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 THE BOXER. This slow-moving drama about provincial life
in besieged Northern Ireland is somewhat of a knock-down, drag-out
affair. Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Danny, a former IRA member who
returns to his home in West Belfast after 14 years in prison.
Though the opening sequences introduce us to the IRA members'
fierce loyalties, clandestine meetings and passionate toasts to
"the prisoners" and "the prisoner's wives,"
Danny-boy strangely receives only frosty looks and stern warnings
from his former friends and leaders. When he sets about reopening
the boxing gym where he trained as a youth--a facility open to
all faiths--suspicions and rivalries reach a fever pitch. More
dangerous than his apolitical silence in the ring, however, is
the unspoken threat that he's back for Maggie (Emily Watson),
his childhood love who's now under the district's watchful, paternalistic
eye as the wife of a prisoner. Though by far the best movie of
recent memory to tackle the tragic violence and hatred wrought
by IRA activity, The Boxer is strangely boring, relying
more on contrived images and meaningful looks than emotive and
revealing storytelling. Though The Boxer has all the
right moves, it lacks the punch writer-director Jim Sheridan delivered
with In The Name of the Father and My Left Foot.
--Wadsworth
THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE TREE. This sweet movie is a sort
of Dances With Wolves for the under 12 set. Little Tree
is an 8-year-old boy living in West Virginia in the 1930s. When
his parents die, he's taken in by his grandparents, who teach
him "the way," a new-agey, Native American sort of religion
thing. As is fitting in movies for children, there's relatively
little conflict, and problems which might cause anxiety in small
viewers are quickly dispatched so that Little Tree and his Grandpa
can again step out into the early morning light to have delightful
adventures. One problem with The Education of Little Tree,
though, is that all the caretaker adults die off, relentlessly,
one after another, which even some of the grown-ups in the audience
found distressing. If your kid was distraught when Bambi's mom
died, he or she probably isn't ready for Little Tree. --Richter
FALLEN. Aside from an eccentrically amusing but all-too-short
performance by Elias Koteas as a mass murderer singing in the
electric chair, this film is relentlessly boring. It's hard to
believe this made it past test audiences, as my informal poll
revealed that 40-percent of viewers spent the film thinking about
work, 35-percent had unrelated sexual fantasies, 20-percent worried
about environmental issues, 4-percent were there as part of a
field trip from a traumatic head injury clinic, and the remaining
1-percent actually paid attention to the screen. The film's format
is oddly cyclical: There are three minutes of plot, then Denzel
Washington does a voice-over describing what just happened, then
he tells his partner (John Goodman) what happened, then he tells
an Angelologist what happened, then he walks around in the mist
and the rain, then there's another three minutes of plot and the
cycle starts again. This allows for nearly 12 minutes of action
in a five hour film. At least I think it was five hours...I kind
of lost track of time when I realized there were only two years
left until the millennium. --DiGiovanna
AS GOOD AS IT GETS. This is one of the first films in what
promises to be a rich and varied genre--the Prozac movie. Jack
Nicholson plays Melvin Udall, a really mean novelist with Obsessive
Compulsive Disorder and a razor-sharp wit. The first half of As
Good As It Gets, before the guy gets medicated, is honestly
funny. Udall is the prototypical nasty New Yorker. He's fair,
too. He hates everyone equally. But a saucy waitress (Helen Hunt)
makes him "want to be a better man," and, in the style
of Awakenings, he begins to snap out of his dark, dank
little world. The second half of the movie is less funny than
the first; Helen Hunt does okay in short scenes but becomes insufferable
when she's on screen too long. And of course, she's way too young
for Nicholson. Still, he is in rare form in this movie, charming
and repulsive both, and there are plenty of genuine comic moments.
This is about as good as it gets for seven bucks at the multiplex
these days. --Richter
GOOD WILL HUNTING. Gus Van Sant directs this movie about
a self-educated mathematical genius, Will Hunting (Matt Damon),
a janitor who mops floors at MIT. Secretly, he's smarter than
all the students and most of the professors, too. When the educated
world discovers Will, he's torn between his beer-drinking, fiercely
loyal buddies and the unfamiliar world of academics. Oh yeah,
there's a sexy Harvard girl (Minnie Driver) in his life, too.
Robin Williams plays the psychologist who tries to help Will figure
out what to do with his amazing gift. There's a lot of good acting;
and the screenplay, by Will Damon and Ben Affleck, can be pretty
funny at points, though it tends to drift into sentimentality.
Van Sant has a real talent for creating arresting visual images;
he does it a little here, when he gets a chance, but a film about
the inner life and psychological changes of a young boy doesn't
really let him flex his muscles. Perhaps he should see
a psychologist and get in touch with his gift. --Richter
HALF BAKED. Why would anyone make a movie about drug-addled
losers in the nineties? I mean, Cheech and Chong were killed by
an angry mob in 1984 for a reason. Watching people pretend to
act stoned is not exactly my idea of a good time, but there were
some brief and amusing cameos. Janeanne Garofalo's three-minute
sequence is a gem; and oddly enough, Bob Saget, who only has three
lines, is sort of fabulous, mostly by playing against type. Still,
the whole thing can basically be explained by switching a couple
of nouns in the old joke, "What did the Deadhead say when
the drugs wore off? Hey, this music really sucks!" --DiGiovanna
HARD RAIN. If you flushed your toilet non-stop for the
rest of your life, you wouldn't come anywhere near the quantity
of water wasted in Hard Rain. An action thriller set during
an ever-rising flood in a small Midwestern town, the flick is
overflowing with freaky situations like high-school halls that
become jet ski highways, jail cells turned into drowning traps,
and rooftops that double as boat ramps. At first, there's an almost
surreal quality to the film, like we're inside some sort of symbolic
dream world. But the blandly calculating script soon turns everything
into soggy cereal. Other than Morgan Freeman, who plays a refreshingly
non-sadistic villain, most of the characters just tread the usual
action-cliché waters, and the movie forfeits any claim
it had to inventiveness when it climaxes with a last-minute bad-guy
revival in slow motion. Ugh, get me a towel. With Christian Slater,
Minnie Driver, Randy Quaid, and, in sadly humiliating roles, Ed
Asner and Betty White. --Woodruff
PHANTOMS. For a relatively low-budget horror movie with
no ideas of its own, Phantoms is mildly entertaining for
a while. Director Joe Chappelle fills as much of the movie as
he can with basic scenes where characters hear strange sounds
and go looking to see what caused them. When this spookiness wears
thin, he brings in Peter O'Toole as a wizened archaeologist-turned-tabloid
writer. But much more than charisma is needed, so the film gruesomely
kills off deputy Leiv Schreiber just to bring him back as an evil,
mutilated being who sings "I Fall To Pieces" at every
opportunity. When that gets old, the Dean Koontz story veers from
Satanic to scientific and a bogus last-minute plot emerges, leading
to several cheesy special-effects scenes reminiscent of The
Thing and The Blob mixed together in a blender with
some sludge. The boring Ben Affleck, Joanna Going and Rose McGowan
(Scream's doggie-door girl) also star. Unfortunately, they
survive. --Woodruff
SPICE WORLD. Some physicists theorize that there are countless
universes in existence. If this is so, then surely the spice girls
are at the center of one of them--it just may not be your particular
universe. When I saw a matinee of Spice World, the audience
was comprised of pre-pubescent girls and lone, adult males with
raincoats draped across their laps. Even if you don't fall into
one of these groups, you may want to check out Spice World
just to see what all the hype is about. The spice girls are five
British Barbie dolls who sing, sort of, and change their clothes
a lot, definitely. In this movie, they face episodes of slight
jeopardy and overcome them easily, all the while spouting off
about "girl power," which appears to be the power to
wear tiny dresses in cold weather with no adverse effects. "We're
strength and courage in a Wonderbra!" declares brainy Ginger
Spice. Who has the heart to tell her she's wrong? -- Richter
SPIKE AND MIKE'S SICK AND TWISTED FESTIVAL. Suggested alternate
titles for this collection of perverse 'toons: Spike and Mike's
Festival of Animation for People with Serious Ass Fetishes; or
We Think Cartoons Involving Fart Noises Are Funny, How 'Bout You?
Animated Things That Bleed, Curse, Have Sex, Commit Violent Acts,
and Randomly Spout Insults. Spoofs of Japanese Animation Can Be
Witty and Fun, Particularly When They Include Nudity and Car Crashes.
This Ain't No Feminist Animation Festival! The We-Know-You're-Here-For-Two-Hours-of-Animation,
But-We-Don't-Actually-Have-That-Much-Material Festival (intermission
and moronic introductions included, free of charge). Some Cynical
and Funny Animation, Some Mildly Amusing Animation, and Some Truly
Disgusting Animation. And finally, The South-Park-Is-Hip-So-We-Can-Get-Away-With-Charging-Seven-Bucks
Animation Festival. --McKay
WAG THE DOG. Director Barry Levinson makes a brave attempt
at political satire, but he can't resist the impulse to water
it down. And what is it with the aging big stars? They can't resist
playing it cute. Dustin Hoffman is an adorable movie producer;
Robert DeNiro is a cuddly spin doctor working for the President.
Together they concoct the ultimate diversionary device--a war.
(This is necessary because the President seems to have broken
one of the Ten Commandments with a girl scout). Occasionally Wag
the Dog is very funny; the first half hour is especially good.
But then it starts to repeat itself, and Levinson and his screenwriters
seem to feel far more comfortable making fun of Hollywood than
of Washington. Eventually, it all degenerates into the regular,
old, predictable ruts. --Richter
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