RECO #48
You scream, I scream: Do we detect a trend in this summer’s movie releases? Since everyone now knows that white men can’t jump, this summer it seems that white men have chosen to prove they can scream. – M.B.
stars
New Review
BULLETPROOF HEART
D: Mark Malone; with Anthony LaPaglia, Mimi Rogers, Matt Craven, Peter Boyle, Monika Schnarre, Joseph Maher.Director Mark Malone makes an impressive debut with this modern film noir about a hit man who falls in love with his victim. This cold-blooded drama stares unflinchingly into the face of death. But what hit man Mick (LaPaglia) finds there, for the first time in his career, is compassion and humanity rather than the usual nihilistic ennui. The movie’s opening sequence shows Mick at work: He’s the best at what he does, and he does it with an artful efficiency and chilling detachment. When next we see Mick, he’s at home in bed with a prostitute (sent to him as a “tip” from a client), and it’s apparent that he would just as soon kill her as screw her. Neither action would stir Mick’s arousal. Two other characters figure into his posh and orderly existence: his associate George (Boyle) and his sidekick-wannabe Archie (Craven). George comes to Mick with an urgent and curious job that must be completed that evening; Archie comes in contrition for his bungled performance on the last job Mick allowed him to join in on. The target of the evening’s hit is a beautiful and mysterious woman named Fiona (Rogers), a woman who welcomes her assassin and longs for his touch. Her enigmatic behavior and her erotically charged allure transfixes Mick and, ironically, provides him with something to live for. The performances in Bulletproof Heart are, every one of them, exceptional. LaPaglia proves himself a fascinating leading man as he ranges back and forth between the character’s icy reserve and volatile physicality. Rogers is pure femme fatale, a noir dame packaged with a lady’s grace; based on her performances in Rapture and Bulletproof Heart alone, it’s clear that Rogers deserves to become a major star. Boyle turns in one of his masterfully colorful performances, and Craven as the dimwitted Archie is all jangly energy and nervous tension. The film’s dialogue occasionally becomes a bit too literary and self-conscious, though the characters manage to deliver them with comfortable ease. The movie is, moreover, divided into sections that are individually introduced with written lines of dialogue or commentary. And though Bulletproof Heart maintains a remarkable visual and moral tone throughout, bits and pieces of the narrative sometimes stick out as implausible. Nevertheless, low-budget indies this sustained and cohesive are a rare find and modern films noirs this authentic are even rarer still.
3.0 stars (M.B.)
Dobie
BUSHWHACKED
D: Greg Beeman; with Daniel Stern, Jon Polito, Brad Sullivan, Ann Dowd, Blake Bashoff, Ari Greenberg.I once had a home economics teacher whose notion of culinary ingenuity revolved around the concept of a “basic dough.” This dough, so she said, could create a vast variety of cookies with minimal time and effort. All you had to do was “add your chocolate chips, your coconut, or your raisins and voil�!” The fact that they all had the same sweet, bland flavor and brown, shapeless appearance in no way mitigated Mrs. Huber’s enthusiasm. They were quick, sweet, and easy. Who could ask for anything more? Bushwhacked is Hollywood’s version of basic dough. The basic ingredients: the ordinary boy who has an extraordinary adventure, the bookworm who comes up with esoteric solutions, the fat boy who eats too much but is just a regular guy anyhow, and the runt who proves that the size of his heart is more important than the size of his biceps. Now, all you have to do is throw in a different setting. It could be (and certainly has been) a ball team, a summer camp, or, in this case, a scout troop – specifically, six Ranger Scouts in search of a leader. Instead of the scaler of high mountains and forder of great rivers that they’ve been promised, they get Max Grabelski (Daniel Stern), an urban delivery boy whose leather jacket, Italian loafers, and Saturday-night swagger cut a foppish figure in the great outdoors. Max uses this mistaken identity to help him evade the law while he tries to find out who framed him for murder. The trouble is, of course, that he is stuck in the wilderness with a bunch of kids who expect him to know what he’s doing. And the ensuing wilderness antics are, well, sweet, bland, and shapeless. And, considering the alacrity with which Hollywood is turning these out, apparently no one is asking for anything more.
1.0 stars (H.C.)
Great Hills, Lincoln, Movies 12, Northcross, Roundrock, Westgate
CLEAN, SHAVEN
D: Lodge Kerrigan; with Peter Greene, Robert Albert, Megan Owen, Molly Castelloe, Jennifer McDonald.The low-frequency radio transmissions constantly disrupting the soundtrack of Clean, Shaven are meant to get under your skin – they’re the sounds of a mind that’s gone unhinged. In his startling, if somewhat uneven, directorial debut, Kerrigan has fashioned a tale of madness that is alternately creepy and sympathetic. As Peter Winter, the schizophrenic wanderer searching for the young daughter he lost years ago, Greene is eerily compelling; if eyes are indeed the windows to a man’s soul, then Greene’s haunted blue eyes in Clean, Shaven reveal the soul of a man in perpetual torment. (It’s hard to believe that this is the same actor who played the sadist in Pulp Fiction.) The pace and detail here are strictly minimal, while the tone is unquestionably paranoiac. Some of the scenes in which Winter acts out his compulsions are bewildering and fascinating (covering and smashing windows and mirrors to avoid his reflection), while others are gruesome (the self-mutilation ritual of shaving and cutting body hair). At times, this is not a movie for the squeamish. Despite the assuredness of its unsettling tone, Clean, Shaven is a frustrating experience because its narrative is so purposely vague. Did Peter Winter really kill the young girl found dead midway through the film and, if so, why? Why is the police detective investigating the murder so obsessed with the crime? Just the electronic murmurings that permeate this film like so much psychological static, these and other ambiguities make this a difficult film to comprehend in any rational way. On the other hand, it’s the elliptical nature of Clean, Shaven that makes it the compelling work it is. Clean, Shaven debuted in Austin during the SXSW Film Festival.
3.0 stars (S.D.)
Dobie
DANCE ME OUTSIDE
D: Bruce McDonald; with Ryan Black, Adam Beach, Jennifer Podemski, Lisa LaCroix, Michael Greyeyes, Kevin Hicks, Sandrine Holt.Canadian director Bruce McDonald, whose last film was the quirkily entertaining Highway 61, helms this flawed, but likable, comic drama which, despite taking a questionable turn in its third act, proves to be a pleasant enough diversion all the same. Set on the Kidabanesee Reserve, Dance Me Outside chronicles the lives, loves, hopes, problems, and triumphs of a diverse group of young Canadian Indians. Silas Crow is a reckless teen who longs to attend mechanics school with his best buddy Frank. Sadie, Silas’ more ambitious girlfriend who has some serious doubts about the future of their relationship, is actively involved in local politics. Meanwhile, Silas’ sister Illianna has just married a caring and successful, if somewhat goofy, white guy with a low sperm count, much to the chagrin of her baby-hungry mother and her old flame Gooch, who returns to town after riding out a three-year prison sentence. The entire community is rocked when an innocent, well-liked local, Little Margaret Wolfchild, is murdered by a local, white-trash hellraiser. After serving only one year for the crime, this killer becomes the target of revenge as Silas and his friends plot an elaborate ambush to avenge the death of their lost friend. When detailing the relationships between its lively characters, Dance Me Outside is pretty engaging stuff, with McDonald utilizing his charming cast to best effect. Unfortunately, the film’s darker moments aren’t as convincing, and so the picture’s revenge subplot and the wholly unnecessary “twist” ending are not only unsatisfying, but serve to seriously dampen the overall effectiveness of the entire movie. Still, much of Dance Me Outside is worthwhile – thanks mainly to its unique setting and characters, both of which are nicely realized by the talented cast and director.
2.5 stars (J.O.)
Village
THE NET
D: Irwin Winkler; with Sandra Bullock, Jeremy Northam, Dennis Miller, Diane Baker.The Net is the first of several new movies that tap into the growing national fear of becoming roadkill on the information highway. No one will be dissuaded from their paranoia by The Net; in fact, the movie targets our worst suspicions. We live in an age in which we’ve all been subject to the computer glitch that distorts a record, wipes out a history, or temporarily shuts down a switchboard, a bank, or an air traffic control tower. Such victimhood stokes our logical fear of a nefarious network of information tycoons driven to control all international infrastructures. No longer a remote nightmare, this information junta is now conceivable – maybe even visible. But I guarantee that the takeover, when it comes, will not bear any resemblance to the scenario portrayed in The Net. Conceived as a kind of Alfred Hitchcock meets John Grisham thriller, The Net merely proves what makes those guys such pros and what makes producer-turned-director Irwin Winkler (Guilty by Suspicion, Night and the City) such a heavy-handed knockoff. The Net is sensationalism sans substance – a hip topic, a hot actress, and a hokey script. Professional computer hacker Angela Bennett (Bullock) is a program debugger. This meek young woman works at home and communicates with her employer and colleagues by computer. We are to believe that Angela never leaves the house; we see her order dinner (a pizza) by modem and socialize via computer chat rooms. For the plot to work at all, it is essential that there not be a soul in the world who can identify her: not a neighbor, not a co-worker, not a relative (Mom conveniently has Alzheimer’s), not a friend. Is this really possible, even given the most hermetic computer nerd? (Perhaps this should serve as a reminder to handsomely tip all pizza delivery guys so that they can instantly ID us should the dire need arise.) But, alas, poor Angela cannot find a single soul who can attest to her real identity and the bad guys also make it impossible for her to turn to the police. Angela Bennett is erased from the map even more expeditiously than leftists are “disappeared” in modern Argentina. Why the megalomaniacal bad guys go to the vast trouble of stripping Angela of her life rather than just mowing her down is somewhat mysterious, though supposedly explained by her would-be assassin’s unplanned attraction to this cyber-gal equal. Talk about unsafe sex: a one-night stand with an apparent Mr. Right (who is concocted from Angela’s “private” computer fantasies) with murder on his mind shows that the cautionary “Mr. Goodbar morality” is still as potent as ever in our brave new computer age. Loss of identity is a central Hitchcock theme and the source for much of his movies’ suspense. All the evil-doing is simply the MacGuffin that prompts the identity crisis. The Net reverses that formula; recovering her original identity means returning Angela to her former mousy self, the movie’s suspense derives from figuring out how wide the evil net has been cast. But in terms of suspense, this Net is full of holes.
1.5 stars (M.B.)
Arbor, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Movies 12, Riverside, Roundrock
SATIN STEEL
D: Clifton Ko; with Jade Leung, Anita Lee, Russell Wong.Kung-fu jungle cannibals, gun-running ventriloquist gangsters, and a vicious henchman with robotic arms all make appearances in Satin Steel, a trashy new action vehicle starring Black Cat heroine Jade Leung. Add to these oddball elements a little steamy sex, some frantic gunplay, a dash of mediocre martial arts fighting, and a few genuinely hair-raising stunts, and you have a ridiculous piece of celluloid that may prove fun for undemanding fans of low-budget garbage – and just about insufferable for everyone else. Jade Leung stars as an “unconventional Hong Kong police detective with a past,” creatively named, well… Jade Leung. Staying true to its formula, Jade is then teamed up with a by-the-book inspector (newcomer Anita Lee) in order to bring down a vicious gun dealer, and… yawn. Since we are all familiar with these kinds of mismatched buddy plot lines, let us cut to the chase and move on to what will make this picture either watchable or unwatchable, depending on your own personal taste… or lack of it for that matter. This is the kind of movie that offers no explanation for the villain’s cyborg arm, allows the heroine time for a sweaty workout sequence, introduces a sympathetic character and kills him or her off for revenge “motivation” one sex scene later, and (in a particularly hilarious bit of internal logic) finds our shapely female cops hunting and arresting suspects in skimpy bathing suits. Even though trashy set-pieces are the focus here, the best thing about Satin Steel is the stuntwork, most of which looks pretty dangerous, and appears to have been done using a minimum of stunt doubles. By comparison, the kung-fu brawls are unexpectedly primitive, as the extent of Leung’s martial arts training is more than a little questionable. Clifton Ko’s direction may be sloppy, but he keeps the picture moving at a fast pace, enthusiastically serving up healthy doses of both sex and violence. This is brainless and poorly done nonsense for sure, but not without a touch of wild energy and inept charm. It co-stars Joy Luck Club’s Russell Wong in an awfully bland performance as Jade’s short-lived love interest.
1.0 stars (J.O.)
Hogg
SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT
D: Lasse Hallstrom; with Julia Roberts, Robert Duvall, Gena Rowlands, Kyra Sedgwick, Dennis Quaid, Haley Aull.In 1990, Swedish director Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?) made his American debut with Once Around, a film about a family’s coming to terms with itself, flaws and all. This film had promise but never quite smoothed out its rough edges. With Something to Talk About Hallstrom succeeds where his first American film failed: the King family is laid bare, warts and all, and is made to seem ideal, ugly, weak, and strong all at the same time. Credit most definitely should be shared between Hallstrom and screenwriter Callie Khouri, best known as the writer responsible for Thelma & Louise’s funny, oft-quoted words. Khouri’s dialogue in this film contains some sweet surprises. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on Grace (Roberts), a young Southern wife estranged from her philandering husband Eddie (Quaid), she utters some line that reveals a little more depth than is at first apparent. “I don’t want to be this wife,” she stammers as she breaks down during a confrontation with Eddie. She is referring to masking her feelings of jealousy, rage, and mistrust. Grace spends the rest of the movie trying to address her emotions and needs – not an easy task for a woman raised to appreciate calm surfaces and pleasing appearances. When a visitor to her parents’ horse farm remarks that Southern womean seem easy to please, Grace laughingly responds, “That comes from centuries of keeping our expectations low.” Battling not only her husband but her domineering, horse-breeding father Wyly (expertly played by Duvall), Grace struggles against expectations and years of tradition to pinpoint her own desires and goals, which involve veterinary school instead of managing the family farm. As crises tend to do, Grace and Eddie’s separation sends ripples through the family, encouraging her well-heeled mother Georgia (the luminous Gena Rowlands) to confront her own husband about his past infidelities. Supporting roles by Sedgwick as witty, independent sister Emma Rae and Aull as Grace and Eddie’s young daughter round out a well-chosen cast. Roberts and Quaid work well together onscreen; the film offers Roberts a rare opportunity to play an adult role that allows her some range. Something to Talk About also features the inimitable cinematography of Sven Nykvist, whose camera captures all of the natural beauty of South Carolina and Georgia, re-creating stunning horse riding competitions such as the finale’s Grand Prix Championship. Perhaps the most satisfying aspect of this film is its lack of tidy closure. As in life, compromises are reached and battles continue with the opponents squaring off warily or affectionately, depending upon the circumstances. Three-dimensional in scope, the characters react to one another with love, anger, subtle manipulation, and generosity. While the film does have its overwrought moments and even some wince-worthy Southern clich�s, Something to Talk About is a pleasant surprise amidst a summer of big cinema hype and little entertainment payoff.
3.0 stars (A.M.)
Arbor, Highland, Movies 12, Riverside, Roundrock, Westgate
VIRTUOSITY
D: Brett Leonard; with Denzel Washington, Kelly Lynch, Russell Crowe, Stephen Spinella, William Forsythe, Louise Fletcher.Director Leonard returns to the virtual reality setting of his previous film, The Lawnmower Man, with this sophomore effort that asks the burning question: “What would happen if a renegade VR program came to life?” Well, okay, so maybe that’s more like a smoldering question instead of an out-and-out conflagration, but Leonard posits it nonetheless. Washington is Parker Barnes, an ex-LAPD detective unjustly incarcerated for a crime he didn’t really commit. When a VR composite of almost 200 serial killers by the name of Sid 6.7 (nicely essayed by Crowe, who, to me, will forever be the evil skinhead Hando from Romper Stomper) is suddenly let loose on the world at large via a chain of inexplicable events too convoluted to go into here, Barnes is set free in an effort to track down and eliminate the attention-starved, media-savvy killer. The notion of the downside of VR hasn’t really been toyed with that much in the movies of late, but Leonard’s film, instead of tackling what could have been a nifty piece of cyber-socio-commentary, fails to deliver the goods, instead coughing up a tired, clich�d bit of cops and robbers tedium that begs, borrows, and steals its narrative from everything from Escape From New York and Terminator 2 to Washington’s own Ricochet. Sadly, there’s not much to chew on here and what’s worse is the fact that even the action sequences – supposedly the saving graces in a film of this sort – are shoddily directed, with sub-par editing and the sort of poorly chosen, intrusive guitars on the soundtrack that are the hallmark of grade-B action films these days. Despite some briefly breathtaking, computer-generated special effects, Virtuosity is 95 minutes of unsubstantial firefights and meandering plot twists. The genuinely talented Washington seems wasted here alongside everything, and nearly everyone, else. Does that make this virtual filmmaking, I wonder?
1.5 stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Westgate
WATERWORLD
D: Kevin Reynolds; with Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Tina Majorino, Michael Jeter, Zakes Mokae.If you can work your way past the monumental anti-hype and ill-will surrounding this most expensive of all films, you’ll find Reynolds and Costner’s enfant terrible of a movie isn’t so terrible after all. With a budget hovering around the $200 million mark and a backlog of cast and crew horror stories so colossal they make Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate-woes pale in comparison (the hurricane that destroyed the main set was a nice touch), Waterworld has been a project under siege almost from day one. That makes it all the more pleasant to find out that the film is actually quite good, as far as gargantuan summer blockbusters go (certainly, it’s vastly more entertaining and technically superior to the sounds-like-a-threat-to-me Batman Forever). Set in a future where an unknown cataclysm has melted the polar ice caps, Waterworld is just that: an environment sans terra firma. Sailing, rowing, and, occasionally flying across this vast, murky expanse are the last footholds of humanity: the Atollers, who have banded together to create a semblance of normalcy atop a vast, floating community; the Smokers (so named because of their penchant for cigarettes; where, though, do they get all these non-soggy cancer sticks?), a vile group of marauders led by the predictably over-the-top Hopper; and – our hero – the Mariner (Costner), a lone, web-footed scavenger who cruises the ocean searching for barterable goods (like, say, dirt). When the Mariner, after an attack by the Smokers, is unwillingly pressed into aid by a stranded woman and her young female charge (Tripplehorn and Majorino, respectively), he must choose between a solitary life on the sea or the more noble (albeit less palatable) route of Savior of Humankind. If this sounds familiar to you, that’s because Reynolds’ film is essentially George Miller’s Mad Max remade by Greenpeace; it’s almost uncanny how much Reynolds and screenwriters Peter Rader and David Twohy have borrowed from Miller’s film (and, going further back, several Kurosawa epics and, of course, Shane), so much so that it sometimes grates on your nerves. That aside, Waterworld succeeds nicely on its own merits. Sure, there’s the occasional plot hole that gapes wider than the toothy maw of Spielberg’s Jaws, but Costner’s misanthropic characterization of the Mariner – not to mention all the terrific “so that’s where all that money went!” stunts – allows you to forget all that logic stuff for a while and just have a rollicking good time watching things blow up all over the place. Nowhere near the Hollywood disaster that was foretold, Waterworld is a near-model summer fantasy: two hours and 21 minutes of loud, expansive fun.
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Great Hills, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Westgate
First Run
CLUELESS
D: Amy Heckerling; with Alicia Silverstone, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Paul Rudd, Donald Faison, Breckin Meyer, Jeremy Sisto, Justin Walker, Wallace Shawn, Twink Calan, Dan Hedaya.Rarely do you find a film so aptly titled as this one, though the upcoming Pauly Shore vehicle, Dude, I Suck comes close. Director Heckerling, who scored so well so long ago with the brilliant, seminal Fast Times at Ridgemont High, returns to cloyingly similar territory in what is essentially a mediocre Nineties updating of that previous film. Instead of Jeff Spicoli, though, we have Cher (Silverstone), a dangerously fashion-conscious Beverly Hills teen whose one great joy in life is making over her friends and maintaining her status as Miss Popularity, USA. Michael Lehmann’s Heathers followed the same sort of story line to much better effect in 1989, and Clueless leaves you itching to race over to the video store in search of just that. Silverstone and the ensemble cast of generic high-schoolers (including a phenomenally ill-used Wallace Shawn replacing the Ray Walston character from Fast Times) tweak their way through a Fox sitcom-quality string of cheap gags and ham-handed teen angst that isn’t so much humorous as it is boring. Perhaps it’s unfair to keep returning to the comparison with Fast Times, but those characters – as portrayed by Judge Reinhold, Phoebe Cates, Sean Penn, et al. – seem, in retrospect, to have been achingly more realized. The kids here just mope, pout, and whine to varying degrees until you want to ship them all off to Rock ‘n’ Roll High School so the Ramones can take a crack at ’em (“Teenage Lobotomy” never sounded so accurate). Clueless indeed.
1.0 stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Lake Creek, Lincoln, Movies 12, Riverside, Roundrock, Westgate
FREE WILLY 2: THE ADVENTURE HOME
D: Dwight Little; with Jason James Richter, August Schellenberg, Jayne Atkinson, Jon Tenney, Elizabeth Pe�a, Michael Madsen, Francis Capra, Mary Kate Schellhardt, M. Emmet Walsh.Just as every boy thrives best when he has a family to belong to, so too does every whale. That was the lesson of Free Willy I. But, whereas Willy I was built around one glorious, spectacular visual image – that of the orca leaping bravely and gracefully over the water’s above-sea-level retaining wall – a shot that was the movie’s raison d’�tre, a shot that served the story and summarized the narrative and thrust events into an epic realm… Free Willy 2 has no similar reason to exist. As a-boy-and-his-orca sequel, this one’s pedestrian (and it’s not just due to the lack of sailing through the air shots). Any adult watching Willy 2 should be able to predict events before the tide ever changes. Kids, on the other hand, should be satisfied with the movie’s mix of family drama, playful whale bonding, and impending ecological crisis. Sibling conflict arises when lead Jesse (Richter), an adolescent who has grown to love his adopted parents (Atkinson and Madsen) since Willy I, has to adapt to the arrival of a half-brother Elvis (Capra), whom he never knew existed. This new family of four travels to the Pacific Northwest on a camping trip where they will see their friend Randolph (Schellenberg) – a holdover from Willy I – and, hopefully, Willy himself. And, of course, Willy doesn’t disappoint; he shows up with his whole pod: his mother, brother, and sister. After much whale cavorting, sibling tension, and puppy love sparked by the presence of Randolph’s god-daughter, some of the “bad guys” cause an oil spill to happen. The whales musts be saved from the effects of the spill and then the kids must be saved from their selfless mission to save the whales. And, somewhere, in the midst of all this, the voice of Michael Jackson turns up to ask the preposterously self-reflexive musical question, “Have you seen my childhood?” Elizabeth Pe�a shows up in the unlikely role of a whale veterinarian; Please, someone, give this subtle talent material to which she’s better suited than poking injections in whale tails and looking generally concerned. (Hint: If you really want to see a great and current movie about the interaction between humans, sea mammals, and myth, check out John Sayles’ Secret of Roan Inish.)
1.5 stars (M.B.)
Highland, Lake Creek, Movies 12, Northcross, Westgate
THE INCREDIBLY TRUE ADVENTURE OF TWO GIRLS IN LOVE
D: Maria Maggenti; with Laurel Holloman, Nicole Parker, Maggie Moore, Kate Stafford, Sabrina Artel, Toby Poser, Nelson Rodriguez, Dale Dickey.At first glance, the plot of Incredibly True Adventure couldn’t be more prosaic; teen love traumas are a film industry staple and our familiarity with their formulas are a given. It’s senior year of high school and two teenagers fall in love. They love in the way that all first-time lovers do – for always and forever. Randy’s skin is white and Evie’s skin is black. Randy likes loud rock music; Evie prefers classical. Randy gets around on Rollerblades; Evie drives her own Range Rover. And, oh yeah, they’re both 17-year-old girls. Randy is an out-of-the-closet dyke who lives with her lesbian aunt and her aunt’s lover. She’s flunking classes, working a duller-than-dull gas station job, and is quite unpopular at school. Evie lives with her single mom, a wealthy professional who travels frequently. Evie has just broken up with her boyfriend, is a model student, and is popular with her peers. She doesn’t know if she’s a lesbian or not but she does know that she’s in love with Randy. Incredibly True Adventure tells the story of the relationship between these two girls and the social, racial, and sexual storm it sets in motion. Yet the tone of the movie remains lighthearted and funny, and even dips into farce before the movie’s ambiguous close. The story is standard teen fare; only the protagonists are new. Yet new protagonists can also generate new narrative conflicts, possibilities, expectations, and resolutions. This is made clear in the film’s opening shots. The first image we see is that of two pairs of feet entwined; one set’s donned in work boots and coveralls, the other set is bare but for high heels and an ankle bracelet. Automatically, we assume this is an image of a man and woman locked in embrace. After a few further shots of the couple’s upper bodies, we can see that these lovers are two women. From the outset, Incredibly True Adventure declares its intention to subvert traditional conventions and expectations. But in the hands of debut feature director Maggenti, subversion becomes the epitome of fun. Furthermore, in terms of feature films containing lesbian thematics, Incredibly True Adventure breaks new ground in comedy. This humor may take the form of a visual punchline as described above or the farcical anarchy that dominates the movie’s last third. But the humor is the spice that makes this Adventure addictive. Maggenti has found a key to inventing film stories that use the familiar structures of the past to chronicle the present and envision the future. Incredibly True Adventure premiered in Austin earlier this year at the SXSW Film Festival.
4.0 stars (M.B.)
Village
THE INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD
D: Frank Oz; with Hal Scardino, Litefoot, Lindsay Crouse, Richard Jenkins, Rishi Bhat, David Keith.From the multi-award-winning children’s book by Lynne Reid Banks comes this above-average fantasy that somehow manages to retain most of the sly wit and style of the source material despite Oz’s sometimes heavy-handed direction. When young Omri (Scardino) is given a small, wooden cabinet, his grandmother’s skeleton key, and a tiny plastic Indian for his ninth birthday, he discovers that the gifts are entirely magical: By putting the Indian (Litefoot) in the cupboard and turning the key, he can bring the tiny warrior to life (as well as any other figures he places inside the slightly worse-for-wear cabinet). Enchanted, both Indian and boy become unlikely friends, with Omri placed in the troubling position of having to take full adult responsibility for the care of his diminutive charge, while the Indian – an Onondaga Iroquois by the name of Little Bear – struggles to make sense of what has happened to him. When Omri’s best friend, Patrick (Bhat), discovers the secret of the cabinet and introduces a tiny cowboy into the picture, the stage is set for both dangerous confrontations and emotional roller coasters. As the old screenwriting maxim goes, “If you introduce a bow and arrow in the first act….” One of the chief draws of The Indian in the Cupboard is the excellent animation – courtesy of George Lucas’ Industrial Light & Magic – used to portray the aptly named Little Bear. A combination of rear projection, computer graphics, and, I believe, some sparing use of stop-motion animation, bring the character to life wonderfully, though much of the credit here goes to the remarkably well-chosen cast, from Litefoot (in his acting debut) on down. Oz and screenwriter Melissa Mathison manage to retain the novel’s solid moral tone without diluting it for the screen, though the director does occasionally wander into unwarranted Spielbergian territory with lingering, golden-lit shots of the Indian and the odd bit of pedantic dialogue (“There are lessons to be learned here, kids,” he seems to be saying, as he hammers home a couple of points with all the subtlety of Hank Aaron). In a young-person’s film as charming as this, that remains a minor quibble, though. Surprisingly well-done nearly all the way around, this neither plays down to its target audience nor fumbles the inherent childhood fantasy of the story. And, of course, after the annoying Housesitter, it’s nice to see Oz back in the magical realm he appears to know so well.
3.0 stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Lincoln, Movies 12, Riverside, Westgate
OPERATION DUMBO DROP
D: Simon Wincer; with Ray Liotta, Danny Glover, Denis Leary, Doug E. Doug, Corin Nemec.Operation Dumbo Drop is a terribly irresponsible picture that seems shamefully patterned after director’s Wincer’s other box office success, Free Willy. The first feel-good family movie set against the backdrop of the Vietnam war, Wincer’s film opens with a number of happy, smiling Vietnamese villagers and their magnificently beautiful elephants being bombed into oblivion by a mortar blast that bathes the screen in a all-encompassing burst of white light. Then, over the course of the opening credits, we see some helicopter stunts, a comic mid-air firefight with the VC, a main character puking his guts out, and a man graphically chowing down on a raw snake. The senseless plot – which the filmmakers insist on telling us is based on a true story – finds hard-headed Captain Doyle (Liotta) teaming up with a more humanitarian, if equally stubborn, soldier named Sam Cahill (Glover) in order to track down and deliver an elephant to a nearby village. Assisted by a trio of stereotypically wacky comic-relief sidekicks (Denis Leary as the lovable but cold-hearted opportunist, Doug E. Doug as the lovable fraidy-cat, and Corin Nemec as the lovable country boy), this motley group heads into the jungle where they “buy” both an elephant and his master – a (lovable, of course) knife-wielding young boy who, following his parents’ death in the war, hates Americans with a passion. Together, this bunch of losers slowly bond together as they travel cross-country with their elephant Bo-Tat, whom director Wincer exploits not for her natural beauty (as he wisely did with the whale in Free Willy), but for the crude laughs provided by her supposedly side-splitting bodily functions. Operation Dumbo Drop is a rotten movie for many reasons – take its illogical scripting, inconsistent performances, sloppy direction, or the unbelievably offensive oversimplification of the atrocities of the Vietnam war. Ultimately, the film fails because it has no audience. The younger viewers are likely to be bored and confused by the historical aspects of the movie (How many 10-year-olds know what the Ho Chi Minh Trail is?) and adults are likely to find the whole affair far too whitewashed and pedestrian to hold their attention. There is one effective sequence – played up with obvious desperation by the movie’s trailers – in which the elephant, thanks to a wide array of fairly convincing special effects, parachutes from a plane. Beyond this genuinely exciting bit of footage, Operation Dumbo Drop is a disastrous miscalculation that leaves the viewer with only one burning thought: “What the hell were they thinking?”
0 stars (J.O.)
Highland, Lake Creek, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock, Westgate
UNDER SIEGE 2: DARK TERRITORY
D: Geoff Murphy; with Steven Seagal, Eric Bogosian, Katherine Heigl, Morris Chestnut, Everett McGill.By what justice can Steven Seagal, an absolute unknown until just a few years ago, claim to be a major movie star? As a screen persona, he’s a no-talent, badass bully. In his directing debut last year with On Deadly Ground, he proved he was about as longwinded and pointless as that relation who’s always avoided at every family gathering. His success is our doing. His action movies make gobs of money and only we can cause that to change. Under Siege 2 provides helpful incentive; it is so bad and illogical that even devoted loyalists should find their faith tested. The subtitle Dark Territory doesn’t even begin to describe how inchoate and blemished this storytelling is. All activity is fashioned with one objective in mind: how to introduce Seagal into the scene so he can kick, whump, stomp, detonate, and, basically, humiliate every bad guy in the hemisphere before eradicating him forthwith. In Under Siege 2, Seagal reprises his character of Casey Ryback, a cook and an ex-Navy SEAL. The mere mention of his name is enough to get heads at the Pentagon and NASA nodding with confidence. Why not? Ryback’s a one-man show. Typical of his bravura style, he, literally, takes on a whole trainload of bad guys this time when (and I don’t think I’m being nitpicky here) it would have been so much more effective to hop off the train and gather the cavalry. What he’s doing on the train in the first place is a pitifully thin story line which leads to further moments of illogic rather than clarity. In one of the year’s most unlikely bits of casting, Eric Bogosian, the noted monologist, plays the deranged villain who commandeers the train as a post from which to kidnap the satellite he once invented. Bogosian has turned into a look-alike for Elliott Gould and appears to have the ability to berserkly chew scenery while Seagal darts about doing his bully-boy thing. At times, you suspect the whole project has taken a few tips from the Leni Riefenstahl school of filmmaking, a style that venerates spectacle regardless of substance. I could go on asking questions like why there’s a woman in the bathroom fixing her lipstick while she’s being held hostage… but in this direction lies certain madness. However, there are two further things I must mention: Ryback’s new sidekick and comic relief character Bobby (Chestnut) plays into some of the most deplorable black stereotyping I’ve seen in a while. He’s a shuffling fraidy cat who jokes his way through the crisis and can’t keep his mind on the task at hand. Something tricky is also going on with the film’s print ad campaign which poses Ryback in his Navy whites, an image we see only in the film’s closing shot. The rest of the time, he’s the man in black, all black: black shirt, black jacket, black pants. Never mussed, never bloodied – not starched Navy whites. What, exactly, are they trying to sell with this ad campaign? Do we care? Just say no.
0 stars (M.B.)
Great Hills, Lincoln, Movies 12, Roundrock, Westgate
Still Playing
APOLLO 13
D: Ron Howard; with Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon, Gary Sinise, Ed Harris, Kathleen Quinlan, Mary Kate Schellhardt.Ron Howard’s take on the ill-fated 1970 moon shot is a big step forward from his previous two films – Backdraft and The Paper – which were generally muddled exercises in how an excellent filmmaker can get lost in his own story. Apollo 13 has no such problems, and as such, it’s a riveting, nail-biting, two-buckets-of-popcorn return to form for Howard, filled with the almost unassailable heroics of the U.S. space program and the genuine urgency of history. The story, by Texans William Broyles, Jr. and Al Reinert, is equally compelling, playing up the interesting notion that by the time this third moon shot came around, not even the media was very interested in the space race anymore until something went awry. Howard pulls out all the stops on this one and the performances are uniformly wonderful: It’s almost a valentine to NASA, but without the celestial mythologizing of films like The Right Stuff. Oddly, some of the integral special effects in the film – and they are integral – seem less than perfect but, overall, Apollo 13 succeeds and may be the only summer adventure blockbuster without bullets or warheads.
3.5 stars (M.S.)
Arbor, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Movies 12, Northcross, Riverside, Roundrock
BATMAN FOREVER
D: Joel Schumacher; with Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, Nicole Kidman, Chris O’Donnell, Michael Gough, Drew Barrymore.Batman forever… and ever… and – yawn – ever. This third installment in what, previously, was a deliciously gothic take on the Dark Knight drags on interminably, filled to bursting with all kinds of spectacular, violet-hued explosions, pithily cumbersome one-liners, and enough ham-handed psychotherapeutic explanations for Batman’s noblesse oblige – from Nicole Kidman, no less – to choke Freud for days. There’s so much and so little going on here simultaneously that you’re not sure whether to squirm or doze. Screenwriters Lee and Janet Batchler forsake the more adult-oriented aspects of the first two films (not to mention the story itself, if you’re in the mood to quibble about trivialities), and instead head directly into territory staked out by the campy Batman television show of the mid-Sixties: All that’s missing is the cartoony “Pow!” after every well-connected punch. Jones and Carrey – as Two-Face and the Riddler, respectively – are the film’s saving graces, as villains are wont to be in this sort of adolescent exercise. Jones does his best to keep up, but it’s Carrey’s show all the way. When he’s off the screen, the film bogs down in Kilmer’s bland, surfer-boy good looks, Kidman’s preposterous (and marginally offensive) sexual high jinks, or O’Donnell’s “Origin of Robin, the Boy Wonder” subplottings. Holy story line gone awry, Batdude!
2.0 stars (M.S.)
Highland
THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY
D: Clint Eastwood; with Eastwood, Meryl Streep, Annie Corley, Victor Slezak, Jim Haynie.Of all people, who would have thought Clint Eastwood would be the one to breathe fresh life into the stagnant genre of women’s film melodrama? Clearly, Bridges is a movie Eastwood very much wanted to make; not only does he co-star, he also directs and co-produces. Eastwood has always been one to flex his screen persona, so it’s not that unusual that he chose to play the role of the sensitive photographer and lover, Robert Kincaid. His real stroke of genius, though, was casting Meryl Streep as Francesca Johnson, the story’s Italian-born, Iowa housewife. It’s one of Streep’s truly great performances. Bridges is punctuated by awkward scenes of Francesca’s grown children discovering the existence of her long-ago affair. But, for the most part, Richard LaGravenese’s script strips the best-selling novel of its purple prose, while retaining the drama at the heart of the story. Bridges is another example of Eastwood’s remarkable economy of style as both a director and an actor. It is neither his best work nor his worst, though it is a fascinating exploration.
3.5 stars (M.B.)
Highland
CRUMB
D: Terry Zwigoff.Though Crumb is packed with information and telling details about the artist, the movie’s objective is hardly art history or a survey of R. Crumb’s place in the world of comics. The movie aims for broader subject matter, to discover something about the role art plays in the life of the artist, and about how the release of art may, indeed, allow the artist to function as a stable human being. Crumb is also about the Crumb family, a unit that, in addition to his wife and children, includes Crumb’s mother, vestigial traces of a deceased father, two brothers, Charles and Max, and two sisters, who declined to be interviewed. Crumb is most fascinating when it’s exploring the chicken-and-egg conundrum. Can art be a buffer between sanity and the abyss, can it expiate all our ugliness within, can it instigate its own path of madness? In Crumb, we have a disturbing portrait of three brothers whose early art experiences were similar, but who all grew quite differently. For R. Crumb, art-making may be his redemption.
4.0 stars (M.B.)
Dobie
FIRST KNIGHT
D: Jerry Zucker; with Sean Connery, Richard Gere, Julia Ormond, Ben Cross.Coming hot on the heels of both Rob Roy and Braveheart, the clumsily titled First Knight is the third in this summer’s sword-swinging sweepstakes, as well as the umpteenth retelling of the legend of Camelot. Despite the sweep of the story, First Knight feels like a would-be epic; in other words, it seems small: cramped, crowded, and unsure of itself. Gere surprisingly displays a fair bit of dashing grace in some of the action scenes but has trouble maintaining a consistent accent. Ormond delivers a serviceable, if undistinguished, Guinevere, with some of her reaction shots prompting unintentional laughter. And although putting Connery in the role of King Arthur may seem like “can’t miss” casting, he too disappoints. His performance is a perfect metaphor for the whole film: It’s a film of stunning averageness and not really good or bad enough to make any kind of a lasting impression which, depending on your point of view, may be even worse than a total failure.
2.0 stars (J.O.)
Arbor, Highland
NINE MONTHS
D: Chris Columbus; with Hugh Grant, Julianne Moore, Tom Arnold, Joan Cusack, Jeff Goldblum, Robin Williams.No matter how long writer/director Chris Columbus labored over Nine Months, even a C-section couldn’t rescue the shallow script and overplayed performances by Grant and Arnold. Columbus’ romantic comedy is all crazy sight gags and no story. Problems with this film arise immediately due, in large part, to the lack of chemistry between Grant and Moore. No one would argue that this film tries to be anything more than a sweet and lighthearted look at one man’s fear and trauma over impending fatherhood and marital commitment. But there are successful ways to pull this off, and Nine Months is one extended shtick that ends long after the last laugh is heard. The labor scene toward the end of the film offers a fine example of over-the-top antics that just aren’t funny; in fact, some of the gags are even offensive. All of this isn’t to say that Grant’s a one-trick actor, but perhaps the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral was due, in large measure, to the timing and abilities of that film’s ensemble cast and the strength of a smartly written script. Nine Months has neither of these.
1.5 stars (A.M.)
Arbor, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Lincoln, Movies 12, Riverside, Roundrock
POCAHONTAS
D: Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg; with the voices of Irene Bedard, Judy Kuhn, Mel Gibson, David Ogden Stiers, Russell Means, Linda Hunt.Here is a movie that knows its target audience. Pocahontas’ arrow, tipped with tender romance and feathered with spirited folklore, hits the bulls-eye dead on. If you can get past the frenzied hype and a liberal license with historical accuracy (and I challenge you to show me a seven-year old who can’t), this latest Disney effort rivals the animated features from the fabled studio’s heyday. Like the best Disney cartoons, Pocahontas is both resplendent and restrained. The rousing action sequences are brief but compelling counterpoints to the beautiful simplicity of the piece. The animation is wonderful. Pocahontas is lovely and while the animators have succumbed to the modern day heroine’s seeming requisite – impossible Barbie doll physiology – they have also imbued her with a spirit so innocent and a bearing so noble that it precludes a too-lascivious allure. The characters are nicely vocalized, the studio scoring a magnificent coup with Russell Means’ portrayal of Pocahontas’ father, Chief Powhatan. Composer Allen Menken is back, and his music lifts the movie to lofty heights.
3.5 stars (H.C.)
Great Hills, Westgate
THE POSTMAN (IL POSTINO)
D: Michael Radford; with Massimo Troisi, Philippe Noiret, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Linda Moretti, Renato Scarpa, Anna Bonaiuto.The Postman is an Italian co-production whose history is as tragically romantic as the poetry of one of its main characters, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. It is loosely based on a novel about an incident in Neruda’s life when he was befriended by a young postman while living in Italy. Together with Radford, The Postman’s lead actor Massimo Troisi had worked diligently since 1990 to bring the story to the screen; both he and Radford share screenwriting credit with three other writers. Sadly, Troisi passed away from a heart condition the day after principal photography was completed on the film. Set in 1952 during the time of Neruda’s exile from Chile to a small island off the southern coast of Italy, the film recounts the friendship between the aging Communist poet and the shy, directionless son of a fisherman who knows only that he does not want to follow in his father’s footsteps. The Postman also is a love story of the first order, a sweet Cyrano tale and, in fact, one of the sweetest stories on film this summer. Slow in parts but appealing overall, The Postman suggests how interwoven the bonds of friendship and love can be. With lyrical beauty and memorable performances, The Postman articulates many feelings that seem to defy explanation.
3.5 stars (A.M.)
Village
THE SECRET OF ROAN INISH
D: John Sayles; with Jeni Courtney, Eileen Colgan, Mick Lally, Richard Sheridan, John Lynch, Gerard Rooney, Susan Lynch, Cillian Byrne.Sayles’ new film is a swirl of mystery and enchantment, of romance between men and mystical creatures, of a baby abducted by animals, of his sister who resolves to win him back, and in so doing restore her family’s place on Roan Inish. It’s a tale of old ties that we’ve set aside but which are still important and for which we still yearn, and Sayles tells it in a remarkable way, in a swirl of history, nature, and folklore that speaks to all ages. He doesn’t so much “capture” the rhythm and spirit of Irish coastal life as ride alongside them, matching their pace and rising and falling with them, like a seal through the tide. The atmosphere of this world is thick and pungent; it washes over us in the lyrical language, in the lovely performances, in the sounds of Uillean pipes and penny whistles on Mason Daring’s Celtic score, in the crisp cinematography of Haskell Wexler. Roan Inish conjures magic, but does so without relying on technical wizardry. Instead, it creates wonder in the unexpected.
4.0 stars (R.F.)
Dobie
SHALLOW GRAVE
D: Danny Boyle; with Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, Ewan McGregor, Keith Allen, Ken Stott, Colin McRedie.From its opening titles, you know you’re in for something different, something wild. First-time director Boyle scores impressively with this Scottish tale of greed, murder, and the quest for a perfect flatmate that echoes everything from Alan Parker’s The Commitments to The Treasure of Sierra Madre, and never feels anything but wholly original. Boyle keeps the proceedings quick and humorous, despite the gravity of the story. His camerawork is top-shelf, heightening both the panicky tension that rises as the film moves forward and the desperate comic air the film maintains throughout. For their parts, all three leads are mini-masterpieces of audacious, thoroughly believable acting. Shallow Grave is a bracing, beautifully filmed black comedy-cum-horror show that grabs hold of you in the first few minutes and then refuses to let you go until the bitter, shocking end. Brilliant.
4.0 stars (M.S.)
Dobie
SMOKE
D: Wayne Wang and Paul Auster; with William Hurt, Harvey Keitel, Stockard Channing, Harold Perrineau, Jr., Forest Whitaker, Giancarlo Esposito, Ashley Judd, Victor Argo.As beguiling and as ephemeral as its title, Smoke is a movie that draws you in and lingers a while in your bloodstream. It’s certainly not harmful to your system but like those darned cigarettes, Smoke leaves you wanting another not long after the last one has been extinguished. Knockout ensemble performances like these don’t come around all that often, and when they do they ought to be savored. The performances here are smokin’. On the other hand, the story that connects all these characters is a bit wan. The movie is structured as a series of converging vignettes; however, the story lines never converge as completely as one might like. Yet, obviously there were more stories to tell here since while Smoke was being shot, director Wang (The Joy Luck Club) and Auster spun off another film, Blue in the Face, that was shot in the three days following the completion of Smoke. Can’t wait: Even if it never all comes together, the fumes are quite intoxicating.
3.5 stars (M.B.)
Village
SPECIES
D: Roger Donaldson; with Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Alfred Molina, Forest Whitaker, Marg Helgenberger, Natasha Henstridge.Despite a very promising first 15 minutes, Species proves to be nothing more than another tired rip-off of Alien, with a touch of Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce thrown in for good measure. The story concerns a desperate manhunt for a young, but rapidly growing, little girl who has taken part in a genetic experiment that has combined alien and human DNA, resulting in a creature (code-named “Sil” and designed by H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist artist who is also responsible for the award-winning titular creature in Alien) that often looks sweet and harmless, but can mutate into a pus-dripping beast and tear your spine out. Species 2. Species is one of those movies in which our hero is always one stupid step behind the villain who, in this picture, doesn’t really seem all that smart to begin with. The only thing worth a damn in Species is the talented cast, with Madsen’s deadpan cool and quiet charm providing most of the film’s memorable moments.
1.0 stars (J.O.)
Great Hills, Highland, Riverside
Previews
BABE THE GALLANT PIG
D: Chris Noonan; with James Cromwell, Magda Szubanski, the voices of Christine Cavanaugh, Miriam Margolyes, Danny Mann, Hugo Weaving.Is this the Chinese year of the pig, or what? Why all these pig movies? First Gordy, now Babe. The G-rated, live-action movie tells the story of a pig with an identity crisis: Babe wants to be a sheepdog and march to his own drummer. Based on the book The Sheep-Pig by Dick King-Smith, Babe is directed by newcomer Chris Noonan who co-wrote the script with George Miller (the man behind Mad Max).
stars (M.B.)
Great Hills, Highland, Lake Creek, Lakehills, Movies 12, Northcross
HONG KONG GRAFFITI
D: Lo Pan; with Cheng Ka Win, Tai Pic, Lo Pan.This 1995 Hong Kong film kicks off The New Far Eastern Film Series sponsored by the Cinema Differentia Company and the Dobie Theatre. The six-week series is dedicated to showing the latest Asian releases. Hong Kong Graffiti is a movie about the country’s pop generation.
stars (M.B.)
Dobie
THE JAR
D: Ebrahim Foruzesh; with Behzad Khodeaveisi, Fatemeh Azrah, Alireza Haji-Ghasemi.We’re told that there is a flourishing film movement afoot in Iran. Unfortunately, few of these works make it to these shores. Thus, the screening of the award-winning The Jar is an exceptional occasion and a rare opportunity to check things out for ourselves. The film tells the story of what happens to a school in the desert when a jar of water breaks. A simple accident sets off a major crisis prompted by the need to find a replacement jar. In the course of the search, much is revealed of the reality of rural life and the fine line separating poverty from disaster.
stars (M.B.)
Hogg
This article appears in August 4 • 1995 and August 4 • 1995 (Cover).