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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: David Cronenberg; with Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jude Law, Ian Holm, Don McKellar, Callum Keith Rennie, Sarah Polley, Christopher Eccleston, Willem Dafoe. (R, 90 min.)
No doubt about it: David Cronenberg is back to his old self. After stumbling badly with his last film, the pointless and disjointed Crash, the Canadian director has finally made a film that can be distinctly described as "a David Cronenberg film." It's been a while. Although all his more recent films -- Naked Lunch, Dead Ringers, M. Butterfly, The Fly, The Dead Zone -- contained that uniquely Cronenbergian language in which the emotional world is brought to life in terms of graphically visceral logic and detail, eXistenZ is Cronenberg's first film since Videodrome (1983) that is wholly his invention and not an adaptation of some previously existing work. Like Videodrome, eXistenZ posits the human body as both a receptacle for and generator of a shadow world of escapist fantasy and alternate reality. These are no mere metaphors for Cronenberg. Sex and horror, pleasure and death, are inextricably linked in his world. In eXistenZ, Leigh is cast as top game designer Allegra Geller, a real-life goddess to her devout fans, a demoness to partisans of the Realist Underground. As she launches the first public demonstration of her new invention, a game called eXistenZ, which is played by inserting the venous UmbyCord of the organ-like MetaFlesh game pod into the human bioport receptacle (a permanent, anus-like jack zapped into the base of the player's spine), an assassination attempt is made on her life. She flees with only a new company flack (Law) for security. The rest of the movie is an elaborate cat-and-mouse game between reality and game reality, the details of which are random and, ultimately, irrelevant. As Allegra explains at one point, "You have to play the game in order to find out why you're playing the game." It's a little dodgy at times but everything is wrapped up clearly in the movie's epilogue. And by then you've seen such unforgettable things as the gristle gun that shoots human teeth that the details of specific narrative comings and goings are clearly subordinate to the overall experience. The timing of the release of eXistenZ on the heels of The Matrix is bound to open our eyes to the possibilities of game realities. Also, in light of the current climate of self-questioning and finger-pointing that surrounds the questions related to children and violence, eXistenZ is sure to tweak a few nerves. The movie asks questions about whether a game designer should be regarded as a great artist and whether the world's most effective game artist deserves to be punished. The assassination attempt on Allegra is referred to as a "fatwa" and the idea for the movie arose during an interview Cronenberg conducted with Salman Rushdie a few years ago while the author was still in hiding. As the story's high priestess of game design, Leigh has not turned in a performance as mischievous and alluring in quite some time. Holm and Dafoe also turn in especially amusing performances. Cronenberg also receives able assists from longtime collaborators cinematographer Peter Suschitzky, production designer Carol Spier, special effects supervisor Jim Isaac, editor Ron Sanders, and composer Howard Shore. "People are trained to accept so little but the possibilities are so great," we're admonished early in the film. Another way of saying this is that in the game of eXistenZ it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. (5/14/99)
Arbor
D: Michael Hoffman; with Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Kevin Kline, Calista Flockhart, Anna Friel, Christian Bale, Dominic A. West, Stanley Tucci, Sophie Marceau, David Straithairn. (PG-13, 115 min.)
For my money the most gloriously, enchantingly trivial play in the Shakespearean canon, A Midsummer Night's Dream may also be the most screwup-proof of the bard's works. The story, already brimming with matchmaking fairies, love potions, and human-animal transformations, couldn't be any more preposterous than it already is, and therefore stands up well to the efforts of latter-day interpreters to "open it up" with their own gratuitous flights of whimsy. Michael Hoffman's contribution to the long tradition of nontraditional Shakespearean settings is to change the locale from ancient Greece to late 19th-century Italy, replete with background music from La Traviata. The only obvious benefits to this approach seem to lie in opportunities to showcase cleavage-flaunting period costumes and the almost pornographically gorgeous Tuscan scenery. Still, I guess it's no sillier than a hip-hop-pumping Romeo and Juliet set in Miami's South Beach. Where Hoffman (Soapdish, One Fine Day, Restoration) really earns his indulgence is in his masterful balancing of outlandish, hallucinatory splendor in the production design with basic reverence for Shakespeare's language and characterizations. This is a sublimely sensual film. Bathed in glitter, summer sweat, and moonlight, overflowing with giddy poetic language and shameless low comedy, it has a seductive, genuinely dreamlike feel that invites total surrender to its spell. Although Hoffman has courted disaster by packing his cast with so many stars who can dominate the screen, his gamble pays off thanks to their willingness to subordinate their charisma to the task of nurturing the story's inherent magic. Among the host of delightful performances, I especially enjoyed Everett as the brooding fairy king Oberon, whose tiff with queen Titania (Pfeiffer) sets the general romantic chaos in motion, and Tucci as his amiably maladroit sidekick, Puck. Kline's Bottom (the actor/ass with whom Pfeiffer becomes enamor'd after she gets a dose of Oberon's love juice) is featured more prominently than in the play. Kline runs with the opportunity, hamming it up shamelessly while adding a bit of pathos and vulnerability to the blustering buffoonery we normally associate with the character. Flockhart takes a manic, highly entertaining vacation from her dingbat Ally McBeal persona as perpetually lovelorn Helena who, thanks to Puck's ineptitude, ends up being pursued by not only her own lust object, Demetrius (Bale), but also best friend Hermia's swain, Lysander (West). These actors are masterful at Job No. 1 in any Shakespeare play, which is to do justice to the ornate and recklessly poetic -- yet richly communicative -- quality of his dialogue. A Midsummer Night's Dream is by no means the most important Shakespeare play, but it's the one that first made me and many others fall in love with Shakespeare. With this luscious, intoxicating adaptation, Michael Hoffman has not only proved that he shares that love, but has poured it into a darn-near irresistible trap for even those who seldom venture into the land of blank verse-spouting men in tights. (5/14/99)
Arbor, Barton Creek, Dobie, Highland, Lakeline, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North
D: Daniel Lee; with Jet Li, Lau Ching Wan, Karen Mok, Francoise C.J. Yip. (R, 102 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Jet Li stars in this 1996 Hong Kong action spectacle (Hak Hap) which is now getting a major U.S. push. Martial arts master Li must fight against his old friends, members of an elite squad of medically enhanced super-soldiers rendered void of emotional and physical pain. It's dubbed into English and digitally remastered. (5/14/99)
Great Hills, Lakehills, Lincoln, Metropolitan, Riverside, Tinseltown North
D: Erick Zonca; with Elodie Bouchez, Natacha Régnier, Grégoire Colin, Jo Prestia, Patrick Mercado. (R, 113 min.)
In the city of Lille, France, an unlikely alliance is formed between two disparate young women -- Isa (Bouchez), a slender naïf burdened with an oversized rucksack and a daffy, close-cropped shock of black hair, and Marie (Régnier), the intelligent, hopeless romantic who takes her in when she has nowhere else to go. The pair meet at a local sewing factory where Isa, broke and homeless after finding that her contact in Lille has moved away, secures a (very) temporary job behind a clanking industrial sewing machine. It's the sort of make-work that goes on in any town, you suppose, fast cash for the hungry and abandoned, but Isa lacks the knack and promptly bungles the job. Catching a smoke with the stand-offish Marie, she innocently ingratiates herself into Marie's hesitant graces and follows her new friend home. It's not actually Marie's place, but the home of a mother and child who were recently injured in a car crash; they're both in the hospital (we later learn that the mother is dead, the girl in a coma) and Marie is in charge of their extensive flat. As much a free spirit as Marie is a brooder, this sudden collision with Isa charges Marie's batteries -- together the two of them go out in search of fun, eventually ending up with a pair of burly club bouncers Frédo and Charly (Prestia, Mercado). Isa rejects Fredo's advances, but Marie, clearly starved for attention, latches onto the hulking, introspective Charly. When she later runs into the pair's wealthy, clubowner boss, Chriss (Colin), she begins to distance herself from the employee in favor of the employer, leaving both Charly and Isa to wonder where her allegiances lie. "Nowhere" appears to the correct answer in Zonca's film, which won France's prestigious Cesar award as well as netting Best Actress awards for both Bouchez and Régnier at Cannes '98. It's easy to see why: In a film that essentially consists of the day-to-day travails that flux across the lives of these two utterly distinct, utterly normal young women, Bouchez and Régnier manage to make every scene (or non-scene as the case may be; there's often so little going on on the surface here that you wonder exactly what Zonca's point is) crackle with a static charge. When Isa takes it upon herself to begin caring for the comatose young girl in the hospice, she discovers a new goal for herself. Marie, at odds with just about everyone and everything by film's end, resorts to cheap and vicious mockery at Isa's emotional openness -- she sees it as a badge of weakness. Zonca, and more importantly Bouchez and Régnier, capture not just the days of their lives but the very seconds. Not a shot drifts by that isn't laden with portentousness, and though I suspect many people will find the film to be "too French," it's nonetheless a tour de force on all available fronts. (5/14/99)
Village
D: Franco Zeffirelli; with Cher, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Lily Tomlin, Judi Dench, Charlie Lucas, Baird Wallace, Massimo Ghini, Paolo Seganti. (PG, 116 min.)
Tea With Mussolini sounds like an elegant affair, but its pinky is barely extended. Franco Zeffirelli's contrived autobiographical film about his youth in fascist Italy has little social grace -- it's embarrassingly awkward, like a dilettante playing the doyenne. The plot embellishments are many -- poetic license is exercised with little restraint here -- so much so that the movie has a fabricated, even fake feel about it. (Shades of Lillian Hellman and Julia.) Aside from Zeffirelli's self-ennoblement, the primary purpose of Tea With Mussolini appears to be casting actresses who have either perfected playing similar roles over the years or who have actually lived those parts: flamboyant, nouveau riche American entertainer (Cher); repressed, annoying Englishwoman with an eventual heart of gold (Smith); kindhearted, nurturing Englishwoman with a constant heart of gold (Plowright); and rowdy lesbian (Tomlin). These colorful women, expatriates living in Florence, raise the motherless Luca (Zeffirelli's alter ego) in a way that's meant to be unconventional -- where's Auntie Mame when you need her? Luca's sentimental education is darkened by the rise of Il Duce and the advent of World War II, but those historical events play like a fairy tale in this movie. (The film's frequent superimposed titles, specifying the time and place, are oddly like those used in newsreels; the effect is unintentionally comic.) Even the beauty of Tuscany is shortchanged in Tea With Mussolini -- David Watkin's bleached-out cinematography is probably intended for nostalgic effect, but it just looks as if the film was overexposed. No doubt that the aging Zeffirelli wanted to wax rhapsodically about his formative years in Tea With Mussolini, but sadly enough, the end product is an exercise in corn. Let's just hope that he hasn't inspired other filmmakers to do the same. Leni Riefenstahl and Coffee With Hitler, anyone? (5/14/99)
Arbor, Barton Creek, Highland, Tinseltown South
D: David Raynr; with Deon Richmond, Donald Faison, Guy Torry, Maia Campbell. (R, 92 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. A high school teen who has lots of fantasies has trouble in his real life getting a date for the prom. Sounds timely. First-time director David Raynr helms this comedy based on a script by Gary Hardwick, the writer-producer of the TV show In the House. (5/14/99)
Lincoln, Metropolitan, Riverside, Tinseltown North
D: Roland Tec; with Jay Corcoran, John-Michael Lander, David Vincent. (Not Rated, 103 min.)
Not reviewed at press time. Roland Tec makes his film writing and directing debut with this adaptation of his stage play A Better Boy. The story's lead character is a successful gay man on the social and physical "A" list, who, while looking for Mr. Right, falls in love with a guy who is less than perfect. This festival-circuit hit asks the age-old question: Do opposites really attract or just create sparks? (5/7/99)
Village
D: Harold Ramis; with Robert De Niro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri, Joe Viterelli. (R, 103 min.)
You don't need a psychology degree to catch all the Freudian subcurrents in Hollywood gangster flicks. All those gun barrels getting stuffed down men's throats, all those big cigars, all that Oedipal conniving to knock off and supplant dominant (god)father figures. So why not explicitly combine the two themes? Take 70 years of clichés about Sicilian Mafia culture and Freudian psychoanalysis, stir 'em up, and see what happens. Ramis, whose directing résumé includes one of the more successful high-concept comedies in recent years (Groundhog Day) and several others of that general ilk (Multiplicity, the original National Lampoon's Vacation) was an obvious -- and smart -- choice to helm this project. His work has a reliable medium-voltage consistency about it, with periodic spikes and surges into the minor genre-classic zone. Ramis' breakthroughs have tended to happen when his casts are strongest. This bodes well for a movie that features wiseguy icon De Niro in a self-parodying lead role and the reliable, versatile Crystal as his foil. And sure enough, the Crystal-De Niro chemistry is the best thing about this farcical tale of a powerful mobster named Paul Vitti who consults a shrink when mysterious anxiety attacks start hampering his ability to perform routine murders and beatings. I was suckered right in by not only the clever setup but also Ramis' skill at manipulating stock imagery and characterizations for his own ends. From the made men's f-word-intensive dialogue to the clam sauce and opera Muzak at the Mafiosi Italian eateries, every stereotype is rendered with Kabuki-like precision, the better to savor their incongruity in the let's-talk-about-our-feelings milieu of clinical psychology. I wouldn't say that Analyze This greatly exceeded my expectations, though. Too often, screenwriters Ken Lonergan and Peter Tolan seemed content to harvest easy laughs from the ground directly underneath the concept's wide canopy. I'd have appreciated a little more willingness to shake the branches for less obvious jokes. Still, De Niro was hilarious in registering believable gangster takes on topics such as the Oedipus Complex ("That Freud was one sick fuck!") and the psychoanalytic method ("I tell you all this stuff and you never say nothin' but 'how did that make you feel?' I could get jelly to do that for me!"). Crystal, as the hapless shrink getting dragged kicking and screaming into Vitti's PuzoWorld theme-park realm, is equally deadpan, and equally good at infusing his role with just enough verisimilitude to keep the broader elements from totally overwhelming the story. But as enjoyable as it is, it's hard to escape a sense of Analyze This being the work of competent talents who knew exactly where the good-enough line was and didn't feel particularly inspired to push far beyond it. And a better definition of a three-star movie I cannot offer. (3/12/99)
Gateway, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Metropolitan
D: Bob Clark; with Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, Kim Cattrall, Peter MacNicol, Ruby Dee, Dom DeLuise, Kaye Ballard. (PG, 94 min.)
Baby Geniuses is infantile, in every sense of the word. The movie anthropomorphizes toddlers by giving them the power of adult speech; no monosyllabic gibberish for these kids. Are they cute? No, just creepy. Watching their computer-enhanced conversations brings to mind those television cartoon characters with superimposed human mouths. It's as if they've had an orifice transplant that didn't quite take (these babes are no Babe). Cheaply made, the premise of this apparent homage to Look Who's Talking is based on the notion that youngsters possess the secrets of the world after birth, but eventually "cross over" and lose this knowledge at age two or so. (Dr. Spock obviously neglected to include this chapter in his childcare manual.) The gimmick gives the movie's infants license to wisecrack, swear, engage in sexual innuendo, and assert their superiority over adults for 90 or so excruciating minutes. The kids also inexplicably possess superhuman strength, which prompts Home Alone-type physical abuse of their elders. Not to worry: The infliction of a painful injury is always followed by an infectious giggle. Trying to encapsulate the movie's storyline is not possible; it doesn't appear to have one. It's just babies, babies, babies, all saying the darnedest things. Although billed as a comedy, Baby Geniuses is a tragedy of epic proportions when considering Turner's performance as the movie's villainess. She's a one-note harridan; her lacquered hair has a greater range of expression than she does. Who would have ever thought that this wonderful actress would one day find herself uttering the line, "Get them, you fools!" and sounding as if she really meant it? Some may view Turner's appearance in this movie as yet another example of the lack of decent roles for actresses over 40; others may see it as a cry for help. Whatever the case, she deserves better than being upstaged by a bunch of bambinos. For that and a zillion other reasons, Baby Geniuses is the best argument for stronger child labor laws since the Olsen twins. (3/19/99)
Lake Creek, Tinseltown North
D: Majid Majidi; Mohammad Amir Maji, Mir Farrokh Hashemian, Bahare Seddiqi. (Not Rated, 87 min.)
Although many of the films we've been seeing from the recently resurgent Iranian cinema feature children as their protagonists (all the better to avoid problems with the censors), Children of Heaven is the first one that I've seen that seems to be telling the story from the children's point of view. In this it sidesteps the allegorical strategies inherent in the tactic; Children of Heaven is simply a story about a predicament faced by two children and the naive but very believable strategies they use to circumvent their problem. A young boy loses his sister's only pair of shoes on his way home from the cobbler when he stops at the grocer's to get potatoes for his mother. Afraid to tell their impoverished parents because of the hardship it would cause, the children decide to share the boy's one pair of sneakers. Amazingly, a whole movie is constructed around this ruse and the additional troubles it provokes. Heartwrenching scenes of the siblings trading off shoes in the alley as one races home from school and the other races off are filled with more drama than one might expect. The girl sees her threadbare shoes one day on the feet of the rag-picker's daughter; the boy's school career is jeopardized by his constant tardiness. The poverty that is at the heart of the situation is in prominent relief, yet there is a happiness about their lives that defies sheer gloss. Here is a brother and sister who truly love each other and are bonded by their complicity. Their hard lives are relieved by such things as playing with the bubbles they create with the soap as they wash the workaholic sneakers. It's poignant but not unhappy. These two know no other reality. Their spunk and ingenuity will likely keep them afloat -- as will their family's love and devotion. Children of Heaven sets these tykes on a quest, yet for a change in the Iranian cinema there is the sense that these children are not merely stand-ins for adults. (4/30/99)
Village
D: Robert Altman; with Glenn Close, Charles S. Dutton, Patricia Neal, Liv Tyler, Julianne Moore, Chris O'Donnell, Ned Beatty, Donald Moffat, Courtney B. Vance, Lyle Lovett, Ruby Wilson. (PG-13, 118 min.)
Robert Altman's jaundiced eye absolutely twinkles in Cookie's Fortune. This honeysuckle-flavored comedy set in Holly Springs, Mississippi is as sweet and refreshing as anything he's ever done. The focal point in Anne Rapp's engaging screenplay is the suicide of an aging matriarch and the confusion that ensues when her death is made to look like a murder. During its slightly off-kilter course, Cookie's Fortune wryly comments on the dynamics of life in a small town, where everything is everybody's business and a man's guilt is a matter of whether you've fished with him. Altman's direction is fittingly as light as the movie; he really seems to be enjoying himself here. His detractors have often accused him of condescendingly portraying individuals -- face it, Nashville didn't endear him to country-western music -- but he embraces the eccentricities of the less-than-cosmopolitan characters in Cookie's Fortune without judgment. People in Holly Springs just do things that come naturally to them, regardless of whether those things make much sense to anyone else. That's why the titular character Cookie kills herself without any warning, and why the immediate reaction of her uptight niece to this tragedy is to eat the suicide note. As in any Altman movie, the cast has a ball. (Lily Tomlin reportedly once told Carol Burnett to take the role of the bride's mother in Altman's 1978 film, A Wedding, even if it meant only carrying a spear.) The actors here are careful to avoid caricature; contrary to thespic tradition, even their Dixie accents are subtle. O'Donnell's clumsy rookie cop provides the film's funniest moments -- his swagger and false bravado are this side of Barney Fife, only more endearing. As his lust interest, Tyler plays a not-so-bad girl with a feisty and appealing verve. And while everyone else has his or her moments (Wilson has a great cameo as a no-nonsense blues singer who literally runs her own police interrogation), it's Close who carries the day as Camille Dixon, whose twisted sense of Southern propriety and family values sets the movie in motion. Close has played some demented dames in her day, but she's never depicted one with such comic insight. Whether she's knocking about in a yellow Pinto, biting crime tape in half with her teeth, or directing a church production of Salome as if she were Oscar Wilde herself, Close is a true joy. Without question, she's the heart and soul of Cookie's Fortune. (4/16/99)
Arbor, Barton Creek, Tinseltown South
D: Jack Perez; with Eric Roberts, Joaquim de Almeida, Tara Crespo, Victor Rivers, James McManus. (R, 100 min.)
A tragicomedy of near-Shakespearean proportions, Jack Perez reimagines Old Mexico and the gringo expat's place in it as a manic fever dream, replete with double crosses, hideous twists of fate, and el diablo, the cockroach. In this 1998 Austin Heart of Film Festival winner, Eric Roberts sinks his teeth into the script (by James McManus) like a starving hound savaging a spare rib, and turns the story's many clichés into revelations of crestfallen grandeur and battered hope. As the alcoholic, thoroughly broken American Walter Pool, Roberts clings to his dreams of becoming a great novelist while precariously residing on the outskirts of a tiny Mexican village -- in a tin and cardboard shack no less. Dividing his time between penning missives to his lost love back in the states, pining for a local señorita, and propping up a battered table at the local cantina, Pool is a shell-shocked waste of a good man, existing on borrowed time, unable to make the payments on his talents, and just generally hanging onto sanity by the abraded skin of his too-white teeth. When he is approached by a gregarious, florid American by the name of Louis Grace (McManus), Pool jumps at the opportunity presented by the meeting. Grace, representing the local mob boss, Jose Garras (de Almeida), offers Pool $100,000 to kill the man who allegedly raped and killed the mobster's 16-year-old son. After a humiliating meeting with Garras, Pool reluctantly takes the offered pistola and sets off to do the deed. Nothing much goes as planned, however, and in the end it's Pool who ends up buried in a shallow roadside grave. Clawing himself out, he awakes in a cucaracha-infested hospital to find that his wounds have left him paralyzed from the waist down. No matter; the double cross has finally given this three-time loser a satisfyingly epic raison d'etre, and he hurriedly sets off to even the score. La Cucaracha is a minor gem that has languished on the shelf for some time; it's one of those films no one seems able to get a handle on marketing-wise, too brazenly downbeat for its own good, but with a cool, giddily humorous edge to it. So many twists and turns are woven into McManus' brilliant screenplay that you're never sure what's going to slap you upside the head next, then when something does, it causes your ears to ring for minutes afterward. Finally, though, it's a desperate, blacker-than-black comedy about the search for life in a dead man, a parable of vengeance, and a love story that could make Federico Garcia Lorca choke on mouthfuls of sick giggles. Perez directs in bold, compelling strokes, drenching the dusty Mexican locales in the mad droning of cicadas, filling the frame with eerily beautiful sun-spattered vistas, and making Roberts look even more insane than we've suspected all along. De Almeida (late of Desperado) and McManus are equally full of vida loca, though the film finally belongs to Roberts' tortured Pool. Comic like a car crash, La Cucaracha takes one man's mala noche and spins it out over a month of black Sundays. (4/23/99)
Tinseltown South
D: Maurice Joyce; with the voices of Thomas McHugh, Fred Newman, Chris Phillips, Constance Shulman. (G, 77 min.)
Doug Funnie is, in some respects, the Charlie Brown of the Nineties. Warmhearted, shy, and likable, he's frequently perplexed by the slings and arrows of adolescence, particularly when it comes to a certain little red-haired girl. But unlike Charles Schulz's character, Doug doesn't ponder theological and existential questions; his dilemmas are on a much smaller scale. The Nickelodeon network has showcased several smart animated series in the past few years, and Doug is probably the sweetest of them all. A daydreamer who just wants to do the right thing, Doug is a great role model for kids. The cynic might say that Doug is a white-bread idealization of today's teenager because he's not every parent's nightmare. True, there's no edge to Doug (his humor is corny, at best) but it's comforting and familiar. In Doug's 1st Movie, Doug and his gang get full-screen treatment, but with limited success. The movie's story is far-fetched when compared to the television series' usual subjects: Doug and his best friend, Skeeter, befriend a lovable lake monster (think Loch Nessie meets E.T.) and must protect him from Mr. Bluff, the town tycoon who owns the polluted body of water from which the creature came. (No doubt the name that they give to the monster -- Herman Melville -- will go over the heads of most of the movie's viewers, including some of the adults in the audience.) There's also a more traditional subplot about Doug's frustrated attempts to woo Patti away from the clutches of an obnoxious upperclassman in time for the Valentine Day's dance. Unfortunately, these narratives don't devote nearly enough time to two of the series' most entertaining characters: Doug's nutty dog, Pork Chop, and his sharp-tongued sister, Judy. Expanding the television's half-hour format, by more than doubling it, is a little disconcerting; the longer length (as well as the movie theatre setting) diminishes the intimacy of the time spent with Doug and friends. Still, if you're a fan of creator Jim Jinkins' colorful characters with purple faces and green hair, you'll overlook these things and enjoy the movie for what it's worth. To borrow from Charles Schulz, you're a good man, Doug Funnie. (3/26/99)
Great Hills, Lake Creek, Northcross, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Ron Howard; with Matthew McConaughey, Jenna Elfman, Woody Harrelson, Sally Kirkland, Martin Landau, Ellen DeGeneres, Rob Reiner, Dennis Hopper, Elizabeth Hurley, Adam Goldberg, Don Most, Clint Howard. (PG-13, 115 min.)
The watch factor: Film critics know it by heart (we all bought stock in Timex's Indiglo line years ago), and most everybody else will recognize it in at least some form or another. It's when -- and how many times -- you find yourself consciously checking your watch during the course of a film's running time. It rarely, if ever, bodes well for the film in question. EDtv, for a film with such an impressive cast, caught me punching my fob not once, not twice, but five successive times. I keep a running tally if I break past three. So what's wrong with Howard's tale of workaday mensch Ed Pekurny (McConaughey) who opts to have his every waking and sleeping moment filmed by floundering cable station TrueTV? It's certainly not McConaughey's amicable performance as the Bay Area lout with a heart of gold. The same goes for Harrelson's turn as Ed's gooney hyper-masculine brother, and Elfman's turn as Ed's emerging love interest (she strikes me, though, as an actress who walks that thin line between fetching perkiness and kvetching annoyance. Like a terrier, she's not everybody's cup of tea). And Howard's film, written by Howard's longtime collaborators Babaloo Mandell and Lowell Ganz (Night Shift, Splash, Parenthood), is packed with the kind of topical, pop-culture witticisms that almost always seem to ensure a hit. Like last year's The Truman Show, to which EDtv is being unfairly compared (the two are miles apart in almost every aspect), Howard's film is champing at the bit to comment on our American culture of white trash insta-fame and Springeristic jingoisms. Ed originally enters into his agreement with TrueTV to help raise capital for his brother's proposed chain of workout centers. Once he finds himself courted by the masses that changes a bit; later in the film, when the masses get greedy, as they always do, Ed's attitude toward his newfound celebrity doubles back once again. There's more of a sustained character arc here than in any three John Grisham adaptations. What fails, if that's the correct word, is that EDtv doesn't gel into the punctilious war cry against mediocrity that it so rightly strives to be; instead, we're left with a pretty solid Ron Howard comedy of manners, which isn't bad at all. It's just not what we were led to expect. Still, Howard fills the frames with a number of outright hilarious touches, chief among them the return of brother Clint as TrueTV's mobile uplink guy. As MTV so astutely pointed out during its 1998 Movie Awards special, Clint Howard is a bedrock genre actor and damn the fact that he more closely resembles a turnip than a man. It's also worth noting that one of the cronies of Rob Reiner (as the scheming head of TrueTV) is none other that Don "Ralph Malph" Most, Richie Cunningham's old fiery-haired crony. Clearly it's old home week. Neither a revelation nor a total wash, EDtv is instead solid comic filmmaking. I just can't help but think it could have been so much more. (3/26/99)
Great Hills, Lake Creek
D: Alexander Payne; with Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell, Mark Harelik, Phil Reeves, Molly Hagan, Delaney Driscoll, Colleen Camp. (R, 103 min.)
High school: Is there a more nightmarish circle of hell anywhere else? You wouldn't think it to see Payne's (Citizen Ruth) take on the exclusionary politics of the dreaded student council electoral process. A fine, near-seamless film that finally suffers slightly from an inability to wrap up its tale, it's the story of senior Tracy Flick (Witherspoon), a turbocharged, blond cookie of a go-getter hellbent on achieving success by hook or by crook. Toward that end, this insufferably perky dynamo of a Betty has positioned herself at the top of the class, heading countless after-school affairs, editing the yearbook, and spearheading any activity that will resonate on her all-important transcript. In that regard, she's Rushmore's anti-Max Fischer, who, despite his ponderous after-school curricula, remained a marginally lovable failure. Tracy, however, is about as lovable as a PMRC-era Tipper Gore, and she boils over with conniving schemes coolly calculated to thrust her into the elite lifestyle she's seeking to fashion post-high school. When she embarks on a campaign for student council president -- unopposed -- she runs afoul of Broderick's civics prof, the denuded and deluded Mr. McAllister, who, despite his obvious love of his job, manages to come off as a schemer in his own right. Urging the injury-sidelined and preternaturally popular and blissfully dim jock Paul Metzler (Klein) to run against Tracy in the interest of "the democratic process," McAllister unleashes a Pandora's Box of high school horrors that eventually undermine his credibility, his job, and ultimately his life. Payne's ruminations on the abuse of power and political machinations aboard the good ship Scholastic Drudgery carry comic incisors quick to puncture the obvious. When Paul's lesbian sister Tammy joins the electoral fray, shattered that her kinda-sorta gal pal switched camps mid-relationship in favor of the oblivious Paul, the three-ring circus reaches a comic flashpoint that leaves charred ambition in its garrulous wake. Despite the high moral ground Payne trods, it's Witherspoon's film all the way. She pouts, she trembles, she explodes into wild, hilarious, painful tantrums when her best-laid plans scurry southward. She's the darkly efficient heart of high school, machine-like in her single-mindedness, disturbing like a razor-bladed daisy but always frothily ebullient. Broderick deserves mention, too, for managing to make this poor sap of a teacher such a remarkably deluded schmo. A subplot involving spousal indiscretions confirms our worst suspicions, though Payne, with much gleefully dark, comic narration, flashback, and freeze-framing keeps Election from tumbling into the pseudo-ironic abyss into which so many other high-school-experience films seem to topple. Home schooling never looked so good. (5/7/99)
Arbor, Dobie, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North
D: Jon Amiel; with Sean Connery, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Ving Rhames, Will Patton, Maury Chaykin. (PG-13, 112 min.)
There are worse fates than being trapped for nearly two hours with the likes of Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones; they are pleasant to watch and easy on the eyes. But if it's a good heist movie you're after, there are surely better ways to go than with this limp caper. A throwback to the techno-heist movies of the Sixties, it may safely be assumed that Connery (who also co-produced Entrapment) is looking to "bond" with the successes of his past. Although the movie's ending suggests the possibility of sequels, I wouldn't bank on it being a long-running franchise. After her memorable career breakthrough in The Mask of Zorro, Zeta-Jones proves here that she has the right stuff to make it as a confident lead protagonist. Apart from her riveting good looks, she projects an aura of capability and intelligence, qualities that also make her a good match for Sean Connery. The "will they or won't they" question is the film's primary glue as there is little in the way of a compelling storyline to hang this thing onto. The script by Ron Bass (Rain Man, What Dreams May Come, My Best Friend's Wedding) and Austinite William Broyles (Apollo 13, Cast Away) is full of implausible holes and little in the way of subplot distractions. Supporting characters have nothing to do (although Maury Chaykin gives it a good try as the duo's perversely dissolute confederate in Kuala Lumpur). The film's highlight is the elaborate tease Zeta-Jones performs as she slithers her body through a mock-up of a laser zone that protects the item they are stealing. The film slows for this sequence as we are given time to carefully study her "learning curve": the pace slows down and the camera fades between lingering close-ups of each star (Connery even bites his lip), and the soundtrack is thick with the sound of labored breathing. Chaykin's performance and the mask Zeta-Jones wears to a dress ball are worth tributes of their own, but it's slim pickings when subordinate aspects such as these are the only things worth recommending. (4/30/99)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Dave Meyers; with Eddie Griffin, Master P, Amy Peterson, Andrew Dice Clay, Traci Bingham, Marla Gibbs, Bill Duke. (R, 96 min.)
Faint praise up front: Rapper-screenwriter Master P may be out of his league in this non-rhyming creative arena, and he's no great shakes as an actor, but at least the latest product of his No Limit business empire can't accurately be dismissed as a vanity project. Instead, P, a onetime high-school basketball scoring star, proves beyond a doubt that he can pass the rock as well as shoot it, framing Foolish from the opening toss as an uncontested alley-oop lob for pal Eddie Griffin to dunk. Not that there was any risk of P's contributions in any way overshadowing the mercurial, trash-talking stand-up comic and star of UPN's Malcolm and Eddie TV series. The plot here is just some inconsequential crust of brain dandruff about two brothers (P as bush-league hoodlum Fifty Dollah and Griffin as brilliant but troubled comedian Foolish Waise) who bicker constantly, fall out over women but still be each other's niggas, goddamn it when times are hard. It comes off as what it may very well be -- the product of a weekend's worth of desultory cribbing from How to Make Millions as a Screenwriter books at Borders. Since Foolish is so story-deprived as to hardly qualify as a movie at all, it's probably more reasonable to evaluate it as an Eddie Griffin concert film. If you've seen his stuff on Comedy Central, you can get a pretty good fix on his Foolish Waise persona by simply doubling the references to genitalia, sex, and the perfidy of "beyotches," then blending in a generous helping of tired observational humor about racial characteristics. But interspersed among material that would hardly pass muster for Andrew Dice Clay (who co-stars as Fifty's gangster employer) is some startlingly poignant, passionately delivered stuff on the subjects of absentee fathers, the African-American male's plight, and slavery. Though the script presents his Foolish Waise character as a full-blown genius, Eddie Griffin is obviously still a work in progress, striving toward an idiosyncratic fusion of Redd Foxx (who in one sorta-funny running gag appears as Foolish's toilet stall-dwelling artistic muse), Richard Pryor, and Chris Rock. The man is raw in more ways than one, but he at least shows promise. Which is more than can be said for Master P's prospects as a Hollywood Renaissance Man. My advice for potential viewers is to respect the wisdom of creative specialization by taking their P on audio, their G on video, and chalking up this film as a forgivable lapse into artistic hubris. (4/30/99)
Highland, Tinseltown South
D: Bronwen Hughes; with Sandra Bullock, Ben Affleck, Maura Tierney, Steve Zahn, Blythe Danner, Ronny Cox, Joe Don Baker, Steve Hytner, Jack Kehler. (PG-13, 104 min.)
Hughes' ostensibly simple romantic comedy -- a man on his way to his wedding is sidetracked by a mischievous other woman -- is surprisingly more solid than you might expect, thanks to an over-the-top star turn by Bullock with assists from Zahn and Tierney. Certainly, there's no reason to break out the thesaurus to enumerate Bullock's many charms -- not here in Austin, anyway. But take note, people: The actress hasn't been as vivacious, as ingratiating, or as downright, drop-dead delicious as this in a good long while (I'm thinking Demolition Man, actually). Her wayward Sarah, an angel swaddled in devil's food, is the kind of spontaneously eccentric foil that Hollywood loves so much but so often blunders -- Bullock (no surprise here) carries off the role in giggly high style, replete with dueling slashes of thick black mascara and gobs of good-bad-girl attitude. Poor beau Affleck is left dog-paddling in her wake, and though he's as good here as he's ever been, he's still mainly a befuddled straight man to Bullock's titular force of nature. As Ben Holmes, Affleck begins the film on a flight to Savannah, Georgia, to marry his beloved at her parents' sprawling estate. When the plane suffers a deus ex machina accident -- courtesy of a wayward waterfowl -- Ben "rescues" Sarah, carrying her off the plane into the terminal, and unwittingly setting in motion an unlikely alliance. Stranded, the pair decide to make the best of it and embark on one of those fatefully error-strewn missions (think Planes, Trains, and AutomoBullocks) to get to Savannah and make it to the church on time! It gives away nothing to say that the pair arrive woefully late, nor, I think, to note that they grow closer, perhaps too close, on the way. While Ben and Sarah are making their slow Southern plod, Ben's fiancée Bridget (Tierney) puts up a solid front in the face of not only her betrothed's missing status, but also a massive Atlantic hurricane that threatens to wipe the wedding party clear off the map. As a metaphor for Bullock's character and the tidal twists of the fortunes of lovers, it's a doozy (albeit a tad obvious), though it adds little to the film's "will he or won't he" tension. Along with the film's outré performances, much of the gleefully fun tone here falls squarely to director Hughes, who uses occasional sprinkles of magical realism throughout to nail the story home. Several CGI shots of pattering rain and swirling cloud banks are dizzily intoxicating, and though, in the end, Forces of Nature is a creampuff of a film, it being a scrappy romantic comedy of the purest stripe, what's so wrong with that? Not a thing, Ms. Bullock, not a thing. (3/19/99)
Gateway, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North
D: Doug Liman; with Desmond Askew, Katie Holmes, Scott Wolf, Jay Mohr, Sarah Polley, Taye Diggs, James Duval, William Fichtner, Jane Krakowski, Timothy Olyphant, J.E. Freeman, Breckin Meyer. (R, 100 min.)
Relentless and mercurial, this new outing by Swingers' director Liman takes off somewhere around Mach 3 and never lets up, leaving you with either a pounding headache or a wicked grin, or perhaps both. Mucking up the conventions of traditional linear narratives à la Tarantino, Liman has broken his film into three separate storylines that weave and bisect amongst each other until they finally collide head on in the final reel. There's supermarket checkout girl Ronna (Polley), who's late on her rent and facing eviction as Christmas draws near. Her solution? Take over for coworker and sometime Ecstasy dealer Simon (Askew), who's off to Las Vegas to clown around with his pals for the weekend. As luck would have it, a pair of soap actors, Adam and Zack (Wolf and Mohr), show up at the grocery looking for party favors just as Ronna takes over for Simon. Convinced she can work around the absent Simon, Ronna contacts his edgy, tattooed dealer, Todd (Olyphant), scores the drugs, and then, through an unlikely scenario involving fetishes, cops, and Amway, ends up burning the dealer and fleeing for her life. Meanwhile, back in Vegas, Simon and pal Marcus (Diggs) manage to do some burning of their own, which sends them racing back to Los Angeles in a stolen car. Adam and Zack's story cuts in here, but it's so sublimely outrageous that no further should be revealed. If all that sounds confusing, it is, but only because Liman parcels out the information one tiny bit at a time until finally you clap your hands to your head and realize that yes, it does make sense after all. As in his previous film, Liman's direction is crisp and taut; this is a filmmaker with a mission, and though it may not be obvious from the start what it might be, you can feel it humming along in the characters' stop-start dialogue and quicksilver editing. John August's script for Go takes on the L.A. rave scene as honestly and intensely as Jon Favreau's Swingers script profiled the retro-cool smootharama that defined the lounge lizards and the Dresden crowd. Designer drugs, glowsticks, whistles, and teenage chaos are the stuff of Go, along with mayhem and titanic, hilarious acts of irresponsibility. Polley, in the pivotal role of Ronna, deftly holds the whole show together, while Wolf and Mohr toe the line between scared rabbits and flaming egos from hell. Go lacks the craftiness of Swingers; it's far more abrasive and downbeat, and the humor is genuinely bleak. Still, Go never lets up until the bitter, rhapsodic end, which is more than you can say for so much else of what's playing alongside it. (4/9/99)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Metropolitan
D: Bill Condon; with Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, David Dukes, Lolita Davidovich. (Not Rated, 105 min.)
In 1957, Golden Age of Hollywood director James Whale was found dead -- a suicide -- in the swimming pool of his Pacific Palisades home. By that point, the English émigré director of some 21 feature films had not made a movie since he retired from filmmaking to live the life of a gentleman painter in the early Forties. Whale, who was an openly gay man in the urbane but closeted world of Hollywood in the Thirties, is generally assumed to have been blackballed by the studios for his sexual/professional imprudence. Although his roots were in the British stage, Whale is best remembered for his stylish American horror gems Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Old Dark House,and The Invisible Man. But like the good doctor who created the Frankenstein monster, Whale's creative reputation was overtaken by the iconic magnitude of the creature he had spawned. Indeed, Bill Condon based his Gods and Monsters screenplay on Christopher Bram's novel Father of Frankenstein. The story is a speculative account of the final days in the life of James Whale, whose debilitating health due to a recent stroke is presumed to be the cause of his suicide. The story invents the character of Clayton Boone (Fraser), a buff, none-too-swift, ex-marine gardener to whom Whale (McKellen) takes a fancy. The decidedly straight Boone is slow to catch on when Whale invites him to pose for one of his paintings and to avail himself of the pool (one of Whale's primary seduction aids). Yet the crux of the story emerges from the unlikely bonds of friendship that grow between the two men. Boone stimulates memories long dormant in Whale -- of such things as his impoverished childhood in England, the horror of life in the trenches during WWI and the horrific death of his young soldier lover, and the buzz of activity and petty drama that typified life on a movie set. Boone delights in the warmth exhibited toward him by this new friend -- a famous person and the father of Frankenstein, no less -- and responds to these overtures of friendship with a newfound compassion and surprising sensitivity. Condon's film also shows great sensitivity to the characters and events depicted here; it never tramples on the privacy and dignity of the subject in question while using the film's speculative structure as a source of biographical illumination -- what it lacks in historical fact it makes up for with emotional realism. So much of the credit must be laid at the feet of Ian McKellen, whose portrait of Whale is a study in acting excellence. The character displays a range that goes from coy to pained, somber to peckish, dapper to dilapidated, and tart to tortured. It is a performance that richly deserves all the end-of-the-year kudos many of the critics groups have awarded it. Against McKellen, Fraser's acting limitations become more noticeable; it seems like another actor might have found dimensions to the character other than his ability to bare his biceps and smile affably. As Whale's disapproving but lovingly attentive uptight Teutonic housemaid, Lynn Redgrave is practically unrecognizable and gives one of the great performances of her career. Though Gods and Monsters is full of scenes and moments that are unforgettable (George Cukor's garden party is a real time-capsule standout), there is an overly romantic quality to the film that makes a narrative parallel between Whale's quest for the young man and the Frankenstein monster's longing for a friend ... or bride. It's a resonant idea but one that reduces the director to the same typecasting he fought all his career. A wonderful companion piece for Gods and Monsters would be Richard Kwietniowski's Love and Death on Long Island, another intriguing film that came out in 1998 that concerns an older, heterosexual British man's sudden, inexplicable yearning for a young, American, male pop star. In that film, John Hurt and Jason Priestley perform an unpredictable pas de deux, motivated by mysteriously compulsive needs that are never fully explained or rationalized. Gods and Monsters instead seeks to make sense of a life hidden by the self-imposed shadows of the lavender curtain and the inscrutabilities of suicide. It's most revealing but ultimately conjecture. (1/1/99)
Great Hills
D: Roland Joffé; with Patricia Arquette, Dermot Mulroney, Ellen DeGeneres, Mary-Louise Parker, Don Johnson, Ray McKinnon, Alex Rocco, Andre Gregory. (R, 104 min.)
From a story by Austin Heart of Film Festival winner Ron Peer (the final film is credited to Peer, Joel Cohen, and Alec Sokolow) comes this sporadically ingenious puzzle box of a film, a deeply cynical, blacker-than-black murder mystery that struggles valiantly to stay one step ahead of the viewer and succeeds more often than not. Drawing its tone (if not its story) from sources as varied as Jim Thompson novels and classic film noir conventions to modern-day whodunits, Joffé (The Killing Fields, The Mission) constructs an intricate house of cards with his scheming characters and then ... blows. Mulroney plays Jake Dunmore, an ad executive and spinmeister who's currently lodged in a liquor bottle. His job at a prestigious agency is increasingly threatened by his bizarre, out-of-control rants and behavior, and he's beginning to suspect that his wife, Sandra (Arquette), is having an affair behind his back. She is, of course, and it's with Jake's older brother Ben, who bides his time between covering for his brother at the agency and playing Bach (and schtupping Sandra) at the local church. Also in this tremulous mix is Peggy (Parker), a bubbly, scatterbrained junior staff member who's apparently developing the hots for Ben. Nothing is what it at first seems, though, and when Ben plunges to his death one night, courtesy of Jake and Sandra, who are intent on securing older brother's $4 million life insurance policy, a ravenous appetite for both murder and instant wealth is cracked open, leaving the surviving players to duke it out amongst themselves to see who will be the last man (or woman) breathing. Also on board is DeGeneres as a flip, supercilious detective who may or may not know more than she's letting on. DeGeneres has come into her own as a comic actress (as opposed to simply a comic), and her obvious, unaffected screen presence -- half bemused cynic, half bewildered onlooker -- fuels much of Goodbye Lover. In a picture filled with comic turns, some quite good, some better than good, DeGeneres is at her peak, tweaking the action around her with various dark jibes and generally having a ball with the material. Patricia Arquette carries the movie -- she's in a good 65% of the scenes -- and it ought to be noted that she does a bang-up job. Granted, Joffé has placed his characters in somewhat of a slightly left-of-center milieu (there's a definite surrealist touch going on here, and you know this isn't the real world), but Arquette pulls off the convoluted role of scheming, scamming wife-mistress far better than expected, crinkled grin and all. This marks something of a return to form for Joffé as well. After (apparently) losing his way with the overeager City of Joy and The Scarlet Letter, he's now forsworn the righteous and the adapted in favor of more earthy pleasures, and while not yet back up to the level of his early genius, he's obviously making a return in that direction. Good for him, and good for us. (4/16/99)
Great Hills
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: Rodman Flender; with Devon Sawa, Seth Green, Jessica Alba, Elden Henson, Jack Noseworthy, Vivica A. Fox. (R, 90 min.)
Despite a negative (and entirely unfounded) pre-release buzz on this ghoulish horror-comedy from Roger Corman alum Flender, Idle Hands turns out to be a stylishly goofy take on the old possessed limb genre, referencing everything from the old Michael Caine vehicle The Hand to Evil Dead 2 and from Karl Freund's Mad Love to any number of old E.C. horror comics. Half the fun, I suspect, is in spotting the throwaway references with which Flender litters the film (George Romero gets two of his own), while the other half lies in the completely over-the-top gore (of which there is much, all creatively done) and blacker-than-black comedy. This sort of moist laff-in recalls the early, gooier work of Kiwi auteur Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Dead/Alive) but with a more Americanized view of things. Sawa plays Anton, a dead-end slacker whose daily grind consists of little more than eating, sleeping, and watching cartoons on television while staying blissfully stoned 24/7. Things take a more interesting bent when Anton's right hand is suddenly possessed by an evil spirit one Halloween night, turning him into a psychotic killing machine who eventually does away with his parents, a pair of cops, and, regrettably, his two best buds, Mick (Green) and Pnub (Henson). On the plus side, Mick and Pnub are too stoned to be bothered with wandering off into that angelic, heavenly chorused light we've all heard about and instead elect to stick around earthside and see if they can't help their pal out of his predicament. As if that weren't enough trouble for poor Anton, Molly (Alba), the neighborhood bass-playing poet babe, has taken a shine to him and the school dance is coming up. What's a demon-possessed stoner (and his two phantom friends, rotting and decapitated) to do? Vivica A. Fox makes a Pam Grier-ish cameo as a nymphomaniacal demon hunter, but the point to Idle Hands -- if there is one -- is to gag the audience while keeping them rolling in the aisles, a talent Flender and his cast have in surprisingly large amounts. No manner of gory evisceration is left to the imagination and the stoner jokes fly as fast and furious as the red stuff. Once you get past the fact that this is sophomoric humor at its best and there's not going to be any hidden moral messages, as there are in so many teen-centric flicks these days, it's all a pleasantly silly, gleefully un-PC carnival ride (albeit one with plenty of cleaver action). Green (Fox's Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Henson make an inspired comic team, Sawa has the befuddled stoner thing down pat, and Alba (Never Been Kissed) is, in a word, yummy. With a final, epic battle involving turbo-bongs and evil hand puppets, Idle Hands might just make it to cult movie status someday. Genuinely twisted and outlandishly stupid, it's that kind of movie, cinematic sinsemilla bathed in arterial hijinks. (4/30/99)
Gateway, Lakeline, Riverside, 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)
Gateway, Lakehills, Lakeline, Metropolitan
D: Ted Demme; with Eddie Murphy, Martin Lawrence, Obba Babatundé, Nick Cassavetes, Ned Beatty, Bernie Mac, Miguel A. Nunez Jr., Clarence Williams III, Bokeem Woodbine, Rick James, Anthony Anderson, Michael "Bear" Taliferro, Lisa Nicole Carson. (R, 108 min.)
This odd mixture of comedy and prison drama works better than might be expected at first glance. By not going all out in either direction, Life manages to find a comfortable blend that exercises the comic talents of costars Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence while also reining in their wilder instincts with measured dramatic storytelling. Last paired in 1992's Boomerang, Murphy and Lawrence play an Oscar-and-Felix-like odd couple who are stuck with each other's company for the rest of their lives when they are sentenced to life imprisonment for a crime they didn't commit. One instance back in 1932 of being together in the wrong place at the wrong time has caused these hustling New Yorkers to live out their remaining 55 years in a Mississippi prison camp. This movie prison stretches all bounds of believability: It's filled with lots of free time and ball playing broken up only occasionally by spates of hard labor, no fences protect its perimeters, the inmates are all a fairly agreeable bunch despite the fact that they are all in there for murder, the penalty for an escape attempt is one night in the hole, and so on. Yet the point of Life is not an exposé on prison conditions but rather an illustration of the bonds of friendship that can develop between people who may not actually like each other. As foils, Murphy and Lawrence are great together, Murphy playing the fast-talking hustler, Ray, and Lawrence playing the more sedate and fussy Claude. Murphy breaks into comic riffs now and again but is mostly held in check by director Ted Demme, who, in Monument Ave. and The Ref, also guided comedian Denis Leary to his only great screen performances. In fact, the large and varied cast provides great support work in this movie, which relies more on character moments than on forward plot development or the dramatic heartache of falsely accused prisoners. This eclectic story structure works much better here than it did in the disjointed Destiny Turns on the Radio, the last film written by Life's screenwriters Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone. Both Lawrence and Murphy seem inspired by recent activities in their choice of these particular screen roles: Lawrence perhaps seeking a calmer and more subdued role following his highly publicized meltdown in the middle of a public thoroughfare, and Murphy (who provided the original idea for the movie), inspired by the possibilities of special-effects makeup in Dr. Dolittle, opted to make a movie in which his character has to age nearly 60 years. Rick Baker's effects work is truly sensational; his spooky reconstruction of Lawrence and Murphy as 90-year-old men may be the most realistic aspect of the movie. This Life may not be everlasting, but it sure gives us a good run for our money. (4/16/99)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Guy Ritchie; with Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher, Nick Moran, Jason Stratham, Steven Mackintosh, Vinnie Jones, Sting, Frank Harper, P.H. Moriarty, Lenny McLean, Vas Blackwood. (R, 106 min.)
Already a tremendous hit in its native England, this turbo-charged debut by Guy Ritchie (previously known only for a handful of energetic television commercials) is a wild, kinetic take on the traditional caper film, one that takes the conventions of the genre and gives them a decidedly U.K. twist -- Johnny Rotten circa 1977 couldn't have directed a more joyously obnoxious bit of tomfoolery. With a plot as convoluted as the East-Ender accents that pepper the production (as in Trainspotting, subtitles are sporadically necessary here), Ritchie and a spot-on cast of mostly newcomers steamroll through the proceedings at a cool 210 kilometers per second. At least that's what it seems like, given the director's penchant for including presumably every one of his stylistic tricks within the frame (and frequently within the same shot -- slow motion, speeded-up action, skewed angles, bizarre opticals, and anything else he can think of). The story centers around four friends -- Eddie (Moran), Tom (Flemyng), Bacon (Stratham), and Soap (Fletcher) -- who go in on an illegal card game hoping to double their money. Unbeknownst to ringer Eddie, the game is rigged, and he not only loses the group's initial investment, but he also ends up owing cantankerous crime boss Hatchet Harry (P.H. Moriarty) an awful 500,000 pounds. With Harry's vicious debt collector Big Chris (Chelsea footballer Jones) on their tail, not to mention the entirely evil, disturbingly silent Barry the Baptist (McLean), the boys have to raise the offending amount or end up floating face down in the drink. Any number of subplots litter Ritchie's film like shell casings in the wake of Big Chris: The boys' next-door neighbors, led by the spotty, dotty Winston, fancy themselves world-class drug dealers (they're far too high on ganja to get much work done, though) and scheme to rip off local kingpin Rory (Blackwood), while Barry the Baptist is off on his own mission to secure a pair of antique hunting rifles for his boss. Add to that flashbacks, flash-forwards, and any number of one-off gags, and what you come up with is a film almost too British to swallow without the aid of a frothy pint of lager. For all its impenetrable rhyming slang, though, Lock, Stock is a breathtaking debut that recalls the hyperstylized violence of Tarantino melded with the classic British caper comedies of Ealing Studios. With such a frenetic, brain-melting load of images to ponder, it's easy to forget that there are also some terrific actors at work here, not the least of whom is the amazing Vinnie Jones. As Big Chris, he's not only a deadly, leather-jacketed killer in the service of the Bad Guys, but also a devoted dad who brings his young son, Little Chris, along for every round of GBH. It's these kinds of heartwarming touches that nail Ritchie and Lock, Stock as two shivs in a gullet, violent visionaries with audacious, outrageous senses of humor as well. (3/19/99)
Arbor, Dobie
D: Jeff Pollack; with David Spade, Sophie Marceau, Patrick Bruel, Artie Lange, Mitchell Whitfield, Martin Sheen. (PG-13, 100 min.)
Former Saturday Night Live smarm-pimp Spade has done well for himself since leaving Lorne Michael's tutelage. A series of comedy features with the late Chris Farley and a trenchant move to an ensemble piece on network television's Just Shoot Me have kept him successfully in the public eye without becoming a strain on anyone's comic vision. Still, the elfin Spade is a comedian best taken in small doses (his snide hipster routine can grate at the best of times, sort of like catching your funnybone in a chipper/shredder), and as a full-fledged romantic lead he suffers from a severe case of "yeah, right." You can hardly see this little blonde smarmbo carrying a bowling ball, much less a whole film. Pollack, who created The Fresh Prince of Bel Air before moving up to the superlative Tupac Shakur feature Above the Rim in 1993, has a deft touch with this sort of romantic fluff, but coupled with Spade's WASPy dialect and the story's obviousness, Lost & Found is mainly lost. Spade plays restaurateur Dylan Ramsey, who falls for the new girl at his apartment complex, a sexy cellist named Lila Dubois (Marceau, luminous despite the material) newly arrived from France. Too bad he's the sort of guy whose close friends are given to saying, "You know, even I didn't like you very much at first." What's a guy to do? In Dylan's case, he absconds with Lila's dog, a cairn terrier called Jack, under the pretense of helping her find the missing pooch. When the dog apparently swallows a wedding ring belonging to Dylan's best friend and partner, the whole charade takes on epic proportions, with Dylan simultaneously wooing Lila and waiting impatiently for Jack to, ah, return the precious stone. Into this There's Something About Mary-ish predicament wanders Lila's ex-lover, the slimy Frenchman René (Bruel), who is intent on winning back the girl and making Dylan his patsy. There are plenty of oddball antics on display, but none more disturbing than Dylan's own patsy, his kitchen assistant Wally, a titanic slob who loves his friend so much that he dyes his hair Spade-blonde and begins dressing like him. The creepy thing is that you quickly begin to suspect that the role was written for Spade's old friend Farley; the guy even looks a bit like that overweight dervish of a comic, and it's borderline tacky to have continued the role after the comedian's tragic death. Perhaps it's coincidence, but nevertheless, the role offers fewer chuckles than it does Freudian heebie-jeebies. Slight in almost every way, Lost & Found is an inoffensive, eminently forgettable bit of fluff, yet more proof of my theory that Spade should quit his comedy gig and tackle the title role in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, already. (4/23/99)
Gateway, Round Rock, Tinseltown South
D: Larry and Andy Wachowski; with Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving, Joe Pantoliano. (R, 139 min.)
"Unfortunately, no one can be told what the matrix is. You have to see it for yourself," intones a grave Fishburne over the film's television ads. I hate to say it, but he's absolutely right. Cobbled together out of bits of pop psychology, cyberpunk lore, and what feels like those old late-night bull sessions during which you and your dorm roommate would argue about whether reality is just the dream of some sleeping giant, The Matrix is a heady, challenging ride into one of the most fabulously constructed science fiction parallel universes this reviewer has ever seen. Beyond that, it's an action film with -- sorry, gang -- Keanu Reeves as a modern-day hacker with dreams of something more. What, exactly, that something is shall remain nameless -- The Matrix is loaded with gut-punching surprises that are best discovered on their own terms. It must be said that Reeves acquits himself at least as admirably here as he did in Speed, although a few sequences in which he attempts to play the lantern-jawed badass elicited minor giggles from the audience. Allied with Fishburne's mirror-shaded Morpheus, Moss's leggy, PVC-clad Trinity, and Pantoliano's wisecracking Cypher, Reeves plays a lone-wolf warrior, Neo, who acts against the futuristic forces of darkness. And what forces they are! Headed by the supremely creepy Weaving as the relentless Agent Smith (think Terminator meets the X-Files' Cigarette Smoking Man), Reeves and his crew put themselves through some of the most rigorous stuntwork this side of Jackie Chan (indeed, the martial arts sequences, of which there are many, were overseen by longtime HK fight choreographer Yuen Wo-Ping of Once Upon a Time in China, among others). The real star of The Matrix, though, are the countless breathtaking computer and optically generated effects that litter the screen like explosions in a Richard Donner film. Rarely have so many startlingly original images been thrown into a single storyline, many of them featuring a new process called "bullet-time photography," which utilizes "dynamic camera movement around slow-motion events approaching 12,000 frames per second." Enough of the tech stuff, though. Really, the only thing you need to know is that The Matrix doesn't just raise the bar on sci-fi and action films, it rips that sucker off and sends it spiraling into the sun. In short, the Wachowski brothers (Bound) have broken through into a whole new ballgame here, not just in terms of graphic design and effects work, but also in editing, sound, and all the other parts that make up a terrific action film. If this sounds like your cup of firepower, let me say that I highly recommend seeing this one in the largest and loudest theatre you can find. It's not for everyone, of course, but I guarantee you fans of firecracker sci-fi cinema are going to be talking about this one for years to come. Bravo! (4/2/99)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Stephen Sommers; with Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, Kevin J. O'Connor, Jonathan Hyde, Oded Fehr, Omid Djalili. (PG-13, 124 min.)
In the pantheon of classic Universal monster movies, the original The Mummy, directed in 1932 by Karl Freund and running just over an hour, was not the start of the studio's most gripping franchise. While the studio's other series feature the man-as-god morality plays of Victor Frankenstein or the baleful, cursed legacy of poor Larry Talbot -- The Wolf Man -- or even the scaly, lovestruck aquatics of The Creature From the Black Lagoon, Universal's Mummy, while pleasantly chilling, was regarded by many as a bit of a bore. Imagine: Bullets won't stop it, but hey, you can always walk faster, right? This ambitious updating by Stephen Sommers (who also helmed the superlative, woefully underseen Deep Rising) makes amends for all that by turning the franchise into an Indiana Jones-style period adventure piece, and while this version suffers from trying to pack too much into too small a space, it's nevertheless a grandly silly outing, filled with Fraser's derring-do, maidens in need of rescuing, foul villains, and the (literally) timeless love story between Pharaoh's wayward priest Imhotep (played this time out by Vosloo of Hard Target and the Darkman series) and his lost love Anck Su Namun. After a prologue and melodramatic voiceover which reveals the circumstances behind the creation of the mummy, Sommers flashes forward to 1923 when mercenary Rick O'Connell (Fraser) and his legionnaire troops discover the lost Egyptian city of the dead -- Hamunaptra -- while fending off some desert raiders. Captured and awaiting execution, O'Connell is eventually recruited (at the end of a noose) by British explorers Evelyn (Weisz) and her brother Jonathan (Hannah -- Sliding Doors, Four Weddings and a Funeral) who immediately embark on a journey to rediscover the city and presumably discover where all that legendary gold is buried. Along the way they ally themselves with an American group operating along the same lines, and before you can say "Karloff!" they've accidentally unleashed the titular baddie. Make no mistake -- this Mummy is an effects film all the way. Early incarnations of the mummy as he seeks to rebuild his corporeality look something like a Todd McFarlane Spawn action figure, though as he garners more fleshy substance (by ingesting the life force of the hapless Yanks who disturbed his crypt) he come to look strikingly like ... Yul Brynner! Sommers is just getting started here, though, and soon follow plagues, more mummies, devilish sandstorms, and whatnot. It's a whale of a Saturday matinee for kids (the film carries a PG-13 rating), almost entirely bloodless, but adults may choke on some of the wooden, ominous dialogue. Fraser proves once again that he's the most amiable actor working today, while Hannah, and especially Deep Rising alumnus O'Connor, provide much comic relief. The whole show feels like it should be unspooling alongside The Phantom or The Rocketeer at the summertime grindhouse of your choice; not a bad thing at all, but also not one likely to steal Karloff's thunder. (5/7/99)
Barton Creek, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Metropolitan, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North
D: Donald Petrie; with Jeff Daniels, Christopher Lloyd, Elizabeth Hurley, Daryl Hannah, Wallace Shawn, Christine Ebersole, Ray Walston, Michael Lerner. (PG, 93 min.)
There will come a day when Hollywood finally runs dry of Sixties television shows to adapt to the big screen. That day hasn't come yet, obviously, but it will, and then what? Forward to Quincy, M.E.: The Movie, and Bosom Buddies: Sinister Queen, I suspect. It's only a matter time. This Disneyfied update of the old CBS curiosity, which ran from 1963 to 1966, isn't as embarrassingly trite as, say, Car 54, Where Are You? but neither is it likely to take home any awards in the originality department. Daniels, mastering the art of the buffaloed double take, fills in for the late Bill Bixby as Santa Barbara television producer Tim O'Hara, who one night witnesses the crash of an alien craft while tooling down the Pacific Coast Highway. The ship is piloted by a renegade Martian played with shameless gusto by Lloyd, an actor who more and more seems to have arrived from some alternate future where all actors mug like Jim Carrey at an awards presentation. With his craft damaged, Lloyd enlists the help of Tim (who introduces this silver-spacesuited wiseacre to the neighbors as his Uncle Martin). Also drafted into assistance is Tim's co-worker Lizzie (Hannah) since Uncle Martin is being pursued by a loopy gang of sci-fi toughs from SETI, led by TV's original Martian Ray Walston and a hyperkinetic Wallace Shawn. (No one appears to have told the writers, Sherry Stoner and Danna Oliver, that SETI -- the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Life -- like the proverbial X-Files, has long since been retired by its NASA overlords. Does it matter? Not a whit.) Toss into this mix Hurley as the conniving newswoman Brace Channing and Ebersole as the nosy paramour-next-door, and you have mass comedy chaos, or so the pitch presumably went. In reality, Petrie (Richie Rich) has crafted a snuffling dog of a comedy that's far too reliant on less-than-amazing CGI effects. Among these are Uncle Martin's ambulatory spacesuit named Zoot, and some truly abrasive chicanery revolving around space gumballs that allow the chewer to transform into an alien being. Kudos, though, to Hannah for transforming into a multi-tentacled she-beast in the film's latter third; the Acme Novelty horror of it all puts you in mind of Sean Young, and it's a kick to watch her/it devour the bad guys. That aside, My Favorite Martian is notable only for the return of Wallace Shawn in yet another role that most would consider far beneath him. This isn't Andre he noshing with, nor is it Uncle Vanya. You've got to wonder what Shawn's father, the late, great William Shawn, former editor of The New Yorker magazine, would have thought of his son's acting choices of late, though it's perhaps for the best that we'll never know. On the plus side, the film opens with a new Mickey Mouse and Pluto short which may indeed be the single worst piece of animated output the Disney studio has ever created. That alone is worth the price of admission on the "so bad it's good" scale -- if you're into that sort of thing, that is. (2/12/99)
Tinseltown South
D: Raja Gosnell; with Drew Barrymore, David Arquette, Michael Vartan, Molly Shannon, John C. Reilly, Garry Marshall, Sean Whalen, Leelee Sobieski, Jeremy Jordan, Jessica Alba, Marley Shelton. (PG-13, 107 min.)
Josie Geller (Barrymore) is the youngest copy editor at The Chicago Sun-Times, a fact that gives her great pride. Still, for all her rampant ability to cross the t's and dot the i's of her coworkers, she's bucking for a story of her own. When publisher Rigfort (Marshall, who's way over the top here) throws her a bone during a story conference, she at first is delighted, then terrified. Not only her job but also that of her editor Gus (Reilly) is riding on the assignment. Her mission: to return to high school and re-enroll as a 17-year-old transfer student to find out what the kids are up to these days. At first glance it seems simple enough, but after the first day -- during which Josie manages to do just about everything wrong, from wearing a disastrously chosen ensemble to drenching herself with chocolate milk -- it becomes apparent that this mission is going to be more trouble than she bargained for. With an assist from her baseball-player-wannabe brother Rob (Arquette), Josie makes herself over as one of the popular kids. Then Rob also enrolls and begins spreading juicy gossip to the effect that Josie is indeed the coolest girl in school. The plan works, and she finds herself on the inside of the cool kids clique (brilliantly headed by the trio of Heathers clones Kirsten, Kristen, and Gibby, a gaggle of teen fleshpots the likes of which we haven't seen since Beyond the Valley of the Dolls ... or at least Clueless). As Josie diligently culls information for her exposé, her English professor, Mr. Coulson (Vartan) begins making eyes at her, a situation her employers feel is just the kind of muckraking journalistic bombshell they're looking for. Caught between her loyalty to the Sun-Times and her budding feelings for Coulson, Josie must decide whether it's love, or war, or just plain old high school chaos she's really after. Never Been Kissed is being marketed as yet another teen comedy and that's something of a mistake, I think, judging by the above-average story by screenwriters Abby Cohn and Marc Silverstein. Granted, Barrymore has blossomed into a terrific comedienne over the past few years, but Gosnell and company lace the comic shenanigans of their film with a hefty dose of the bittersweet. Frequent flashbacks to Josie's real high school days reveal a series of genuinely traumatic incidents that end with a prom-night prank very nearly worthy of Carrie, which in turn results in the mousy copy editor into which the character has transformed at the film's beginning. Barrymore and Arquette take their performances to heart and are clearly having a ball with the material, but it's Gosnell's solid direction that keeps the film afloat. While hardly an original story, Never Been Kissed still manages to get by on wry smarts, barbed asides, and plenty of Barrymore's comic grace. (4/9/99)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Metropolitan, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North
D: Joe Johnston; with Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, William Lee Scott, Chris Owen, Chad Lindberg, Natalie Canerday, Laura Dern. (PG, 108 min.)
Let me preface this by saying I have absolutely nothing against former Austinite Joe Johnston. His work with George Lucas, as production and visual effects honcho on Star Wars and its sequels as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark (not to mention supervising the intense aerial sequences on Spielberg's Always) is beyond reproach. This, clearly, is an artist who can reach deep inside himself and touch the kid that grew up thriving on Ray Bradbury's Mars stories. As Harry Knowles' geek squad would wisely put it, the man is "one of us." That's not even mentioning the terribly overlooked The Rocketeer. There have been the occasional slip-ups: TV's The Ewok Adventure and it's so-bad-it's-really bad sequel Ewoks: The Battle for Endor spring to mind like Tinky-Winky in a broken blender. Hey, no one's perfect. So it pains me to say that October Sky, the true story of Homer Hickam, a Coalwood, West Virginia kid with a dream, is ploddingly earthbound. That dream, to follow in the footsteps of his hero Werner von Braun and kick out rockets for America's budding, late-Fifties space program, comes true, though not without its setbacks. As the film opens, the American world is reeling from the announcement that the Soviets have sent an unmanned satellite -- Sputnik -- into low orbit around the Earth. Gyllenhaal, as the teen Hickam, reacts not with fear but with single-minded fascination. It's not long before he and his friends -- Roy (Scott), Quentin (Owen), and O'Dell (Lindberg) -- set off their own rudimentary jet propulsion mockups, blasting holes in mom's white picket fence and tearing up the countryside with needle-nosed precision. Of course, there's a setback, and here it comes in the form of Homer's father John (Cooper), a longtime coalminer stuck between the striking miners beneath him and this wild kid who just wants to get out of town. Tough call, yes, but Cooper, late of John Sayles' Lone Star, gives the best performance in the film. It's not what you'd call nuanced, but it is thoroughly believable, this hardshelled rural traditionalist with a stoic façade. There's nothing remotely "bad" about October Sky -- it's an accomplished, heartfelt work by anyone's measure. The problem here is the film's deadweight earnestness; watching October Sky is like having von Braun proselytize at you for two hours at a stretch. And that's without the admittedly fascinating Wagnerian subtext. If you've seen the ad campaign -- "not since Rocky has a film so deeply touched the hearts of blah blah blah" -- you're acquainted with a studio that has absolutely no idea how to market this unique, fresh, but ultimately stagnant film. There's hope, heroism, and Dern as a dying schoolmarm, but October Sky falls flat (despite its rich tone and some startling cinematography by Fred Murphy) due to its all-too-obvious third act and the vague fact that, really, not that much happens. Familial redemption, yes, of a sort, but no real fireworks. Here's hoping for a sequel that takes off where that final shot of the space shuttle rocketing skyward begins. (2/19/99)
Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Village
D: Alejandro Amenábar; with Eduardo Noriega, Penélope Cruz, Chete Lera, Fele Martínez, Najwa Nimri, Gerard Barray. (R, 117 min.)
Winner of seven Goya Awards (Spanish Oscars), this sophomore feature by Amenábar is a deeply complex psychological mind warp of a film that begs to be viewed more than once, if only to unpeel the multiple layers of meaning that drench every scene like the webbing surrounding an arachnid's lunchtime fix. To say that this is a "thriller" hardly does Amenábar or his cast justice; Open Your Eyes is a brilliant puzzlebox caught on celluloid, beautiful to look at but difficult to figure out. Amenábar combines elements of science fiction, horror, and German Expressionism with the more traditional elements of a love story and Hitchcockian "wrong man" turns, and then somehow manages to make it all fit into a skewed sort of logic. You may not get it at first, but the effort is well worth it when you do. Noriega plays César, a wealthy young Madrid gadabout who values his looks and his libido above all else. Orphaned years before when his parents died in a car crash, he bides his time throwing lavish parties and hanging out with his best friend Pelayo (Martínez) when not busily bedding young women on a nightly basis. When his friend introduces him to the mysterious Sofia (Cruz) during a birthday party, César finds himself coolly ditching his current paramour, the feral Nuria (Nimri), in favor of this new acquisition. Little does he suspect that the night will end with them falling in love (while Pelayo stews outside, robbed of an "ideal" woman yet again by his handsome Lothario of a friend). As dawn rises and César leaves Sofia's apartment, he's accosted by Nuria, who offers him a ride home. He accepts, only to find that the spiteful woman has other plans as she careens her sportscar out of control and kills herself, leaving César to face life with a shattered face, his good looks a thing of the past. And then, strangely, César awakes to find himself in the company of a doctor in a psychiatric ward, his face covered by a bizarre mask, and intimations of murder ringing in his ears. Has César lost his mind? He recalls a team of physicians tirelessly rebuilding his cracked visage, but why then does he still need the mask? And what of Nuria, who appears to be alive and well, except for the fact that everyone but he knows her as Sofia? No written description of Open Your Eyes will do justice to this surreal, disturbing tale of dreams and nightmares, as each successive scene offers up more distressing questions than answers, deepening the mystery pool yet staying true to its own maddening internal logic. Amenábar's film does make sense, it's just not the sense of everyday life. The logic here echoes that of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (whose protagonist is also named César) and Eyes Without a Face, though Amenábar's film is wholly original. At only 25 years old, the director is being called the savior of Spanish cinema. That might not be too far off the mark if Open Your Eyes is indicative of things to come. (4/30/99)
Dobie
D: Sam Weisman; with Goldie Hawn, Steve Martin, John Cleese, Mark McKinney. (PG-13, 92 min.)
Since most folks' attitudes about Neil Simon can be plotted somewhere along the vast arc between indifference and near-religious zealotry, this remake of the fondly remembered 1970 original starring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis is probably all but flop-proof. Unfortunately, awareness of this fact seems to have resulted in a general lack of urgency that reveals itself in generic, TV-sitcom directing techniques, halfhearted acting, and lamebrained, uninspired efforts to update Simon's screenplay for Nineties audiences. The basic concept remains unchanged: A middle-aged Midwestern couple (Martin and Hawn), who are in New York for hubby's job interview, get subjected to outlandish big-city indignities that push them to the brink of insanity but ultimately re-light the spark in their humdrum marriage. The general feel of the action and dialogue, however, is markedly broader -- not that Simon is any Joseph Mankiewicz to begin with -- than the earlier film, much more driven by pratfall comedy and spectacular, cataclysmic events. In one early scene, we're even treated to that quintessential action-movie staple, the runaway car crashing through a fish market. The clear villain in this area is screenwriter Marc Lawrence, an inexplicably hot current property who's also responsible for the currently playing Forces of Nature. Lawrence shows little feel for Simon's light, zingy style, which plays off unexpected juxtapositions of characters and situations. And director Weisman (George of the Jungle; D2: The Mighty Ducks) is a curiously undistinguished choice to helm a movie with this much hit potential. But as much as it pains me to say this, there's no weaker link in this creative chain than Steve Martin, a performer I've loved since his late-Sixties appearances on the Dean Martin Comedy Hour. As so often happens with even the most original comic actors (including Jonathan Winters, Robin Williams, and even Lemmon himself), Martin seems to have let his signature style harden into a mold -- a slightly toned-down variation on his wild-and-crazy-guy SNL persona. The repeated imposition of these mugging, arm-waving antics onto his allegedly fussy and anal-retentive character creates a disconcerting effect that really only works once, when he accidentally swallows a hit of acid thinking it's aspirin. Hawn is actually pretty effective as the frustrated hausfrau whose animal guile -- including a surprising flair for femme fatale subterfuge -- emerges under duress. But the best reason to consider catching The Out-of-Towners as a rainy weekend renter is John Cleese, who hilariously adapts his Basil Fawlty character to his role as an imperious, cross-dressing hotel manager. However, even this is a small blessing in such a slight, oddly lifeless movie with dubious appeal for even the most incorrigible Simon devotees. (4/2/99)
Gateway, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Northcross, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Brian Helgeland; with Mel Gibson, Gregg Henry, Maria Bello, David Paymer, Lucy Liu, Deborah Kara Unger, William Devane, Bill Duke, Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn. (R, 102 min.)
Here's the set-up: Bagman and driver Val and Porter (Henry, Gibson) steal $140,000 from an Asian syndicate, and then Val double-crosses Porter, steals his cut, and runs off with his wife (Bello), leaving Porter for dead in a parking garage with a bunch of .38 slugs in his hide and a crack in his head. The only trouble? Porter, like the proverbial bad penny, just keeps coming back, much to the dismay of his ex-partner and those unlucky enough to be in control of his missing cash flow. Based on the Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark) novel The Hunter (which was also made into the 1967 film Point Blank), Payback mines the gritty, flinty conventions of heist-and-vendetta flicks like a streamlined pro, all rough edges and washed out images. Gibson reverts almost to his primeval Mad Max days as the unstoppable, amoral Porter, a wandering Ronin intent only on getting his cut. With his junkyard-dog good looks and scrappy leather jacket hanging off-kilter on his frame, Porter looks like the gutter come to nasty life. That he's Payback's protagonist says less about his Homeric qualities than it does about the rest of the film's morally bankrupt cast, which includes Porter's junkie wife (Bello), weaselly cab Mafia honcho Stegman (Paymer, excellent as always), Porter's trick-turning ex-flame Lynn (Unger), and assorted other roughhousers. Screenwriter Helgeland, coming off the critical success of L.A. Confidential and the commercial wreck of Costner's The Postman, makes his directing debut this time out and does an alarmingly bang-up job. Payback has a slight story; there's really not much going on here except for this dog-tired, three-time-loser trying desperately to get his money back, but Helgeland whips it up into a monumental battle of wills: Porter vs. The City. What city? We're never told, but this steaming, befouled metropolitan slag heap bears more than a passing resemblance to the Dark Knight's fabled Gotham (you get the idea, though, that even superheroes might want to steer clear of this Porter guy). Production designer Richard Hoover deserves particular praise for creating the look and feel of a giant, post-industrialized hellhole for Porter to chase around in. It's not exactly the Detroit of Robocop or Carpenter's New York escape, but Payback's milieu is as formidable a character as anyone sporting an exit wound onscreen. Helgeland's film positively seethes with bad vibrations; it's kicky, nasty urban sangfroid with pointy little teeth and a serious case of the angries, an existential hand grenade disguised as a heist film. (2/5/99)
Tinseltown South
D: Mike Newell; with John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Cate Blanchett, Angelina Jolie, Jake Weber, Kurt Fuller, Vicki Lewis, Matt Ross, Jerry Grayson, Michael Willis. (R, 124 min.)
Operating under levels of stress that would turn ordinary men to jelly, the air traffic controllers at New York's Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON) must safely guide 7,000 flights a day to safe harbor at one of the area's three mightily congested terminals -- Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark airports. Dealing with 80-hour work weeks and little or no rest or vacation, it's a common occurrence for the controllers to occasionally "go down the pipes," that is, go nuts sitting in front of their glowing terminals and aligning the tiny flashing blips on the screens in all-important order, shaking, cursing, fighting in the planes one on top of each other, day after day after day. As you might imagine, their personal lives suffer. This new film by Newell (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco), which is based on a 1996 article by Darcy Frey in The New York Times Magazine, takes a comic look at these mad airline saviors and the women who love them, and while it's a giddy, nervous ride, packed with rich, techno-speak dialogue and tense situations on and off the TRACON playing field, it also suffers from a distinct lack of pacing that brings it down, in the third act, faster than a wingless, cast-iron ValuJet. Cusack plays Nick Falzone, the hot-dogging Newark controller who's most in his element when he's stacking up late arrivals one atop the other and cramming them into nonexistent airspace, lining up the blips like geese in the New York sky or maybe rusty ducks at a shooting gallery. Quietly singing "Memories are Made of This" to himself, he conscientiously avoids any "deals" (slang for near midair collisions) and considers himself lucky to be able to go home at the end of the day and make love to his contented, Jersey-girl wife Connie (Blanchett, looking as far away from Elizabeth as possible). Nick's perfect world takes a nosedive after the arrival of transplanted controller Russell Bell (Thornton), a radar master who may be even more talented than Nick, and whose silent, Zen-like attitude toward his job only infuriates Nick more. Clad in scruffy jeans, work boots, and a leather jacket, Bell is Joe Cool of the skyways, an unflappable ode to the self, and it drives the more vocal Nick batty. It doesn't help matters either that Bell's alcoholic, lonely wife is pulling Nick away from Connie. And it surprises no one more than Nick himself when he beds her after an innocent Italian dinner one night. This act leads to a psychological game of one-upmanship that is at the core of Newell's film. How do these two divergent hotheads hold the line on thousands, millions of lives when their own home situations are so badly fractured? Written by Glen and Les Charles (of the television shows Taxi and M*A*S*H), the film has their ensemble feel all over it, but Newell's rushed pacing in the third act botches the whole film. It's a glorious mess, though, with genuine bits of comic genius strewn amidst the rubble, not unlike a plane crash in its own way. The four leads acquit themselves brilliantly -- Thornton in particular -- but Newell drops the ball midway through and fails to return to what is essentially an airborne, emotion-laden ballet. Turbulence, folks. Better buckle up. (4/23/99)
Great Hills, Lakehills, Lincoln, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Wes Anderson; with Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Olivia Williams, Brian Cox, Seymour Cassel, Mason Gamble, Sara Tanaka, Stephen McCole, Luke Wilson. (R, 93 min.)
There's something about Jason Schwartzman's face in Rushmore that makes you want to punch him or hug him -- you're never quite sure which. It's a face that demands a reaction, even while it stares out coolly from beneath the oily brow, assessing the possibilities before it. As Max Fischer, a 10th-grade student at Rushmore Academy, Schwartzman is the underachieving soul of academia, his plate piled high with extracurricular activities (French Club, Fencing Club, Double-Team Dodgeball Society, and founder of the Max Fischer Players) but with little else. His entire life is built on schemes, dreams, and ambitions that realistically should have no part in his life (upon graduating from Rushmore, he's chosen to attend Oxford, with Harvard as his "safety"), and when he falls in love with widowed first-grade teacher Miss Cross (Williams) everything becomes that much more complicated. It's about this time that Max also meets Rushmore alum Herman Blume (Murray), a crinkled, sallow industrialist whose faded dreams of Rushmore past have been replaced by a sterile home life composed of a fatuous trophy wife and a pair of zombified hooligans for children. In Max, Blume sees himself as he used to be, and in Blume, Max sees a chance to perhaps win the heart of Miss Cross. With funding from Blume, Max begins work on a planned aquarium above the baseball field. For his effort, and due, in large part to his flagging academic standing (his Max Fischer Players production of Serpico obviously isn't being taken into consideration here), Max finds himself banished to public school. To make matters infinitely worse, Blume has fallen in love with Miss Cross, and Max's best friend, fourth grader Dirk Calloway, is on the outs after hearing how Max off-handedly bragged about getting some play in the back seat of his mother's convertible. Anderson sets up this conflict of wills -- Max vs. Blume -- in a sort of surrealist, academic omniverse. Although the film was shot in Houston at St. John's Academy (Anderson's alma mater), Rushmore as a film exists out of time and place, locked into a vaguely Sixties-ish groove that's only heightened by Schwartzman's dank locks and Anderson's choice of a uniformly British Invasion soundtrack. If anything, this outré, wildly original piece of cinema recalls Mike Nichols' The Graduate, especially in one scene in which the estranged Blume takes a solo cannonball into his family's pool and rests, silently, on the bottom, observing. Featuring Schwartzman, Williams, and Cassel (as Max's father), Rushmore is filled with brilliant, stand-out performances. But it is Murray who thrills here like he hasn't done in years. Murray's quiet, reserved, and droll wit is always at the ready and Rushmore offers him the opportunity to flex his chops and kick into laconic high gear. It's a wonder watching this comic stylist come back into the fore, especially in a film like this. See this week's "Screens" section for an interview with director Wes Anderson. Anderson and Jason Schwartzman will be parked at 24th St. and Rio Grande in the Rushmore schoolbus Friday, February 5 from 3:30-6:30pm. (2/5/99)
Alamo Drafthouse, Arbor
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)
Alamo Drafthouse, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Gil Junger; with Heath Ledger, Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Larisa Oleynik, David Krumholz, Andrew Keegan, Susan May Pratt, Gabrielle Union, Larry Miller. (PG-13, 94 min.)
There's a charming scene in this film that has the young protagonist, Patrick Verona (Ledger), trying desperately to prove his love to the lady fair, Katarina Stratford (Stiles), by serenading her with full accompaniment from their high school marching band. Security arrives and chases Verona back and forth, the length of the stadium, but his task is complete and the girl is won. Sort of. This updated version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is only one of several such adaptations to come out this year, but it is one of the better ones so far, relying less on teen-comedy conventions and more on the Bard himself, even going so far as to drop in bits of the original text wherever possible. As for the story, screenwriter Karen McCullah Lutz wisely chooses to stick to the basics of Shakespeare's text and expand only where necessary. When Bianca Stratford (Oleynik) is forbidden from dating by her flustered father (Miller) until her older sister, who has absolutely no interest in teenage mating rituals, begins dating as well, she manages to convince her intended beau, the thuggish BMOC Joey Donner (Keegan), to pay to have her older sister wooed by the scruffy, Aussie-accented Verona. The machinations that come into play here, including the movements of the quiet, shy sophomore Cameron (Gordon-Levitt), who is hoping that he will be the one escorting Bianca to the prom, are complex and hilarious. When Kat begins to fall for Patrick's charm, he, unsurprisingly, begins to fall for her. And what's not to love? Stiles plays this "shrew" with dead-on accuracy, making her the live-action equivalent of MTV's Daria, a whip-smart, sometimes bitter girl with the soul of a poet who just wants this whole high school clique behind her. Prom and parties? They're not for her until she realizes, that yes, Virginia, there are other brilliant misfits out there as well as herself. She's a riot grrrl update of the traditional Shakespearean indie female, and both Stiles and Junger manage to breathe new life into an old character. It certainly doesn't hurt things, either, to make her a fan of the Boston-based grrrl rock band Letters to Cleo, who make an appearance as the school's prom band. Junger has a deft touch with light comedy such as this; he manages to keep the film's convoluted plot spinning without resorting to too much gimmickry or descending to the level of so many teen comedies. Kudos also to Larry Miller as Kat and Bianca's father, a single dad so wrapped up in protecting his girls that he has them wear a padded "pregnancy harness" to remind them of the dangers of dating. What would Shakespeare have made of all of this? I suspect he would have approved. (4/9/99)
Barton Creek, Gateway, Lakeline, Metropolitan, Round Rock, Tinseltown North
D: Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam; with Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung. (PG-13, 89 min.)
Twin Dragons, made seven years ago to raise money for the Hong Kong Director's Guild, is now being hustled onto the revival circuit to catch the tail-draft of last year's mega-successful Rush Hour. As flagrant cash-in strategies go, it's actually pretty darned felicitous. Other Chan movies have been more favorably reviewed, but few dish out more of the kinetically exhilarating flesh-cartoon spectacle that has dominated the latter half of his career. Of course, this will register as an endorsement only for those who buy into Chan's cult of personality and his anachronistic, slapstick-driven style. Few movie personalities (I doubt that even the man himself would characterize himself as a real actor) generate responses so dramatically split into entrenched pro and con camps. Personally, I regard Chan as a treasure, a living link to an archaic but still vital form of purely physical comedy that is as worthy of respect within its own sphere as the gemlike verbal wit of a Tom Stoppard script. Granted, you could search Jackie's entire body of work in vain for a plot that served as much more than a bungee cord loosely binding together a succession of tour de force fight scenes, and Twin Dragons is no exception to that rule. In this case, the story gimmick is that Chan plays both leads: a pair of identical twins separated at birth, one of whom grows up to be a world-famous concert pianist and the other a lowly grease monkey with a knack for getting on the wrong side of local gangsters. Hilarity ensues as the two men's girlfriends and the aforementioned hoods chase the guys around Hong Kong in an escalating tumult of boat and car chases, explosions, gun battles, and epic martial arts dustups that are as painstakingly staged as Cirque du Soleil acrobatic routines. Hark and Lam, tossing all artistic pretense aside, surrender themselves totally to Chan's goofball aesthetic, resourcefully framing not only the centerpiece fights but also the endearingly loopy bits of straight slapstick -- as when the mechanic ends up conducting the Hong Kong symphony. Chan, who long ago gave up trying to please the contingent that maintains he's sucked since Drunken Master, has instead forged onward in perfecting his idiosyncratic vision of showboating kung fu mayhem perpetrated by a basically pacifistic character who's as fun to watch trying to avoid fights as actually cracking the bad guys' skulls. Again, let there be no mistaking that Twin Dragons is only for those who are fully on the bus with Jackie's approach, who don't regard Chris Tucker as indispensable yang to Chan's yin, and who won't let a little bad (okay, execrable) English-language dubbing get in the way of their movie enjoyment. If this describes you, get cracking and avail yourself of this rare two-for-one Chan special. (4/16/99)
Lake Creek, Metropolitan
BLAZING SADDLES(1974) D: Mel Brooks; with Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Slim Pickens, David Huddleston, Alex Karras, Dom DeLuise, Mel Brooks. Mel Brooks' early reputation as a film director rests with the success of this raunchy Western spoof. A great cast is eclipsed by the hilarious performances of Harvey Korman and Madeline Kahn as a Marlene Dietrich-like chanteuse. (R, 93 min.)@Alamo Drafthouse; Thu (5/20), midnight.
PURPLE RAIN (1984) D: Albert Magnoli; with Prince, Apollonia Kotero, Morris Day, the Revolution, the Time. Q: What is the sound of one dove crying? A: Purple Rain. The filmmaker formerly known as Prince made his onscreen debut in this starring vehicle. The plot is essentially a backstage musical that's semi-autobiographical. Prince's scintillating performance numbers, Magnoli's flamboyant visual style, and a script that emphasizes the unusual angle about a sexist black musician from a troubled home overcoming all odds make the film's other dramatic weaknesses fade into guilty pleasures. The title song, "When Doves Cry," won the Oscar. (R, 111 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Fri (5/14)-Sat (5/15), midnight; Sat (5/15)-Sun (5/16), 4:20.
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) D: Jim Sharman; with Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien. Talk about time warps ... this weekend marks the phenomenal 23rd anniversary of this movie's continuous Austin run. Local Rocky Horror fans have been dressing up and doing the "Time Warp" thinglive for 23 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; Fri-Sat, midnight.
Z(1969) D:Costa-Gavras; with Yves Montand, Irene Papas, Jean-Louis Trintingnant. A sensation when it came out, Z is a political conspiracist's movie dream. Based on a true Greek incident, the movie is an anatomy of a political assassination. Topical references to Greece's right-wing military junta of the time added to Z's zest. It won the Oscar for best foreign film and editing; one-name director Costa-Gavras has never equalled this work. It was shot by Jean-Luc Godard's frequent cameraman in the Sixties, Raoul Coutard. How it holds up is anyone's guess. (PG, 127 min.)@Village; Fri-Thu.
FASHION IN FILM NOIR:The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)D: Tay Garnett; with Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn. Blackmail, a local noir boutique, presents a special fashion show in conjunction with this film noir classic. Lana Turner and John Garfield burn up the screen as the story's illicit lovers. @Alamo Drafthouse; Sun (5/16), $5 admission/$4 AFS.
IMAX THEATRE (San Antonio):
Amazon (1997) D: Kieth Merrill; with Julio Mamani, Mark Plotkin, Sydney Possuelo, narrated by Linda Hunt. A tribal shaman and an American ethnobotanist search for the medicinal qualities of native plants in the Amazon, while a modern-day explorer investigates the recently discovered Zoë tribe. (NR, 38 min.) All seating is assigned and may be purchased in advance. Other daily IMAX shows include 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.
THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF RADIO-TV-FILM: End-of-the-Semester Student Films continue screenings over the next two Saturdays. The classes whose projects will screen this Saturday include: Digital Animation (Talenti) at 6pm; Advanced Studio Production (Knight) at 7pm; and Production 2 (Panov) at 8pm. @Studio 4D in CMB (Communications Building B); Sat (5/15), free admission.