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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: Freida Lee Mock and Terry Sanders. (Not Rated, 102 min.)
There's no denying it: Movie critics tend to be way more cynical than the general population. Some of us come by the trait naturally, but many more acquire it through overexposure to films that labor mightily to uplift only to blow it all in a noxious spew of over-the-top sentimentality and shameless emotional manipulation. Thus my high regard for Freida Lee Mock, who's spent the Nineties turning out documentaries (Maya Lin: A Strong, Clear Vision; Never Give Up: The 20th Century Odyssey of Herbert Zipper; Rose Kennedy: A Life to Remember) that manage to be both inspiring and scrupulously schmaltz-free. Return With Honor extends this remarkable run with a powerful, deeply empathetic account of captured American airmen's experiences as P.O.W.s in North Vietnam. There's no political agenda here, no pandering to Ramboesque fantasies of unliberated prisoners still languishing in remote jungle camps. Instead, Return focuses narrowly on ex-captives' toenail-curling accounts of how they survived torture, solitary confinement, and wrenching loneliness -- experiences that many endured for seven years or more. For anyone who's ever wondered how they'd hold up under torture, the confessions of these stud-duck fighter pilots should erase any doubt. Many cracked almost instantly. Recognizing human frailty, the P.O.W. code of honor demanded only that one refrain from words or deeds that could cause immediate harm to fellow prisoners or the war effort in general. In other words, a P.O.W. was to behave always in ways that would allow him to "return with honor" after the war. As a dyed-in-the-wool peacenik who turned 18 the year the draft was abolished, I've never before fully grasped the unique significance of honor in a military context. However, Mock and Sanders' film goes far beyond recruiting-poster platitudes to illustrate in concrete terms how esprit de corps, self-discipline, and sacrifice for the common good can not only be points of pride but also the best defense against efforts to crush the spirit. None of these men -- including current U.S. Senator John McCain -- seems overly impressed with their feats of bravery. Most, in fact, go out of their way to confess moments of fear and weakness. Several unashamedly cry on camera as they recall friends' deaths or their ecstatic postwar reunions with their families. Others gloss over astonishing acts of courage with self-deprecating humor. Utterly absent is any hint of the expected Top Gun frathouse bluster or cheap potshots at peace protesters back home. (Their most serious complaint against the antiwar movement seems to have been its value as a propaganda weapon for their captors.) Positive feelings about our involvement in Vietnam, or even the military, aren't required for appreciation of this film. Though simple intellectual honesty compels our gratitude and respect for people who've served in uniform -- as opposed to many of the wars we've fought through the years -- the military experience is a topic so laden with political baggage that it's hard to treat in any depth without polarizing the audience. Return With Honor is a perfect companion to a post-Memorial Day weekend: a story of transcendent human courage and sacrifice that inspires us to greater appreciation of what we have and what we've been given. (6/4/99)
Arbor, Dobie
D: David Mamet; with Nigel Hawthorne, Jeremy Northam, Rebecca Pidgeon, Gemma Jones, Guy Edwards, Matthew Pidgeon, Colin Stinton, Aden Gillett, Sarah Flind. (G, 110 min.)
What's this? A Mamet film without the usual incendiary peppering of ricocheting epithets? A period costume drama? A G rating? Heaven forfend. Despite the unusual nature of The Winslow Boy and the shocking absence of the more traditional aspects of Mametian dialogue, this adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1946 play is still a shocker, and not only because it's a vituperative courtroom drama that very rarely enters into the courtroom. Set in 1910, the movie's Winslow boy is 13-year-old Ronnie (Edwards), a young British naval cadet who returns home to his upper-class family's home in London thoroughly disgraced, and more than a little terrified of his stiff-upper-lip father's (Nigel Hawthorne, The Madness of King George) reaction to the exceedingly bad news. Accused of stealing another cadet's five-shilling postal order and then cashing it, Ronnie has been summarily sacked and tossed out on his ear without any suitable venue of recompense. After Ronnie confesses to his father that he did not, indeed, make off with the money in question ("You cannot lie to me," the elder Winslow gravely intones, "for I am your father and I shall know it." Coming from Hawthorne, you believe it.), the entire family is thrown into the unenviable position of having to defend their sibling and son from nothing less than the Crown, which oversees the actions of the Royal Naval Academy, effectively making it so that their only defense lies in suing the state. Of course, in England of 1910 such things simply were not done, and the clearing of the boy's name appears to be an arduous and ungainly task. While Ronnie's mother seeks to shield her son against any further malicious slander, her husband goes all out, seeking and finally winning the assistance of coolly calculating barrister Sir Robert Morton, who, after grilling the boy relentlessly, comes to the conclusion that his protestations of innocence are truthful. Sister Catherine, meanwhile, finds her impending marriage to Regimental Army man John Watherstone threatened by the case's exploding publicity, and father Arthur sees his increasingly slipshod health begin to fail. Mamet is exploring the tension and subsequent breakdown put on the family by the state here, but more than that he's crafted a winning doppelganger of more recent court cases such as the trials of O.J. Simpson and recent White House goings-on. Echoes of both can be found in the groundswell of tacky publicity (signs, buttons, banners, and cartoons adorn London as the case comes to full boil) and the public's incessant craving for more. If not for the period costumes, The Winslow Boy could easily be transposed to current times. Mamet's dialogue is still on the mark, rapid-fire, and as cutting as an antique straight razor. Hawthorne, Pidgeon, and Edwards as young Ronnie all acquit themselves admirably, but it's Northam, with his black-clad seeming indifference that cuts to the heart of the film. It's not your typical Mamet, certainly, but still unmistakably the playwright-director's heady, biting brew. (6/4/99)
Arbor
D: Samira Makhmalbaf; with Massoumeh Naderi, Zahra Naderi, Ghorbanali Naderi, Soghra Behrozi, Azizeh Mohamadi. (Not Rated, 85 min.)
This perplexing and provocative movie, which is not quite fiction or documentary, is about the real-life experiences of twin Iranian 12-year-old girls whose lives had been spent locked in their house by their worried, fundamentalist father and blind mother. They were never allowed outside and never bathed; they were completely unsocialized, not knowing how to communicate verbally or even walk properly. Some women in the poor Tehran suburb in which the family lived finally wrote a letter to the welfare agency, which came and bathed the girls and cut off their tangled mess of hair and made the father promise to allow his girls to play outside and be with other people. But once back home, the girls were again locked up. The story became a national news story splashed across the media headlines. And this is where the movie part of this story gets really interesting. The Apple was made by 17-year-old Samira Makhmalbaf, herself the privileged daughter of Mohsen Makhmalbaf, one of Iran's most internationally honored film directors. Upon hearing the news reports, the younger Makhmalbaf knew instantly that this was a story she had to tell. The backstory surrounding the making of The Apple has received a lot of press coverage in the course of the film and its director traveling to some of the world's most prestigious film festivals. Immediately seizing upon the story, Makhmalbaf realized that she must film quickly before the girls became socialized and the situation changed. The actual family members appear as themselves in the film. The director spent time with the family in advance of filming in order to get a sense of the reasons for what had occurred. The filmed result is something that cannot be exclusively categorized as fact or fiction: Situations were deliberately re-created or provoked in order to solicit the responses the director felt confident would occur. There's something equally fascinating and creepy about such a tactic. Still, the father is given his fair due. His religious beliefs caused him to fret that his "flowers" would be harmed or raped if he allowed them outside. He felt vilified by a world that had "dishonored" him and he wanted nothing more than to have his say on camera. Meanwhile, the girls' uninitiated experiences with the outside world make for compelling viewing. The blind but adamant mother is perhaps the movie's biggest cipher of all. The Apple mixes a genuine sense of raw urgency with a symbolically poetic nature. Like the apple Eve took from the serpent, The Apple is sure to tempt Iranian viewers to open the garden gate. (6/4/99)
Village
D: Rob Sitch; with Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, Sophie Lee, Anthony Simcoe, Charles Tingwell, Tiriel Mora, Wayne Hope. (R, 82 min.)
The Castle is an Australian movie about the triumph of the little guys ... or maybe just the triumph of the underdog dumb guys. It was Australia's highest-grossing movie of 1997. The Kerrigan family is a happy-go-lucky brood. Mom, Dad, and the four kids love their home on the outskirts of Melbourne. It's a home that's a real fixer-upper with portions of additions built on here and there and perky and useless accouterments everywhere. They love its location, too -- right next to the airport runway and a toxic dumpsite. (If any of them were ever to travel anywhere by plane it would be such a short trip to the airport.) The Kerrigans' home is their castle. Then one day they receive government papers informing their beloved home has been "cumpulsorily acquired" for an airport expansion. The family and their eccentric neighbors fight the eviction all the way to the Supreme Court. Though The Castle is sure to evoke special reactions during its run in Austin due to this city's long struggle with the issue of airport location, the movie is nevertheless a peculiarly Aussie slice of optimistic comedy. What passes for affectionate portraits may instead be rude caricatures. The story's comedy derives from its deadpan tone in which the narrator's voiceover account of the events is then repeated by the actors. Twice as nice, I suppose. Comedy is a hard thing to put your finger on when it goes wrong. My sense was that I was laughing at the characters and not with them, even though we're all well-trained to root for the little guy. Still, the movie was wildly popular in its home country and then also quite popular when it showed at Sundance in 1998. Miramax bought this micro-budgeted movie on the spot for $6 million and then proceeded to keep it on the shelf for a year and a half before giving it this halfhearted release. The reasons are baffling. But not nearly as baffling as why the Kerrigans think their home is a castle. (6/4/99)
Village
D: Morgan J. Freeman; with Brendan Sexton III, Kate Hudson, Christina Ricci, John Heard, Lucinda Jenney, Casey Affleck, Sara Gilbert, Isidra Vega, Ethan Suplee, Michael Ironside. (R, 87 min.)
Just because a film is "quirky" that doesn't necessarily make it interesting. Morgan J. Freeman's follow-up to his much ballyhooed Hurricane Streets is 90-plus minutes of oddball characters wandering restlessly around a barren New Mexico township, searching presumably for life, love, and answers, and finding very little of any substance. While it's filled with vaguely interesting performances from all on board (Sara Gilbert, late of TV's Roseanne, is utterly wasted, however), the whole of the film just leaves you scratching your head and wondering "Why?" "Why not?" seems to be Freeman's motivation in this relentlessly pointless film, and though the characters may be interesting at times, too often they come off as stock "indie" filler. Sexton plays Blue, the lone resident of the town who seems to have any ambition going for him. That ambition, odd though it might be, is to finish construction on his late father's landlocked waterpark, a snaking, incomplete network of pastel-blue tubes that he hopes will someday put the town on the map. It's more a misguided labor of love than anything else, but Blue is determined to make it work, water or no. Ricci plays Ely, a mad bomber in training who spends her days wandering around town setting off pipe bombs and yammering on about blowing herself up someday. Freeman is vague about Ely's motivations here -- she could be a lovable, heavily mascaraed headcase or just a lunatic in search of an asylum. Both Ricci and Freeman are mum, however. Things take a turn for the sublimely ridiculous, however, when dad John Heard and his daughter Skye (Hudson) arrive in town one day to visit "the world's largest ice cream cone," the sort of roadside demi-attraction you only seem to stumble across while driving America's least-traveled interstates. Alas, it's dad's idea to make the pilgrimage and Skye, a budding television actress, hates it all until she strikes up a relationship with the shy, reticent Blue. Blue and Skye, despite their too-obvious names, fall head over heels in love over the course of the next few days, as the town is quarantined by the FBI after a tractor-trailer containing the secret ingredients for a new cola brand overturns and results in the death of the rig's driver. Death by soda-pop misadventure is one of the least likely ways to die in the desert, I'd think, but Freeman milks the MacGuffin for all it's worth. Meanwhile, the townspeople use this as an excuse to wander about and spit out dull platitudes and duller romance. Big deal. The film perks up when Ricci wanders onscreen with explosives in hand, but most of the time it's an exercise in indie futility. Like the desert, there doesn't seem to be all that much going on here, and Freeman, sticking to the obvious surface of things, does little to engage any more than our passing interest in it all. (Desert Blue first played Austin as the opening-night film of this year's SXSW Film Festival.) (6/4/99)
Dobie
D: Leslie Woodhead; with Haile Gebrselassie, Yonas Zergaw, Gebrselassie Bekele, Shawanness Gebrselassie, Tedesse Haile. (G, 83 min.)
It's hard to imagine what Disney thinks they have here with this unusually fashioned biopic of long-distance-running champion Haile Gebrselassie. Not quite a full-fledged documentary, sports biography, or inspirational work, Endurance has elements of all these familiar types of filmmaking yet could be said to belong to no one genre in particular. Also difficult to figure is who the target audience for this movie might be. Running enthusiasts eager to learn more about this 1996 Olympics winner from Ethiopia will be treated to some beautifully filmed, almost ethnographic detail about Gebrselassie's impoverished childhood but will discover little of the inner psychology of what makes Haile run. Viewers looking for a story about the thrill of victory will be stymied by the film's opening presentation of Bud Greenspan's acclaimed Olympics footage (which was not aired at the time of the event) that reveals from the outset how much Gebrselassie has achieved. Adults may be put off by the seeming simplicity of the narrative, which is told with a bare minimum of dialogue and chapter-heading-like intertitles. Children, however, may be put off by the slow, graceful beauty of Endurance and its simple methodology. Yet these are the very qualities that may help boost the film's fortunes overseas among people of various languages and in countries hungry for Third World heroes. All this makes Endurance a hard film to pin down; however, its elusiveness just may be part of its appeal. After beginning the film at the Olympics, the story then flashes back to Gebrselassie's early years in Ethiopia. The grinding poverty and the 24-hour-a-day task of survival occupies the young boy and his family members. Many of Gebrselassie's relatives are played by actual family members: A nephew of Gebrselassie plays the runner as a child, Gebrselassie's sister plays his mother, and so on. Director Leslie Woodhead is an acclaimed British documentarian and his footage of the area (filmed on location) has an anthropological feel, though the landscape often resembles the tactile grace of a Terrence Malick panorama (Malick, indeed, serves as one of the film's executive producers). The intertitles inform us of such rudimentary details as, "Six miles to school," "Three hours a day to fetch water," "Every year a new brother or sister," and then the film proceeds to act out the information with very few words. The animism of the land, the exoticism of the Coptic Church rituals, and the musical mixture of native sounds and the runners' heavy breathing all help create a swirl of textures. Still, at 83 minutes, Endurance seems long. And the film leaves so many question not only unanswered but unasked. Why does Gebrselassie run? What was it like for him to disobey his father and leave home to pursue his dream? How deep is the chasm between anonymous Third World poverty and instant international celebrity? Endurance will answer none of these, so it does not bring home the gold but still slices past the finish line. (See related interview in this week's Screens section.) (6/4/99)
Arbor
D: Jon Turteltaub; with Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Maura Tierney, Donald Sutherland. (R, 123 min.)
Fans of Daniel Quinn's 1992 philoso-fiction novel Ishmael are sure to cringe at some of the changes Hollywood has made to assure box-office viability for this loose "as suggested by" adaptation. But while incorrigible showboats Gooding and Hopkins may not be ideal vehicles for Quinn's wryly didactic ruminations on man's crummy stewardship of the earth, pragmatic cultists will at least have to admit that they're (a) a heck of a lot more entertaining than Al Gore, and (b) better positioned than Quinn to win hearts and minds in a post-literate age. The major change wrought by Turteltaub -- with the author's apparent consent -- is elimination of Quinn's magical-realist flourish of making the lead character a talking gorilla. Instead, Ishmael's humans-are-pigs jeremiads are delivered by Hopkins, in the role of prominent anthropologist Ethan Powell. Powell, who vanished for two years while studying gorillas in Africa, seems to have gone feral during that time. He no longer speaks, not even to defend himself against murder charges. Clinical psychologist Theo Calder (Gooding Jr.), a hard-charging careerist with a knack for dealing with hard-to-reach subjects, is put on the case and quickly cajoles Powell into talking. And talking, and talking, and talking ... Between the periodic beatings that Powell doles out to Calder and others in his immediate vicinity (like fellow geezer Sean Connery, the bad-assedness of Hopkins' movie persona seems to increase in inverse proportion to his real-life decrepitude), the handcuffed, white-bearded doctor delivers a fair enough summary of Quinn's philosophy. Basically, it boils down to a vision of humans as insatiable "takers" of the earth's resources. Deluding ourselves that we're exempt from nature's laws, we hurtle blindly into the abyss, trashing the earth for short-term gain while assuring our own extinction. And it's not just our external environment that's suffering but our souls as well. By disconnecting from nature, we lock ourselves into sterile, artificial worlds that satisfy none of our most basic emotional needs. Boring! Imagining (perhaps accurately) a mass audience with a Homer Simpson-like incapacity for idea-driven entertainment, the filmmakers regularly interrupt Hopkins' cautionary lectures with big, bombastic knucklehead movie moments: macho brawls; bodies flying through windows; Hopkins halfheartedly stealing riffs from his Hannibal Lecter persona and Gooding whipping himself into grimacing, hyperventilating fits -- apparently for no other reason than that he believes it's what is expected of him. The whole experience is disconcertingly schizoid. Still, there's plenty of solid, intelligent content here to stir the mind and heart, assuming you're able to overlook the distinctly patronizing presentation. In an ideal world, of course, movies about looming environmental Armageddon wouldn't require nearly this many bloody fistfights or scenes of Cuba Gooding Jr. in full Pepsi-commercial manic overdrive. But then, in an ideal world, I'd look like Pierce Brosnan and Rush Limbaugh would be my yardman. My admittedly hedged advice: Consider giving Instinct a shot, if only because we so rarely encounter movies that provoke discussion of topics more substantial than who's had hair implants or who supposedly blew the producer for the lead role. Otherwise, save your ticket money and buy the book. (6/4/99)
Gateway, GC Barton Creek Square, Highland, Lakeline, Riverside, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
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, Lakehills
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)
Discount, Lake Creek
D: Daniel Lee; with Jet Li, Lau Ching Wan, Karen Mok, Françoise Yip. (R, 102 min.)
This 1996 Hong Kong actioner (which has been decently dubbed into English for American release) posits the crushingly handsome Li as Simon, a biologically "modified" superman who has since broken ranks with his government-run collective of super-soldiers in favor of spending his remaining days shelving books at the local library. While this may at first appear to be an odd career choice for a man able to punch through other people's sternums like a hot knife zipping through a wad of I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, Simon's voiceover quickly reveals that both he and the other surviving members of the genetically enhanced "701 Squad" have been targeted for liquidation by their creators. In that light a pleasant civic job at the local book depository doesn't really seem so odd after all. When Simon's chess buddy and local tough-guy police officer Rock (Lau) becomes embroiled in a gangland war of attrition against the local mob by what appears to be the rest of the surviving 701 Squad, Simon dons the titular eyewear and leaps into the fray, seeking to locate his past love Michelle (Mok) -- now one of the 701 killers -- and his new love as well, a mousy, lovestruck young woman who works alongside him at the library. Like so many other HK action pieces, Black Mask thrums along at an almost super-human pace, mirroring the actions of its comic-book characterizations with snap, crackle, popcorn editing, and enough spent shell casings to give John Woo a run for his money. Produced by UT alumnus Tsui Hark, the film is drenched in Hark's trademark neo-psychedelics, from the mind-blowing shots of Li, Yip, and Mok battling it out high atop some sort of radio antenna to Li's final knock-down, drag-out brawl with his former 701 mastermind, Black Mask is superlative HK action. Of course, it's not hurting things that the film's director of action is the legendary Yuen Woo Ping, the man behind not only Jackie Chan's explosive Drunken Master series but also Keanu Reeves' recent (and highly impressive) theatrics in The Matrix -- many of the fight scenes in the film are precursors to those in The Matrix, although the bloodshed quotient is considerably higher (more noses are savagely broken, with streams of gore flying across the screen each time, than in any other film I've seen). At its heart, Black Mask recalls a sci-fi take on such HK standards as Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain or even the live-action Wicked City. It's a bloodily exhilarating piece of hyper-kinetic filmmaking (and one with a sense of humor, thankfully) that ricochets across the screen like a wayward rocket. No wonder we call this guy "Jet." (5/21/99)
Great Hills, Lakehills, Lincoln, Metropolitan, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North
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)
GC Barton Creek Square, Highland, Tinseltown South, Village
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)
GC Barton Creek Square, Lakehills, Northcross, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
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, GC Barton Creek Square, 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)
CM Barton Creek Cinema, Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
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)
Tinseltown South, Village
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)
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)
Tinseltown South
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)
Alamo Drafthouse, Gateway, Tinseltown South
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: 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: 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
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)
Highland, Lake Creek, Northcross, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Peter Ho-Sun Chan; with Kate Capshaw, Blythe Danner, Ellen DeGeneres, Tom Everett Scott, Tom Selleck, Geraldine McEwan, Julianne Nicholson, Gloria Stuart. (R, 95 min.)
"Darling, do you know how much in love with you I am?" Well, darling, who could resist such a letter from a secret admirer that began with these provocative words? That's the simple premise of The Love Letter's mistaken-identity romantic comedy. However, despite the familiar letter-gone-askew storyline, this is hardly a You've Got Mail/Message in a Bottle retread. For in The Love Letter the story's outcome is far from predictable and its possible permutations are near-infinite. The catch here is that the letter falls into a variety of hands and every reader assumes the letter was meant for his or her eyes alone. And you know what they say about the word "assume," how it makes an ass of both u and me. There's truth in the cliché ... not that these characters are made asses of (far from it, in fact), but rather that they demonstrate the idea that all of us are permanently wired to receive additional love and all it takes is the most oblique of stimuli to start it pumping. Set in the small New England town of Loblolly by the Sea where everyone knows everyone else's business (or so they think), the film starts off with the tone of a Fractured Fairy Tale. Helen, a divorced woman who has just sent her child off to summer camp, owns the town's used bookstore, which becomes the center of much of the film's activity. The letter starts a reaction that finds her caught between choosing her torrid summer romance with the 20-year-old college boy working in her store (Scott) and the platonic but always out-of-sync relationship with a man from her past (Selleck). Along the way many other eyes meet up with the letter, including bookshop manager and best friend Janet (DeGeneres, who seems to have stepped from the set of one bookstore into another). The permutations are endless, and that's the point. The letter stimulates ideas and possibilities that most probably would not have otherwise existed. Male, female, age, orientation -- these things become secondary in the face of unconditional love. The critics of The Love Letter are likely to bristle at what they perceive to be that most derogatory of things: a "woman's movie." By that I suspect they will be referring to the film's uncommon eroticism that zeroes in on the sparks ignited by the mere touching of hands or the odalisque languor of a couple spooning in bed. And it probably also has something to do with the movie's ambiguous possibilities and interconnectivity. Though the movie can be faulted for wandering around a bit in its latter stages as it searches for a conclusion, all participants contribute expertly to the production. The performances feel right (except for Selleck's bad hairdo) and the screenplay by Maria Maggenti (The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love) crackles with good dialogue and wit. (The film is an adaptation of Cathleen Schine's novel.) Cinematographer Tami Reiker (High Art) shot this film with an amazingly fluid style and helps foster the story's sensibility of a slightly surreal reality. Making his American debut with The Love Letter is Hong Kong director Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Comrades: Almost a Love Story), who might seem an odd choice for this woman-centric work until one looks at the convention-twisting quality of his Hong Kong romantic comedies. The Love Letter is a movie that reaches for the unexpected; it is worth an R.S.V.P. (5/21/99)
Arbor, CM Barton Creek Cinema, Tinseltown North, 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)
CM Barton Creek Cinema, 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)
CM Barton Creek Cinema, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Metropolitan, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North
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)
Gateway, Lakehills, Lakeline, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Roger Michell; with Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, Rhys Ifans, Emma Chambers, Tim McInnery, Gina McKee, Hugh Bonneville. (PG-13, 123 min.)
English tea is a straightforward brew. Warmly familiar and comfortingly sweet, a nice hot cuppa is equally suited to a solitary bit of weeping, a good cuddle with a sweetie, or a hearty chuckle with friends. Notting Hill is a veritable pot full of the stuff. No smoky Darjeeling or perfumey Earl Grey here, just the plain black brew, hot and light and sweet. Anna Scott (Roberts) is a big, big American movie star, her beautiful face plastered on every magazine, newspaper, and bus. William Thacker (Grant) is a struggling shopkeeper in Notting Hill, an eclectic neighborhood on the west side of London. The two don't seem destined to meet. But they do, when Anna comes into the store one day, and again later when their paths and very different worlds literally collide. Fame vs. anonymity. Rich vs. poor. American vs. British. Can love overcome the differences? Writer Richard Curtis and producer Duncan Kenworthy, who struck it rich with Four Weddings and a Funeral, mine the same vein in this picture and there's still some gold in them there hills, or at least in Notting Hill. Funny, bright, sly, and unabashedly romantic, Notting Hill combines fluffy, fairy-tale fantasy with big laughs, snappy dialogue, and small moments of pain and unease to create a surprisingly satisfying two hours. Though Grant's stammering charm and Roberts' radiant beauty are both brilliantly evident, their romance falls oddly flat. But no matter. The real fun is not in the lead characters but in the rest of the players. Rhys Ifans is ridiculously funny and exquisitely unbelievable as William's shaggy and blithely repulsive flatmate, Spike. Emma Chambers (who lights up the small screen each week as Alice in the British PBS comedy, Vicar of Dibley) is hilariously discomfiting as Honey, Charles' sincerely fawning baby sister. But it is William's best friends, Max (McInnery) and Bella (McKee) who steal away with the heart of the picture. Their marriage has faced its own test of odds and emerged quietly, shiningly triumphant, and their moments together are the stuff, not of fantasy, but of true and abiding affection. Anna and William's fate, fairy tale that it is, is destined for happily ever after, but Honey's and Spike's and Max's and Bella's futures are less clear, and thus far more interesting. These are the people Curtis knows best and the ones, with their uncompleted lives, who leave the theatre with us. You may prefer a more exotic blend or something more nutritious or a stiffer drink altogether, but if every once in a while you crave a spot of something sweet and warm and comforting, Notting Hill could be just your cup of tea. (5/28/99)
GC Barton Creek Square, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Metropolitan, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North
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)
GC Barton Creek Square, Great Hills, Lake Creek
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
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)
GC Barton Creek Square, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Tinseltown South
D: George Lucas; with Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Jake Lloyd, Natalie Portman, Pernilla August, Ahmed Best, Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Park. (PG, 133 min.)
It's 22 years later, but George Lucas is finally back in the saddle, pitting good against evil in a complex web of intergalactic skullduggery that makes those old Republic serials look as dull as the chrome on Rocketman's codpiece. Episode 1, however, draws heavily from the Republic crypts, as well as Ben Hur, Citizen Kane, and innumerable other cinematic and literary references (the original Star Wars got by with a smattering of Joseph Campbell and Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress). Drowning amidst the oceans of hype, marketing, and the endless lines of Lucasfans waiting, endlessly waiting to get inside, there is a movie, and unfortunately it's not a terribly good one. As that off-yellow opening crawl informs us, the dreaded Trade Federation is mucking about with the good people of Naboo, a verdant, peaceable planet ruled over by Portman's Queen Amidala. Intent on helping out the beleaguered innocents, Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Neeson) and his cocksure apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor) arrive with light sabers in hand and find themselves in the middle of a full-blown war. Add to this mix precocious Jake Lloyd as Anakin Skywalker (having not yet affixed the Darth Vader nom de guerre; he's still a slave child on dusty old Tatooine) and the Jedi's bizarre, lop-eared Gungin pal Jar Jar Binks, as well as a handful of old favorites (Yoda, C-3P0, R2-D2), and you have a crowded cast indeed. Crowded, come to think of it, is an accurate assessment of the whole film. Lucas, eager to please everyone it seems, crams gobs of action into every part of every frame. If there's not computer-generated shots of massive armies colliding on the fruited plains, there are monstrous cityscapes, or explosions, or Samuel L. Jackson's sage Mace Windu pontificating with a Jackie Brown accent. Lucas' script seeks to explain something, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. Episode 1 often has the rushed, stop-start feel of old newsreels, with information being parceled out at an alarming rate but minus the emotional or character-driven narratives we've come to expect from our dealings with Lucas. The entire film is curiously soulless, with major characters making their entrances and exits (some of which are unexpectedly final) as if they were breezing in from some other screening next door. Neeson's Qui-Gon is the only interesting one in the bunch, or at least the only one solid enough to anchor a scene, though the villainous Darth Maul (Park) is. Lloyd is far too precious to make much of an impression as the once and future Vader (his constant cries of -- I kid you not -- Yippee! are disturbing in all the wrong ways), McGregor appears to be waiting for craft services most of the time, and Portman leaves no peculiar accent unscathed in her Kabuki-inspired getups and chilly Eurotrash syntax. What works, of course, are the effects, computer-generated and otherwise, of which there are over a whopping 2,200. The cosmic Huggy Bear that is Jar Jar Binks may be the most annoying Star Wars character since the Ewoks first piddled on the forest floor, but for an entirely CG-character, he's impressive, if not human. What does it say about a filmmaker when his effects come out better than his human cast members, when a single laser strike is more dramatic than a whole raft of (stilted) dialogue? It says he ought to spend more time on story and less time crunching binaries, more on pacing the myth and less on cramming it down viewers' throats. (5/21/99)
CM Barton Creek Cinema, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Metropolitan, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North
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 were 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, CM Barton Creek Cinema, Highland, 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)
GC Barton Creek Square, Lake Creek, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Josef Rusnak; with Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Vincent D'Onofrio, Dennis Haysbert, Steve Schub, Bob Clendenin, Rachel Winfree. (R, 120 min.)
With The Matrix, eXistenZ, and now The Thirteenth Floor, filmgoers' collective sense of reality has been taking a real pummeling of late. That thematically similar films tend to arrive in clusters is old news, but these three deal with almost identical themes of false realities and that age-old stoner question (these days I guess we ought to revise that to cyber-question) that asks, "Hey, what if we're all just figments of someone else's imagination?" The Thirteenth Floor, adapted from Daniel F. Galouye's novel of the same name, lacks the stylish overkill of The Matrix and skirts the Cronenbergian cyber-angst of eXistenZ in favor of a vague futuristic bent that involves video-game simulations and Teutonic existentialism. Unfortunately, it's a mix that comes off as sublimely ridiculous when it's not struggling to be highbrow (sporadic flurries of giggling accompanied the semi-full screening I attended). Bierko plays Douglas Hall, a software developer who, along with techie pal Whitney (D'Onofrio) and boss Hammond Fuller (Mueller-Stahl), has developed a full-body video simulation of 1937 Los Angeles. Think of it as the ultimate virtual reality, one where you can lie down, go to sleep, and have your consciousness "transferred" via computer scan to a pre-existing game character in good old L.A. The film is sketchy on the "whys" of all this, but, presumably, it's a great way to pick up virtual one-night stands without all the icky real-world repercussions. When Fuller turns up dead after leaving Hall a mysterious message within the game's structure, Hall takes it on himself to enter into L.A. '37 in search of both the message and possible clues to who-dun-it. Enter Detective McBain (Haysbert) who thinks Hall himself may be responsible for the murder. While Hall's busy poking around in the past (for only two hours at a time -- any more and the Beta-test game could presumably fry his neurons), he encounters a mysterious blonde (Mol), who then turns up in the real world, which leads to the question -- wait for it! -- "What is the real world?" Despite intricate but creaky plotting, Hall quickly discovers that reality, as is so often the case these days, isn't what it's cracked up to be. Rusnak's CG-enhanced vision of old-time L.A. looks picture-perfect (after an early experience jacked in to the system, Hall pronounces "the color's a bit off"), but the rest of his film is a jumbled mess with as many plot holes as a year-old chunk of Swiss cheese. Granted, it's tough to pull off such an ambitious storyline, but The Thirteenth Floor fumbles on so many levels it's just plain silly. To paraphrase the film's tagline: The Thirteenth Floor: You can go there, but why would you want to? (5/28/99)
GC Barton Creek Square, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Metropolitan, Riverside, Tinseltown North
D: Tony Bui; with Don Duong, Nguyen Ngoc Hiep, Tran Manh Cuong, Harvey Keitel, Zoe Bui, Nguyen Huu Duoc. (PG-13, 108 min.)
Much has been made of this movie being the first American film shot in Vietnam since the war, and performed in Vietnamese by Vietnamese actors. For that it is to be commended. And to the extent that a film's visual beauty contributes to a work's overall value, Three Seasons is aces in this area. The camerawork by Lisa Rinzler (Trees Lounge, Menace II Society) is languorous and supple, moving in long, slow takes that are somewhat reminiscent of two other recent Vietnamese movies, Cyclo and The Scent of Green Papaya. Yet, apart from its beauty and novelty, Three Seasons has little to offer. Its interwoven stories of five separate characters are slight and blurrily developed. The movie's overriding theme concerns the new Vietnam's reconciliation with its past; Three Seasons appears to be in favor of such peacemaking. I would suggest that a good start might have been for the characters to refer to the film's location city as Ho Minh City rather than Saigon. The five characters whose stories we follow are Kien An (Hiep), a flower girl who tends lotus blossoms for a mysterious poet/landowner with leprosy, who chooses her to record his pent-up poems. Woody (Duoc), a street urchin in the neo-realist mode who spend the movie searching for his lost merchandise case; Hai (Duong), a cyclo driver who becomes obsessed with an unhappy prostitute whom he shuttles from job to job while neglecting his own work; Lan (Bui, no relation to the director), the prostitute who learns to accept demonstrations of love; and Hager (Keitel, who also is the film's executive producer), an ex-Marine in Vietnam to search for the child he fathered while in the military but has never known. Their stories intersect only tangentially and are furthered along by a great many coincidences. Three Seasons is the first feature film by writer-director Tony Bui, who was born in Vietnam but emigrated to the States with his family when he was two years old. This project is clearly a personal journey for the filmmaker, an attempt to explore his cross-cultural identity. Bui, however, seems unclear regarding what it is he wants to say about the experience. Still, the film is invested with so much lyrical beauty and exoticism that the film was a multi-award-winner at this year's Sundance Film Festival, soaking up awards bestowed by both judges and audience, an indication of the geniality and likability of Three Seasons. (5/28/99)
Arbor
D: Roger Nygard; with Denise Crosby, LeVar Burton, William Shatner, James Doohan, Michael Dorn, Jonathan Frakes, Walter Koenig, Kate Mulgrew, Leonard Nimoy. (PG, 86 min.)
So you think the hype surrounding that other sci-fi franchise is all that, huh? Here's a quarter, kid. Go buy a reality gumdrop. This loving, give-'em-enough-rope documentary about the phenomenon of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek explores a fanatical devotion to the show's four television incarnations that makes Lucas' crowd look like pikers. Using Crosby (Tasha Yar) as his "host," Nygard takes his camera to various Trek conventions and manages to interview just about all the main characters (Patrick Stewart is notably absent), a plethora of the fans themselves, and a whole lotta Klingons. Trekkies is a hilarious work, mining the psychology of the average and not-so-average Trek fan, and coming up with the answers to all your burning questions about the show and its devoted following. Here's a dentist who's redone his entire office in an out-of-control Trek motif (and here's the receptionist griping about having to wear "this silly costume"), here's a professor of linguistics who's taken the trouble to not only learn the Klingon language, but also teaches a course so that others can study it, and here's a Whitewater jury member who attended each and every day of her civic duty in her Star Trek: The Next Generation commander's uniform. The list goes on, and despite the fact that so many of these fans are desperately in need of a life, Nygard doesn't push them too far. They're at times silly, confused, or confusing, but, above all, the Trekkies are following some high intellectual ideals put forth by Star Trek creator Roddenberry. How else to explain the countless hours of community service each "outpost" (or regional fan club) performs with disabled kids and the elderly or the charitable donations made in the program's name? Nygard and Crosby also take a plunge into pathos with James "Scotty" Doohan's weeper of an anecdote recalling his struggle to save the life of a suicidal fan. The film then about-faces into surrealist comedy with DeForest "Bones" Kelley's recounting of the horny fangirl who sent him a cannabis ciggie through the mail with the comment that "you've turned me on so many times in the past that I feel I should turn you on at least once." Medical marijuana indeed. Debuting in 1966, Star Trek has 11 years on Star Wars and its fans are clearly out there in more ways than one. Recent talk of the Star Wars religion, though, frankly seems better suited to Roddenberry's franchise, although images of James Tiberius Kirk traipsing around a Styrofoam galaxy still stick in the craw. Better that than a bland Yoda, though. (5/21/99)
Metropolitan
D: David Hubbard; with Deon Richmond, Donald Adeosun Faison, Maia Campbell, Guy Torry, Aloma Wright, Harold Sylvester, Bill Henderson, Michael Warren. (R, 92 min.)
In the mind of teenager Gregory Reed (Richmond), the world is a hoochie cake and he'd best get to eating. At breakfast, during class, in the hallway, this sweet, likable high school senior is trippin', off in a montage of MTV fantasy, where he is a real G, bumpin' booties with stacked women, delivering his spoken word rap "Bitch, Don't Be Messin' Wit' My Shit" to a swooning crowd, fending off a swarm of eager college scouts. His well-meaning parents are dogging him to "get those college applications in," but Greg prefers the solace of his fantasies, and the mind-numbing company of his pimp-wannabe friends, June and Fish. Welcome to the black version of John Hughes High -- just as predictable, just as improbable, just as fantasy-filled, and probably just as funny. But then why did director Hubbard and screenwriter Gary Hardwick have to go and make it so insulting, too? Hardwick's story, like most teen comedies these days, is about as nutritious as soggy Wonder Bread, and although laced with a few genuinely funny, although crass, moments, what makes this film particularly heinous is its blind hypocrisy in embracing everything it seems to be against. Greg eventually trades in the fantasy of his rap-star dream world -- money, cash, ho's -- for the fantasy of Hardwick's Hollywood happy ending, in which he finishes off the senior prom by slammin' all night with his gorgeous walking wet dream Cinny (Campbell). We're supposed to see this as a good thing since, as Greg's Louis Gossett, Mercedes-driving teacher Mr. Shapir (Warren) has told us, Cinny is one of the most remarkable students to ever walk these halls. Yeah, right. So what have we learned? Well, kids, it seems just a smidgen of ambition can get you into the best all-black college (named here Morehoward), and the best-looking, smartest girl in school can be yours through calculated lies and a few bold moves at prom. Come on. Maybe I'm taking this all too seriously. Maybe it's just the same old clichés all in the name of entertainment. Or maybe this reviewer is just a bit tired of feeding the fantasies of kids who wanna be pimps, of seeing happy endings involving slammin' all night, and of lazy, limply written tripe trying to pass as harmless entertainment. (5/21/99)
Lincoln, Metropolitan, Riverside, Tinseltown North
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)
CM Barton Creek Cinema, Gateway, Highland, Lakeline, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North
BRAZIL: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT (1985) D: Terry Gilliam; with Jonathan Pryce, Kim Greist, Robert De Niro, Katherine Helmond, Ian Holm, Bob Hoskins, Michael Palin. This modern cult classic is a triumphantly dark comedy directed by one of the film world's truly original visionaries, Terry Gilliam. This director's cut European version of the film is a recently struck print that contains scenes not included in the version released in America. The weeklong screening of Brazil kicks off the Alamo's Terry Gilliam Weekend, which also includes a screening of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (R, 142 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Sat (6/5) - Tue (6/10), 9:30pm.
CUBE (1997) D: Vincenzo Natali; with Maurice Dean Wint, Nicole de Boer, Nicky Guadagni, David Hewlitt, Wayne Robson, Andrew Miller, Julian Richings. "Stagy in the extreme (though not based on a play), the Canadian-helmedCube revolves around a quintet of strangers trapped inside a steel and Lucite cube. Bizarre, seemingly random patterns cover the walls and in the center of each wall sits a sliding portal through which egress can be made. The trick? Some rooms contain deadly booby traps such as whipping razor wire and wall-mounted jets of acid. It's up to the five to figure out which room is which, as well as what the hell'sgoing on and why, specifically, they've been cast in alongside each other. Eventually, all of this wears thin, enlivened only by a couple of moderately unassuming turns (de Boer, Miller) and the occasional freshet of gore. By the end of 90 minutes, it comes as no surprise that the 'protagonist' turns out to be the most simple-minded of the lot, making this a sort of angsty Forrest Gump for the Wired set. Startling at times, but just as equally distant at others, Cube seems to have it all backward: It's a film in search of a one-act play." -- M.S.(10/30/98) (R, 90 min.) @Dobie; Fri -Thu, midnight.
FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF (1986) D: John Hughes; with Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck, Mia Sara, Jeffrey Jones, Jennifer Grey, Edie McClurg, Charlie Sheen, Louis Anderson, Max Perlich, Kristy Swanson. When peoople think fondly of John Hughes, it's movies like Ferris Bueller that they're thinking of. This one smells like Eighties-style teen spirit. Matthew Broderick plays a kid who ditches high school for the day. The movie follows his adventure. The picture drawn by the movie of the vicissitudes of high school life before Bueller are impeccable. (PG-13, 103 min.)@Alamo Drafthouse; Thu (6/10) midnight.
IT'S IN THE WATER (1986) D: Kelli Herd; with Keri Jo Chapman, Teresa Garrett, John Hallum, Barbara Lasater, Derrick Sanders. This screening is sponsored by the Metropolitan Community Church. "In this favorite Austin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival favorite, SMU graduate Herd tells a story that's sure to click with the droves of gay and lesbian Austinites who migrated from conservative hinterland outposts.While volunteering at the local hospice, newly minted Junior Leaguer Alexandra "Alex" Stratton (Chapman) runs into Grace (Garrett), an old high school buddy who's back in town after her hubby discovered a fling with a fellow (female) nurse. Meanwhile, another friend is pulling the chains of local homophobes by telling them there's something in the local water supply that releases latent homosexual potential. Paranoia spreads like ebola, and soon nonstandard sex is replacing the capital gains tax as the major local bugaboo. As in many gay-themed comedies, the straight opposition are virtually all hysterical, hateful buffoons. But subtlety was clearly not in Herd's game plan. What she attempted, with considerable success, was to create a good-natured tribute to people who've suffered the trauma of coming out in a less than supportive environment and lived to laugh about it." -- R.S. (1/30/98) (NR, 99 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Sat (6/5) - Sun (6/6), 4:30.
RED DAWN (1984) D: John Milius; with Patrick Swayze, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson, Charlie Sheen, Powers Boothe, Ben Johnson, Harry Dean Stanton, Jennifer Grey. This is the kind of teen movie that only an inspired but gun-crazy director like John Milius could make. The premise has the Communists landing in Middle America and it's then up to a bunch of high school jocks and weekend hunters to save the day for god and country. At his best, Milius can mold brilliant characters who "love the smell of napalm in the morning." At his worst, he's considered a reactionary nut. This is a good chance to decide for yourself. Bonus: Ten patrons from each screening will win the opportunity to go head-to-head with the Alamo staff in a paintball grudge match on June 6.(PG-13, 114 min.)@Alamo Drafthouse; Fri (6/4) - Sat (6/5), midnight.
THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) D: Jim Sharman; with Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick, Richard O'Brien. Austin Rocky Horror fans have been dressing up and doing the "Time Warp" thing live for 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.
STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997) D: Paul Verhoeven; with Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Jake Busey, Dina Meyer. How would mankind respond to an invasion of giant extraterrestrial insects who can travel interstellar space and annihilate millions with blasts of nuclear plasma from their butts? Starship Troopers answers this timeless question with goofy charm, high camp flamboyance, and unwavering faith that nothing succeeds like excess. Crass sexual exploitation? Natch, especially given the opportunities provided by a cast of sleek young actors and actresses playing the starship pilots and infantrymen who battle the alien creepy crawlies. Howard Sternesque single-entendre humor, coed military showers, and battlefield sex all remind us that this is, in fact, the work of Showgirls' mastur-mind, though in this adolescent context, Verhoeven's trademark salaciousness seems perfectly apropos. The lethal beasties, ranging from ottoman-sized thrips to gargantuan beetles and slugs to shrieking swarms of razor-jawed "arachnids" are masterfully rendered. With a special effects budget that would shame the Pentagon, cataclysmic violence, high levels of ambient horniness, and total lack of pretense to any goal higher than pure, mindless fun, Starship Troopers delivers all of these goods in spades." -- R.S. (11/7/97)(R, 125 min.) @Dobie; Fri-Thu, midnight.
AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY "Summer Free-for-All: George Morris Tribute": Imitation of Life (1934) D: John M. Stahl; with Claudette Colbert, Louise Beavers, Fredi Washington, Warren William, Rochelle Hudson, Ned Sparks, Alan Hale. The Austin Film Society's current series is devoted to films whose greatness serves as a tribute to George Morris, the Film Society's mentor and "patron saint," and a former film critic for The Austin Chronicle. Adapted from a popular 1933 novel by Fannie Hurst (and again re-made as a motion picture by Douglas Sirk in 1959), the Stahl version of this melodrama is hard-hitting but sentimental. It is an unusual melodrama about a household of women, one a white woman and her daughter and the other a black woman and her daughter. The relationship is formed by practical business concerns but grows into one of lifelong friendship. Along the way, they confront issues involving female entrepreneurship and the debatable practice of light-skinned black people passing for white. In an article on John Stahl for Film Comment (May-June 1977) George Morris wrote: "Stahl's sincerity and restraint provide the vital connective tissue linking the various themes and obsessions that recur throughout his oeuvre. Stahl's films are about survivors. His protagonists reflect his own innate integrity as a director; they follow their own personal vision, never relinquishing the mysterious inner forces which form their particular codes of behavior, never losing sight of their individualized priorities." The film will be introduced by Marjorie Baumgarten of The Austin Chronicle. For more info on the series (and more reviews by George Morris) see the May 28 Screens section of the Chronicle, call the AFS at 322-0145, or see http://www.austinfilm.org. (NR, 109 min.)@Texas Union; Tue (6/8), 8pm; free admission but donations accepted at the door to benefit the D. Montgomery Award.
COLUMBIA PICTURES 75TH ANNIVERSARY FILM FESTIVAL:
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: Director's Cut (Fri-Sun)
From Here to Eternity and On the Waterfront (Mon-Tue)
Taxi Driver (Wed-Thu)
@GC Barton Creek Square; Fri-Thu.
EVIL DEAD MARATHON:
Evil Dead (1983), Evil Dead II (1987), and Army of Darkness (1993) Star Bruce Campbell will be on hand to introduce and do a Q&A on this Sam Raimi horror trilogy. @Alamo Drafthouse; Fri (6/4), 9pm, sold out.
IMAX THEATRE (San Antonio):
Alaska: Spirit of the Wild (1997) D: George Casey; narrated by Charlton Heston and Liam Neeson. This tribute to the frozen majesty of Alaska sounds like perfect programming for the hot Texas summer. Spawning salmon, hibernating bears, and snow-mantled Mt. McKinley are some of the film's sights. (NR, 40 min.) All seating is assigned and may be purchased in advance. Other daily IMAX shows include Amazon, 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 LEAST OF MY BROTHERSThe Least of My Brothers (1999) D: Matt Kordelski. Kordelski's documentary tells the infamous story of the desegregation of Vidor, Texas, and the murder of Bill Simpson, the last black man to move from a public housing complex in the notoriously all-white East Texas town. When Simpson finally left Vidor, he left in a coffin -- the victim of a shooting which to this day is unsolved. The documentary investigates Simpson's death and talks with many of the people who refused to talk with the police at the time of the shooting. The filmmaker and several of the story's participants will be on hand for a Q&A following the screening. For more info see http://www.flash.net/~mcca/leastofmybrothers/.(NR) @Ritz Lounge; Mon (6/7), 8pm.
PARAMOUNT SUMMER FILMCLASSICS:Babes in Arms (1939) D: Busby Berkeley; with Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland. Hey, kids, let's put on a show. (NR, 96 min.) @Paramount; Sun (6/7), 4pm.
Casablanca (1942) D: Michael Curtiz; with Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Heinreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Dooley Wilson. Play it again, Paramount. There's no better way to kick off a summer revival series than with this timeless classic. (NR, 102 min.) @Paramount, Sun (6/7), 7:15pm.
Doctor Zhivago (1965) D: David Lean; with Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, Geraldine Chaplin, Tom Courtenay, Alec Guinness. Greet the summer heat from the vantage point of the frozen Russian tundra while watching this sumptuous romantic epic. The marvelously widescreen multi-award winner is truly one for the ages. (NR, 180 min.) @Paramount, Wed (6/9) - Thu (6/10), 7:30pm.
Houseboat (1958) D: Melville Shavelson; with Cary Grant, Sophia Loren, Martha Hyer, Harry Guardino. When she takes over as his housekeeper, Sophia Loren also takes Cary Grant's three motherless children in hand. Love is sure to follow. (NR, 110 min.) @Paramount; Mon (6/7), 7:15pm; Tue (6/8), 9:30pm.
To Catch a Thief (1942) D: Alfred Hitchcock; with Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis. Cary Grant plays a reformed cat burgler on the French Riviera who vindicates himself from new suspicions with the help of the beautifully bedecked Grace Kelly. Hitchcock tools this mistaken-identity tale as more a romantic comedy than a thriller. It was during this location shoot that Kelly met Prince Rainer. (NR, 106 min.) @Paramount, Mon (6/7), 9:35pm; Tue (6/8), 7:15pm.
To Have and Have Not (1944) D: Howard Hawks; with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan, Hoagy Carmichael. The Humphrey Bogart weekend continues with this film adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel (the script is by Jules Furthman and William Faulkner). This was Bacall's first movie and the project where she and Bogart met. Their love scenes couldn't be any spicier. (R, 100 min.) @Paramount; Sun (6/7), 9:25pm.