidentally stumble across a downed Cessna with $4.4 million and a dead pilot. Lou and Jacob vociferously argue that the money is theirs by the ancient right of finders keepers, however Hank is anxious to turn over the Benjamin-crammed duffel bag to the authorities and takes the moral high road, at least for the minute. In the end, it's decided that Hank, and only Hank, will hold the money until he feels it's safe to split it up; then the three will go their separate ways, leave town, and never, presumably, be seen again. With as juicy a setup as this (courtesy of scenarist Scott B. Smith, who adapted the screenplay from his bestselling novel of the same name), the possibilities are endless, but from the moment you lay eyes on the bitter, sterile Minnesotan tundra that acts as the film's unofficial fourth conspirator, it's obvious the direction in which events are going to go. Fear, paranoia, and plain old greed quickly factor their way into the trio's plans, aided and abetted by Hank's wife Sarah, who despite (or maybe because of) that bun in the proverbial oven is no creampuff. Regardless, she's immediately on Hank's case to keep a close rein on the cash, as well as advising him to "put a little of it back" in the plane in an attempt to cover their tracks. A Simple Plan takes so many twists and turns (none of which engender confidence in the human race, I might add) that revealing any more here would be a sin. Suffice to say that Raimi has crafted a nasty, countrified gem of a psychological thriller, and he's done it with none of his usual gimmicky shrieks or stylistic flourishes. A Simple Plan is almost painfully reserved at times, while at others it flares into a maelstrom of jaw-dropping, stomach-clenching anxiety. It's not perfect -- Thornton's slack-jawed yokel Jacob is played a bit wide of the mark and Fonda continues to irk in some indefinable way -- but it's a revelation for longtime Raimi fans. And it's a hell of a ride too, for both Raimi fans and newcomers alike. (12/11/98)
Arbor
D: Jonathan Frakes; with Patrick Stewart, Frakes, Brent Spiner, LeVar Burton, Michael Dorn, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, F. Murray Abraham, Donna Murphy, Anthony Zerbe. (PG, 99 min.)
The so-called Star Trek Curse continues unabated; that is, even-numbered Trek's are good, while their odd-numbered cohorts stink like a dead Horta in a pop bottle on a hot July day. This being the ninth outing of the series, all is not well in Federation space. As directed by Jonathan "Testosterone" Frakes (who, it should be noted, also directed the above-average First Contact last time out), Insurrection is a muddled, gimpy mess, filled with the worst sort of Trek clichés and ill-timed humorous outbursts. On top of that, the film might as well have been edited by Mr. Scott in the midst of a Romulan ale bender: Plot points appear out of nowhere and voluminous backstory seems to have been dropped in favor of bigger, better explosions and forehead-slappingly bad double entendres. Is this Star Trek or Friends in space? Briefly, the plot centers around a vague plot by Federation Admiral Dougherty (Zerbe) and his alien ally Ru'afo (Abraham, playing what appears to be some sort of deep-space Salieri) to participate in the forced relocation of an indigenous people to another world in order to secure mining rights to a planet firmly resembling paradise. Captain Picard (Stewart) is rightfully shocked that the Federation would condone this blatant slap in the face to their sacred Prime Directive of non-interference in alien cultures, and decides -- on a whim, it seems -- to commit high treason and rescue the natives from their usurpers. That's about it, plot-wise, though The Next Generation series creator Rick Berman does toss a bone to Picard in the form of a lovely alien sage who acts as a sort of love interest. Meanwhile Riker (Frakes) shaves his beard and goes hot-tubbing with ex-flame Counselor Troi (Sirtis), Data (Spiner) runs amok, and Worf (Dorn) finally hits puberty (I kid you not). Longtime fans of the series (I number myself among them) will be aghast at the flimsily constructed plotting and subpar set design; didn't we get enough otherworldly Styrofoam passageways back when J. Tiberius Kirk was the Federation's chief gallavanteer? And why the sudden need to have poor android Data spout such witless Schwarzeneggerisms as "Saddle up! Lock 'n' load!" It's enough to make a Trekker miss the glory days of Ensign Yeoman's cleavage, I tell you. Trek has fared far better with comic underpinnings before (Nimoy's Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home succeeded nicely, as did STTNG television episodes like "The Naked Now," in which the entire Enterprise crew was goofily sidelined by some intergalactic Ecstasy). Frakes, I fear, directs with an iron goatee, and his notion of humor is on a par with Buddy Hackett's. Let's hope installment number 10 -- an anniversary of sorts -- will put the crew back on sci-fi terra firma where they belong. (12/11/98)
Gateway, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
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)
Alamo Drafthouse, Discount
D: Peter Berg; with Christian Slater, Cameron Diaz, Daniel Stern, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Jon Favreau, Jeremy Piven, Leland Orser, Carla Scott. (R, 101 min.)
Chicago Hope's Peter Berg hangs up his scrubs in favor of the director's chair and ends up with more blood on his hands than a whole season's worth of television dramatics. He also ends up helming one of the nastier black comedies to come down the pike in some time, though calling this mess a "comedy" cheapens the term in the extreme. Newlywed-to-be Kyle Fisher (Favreau) finds himself on the receiving end of the karmic Louisville Slugger when he and four of his closest, most masculine buddies take off for a weekend bachelor party in Las Vegas. Along for the ride are brothers Michael and Adam (Piven and Stern); shy, withdrawn mechanic Charlie (Orser); and scheming real-estate weasel Robert Boyd (Slater), a man so devoid of scruples he makes Michael Milken look like Michael Moore. Against the better wishes of Kyle's fiancée Laura (Cameron), the guys shack up in a swank Vegas casino and spend the first night binging on liquor, cocaine, and, eventually, a high-priced call girl. Although Kyle nixes the traditional sleep-with-the-hooker idea, Michael has no such qualms and leads her into the bathroom, where, after a drunken game of "spin the hooker," she meets her grisly end when her skull accidentally fuses with a towel rack. Panicked and wasted, the quintet decide (under the wild-eyed tutelage of Robert) their best shot is to bury the poor girl in the Nevada desert. Unfortunately, before they can get their act together, hotel security drops by and leaves them, eventually, with another corpse. After a vaguely disturbing scene in which the boys load up on such high-desert incidentals as chainsaws, shovels, and gore-proof slickers, the deed is done and they return home to a life forever changed. Once back, both tempers and paranoia flare as their plan begins to unravel, and more corpses begin to make appearances. Through it all, Kyle and Laura staunchly march on toward their appointed destiny in holy matrimony, while all else is reduced to chaos and bloodletting. Ostensibly a cautionary tale of how very bad things create lasting mental impacts on those involved, Berg's film instead plays out like Laurel and Hardy directed by Sam Raimi with a hangover. The comic moments revolve almost exclusively around pain and violence and degradation, and though that may work well enough in more cerebral films (the Belgian Man Bites Dog comes to mind), here it's simply too much of a very bad thing. Slater is particularly disturbing as he plays the moral black hole and mindless drug Hoover, while Cameron steadfastly acts as though she's on the verge of a full-scale panic attack. There is a line between gallows humor and tastelessness, but Very Bad Things apparently doesn't have a clue where that might be. (11/27/98)
Great Hills
D: Frank Coraci; with Adam Sandler, Kathy Bates, Fairuza Balk, Jerry Reed, Henry Winkler, Clint Howard, Rob Schneider, Larry Gilliard Jr. (PG-13, 100 min.)
Another half a year, another Adam Sandler film. Director Coraci, who reined in the manic comic in their last outing, The Wedding Singer, takes the opposite tack this time and allows Sandler the freedom to go way over the top with mixed results. Fans of The Mumble that Walks Like a Man will almost certainly rejoice that Sandler is back to his old SNL tricks; others might note that the whole thing feels like yet another extended sketch that drags on about an hour too long. Either way, the game is played by Sandler's rules. Here he's Bobby Boucher, a Louisiana football waterboy who, when fired by evil coach Reed, moves on to serve for the losingest college team in Louisiana history, which, unsurprisingly, is coached by Henry Winkler. Thoroughly wrapped in his mother's apron strings (Kathy Bates, even more over the top than her co-star, if such a thing is conceivable), he's the saddest sack around, taking his team's abuse as if it came with the job. When Winkler urges him to take a stand, Bobby unleashes the beast within and turns out to be a pretty good tackler. So good, in fact, that he wins the respect of his teammates, leads them to the first annual Louisiana Bourbon Bowl, and starts attracting groupies like Peter Frampton on remoulade. Against the better wishes of his mother, he begins dating ex-con Vicki Valencourt (Balk) and, well, you can probably figure it out from here. The Waterboy is about as inoffensive a comedy as you're likely to find these days, although citizens of the Sportsman's Paradise might rankle at the heavy-handed depiction of their Cajun cousins. Still, it's a mildly amusing bayou farce with plenty of "foosball" action to liven the sometimes plodding proceedings. As in The Wedding Singer, Coraci displays an inspired sense of mediocrity in his direction. Scenes proceed from one another with casual ease as Sandler loafs through the role, smacking his lips and generally playing up the Cajun hick routine. Salvation, if that's what you want to call it, comes in the form of the impossibly sexualized Balk, who devours scenery with gooey abandon. Who knew this evil witch from The Craft was such an accomplished comedienne, and why isn't she doing more of it? All raven locks and gobby mascara (and that aquamarine tattoo -- nice permanent touch), she's all the cornfield girls of Hee-Haw rolled into one smoky package. Kudos also to Clint Howard, who has a smallish part, but makes the most of it, and to SNL alumnus Schneider as well, whose predictably toady turn is one of the small, throwaway highlights of the film. It's not Billy Madison, quite, but The Waterboy is still pure Sandler. If you like that sort of thing. (11/6/98)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Nora Ephron; with Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, Greg Kinnear, Dave Chappelle, Jean Stapleton, Parker Posey, Steve Zahn, Dabney Coleman. (PG, 116 min.)
They say that chemistry is everything when it comes to romantic screen pairings. As the star-crossed couple who carry on a cyberspace romance that has trouble translating into real life, Hanks and Ryan double-click in You've Got Mail. Unlike actors in many contemporary movie romances, they connect in that indefinable but unmistakable way, their attraction to each other as natural and inevitable as taking the next breath. Both Hanks and, more particularly, Ryan have heavily relied on certain expressions to play cute in the past -- she often scrunches up her face and flashes a gummy grin, he's prone to looking befuddled and skeptical at the same time -- but those mannerisms don't obscure their characters' mutual attraction here. Nora and Delia Ephron's screenplay begins smartly as it charts the movie's online love affair, observing that strange intimacy in the context of the bustling and impersonal streets of New York City. (The joke goes that the one, true love of your life may walk right past you on the sidewalk, and you'll never know it.) Things get complicated when the two chatliners unknowingly meet and end up disliking each other upon discovering that they are Upper West Side business rivals: She owns a quaint children's bookstore, a neighborhood fixture for over 40 years, while he's building a nearby superbookstore that sells everything at a discount, except for the cappuccino. The war between competing enterprises escalates into a war between the sexes, with the embattled finding themselves oddly attracted to the other without knowing why. Eventually, one of them finds out who the other is, a development that you could characterize as either a vaguely sexist plot device or a canny means by which to entice the movie's female audience. As in Ephron's other directorial efforts (Sleepless in Seattle), the secondary characters in You've Got Mail are flat and almost superfluous; when Hanks and Ryan aren't onscreen together, you're antsy until they reappear. That's how good the two are as a pair -- everyone can't help but pale in comparison. In many ways, You've Got Mail is a valentine to the happenstance miracle of lovers and other strangers, a movie that regards modern romance as something that is, ultimately, old-fashioned to its core. It's that classic sense of timelessness that makes You've Got Mail an appealing love story for these and all other times. (12/18/98)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
THE LAST EMPEROR: DIRECTOR'S CUT(1987) D: Bernardo Bertolucci; with John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ying Ruocheng, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto. This director's cut adds 58 minutes on to Bertolucci's magnificent 1987 original. At the time of its initial release, The Last Emperor snagged nine Academy Awards. All advance word on this new, three-and-a-half-hour director's cut reports that the extra hour thoroughly enhances the movie experience by lending more richness to the characters and their times. In 1988, when The Last Emperor first premiered locally, The Austin Chronicle wrote: "Bertolucci's modernist epic is a celebration of the grandeur and resilience of China. The script by Bertolucci and Mark Peploe uses 1950 as the narrative epicenter for the flashbacks that chronicle the life of Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, who assumed the throne in 1908 at age three at the whim of the dying Empress Dowager. Pu Yi is enthroned in the Forbidden City in Peking, and Bertolucci and his brilliant cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and art director Fernando Scarfiotti, given permission to shoot within these once-holy walls, have captured oneiric visions of decor, architecture, and color (vibrant reds, golds, yellows, and blues), all processed in three-strip Technicolor whose magnificent hues we haven't seen in this country in years. The coronation of Pu Yi, the tribal rites and ceremonies, Pu Yi's shadow play with a billowing white sheet, the arrival of the republican warlords in 1912 -- all of these are rendered by Bertolucci's ceaselessly exploring Steadicam, tracking and craning across and around the vast space of the wide screen in its journey to discover the enigma at the center of the drama. ... As so eloquently portrayed by Lone, Pu Yi is a man outside history and time, another Bertolucci conformist who wants to retain the monarchy as neurotically as Jean-Louis Trintignant wants to retain his "normalcy" in The Conformist (1971). The tragedy of his story, of all history perhaps, is that no one, nothing, ever really changes. This is the enigma at the heart of this magisterial dream of a movie. (Reviewed:2/12/88; -- George Morris)(PG-13, 219 min.) @Arbor; Fri-Thu.
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) D: Jim Sharman; with Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien. Austin Rocky Horror fans have been dressing up and doing the "Time Warp" thing live for 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.austinrocky.org. (R, 95 min.) @ Wells Branch Discount Cinema; midnight, Fri-Sat.
THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) D: Victor Fleming; with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Frank Morgan, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton, Charley Grapewin, the Munchkins. This special edition re-release commemorating the 60th anniversary of America's beloved classic has been digitally restored and remastered in Dolby Digital Stereo Sound. It's been 25 years since the movie's last theatrical run, which means that just about eveyone is overdue for seeing this marvelous spectacle the way it was meant to be seen. (But even though the MPAA has doled out a G rating for this new release, do remember how truly scary all those flying monkeys and melting witches can be on young, impressionable eyes.) A particularly fun Web site with a movie timeline and lots of sound clips, photos, lyrics, and posters can be found at http://www.thewizardofoz.com. Click those ruby slippers and be off to see the Wizard. (G, 101 min.) @Discount 8, Fri-Thu.
IMAX THEATRE (San Antonio):
The IMAX Nutcracker (1997) D: Christine Edzard; with Miriam Margoyles, Heathcote Williams, Lotte Johnson, Benjamin Hall. There's no ballet in this 37-minute-long, live-action version of this seasonal kids classic, but it's sure to be b-i-g nonetheless.(NR, 37 min.) All seating is assigned and may be purchasedin advance. Other daily IMAX shows includeMystery of the Maya, Everest, Alamo: The Price of Freedom,and conventional 35mm theatrical screenings each evening. For more info and reservations, call 800/354-4629. @Imax Theatre in San Antonio; Fri-Thu.