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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.), Sarah Hepola (S.H.), 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: P.J. Castellaneta; with Jennifer Tilly, Mitchell Anderson, T.C. Carson, Chris Cleveland, Lori Petty, Cynda Williams, Serena Scott Thomas, Billy Wirth, Timothy Paul Perez, Seymour Cassel. (R, 108 min.)
Just sex, you say? Gee, what could be more relaxing than that? Director P.J. Castellaneta knows the torrent of neuroses, complications, and conundrums that delicate (or perhaps, rough) subject unleashes in all of us. And while the film's revelations about doing the wild thing in the Nineties (i.e., it's confusing) may not be earth-shattering, to see the subject treated with such humanity and humor is a gratifying, even touching, experience. From its hysterical opening sequence, the film dabbles in sex farce, including hilarious rants on such dilemmas as whether to spit or swallow, but Castellaneta proves he knows not only the moans and groans of the bedroom, but also the hushed intimacies and betrayals, the wide-eyed nights brimming with uncertainty, the comfort -- or suffocation -- of a lover's arm resting on your side. Vincey Sauris (Anderson) is your typical writer: that is, unemployed and alone. His dalliances with men are confusing at best and at worst, humiliating. He spills these misadventures to Tara (Tilly), his close friend and a mother hen to a bevy of lost souls who congregate regularly at her dinner parties. But Tara has problems of her own, not the least of which is a boyfriend (Perez) far less enthusiastic about starting a family than she. In fact, conflict seems the only constant in the lives of Vincey's friends, like the implosion of the nine-year relationship between lesbians Sarina (Williams) and Megan (Scott Thomas, sister of Kristin) following Megan's fling with a man. All these crises are trumped by Javi's (Garcia) announcement that he is HIV-positive. Instead of focusing narrowly on Javi's impending illness, however, Castellaneta uses his situation as just another example of love blossoming under the most painful (and unlikely) circumstances. But Castellaneta isn't content with creating just another chatty comedy about romance, and It's Just Sex gets dark -- quick. Gay-bashing, pregnancy, switching sexual streams -- it's all a bit too much for one film, and the story sags underneath the weight, but this ensemble, led by Party of Five's Anderson, continually sucks us in with their quick wit and vulnerability (although Lori Petty, as Sarina's butch gal pal, still tries too hard for my taste). The real surprise here is Tilly, whose usual bubblehead comic business can be so damned annoying. Instead, the actress has drawn a believable character, full of folly but also as cuddly and sweet as she is a vicious gossip. The concern and the investment each of these characters make in each other is palpable, and the film is also a poignant depiction of the ways modern singles can find the support of a family network in an age of broken homes and estranged children. Perhaps the film is most praiseworthy in its defiance of conventional cinematic solutions. Risky and inventive, Relax ... It's Just Sex sometimes stumbles in its attempt to be all things to all people. But just like that all-important act it centers around, just when you think you've figured it all out, they go and change the rules. (6/25/99)
Dobie
D: Dennis Dugan; with Adam Sandler, Joey Lauren Adams, Jon Stewart, Steve Buscemi, Josh Mostel, Rob Schneider, Cole Sprouse, Dylan Sprouse, Kristy Swanson. (PG-13, 95 min.)
A kinder, gentler Adam Sandler targets a whole new demographic, the ladies, in this lighthearted -- but still marginally obnoxious -- tale of unplanned parenthood and wayward parental mores. I've followed Sandler's bizarre career trajectory from his Studboy character on MTV's Remote Control back in '89 to his five years with Saturday Night Live and from there to his Hollywood vehicles, wondering if his gimpy, collegiate humor would ever fully translate to a wider audience. With last year's The Wedding Singer, which indeed translated to a mammoth audience (and a reported $20 million-plus paycheck for the actor), it's clear that his appeal is less frat-house-centric than previously imagined. To my sensibilities, this is along the lines of kippered herring suddenly becoming a North American dinner staple, but hey, stranger things have happened. Sandler plays Sonny Koufax, a New York law school grad who, thanks to a sizable insurance claim, spends his time loafing about his East Side loft when not working a sporadic gig as a tollbooth attendant. Like nearly all Sandler's characters to date, Sonny is a chronic underachiever with a kid-sized chip on his shoulder, content to drift through life shooting hoops, ogling women, and hanging out with his sad-sack pals day after day after day. For Sonny, though, it all changes when two things occur almost simultaneously to reverse his uber-slacker attitude. The first is when his go-getter girlfriend Vanessa (Swanson) gives him the boot for a (much) older man. The second is when a five-year-old little boy by the name of Julian (twins Cole and Dylan Sprouse), who is possibly the illegitimate son of his best friend Kevin (Stewart), is deposited on his doorstep with a note asking that he be cared for in lieu of group-home placement. From here on out, there is barely an unpredictable shot in the film, with Sandler initially trying to cope with the kid's bed-wetting, feeding schedule, and general care, and then falling hopelessly in love with the little scamp. This being a Sandler film, Sonny and Julian bond over such creaky gags as outdoor urination, manhandling Central Park rollerbladers, and scamming on the babes. Sandler excels as big-kid schtick, but you really wish there was more going on here. When Sonny falls for a paralegal (Adams), who in turn falls for Julian, the film takes a sidetrack into relationship humor that seems to go nowhere fast. Likewise, a strained subplot involving Sonny's own tortured relationship with his lawyer father. Buscemi once again turns up in a cameo (though one not nearly as subversive as Billy Madison's rifle-wielding headcase), as does Sandler's old SNL crony Shneider. Dugan keeps his direction workmanlike and uninspired, and the laugh-out-loud gags are few and far between, though several women I've spoken to agree that, for them, this is their favorite Sandler thus far. For Sandler's core audience of developmentally arrested males, it may all be a little too cute. (6/25/99)
Gateway, GC Barton Creek Square, Highland, Lakeline, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Simon West; with John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe, Richard Cromwell, James Woods, Leslie Stefanson, Clarence Williams III. (R, 120 min.)
About this time every year, Hollywood invites us to watch as the military's dress-white cloak of honor and rectitude is ripped asunder, exposing -- gasp! -- unspeakable secrets lurking beneath that immaculate surface. (Jeez, after A Few Good Men, Courage Under Fire, A Soldier's Story, and countless other films of this type, shouldn't they just put Velcro on the damn cloak to ease the sundering process? I mean, it's not like there's any suspense left to milk ... ) If you're a completist about these things, you'll be happy to hear that, while The General's Daughter isn't quite up to the standard of the movies I just named, it at least does a workmanlike job of extending the tradition. Every convention is honored, starting with the protagonist, a working-stiff military cop named Warrant Officer Paul Brenner (the increasingly oviform Travolta), whose murder investigation sends him down a darkening path of deceit and duplicity leading, as ever, all the way to the top. Since our decedent is both an officer and the daughter of a beloved general (Cromwell) with political hopes, Brenner is pressured to wrap things up quickly in order to keep the FBI and the jackals of the civilian news media at bay. And because the victim, Capt. Elizabeth Campbell (Stefanson), was gorgeous and gifted, she's subject to the ironclad movie law (I call it the Prima Donna/Whore Principle) requiring all brilliant, attractive women with a touch of swagger about them to have freaky-deaky sexual tastes. None of the ensuing plot turns are any more surprising than this setup. There's never a slack or static moment, though, and the cast is superb. Travolta and Stowe (as his partner/ex-girlfriend) mesh smoothly and likably, though Stowe really has just one featured scene. Woods, again the scene-stealer, is savory as a wily Army psychologist who engages Brenner in enjoyably barbed adversarial banter. West also shows more creativity than most of his predecessors within the strictly codified boundaries of this genre, particularly impressing with his flair for intensifying his narrative with repeating images of almost fetishistic power. This last point brings me to what I consider a much more serious flaw in this film than its unoriginality: its bizarre disjunction between the story unfolding through the characters' words and actions and the one West tells with his camera. Overtly, The General's Daughter argues that men's screwed-up, hypocritical attitudes about sex are to blame for restricting women's horizons and poisoning their sexual psyches. On the other hand, almost every withering attack on said hypocrisy is undercut by a gratuitous, lingering image of Elizabeth's luscious naked bod spread-eagled helplessly on the ground or writhing beneath a faceless, implacable rapist. Bondage porn for self-loathing pervs, you might say. Like the "classy" men's stroke magazines of the Sixties, The General's Daughter inspires all kinds of cognizant dissonance with its blend of high-mindedness and cheesy titillation. Very odd, and very icky. Highly recommended for graduate psychology students in aberrant sexuality, but others can probably skip sans regret. (6/26/99)
Gateway, GC Barton Creek Square, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Metropolitan, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North
D: Francois Girard; with Samuel L. Jackson, Don McKellar, Carlo Cecchi, Irene Grazioli, Jean-Luc Bideau, Christoph Koncz, Jason Flemyng, Greta Scacchi, Sylvia Chang, Colm Feore. (Not Rated, 130 min.)
Pardon me, Mr. Jackson, but what the fuck are you doing? Hopefully, a deuce of muddled roles -- first as Star Wars' Jedi Master Mace Windu, a bland, blasé role delivered with enough wood onboard to restock much of our depleted Amazonian forestation, and now this cipheresque anti-role -- does not signify some actorly trauma of the sort that devours careers whole, Kangol and all. It's disconcerting to watch one of this century's most forceful screen presences cinematically stumble twice in the space of a month, much more so than watching him pump hot lead into teenage drugboys while reciting applicable scripture, certainly. Still, there's no denying the fact that Jackson is woefully miscast here, and as a result spends much of his time struggling to define his role as a "serious" collector of objets d'art in this muddled-though-gorgeous omnibus film. Girard, who also helmed the superior Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, is apparently indulging his cultural palette with this multi-storied tale of a legendary red violin and those doomed persons who manage to get their hands on it. Wrapped in a cloying, house-of-cards framework set at a modern-day art auction where Jackson is but one of many representatives of the power elite vying for a chance to own the blood-red relic, the film is strung together on a washline of improbabilities and just hangs there, flapping in a crisp, cinematographically enhanced breeze. Besides the framing device, there's the history of the violin, constructed in old Cremona by a perfectionist named Nicolo Bussotti for his unborn son. When the boy and his mother perish during childbirth, Bussotti embarks on a secretive redesign of a perfect, final instrument, which later falls into the hands of a group of monks and from there to a child prodigy, a band of Gypsies, a Victorian bon-vivant-cum-composer, and a young female Communist official struggling to bury her humanity during China's Cultural Revolution. And so on. Flemyng, as the Victorian violinist Frederick Pope, clearly has a ball getting it on with both the instrument in question and jealous lover Greta Scacchi (simultaneously, I might add, an impressive feat by anyone's standards), and Chang as the downtrodden officiate Xiang Pei brings a note of dour consequence to the proceedings, but that's it, really. Not all is lost, though. An impressively evocative score by composer John Corigliano almost saves the day single-handedly (one assumes the other digits are furiously clutching a bow), and cinematographer Alain Dostie isn't afraid to get right down in the Viennese cobbles and render unto Botticelli what is Botticelli's. And Cecchi, admittedly, holds our attention as the forlorn, quite possibly mad, Bussotti. But, really, what's the point of all this tortured excess? Viewers may be lulled into a faux affection for Girard's lush, operatically vulcanized film by fearing that otherwise they might be seen as culturally déclassé. Pay no mind. Purchase Corigliano's score, but don't feel you need the film to savor it. And would somebody please get Mr. Jackson a gun already? (6/25/99)
Arbor, Dobie
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)
Discount, Lakehills
D: Jay Roach; with Mike Myers, Heather Graham, Michael York, Robert Wagner, Seth Green, Mindy Sterling, Rob Lowe, Gia Carides, Verne Troyer, Elizabeth Hurley. (PG-13, 95 min.)
Remember that running sight gag in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery that had various fruits, vegetables, and whatnot strategically placed in front of Myers' and Hurley's naughty bits? The sequel opens with a continuation of that image and, eventually, moves to an even more inspired verbal offshoot. It's guffaw-inducing comedy at its finest, and like much of this new outing, it's even better than the original, ahem, package. Hurley makes only a brief cameo here, replaced by a slinky Graham as CIA operative and new bedmate, Felicity Shagwell, to Myers' swinging shutterbug secret agent, but fans of the original will hardly miss her. Granted, Graham lacks the comic spontaneity that her predecessor evinced, but she's still lovely to look at, and besides, Myers and co-writer Michael McCullers have packed so many ribald yuks into the mix that it's hard to even catch your breath, much less nitpick. But that's my job, isn't it? This time out, Powers must travel back in time to the fabled swinging Sixties of Carnaby Street to retrieve his "mojo" (read: his libido), which has been stolen by nefarious evildoer Dr. Evil (Myers again) and his new henchmen Fat Bastard (still Myers!) and Mini-Me, a 1/8th-scale clone version of the bad doctor. Roach has gone on record as saying that upward of 40% of the new film's dialogue was ad-libbed on the spot, and like the good old days of a pre-earnest Robin Williams, it shows through gleefully. Myers' preoccupation with scatological humor gets to be a bit too much sometimes (a scene in which Fat Bastard's stool sample is mistaken for the proverbial cup of mud is enough to put anyone off their java for a good long while), but the dozens of brazen throwaway gags scattered throughout more than make up for any lapses into outright bad taste. Headquartered in Seattle in a Space Needle-esque Starbucks Tower (!), Dr. Evil divides his time between scheming to do away with our hero and struggling to maintain his evil grip on decidedly non-evil son Scott Evil (who turns up on a Jerry Springer Show entitled "My Dad Is Evil and Wants to Dominate the World") while doling out way too much misplaced affection to Mini-Me (Troyer) in a deliciously wicked homage to Brando's evil clone in The Island of Dr. Moreau. Does Austin get his mojo back, save the day, and shag the Shagwell? Well, duh. But it's all fab, baby, a kicky, wiggy sequel that scores on all levels, from the sexy to the sublime. Cameos by Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello, Woody Harrelson, SNL alum Will Ferrell, Willie Nelson, Tim Robbins, and Rebecca Romijn Stamos, among others, keep you on your toes, while Myers delivers one of the best spy send-ups since James Coburn in In Like Flint (yet another cameo, by the way). Now, if someone would teach Heather Graham how to stop acting sexy and just be sexy, we'd have a near-perfect comedy on our hands. (6/11/99)
CM Barton Creek Cinema, Great Hills, Lakeline, Lincoln, Northcross, Riverside, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
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)
Lakehills, Tinseltown South
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)
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)
Discount, Lakehills
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)
Alamo Drafthouse, Arbor, GC Barton Creek Square
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)
Gateway, Highland, Lake Creek, 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
D: Simon Shore; with Ben Silverston, Brad Gorton, Charlotte Brittain, Jessica A. Hart. (R, 110 min.)
When you're 16 years old, sex is a mystery: it's forbidden, intoxicating, bewildering. For Steven (Silverstone), the gangly British lad in Get Real, it's all the more perplexing because he's gay, a troubling secret shared only with his best friend and the anonymous men he picks up in public restrooms. When an improbable romance develops between Steven and a handsome school jock, John (Gorton), he couldn't be happier, except for one thing: John is petrified of his own sexuality. And so, Get Real recounts the rocky road that Steven must travel before coming to terms with the inescapable realization that it is better to live the truth than to live a lie. Like the similarly themed Beautiful Thing (or even less so, Maurice) of a few years back, Get Real evokes the trauma of adolescent angst as a bittersweet experience, both confusing and exhilarating. (The rhythm of this movie effortlessly captures these conflicting emotions.) Whether gay, straight, or somewhere in between, it's a tough time for everyone -- even the upperclassman who bullies Steven relentlessly is tortured in his own way. Yet Get Real is full of rich humor in its observations of teenage rituals. At a school social function, Steven and John slow-dance with their female dates, all the while gazing intently into the other's eyes; the punchline to this scene is by far the film's funniest moment. While the character of John is not as fully realized as you would hope -- he seems too comfortable with Steven in their private moments, if he's as closeted as the film would lead you to believe -- the fullness of Steven's character more than compensates. As portrayed by the engaging Ben Silverstone, he's a gawky duckling on the verge of becoming a beautiful swan. His wide smile, protruding Adam's apple, and good-natured demeanor make him instantly likable. The film's climactic scene, in which Steven comes out in a very public way, is dramatically forced, but nevertheless effective because Silverstone has won our empathy early on. Even at its most contrived, however, this British film is notches above Hollywood's current teen flicks, which seem to aim more for demographics rather than people. Can you imagine a movie such as this one coming from a major American studio? Get real. (6/11/99)
Dobie
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: 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, Round Rock, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
D: Wu Tian-Ming; with Zhu Xu, Zhou Ren-Ying, Zhang Riuyang, Zhao Zhigang. (Not Rated, 101 min.)
Celebrated Chinese filmmaker Wu Tian-Ming (The Old Well) returns after a 10-year hiatus with an affecting period piece told in the gentle manner of a fable and explores the mysteries of love. Elderly street performer Master Wang (Zhu) is known affectionately in his Sichuan province as The King of Masks. Plying the Yangtze on his cramped little skiff, he puts in at various towns and villages and makes his way to the marketplace where he stages impromptu performances of his art, that of "face-changing," a sly, complex, wholly beautiful bit of theatricality involving colorful painted paper masks that he whisks on and off his face with sublime precision. Alas, with his wife gone and his only male heir dead of illness, he has no one to whom he can pass on this ancient family tradition, and so to rectify the problem, he one day purchases a young child (Zhou) in a nameless village square. All is well until the old man discovers, much to his chagrin and horror, that this potential heir he took to be a boy is, in fact, a girl, devoid of the necessary "tea-cup spout." Horrified at his costly error, he nonetheless agrees to keep her on as a cook and general gopher until such time as he can rectify the situation. When "Doggie" (as he affectionately calls her) is kidnapped by a band of street thugs, presumably intent on selling the child into slavery, Wang is inconsolable, though when she returns with a real male heir in tow, he finds his fortunes looking up. And then things go awry once again. The many twists and turns that fate can take is Tian-Ming's driving force here, and he layers them out before us with surprising ease and agility. Like Master Wang's artistry with his masks, the old man's need for love and affection is a solitary thing until his emotions, like the flimsy bamboo fans he utilizes in his act, are opened wide. Apart from his admittedly familiar storyline -- that of the orphaned child and the crusty-yet-lovable old man savaged and saved by unexpected love -- Tian-Ming's stunningly gorgeous direction and the assured performances he draws from his actors make for a powerfully redemptive tale. Slinking camerawork reveals the alleyways and snaking trails of turn-of-the-century China, where child slavery was commonplace as starving families often looked to their young daughters less as a member of the group than as a potential meal ticket. Throughout all the doomy ambivalence of the tale, Zhu and newcomer/Peking Opera acrobat Zhou strike sentimental fire onscreen, rekindling each other's dormant emotions and proving once again that love conquers all (even if it's just a simple fable). (6/11/99)
Arbor
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, Tinseltown South
D: John Sayles; with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, David Strathairn, Vanessa Martinez, Kris Kristofferson, Casey Siemaszko, Kathryn Grody, Rita Taggert. (R, 126 min.)
John Sayles' new film Limbo is half a great movie -- specifically, the first half. It is here that we find Sayles at the top of his game, telling a story about individuals in under-explored pockets of American life who are as much motivated by social and economic dynamics as by personal demons and ambitions. Whether Sayles chooses for his settings the off-ramps of New Jersey (City of Hope; Baby, It's You), the backwaters of Louisiana (Passion Fish), the border culture of Texas (Lone Star), or the last American frontier as he does in Limbo, Sayles' movies are always about the environments that inhabit his characters as well as the characters who inhabit these environments. For Joe Gastineau (Strathairn) and Donna De Angelo (Mastrantonio), Alaska is a state of limbo. Each character is looking not for the proverbial last chance, but for a moment of grace in which the weight of past baggage will lift temporarily from their shoulders. Joe and Donna are fortyish and tentative about love. Joe was a high-school football star whose knee prevented him from turning pro and then was doubly burned when two friends died in a fishing accident for which he was responsible; Donna is an itinerant singer who is working her way through Alaska for the year with her sullen teenage daughter in tow. The opening of the film sets a wonderful constellation of characters and social factors into motion: the decay of the fishing and cannery business, the developer arrivistes who want to turn Alaska into one giant theme park for adventure-hungry tourists, the rugged renegades from civilization's confining clutches who find their territory ever-dwindling, and the entrepreneurial lesbian couple who operate the area's upscale lodge. All these dynamics are set into full jostle and the strands create a wonderful and rich narrative tapestry. Yet, just as you think you've found the story's groove, Sayles turns directions and pares down the story to focus exclusively on three characters: Joe, Donna, and her daughter Noelle (Martinez). In an ill-developed storyline, the shady dealings of Joe's brother (Siemaszko) become the reason these three are thrust suddenly into a dire survival-in-the-wilderness tale. This, too, is another kind of limbo, and we wonder whether the characters will succumb to the ravages of nature or the perfidy of mankind. It's possible at this point to intellectually appreciate the ideas that Sayles seems to be putting forth, but this latter half of the movie undeniably pales in comparison to the riches of the first half. Sayles is conducting a narrative experiment in which the movie's very conclusion is its most reckless test by confronting the viewer with an intimate (and many say frustrating) knowledge of the state of limbo. It's not simply a matter of courting a quality of ambiguity; what Sayles does here is to truncate the final scene so that we all but learn the fate of the threesome. So many characters were abandoned as the movie moved into the second half, now the final three are left inconclusively. Excellent performances and the steadying camerawork of Haskell Wexler make Limbo a supremely engaging work, but this place Sayles condemns his viewers to is just one rung removed from Purgatory. (6/11/99)
Arbor, GC Barton Creek Square
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)
Gateway, Highland
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, 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)
GC Barton Creek Square, Lake Creek, 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)
Lakehills, Lakeline, 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: 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 -- seem 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)
Village
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)
Lake Creek, Tinseltown South, Village
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 Gungan 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: Chris Buck, Kevin Lima; with the voices of Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, Glenn Close, Lance Henriksen, Rosie O'Donnell, Wayne Knight, Brian Blessed, Nigel Hawthorne, Alex D. Linz. (G, 88 min.)
Edgar Rice Burroughs' Ape Man has inspired nearly 50 movies over the years, testament enough to the enduring attachment we have to the story's intrinsic conflict between civilization and nature, man and beast. However, this new Disney offering represents the first time that Tarzan has been animated (assuming we don't count Tarzan knockoffs like Jungle Book and George of the Jungle). In retrospect, animation seems an all-too-obvious solution to the unreal merger of human and animal kingdoms, allowing humans to swing like apes on the vines and elephants to cavort with humans. Of course this is Disney, and a G-rated kids' picture at that, so don't go in expecting pure fidelity to Burroughs' storylines; still, the nature/civilization conflict survives in this transposition. In true Disney fashion, though, the story is folded into the ongoing drama between parents and child: the son's need to prove his worthy successorship to the dominant father, and the child's harsh and untimely separation from the mother. All this is established in the film's rousing opening minutes in which a shipwrecked human baby whose parents have been devoured by a hungry leopard is adopted by Kala, the grieving gorilla mother whose own baby was eaten by the leopard. Her mate Kerchak, the leader of the gorilla pack, insists that the creature is "not our kind," but Kala's mother-love prevails. Growing up, Tarzan wonders why he appears so different, but it's not until he's grown that three human beings -- a great, white hunter; a dotty professor; and his spunky daughter -- invade Tarzan's jungle habitat and provide some clues as to the origin of his species. And it is here that Tarzan's identity and allegiances become forever complicated. Tarzan is also Disney's best-looking animation feature in years. Its new and much-promoted "deep canvas" technique allows backgrounds to have a three-dimensional appearance, which creates vine-swinging sequences that play like amusement park rides. The vibrancy of the images is reinforced by the smartness of the vocal characterizations. Goldwyn's adult Tarzan conveys a profound but angst-free curiosity, Driver's Jane is a beautifully realized blend of pert and saucy; Close's Kala expresses the boundlessness of a mother's love without ever becoming cloying. As Tarzan's best friend Terk, O'Donnell comes across as a pipsqueak Eddie Haskell, a nicely modulated version of the daytime hostess' brash but weasely demeanor. Most surprising are the songs by Phil Collins. Unlike the usual Disney sing-alongs, the rock dummer's music is used primarily as an effective bridge between sequences. Only once does the movie stop for one of those cute show-tune set-pieces, and it seems out of place amid the otherwise propulsive jungle drumbeats. Although the villainous parts of this Tarzan are a bit hazy and the animal attraction between Tarzan and Jane a bit chaste, the film, nevertheless, works both for children and the adults who are destined to watch it with them many times over. Score one more hit for the "wild, flying man in a loincloth." (6/18/99)
CM Barton Creek Cinema, Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Metropolitan, Northcross, 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, Lakehills
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)
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)
Metropolitan
D: Paul Quinn; with Aidan Quinn, James Caan, Stephen Rea, John Cusack, Moya Farrelly, Jacob Tierney, Colm Meaney, Moira Deady, Susan Almgren, Pauline Hutton. (R, 120 min.)
Now I know why my father was so insistent I carry a handkerchief on my person at all times. This Quinn family production (brother Declan Quinn tackles the cinematography chores, Paul directs, and Aidan co-stars) is as weepy a number as you're likely to see this summer, a heartbreaker of the first order and also a sterling example of what poor, downtrodden brother Aidan can do when he finally gets his hands on a decent script. Forget clinkers like Crusoe, Benny & Joon, and Avalon, this is what fans of the underutilized actor have been waiting for since his Reckless debut 17 years ago. A long wait, sure, but sweeter for it, all the same. Chicago high school teacher Kieran Johnson's (Caan) life is a mess: His elderly mother Fiona is vegetating in the upstairs bedroom of his divorcée sister (Almgren); his nephew, Jack (Tierney), is edging toward reform-school, and his own laborings as an educator earn little more than classroom taunts and barbs. While lecturing Jack in the family garage, Kieran accidentally uncovers a moldering old photo of a happy young couple tucked into a book of Irish poems that was inscribed, apparently, to his namesake, the father he never knew. Taking this as a sign (as much as Caan the actor can be said to take anything as a sign), he flies off to old Ireland with Jack in tow to uncover the mystery of this other Kieran. Once there, he is told the sorrowful tale of his sire by a B&B manager (Deady), and the film flashes back to 1939. It's then and there that Kieran O'Day (Quinn), a "poorhouse bastard" with a shambling gait and a tree-stump neck that would do Henry Rollins proud, meets upper-crust lassie Fiona Flynn, who's been recently tossed out of boarding school for offending the nuns. After taking in a local dance during which a tipsy Kieran chivalrously defends the lusty Fiona after a pair of low-life twins accost her, the pair begin toppling down the slippery slope of love. Naturally, everyone else in the village is dead set against the romance, citing everything from moral turpitude (Rea as the libidinous village priest is especially, ah, charming) to Kieran's financial nonexistence (by day he tills the soil outside his foster parents' house). There are bright spots in this admittedly dreary Irish tragedy, though. The always reliable John Cusack shows up as a photographer for Life magazine, zipping in on a single-seater Cessna and helping the young lovers woo each other on a starlit beach, while Meaney, back in the real world, is interesting as the mincing innkeeper. As Kieran's history is told over the course of several afternoons, young Jack strikes up a friendship with a forward-thinking young village flirt. And Caan, stoic though he may be (it's still difficult to shake the image of Rollerball's Jonathan E. after all these years) grapples with emotions. The modern-day bracketing works only half as well as the flashbacks, unfortunately. Quinn is astounding, though, as young Kieran, and Farrelly has more spark to her than a thousand Zippos. Altogether winning in a teary-eyed sort of way (Declan Quinn's cinematography is nothing short of brilliant), this is a multi-handkerchief affair, and a grand return to form for Quinn brother Aidan. (6/18/99)
Arbor
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)
Village
D: Maria Ripoll; with Lena Headey, Douglas Henshall, Penélope Cruz, Gustavo Salmeron, Mark Strong, Eusebio Lazaro, Charlotte Coleman, Neil Stuke, Elizabeth McGovern. (R, 92 min.)
Two films set in London's quaintly upscale Notting Hill neighborhood within one month (the other being, of course, Notting Hill), and neither one quite succeeds like it ought to. Granted, Twice Upon a Yesterday, which might be charitably described as Sliding Doors from a guy's point of view, makes the Hill infinitely more interesting than in the recent Julia Roberts/Hugh Grant vehicle, but the neighborhood, alas, isn't the star here, Headey and Henshall are. As Sylvia and Victor, they're a pair of longtime lovers whose romance finally crashes and burns in the wake of unemployed actor Vic's sexual indiscretion; a subsequent bout of the truthies seals his fate, and before you can say, "Bad actor, no monologue," it's six months later and he's out on his rear and moping himself silly over his ex's impending nuptials to gym-mate Dave. Debuting Spanish director Ripoll then brings in a touch of magical realism in the form of a magical umbrella and a pair of quixotic, pre-dawn trash men, who literally rescue Vic from the gutter and offer him one more chance to get it right. Awaking in his bed the next day, he discovers that, yes indeed, he's back in the love loop with Sylvia. This time, he firmly insists there's no affair, promptly breaks it off with the other woman, and refashions himself into the perfect boyfriend, flowers and all. All's fair in love, war, and Cervantes, though, and try though he might, Vic can't circumnavigate fate. Dave once again shows up (courtesy of a dinner engagement with Sylvia's best friend, Four Weddings and a Funeral's Coleman), but this time it's Sylvia who initiates the behind-the-scenes action. Yet another breakup ensues, which this time leads to Vic's meeting Spanish expat Louise (Cruz), an elfin novelist with a taste for struggling actors. On this cosmic highway Vic finds himself the unemployed thesp only briefly. As goes his love life, so goes his life in general, apparently. Ripoll has fused the elements of classic romantic comedy with the more outré dreamscapes of magical realism, creating a hybrid beast that never quite seems to know where it wants to go. Charming in its own way, Twice Upon a Yesterday nonetheless seems a bit crowded, both with observations on the machinations of love and odd subplots (what's going on with Vic's loony friend Freddy, anyway?). Headey and Henshall are both fine in their roles, with the former milking the emotional heifer from both ends while the latter comes off as sort of a low-rent Kenneth Branagh (he not only looks like Branagh, but sounds a bit like him as well). In the end, Ripoll's message seems to be that when it comes to love, somebody's bound to get slammed no matter how many chances to get it right they may have. Not exactly earth-shattering news, that, but as a pleasant summer diversion not involving laser cannons or Will Smith, you could do worse. (6/18/99)
Arbor
D: Michael Hoffman; with Michelle Pfeiffer, Rupert Everett, Kevin Kline, Calista Flockhart, Anna Friel, Christian Bale, Dominic A. West, Stanley Tucci, Sophie Marceau, David Straithairn. (PG-13, 115 min.)
For my money the most gloriously, enchantingly trivial play in the Shakespearean canon, A Midsummer Night's Dream may also be the most screwup-proof of the bard's works. The story, already brimming with matchmaking fairies, love potions, and human-animal transformations, couldn't be any more preposterous than it already is, and therefore stands up well to the efforts of latter-day interpreters to "open it up" with their own gratuitous flights of whimsy. Michael Hoffman's contribution to the long tradition of nontraditional Shakespearean settings is to change the locale from ancient Greece to late 19th-century Italy, replete with background music from La Traviata. The only obvious benefits to this approach seem to lie in opportunities to showcase cleavage-flaunting period costumes and the almost pornographically gorgeous Tuscan scenery. Still, I guess it's no sillier than a hip-hop-pumping Romeo and Juliet set in Miami's South Beach. Where Hoffman (Soapdish, One Fine Day, Restoration) really earns his indulgence is in his masterful balancing of outlandish, hallucinatory splendor in the production design with basic reverence for Shakespeare's language and characterizations. This is a sublimely sensual film. Bathed in glitter, summer sweat, and moonlight, overflowing with giddy poetic language and shameless low comedy, it has a seductive, genuinely dreamlike feel that invites total surrender to its spell. Although Hoffman has courted disaster by packing his cast with so many stars who can dominate the screen, his gamble pays off thanks to their willingness to subordinate their charisma to the task of nurturing the story's inherent magic. Among the host of delightful performances, I especially enjoyed Everett as the brooding fairy king Oberon, whose tiff with queen Titania (Pfeiffer) sets the general romantic chaos in motion, and Tucci as his amiably maladroit sidekick, Puck. Kline's Bottom (the actor/ass with whom Pfeiffer becomes enamor'd after she gets a dose of Oberon's love juice) is featured more prominently than in the play. Kline runs with the opportunity, hamming it up shamelessly while adding a bit of pathos and vulnerability to the blustering buffoonery we normally associate with the character. Flockhart takes a manic, highly entertaining vacation from her dingbat Ally McBeal persona as perpetually lovelorn Helena who, thanks to Puck's ineptitude, ends up being pursued by not only her own lust object, Demetrius (Bale), but also best friend Hermia's swain, Lysander (West). These actors are masterful at Job No. 1 in any Shakespeare play, which is to do justice to the ornate and recklessly poetic -- yet richly communicative -- quality of his dialogue. A Midsummer Night's Dream is by no means the most important Shakespeare play, but it's the one that first made me and many others fall in love with Shakespeare. With this luscious, intoxicating adaptation, Michael Hoffman has not only proved that he shares that love, but has poured it into a darn-near irresistible trap for even those who seldom venture into the land of blank-verse-spouting men in tights. (5/14/99)
Gateway, GC Barton Creek Square, Highland
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 Weatherstone 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
BOUND (1996) D: The Wachowski Brothers; with Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon, Joe Pantoliano, John P. Ryan, Richard Sarafian. "The impressive co-directing debut of the Wachowski Brothers -- Larry and Andy [who recently scored big with The Matrix] -- has visual style to burn. What's more, they toss a few original twists into a familiar generic set-up and thereby create a thoroughly entertaining and stylish thriller. In Bound's twist on the Mob caper film, two women fall in love and plot to pilfer a cool $2 million from the unsuspecting mobsters. But it's not the narrative as much as how the film looks that keeps Bound's spectators rapt. The Wachowski Brothers and cinematographer Bill Pope have created an eminently watchable film, whose hook has more to do with the way it stokes your eyeballs than with what actually happens." --M.B.(10/4/96) (R, 107 min.) @Dobie; Fri-Thu, midnight.
KINGPIN (1996) D: Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrelly; with Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, Vanessa Angel, Bill Murray, Chris Elliott, Richard Tyson, Rob Moran, Lin Shaye. "From the writer/directors (the Farrelly Brothers) of Dumb and Dumber comes this new entry into the arena of stunningly ridiculous filmmaking that's not only dumber, but also far more entertaining than the duo's previous outing. Kingpin's teaming of Harrelson and Quaid works surprisingly well, aided by an above-average script that makes the most of a wonderfully ludicrous situation: a washed-up pro bowler (Harrelson) who lost his game hand, his dreams, and most of his hair circa 1979 thanks to a conniving and thoroughly unctuous rival (Murray). When he meets a young Amish man, Ishmael (Quaid, sublimely goofy in flowing golden locks), who seems to have all the hallmarks of a natural-born bowling pro, he spies his chance for a comeback and one final bid at his dream of tenpins immortality-by-proxy. The script is packed with surreal, stupid gags that thankfully work far more often than not. Quaid and Harrelson play off each other here like old pros." --M.S.(7/26/96) (PG-13, 113 min.) @Dobie; Fri-Thu, midnight.
RAISING ARIZONA (1987) D: Joel Coen; with Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, Trey Wilson, John Goodman, William Forsythe, Frances McDormand, M. Emmet Walsh. The Coen brothers sealed their place in film history as more than just a novelty act with this demented comedy about an infertile couple who steal a quintuplet.The film's family values will make your head hurt and the chase scenes will set your noggin spinning. (PG-13,92 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Thu (6/24), midnight.
RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD 2 (1985) D: George Cosmatos; with Sylvester Stallone, Richard Crenna, Charles Napier, Julia Nickson, Martin Cove. The Alamo ushers in Fourth of July weekend with this Stallone exercise in political and violent absurdity. Rambo is sent on a one-man mission to rescue M.I.A.s in Cambodia but finds out he has been duped by the U.S. government. All patrons will receive a crayon and an original Rambo coloring book image to complete for fun and prizes, culminating on Saturday with a vintage Rambo lunchbox filled with beer. Also showing is the short "Rambo: Part 2.5, aka How Savage Stole Santa Claus." (R, 95 min.) @Alamo Drafthouse; Thu (7/1), 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.
WAITING FOR GUFFMAN (1997) D: Christopher Guest; with Guest, Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey, Bob Balaban, Lewis Arquette, Brian Doyle-Murray, Matt Keeslar. "In the fictional town of Blaine, Missouri, Corky St. Clair (Guest), the visiting high school drama teacher and Off-Off-Off-Broadway refugee, is faced with the largest challenge of his life: to create a workable musical revue celebrating his town's sesquicentennial using only local players. This mockumentary, from the guiding light behind This Is Spinal Tap, is a scattershot affair, filled with the type of one-off gags SCTV did so well in their late-Seventies heyday. Guest's portrayal of the thoroughly closeted, expatriate, Broadway wannabe St. Clair is broad to the point of annoyance sometimes, although at other times his mastery of the banal subtleties of St. Clair's existence is affecting. But is it funny? Well, most of the time." --M.S.(3/28/97) (R, 84 min.) @Dobie; Fri-Thu, midnight.
ACCESS AUSTIN ARTS:
Star Wars: Episode 1 -- The Phantom Menace (1999) D: George Lucas; with Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Jake Lloyd, Natalie Portman, Pernilla August, Ahmed Best, Samuel L. Jackson, Ray Park. This audio-described screening uses words to paint the picture and key visual elements for blind or visually impaired audience members. The descriptions are created live, with a trained volunteer describer, and are transmitted via unobtrusive FM radio signals. Access Austin Arts is dedicated to making the cultural arts accessible to people with disabilities and the groupaudio describes at least one movie a month as well as two to three live theatre events. For more info call 454-9912 or visit http://www.main.org/accessarts.(PG, 133 min.) @Gateway; Sun (6/26), call for times.
AMERICAN DETECTIVE:
American Detective (1999)D: Dan Brown; with Jonny Mars, Julianna Shellfield, Bill Wise, Matt Carmody, Jana Lee Brockman. In this locally made dark comedy, a directionless loner becomes a private investigator by mail order and uses his new status to stalk the girl of his dreams. The film and its director are just back from a successful date at the Nantucket Film Festival. @GSD&M parking garage roof (828 W. Sixth St.); Fri (6/25); doors open at 7pm, Sarah Hickman will perform live at 7:30, movie begins at 9pm; free admission.
AUSTIN FILM SOCIETY "Summer Free-for-All: George Morris Tribute":
Diary of a Country Priest (1950) D: Robert Bresson; with Claude Laaydu, Jean Riveyre, Andre Guibert, Nicole Maurey, Nicole Ladmiral, Marie-Monique Arkell, Martine Lemaire, Antoine Balpetre, Bernard Hubrenne. 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. Excerpted here is Morris' original review of this French film by one of the masters of what Paul Schrader termed "transcendental" style. "Although it is his fourth feature, Diary of a Country Priest is the first movie that is stamped from beginning to end with Bresson's unmistakable signature. In adapting Georges Bernanos' 1936 novel, the director retains its diary structure, the author's spirit and tone, and most of the dialogue. A young priest (Laydu) is assigned to the village of Ambricourt, where he comes up against indifference, corruption, and greed among the locals. Obsessively devoted to his calling, Laydu becomes involved with the psychological cruelties being acted out in a neighboring chateau among a bereaved Countess (Arkell), her unfaithful husband (Riveyre),his mistress and governess to their daughter (Maurey), and the daughter (Ladmiral). The priest's journal determines and shapes Bresson's elliptical narrative and his formal strategies of discontinuity. And even within those strategies, Bresson splinters our comprehension of the events recorded on its pages, the words of which are alternately seen on the screen, narrated offscreen by their author, or recreated before our eyes in plastic space. Laydu struggles to assert his absolute faith and will on disinterested parishioners and Church officials alike, but this sunless, claustrophobic world distrusts his ardor and suspects his motives. The priest is a displaced person in the modern world, and Bresson's minimalist deployment of reductive formal patterns dramatically exaggerates the physical world while simultaneously intensifying the sense of spiritual disassociation. The director uses only two professionals in the cast (Balpetre and Arkell), initiating with this film the practice he would continue throughout his career of casting unknowns, "models" who will not display any emotion or thought that might editorialize on the search for truth in the progression of his images. He used no nonbelievers in this movie, and for the title role, he chose the Belgian-born Swiss Laydu, coached him for a year, and made him live in a monastery, and exacted from him one of the most sublime embodiments of the failed saint in the magnificent cinema of Robert Bresson." -- George Morris (4/11/86) The film will be introduced by UT professor Charles Ramirez Berg. For more info on the series (and more reviews by Morris) see the May 28 Screens section of the Chronicle, call the AFS at 322-0145, or see http://www.austinfilm.org. (NR, 120 min.)@Texas Union; Tue (6/29), 8pm; free admission but donations accepted at the door to benefit the D. Montgomery Award.
AGLIFF QUEER OUTDOOR SCREENINGS:
The Ritz (1976) D: Richard Lester; with Jack Weston, Rita Morena, Jerry Stiller, Kaye Ballard, F. Murray Abraham, Treat Williams, Paul Price, Bessie Love, John Ratzenberger.
The Austin Gay & Lesbian International Film Festival (aGLIFF) is sponsoring a monthly outdoor film series through the summer. This month's selection was written by the inimitable Richard Lester (A Hard Day's Night) and written by Tony Award-winner Terrence McNally (Love! Valour! Compassion!). The film is a rarely seen farce, featuring a stupendous cast (and a very young Treat Williams), which follows a man who hides out in the gay baths to escape from his murderous brother-in-law. Rita Moreno re-creates her Tony-winning role as a talentless diva; F. Murray Abraham plays a bitchy door queen. Chubby chasers and muscle-boy dance numbers abound. Also showing is a Bugs Bunny cartoon. (R, 91 min.) @Zilker Clubhouse; Wed (6/30), doors open at 8pm/showtime at dusk; drinks and food will be available, but no coolers allowed; admission: $2 aGLIFF members/$3 nonmembers.
CINE-CLUB of the ALLIANCE FRANCAISE D'AUSTIN:
La Cérémonie (1995) D: Claude Chabrol; with Sandrine Bonnaire, Isabelle Huppert, Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Cassel, Virginie Ledoyen. "Chabrol's icily brilliant adaptation of Ruth Rendell's A Judgment in Stone is a quite disturbing film. Unease starts building from the opening scene and continues through to the film's horrific climax, which slices home like a shaft of cold, jagged steel in the belly. Chabrol, whose career has been long and uneven, is in peak form with La Cérémonie, which earned six 1995 César (French Oscar equivalent) award nominations, including best direction, and a best actress award for Huppert. Building tension with a mastery that honors his idol, Hitchcock, Chabrol slowly parcels out information in a way that deepens, rather than resolves, the mystery. Then, when truth and moral clarity seem hopelessly remote, he brings them home in a breathtaking rush that sends you home chilled but exhilarated." --R.S. (5/9/97) The screening is part of the Cine-Club's year-long series "Lovers and Friends" (http://www.ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~prom/cine-club). (NR, 111 min.) @St. David's Health Resource Center Theatre (3000 N. I-35 -- enter parking lot through south entrance gate; exit code announced at screening); Fri (6/25), 7:30pm, $2 donation requested.
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.
PARAMOUNT SUMMER FILMCLASSICS:All About Eve (1950) D: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; with Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, Thelma Ritter. Everyone's claws are perfectly sharpened in this multi-Oscar-winning tale of an aging actress and her fawning acolyte/backstabber. Great script, great performances, a true culture classic. (NR, 138 min.) @Paramount, Mon (6/28), 9:25pm; Tue (6/29), 7pm.
The Little Foxes (1941) D: William Wyler; with Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright, Dan Duryea. Lillian Hellman's play (which she also adapted for the screen) is about Southern gentility and greed and is brilliantly realized by this group of actors and sensitive staging. Bette Davis as clan diva Regina is a standout. (NR, 116 min.) @Paramount, Mon (6/28), 7pm; Tue (6/29), 9:45pm.
Mildred Pierce (1945) D: Michael Curtiz; with Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth, Butterfly McQueen. There are so many angles from which to look at this Hollywood/Joan Crawford benchmark. It's solid Hollywood storytellling that observes a woman's rags-to-riches business success that comes at the expense of her spoiled-brat daughter, who competes with her for the same man. (NR, 109 min.)@Paramount, Wed (6/30), 7pm; Thu (7/1), 9:35pm.
Mommie Dearest (1981) D: Frank Perry; with Faye Dunaway, Diana Scarwid, Steve Forrest, Howard da Silva. The Joan Crawford story from her unhappy daughter's perspective is a most definitely creepy affair. For all the campy fun of the "No wire hangers" mantra, there is also this horrific, PG-rated story of alleged child abuse. (PG, 129 min.) @Paramount, Wed (6/30), 9:20pm; Thu (7/1), 7pm.
WORKING STIFF JOURNAL FORUM:
The Subtext of a Yale Education
D: Laura Dunn. Filmmaker Dunn, who is now a master's candidate in UT's RTF Dept., made this documentary while she was an undergraduate at Yale. It was a time of significant labor conflict in a setting well-known for its active unions and conservative administrations. The film focuses on the corporatization of higher education. Dunn will introduce the documentary, and a panel of local labor organizers and experts will lead a discussion after the screening. For more info call 478-4465 or visit the Working Stiff Jounal online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/wsj.htm.
@AFL-CIO Building (11th St. & Lavaca); Fri (6/25), 7pm, free admission.