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 THE APOSTLE. Robert Duvall has chosen parts in interesting,
meandering movies so often that it's no surprise he's finally
made one himself. The Apostle deals in the fuzziness of
morality, the difficulty of self-knowledge, and the uses and misuses
of religion so gracefully that you may not notice anything is
being questioned, at first. Duvall, with gleeful unselfconsciousness,
plays Sonny, a preacher who can't tell when he's being generous
and when he's being self-serving. His devotion to a life of God
looks an awful lot like a devotion to himself--he commits some
of the really bad sins, but he's prone to kindness as well.
The sheer ambiguity of this story is staggering, given the state
of American movies these days. How often can two people see a
film and come away with completely different ideas about its meaning?
With The Apostle Duvall, who has already proven himself
to be a spellbinding actor, has shown himself to be an intelligent
writer and director as well. --Richter
BLUES BROTHERS 2000. Watching this plodding sequel to 1980s
manic, over-the-top Blues Brothers, one can't help but
sense the cynicism of director John Landis. Every uninspired gag
and dull, lifeless scene seems to grumble, "To hell with
trying. I'm just going to repeat the structure of the first film,
adding tons of car crashes and music-world cameos, and that ought
to be enough to make a lot of money." Reprising his role
as Elwood Blues, Dan Aykroyd (who co-wrote with Landis) does what
he can, occasionally goosing up his stiff, laconic shtick with
outbursts of deadpan verbosity. The movie gets off to a grim start
by explaining that Aykroyd's friends John Belushi, John Candy
and Cab Calloway are dead; then Aykroyd spends what seems like
two hours forming a new band that includes John Goodman, Joe Morton
and a 10-year-old boy--none of whom ever comes close to matching
the inspired zaniness of the film's predecessors. Why Landis waits
until the film's last half-hour to cash in on his huge guest list
of great old rock and blues performers is beyond comprehension.
The musicians, who include B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, James Brown,
Isaac Hayes, Dr. John, Eric Clapton, Bo Diddley, Steve Winwood
and ringleader Paul Shaffer, jam and sing and whoop it up as if
they think they're in a much better movie. --Woodruff
DEEP RISING. I don't know how this movie got past the typical
Hollywood dumbing down, but it's actually a half-way decent genre
pic. Instead of just setting up a scenario where a group of heavily
armed stereotypes blast their way through a swarm of bug-eyed
monsters, this film actually went to all the trouble of producing
a fairly compelling story of intrigue, and even included a couple
of sub-plots that were more than just window dressing. Even more
odd, when someone does do a little killing, they don't feel obliged
to make a stupid wisecrack. Of course, there are still all the
standard elements of a thriller, and when things blow up they
blow up real good, but there's also some very nuanced acting by
Kevin J. O'Connor, and a decent job by the under-rated Treat Williams
as the macho lead. While this is by no means Citizen Kane,
it's certainly a lot better than the last couple of Alien
films, to which it will no doubt be compared. --DiGiovanna
DESPERATE MEASURES. Things I learned from watching Desperate
Measures: (1) If the sociopathic prisoner who was supposed
to donate life-saving bone marrow to your son with leukemia escapes
from the operating room and is running around killing people,
don't try to prevent cops from shooting him. That's just selfish,
and makes you look like a jerk. (2) If you've gotta have shoot-outs,
hospitals are a nifty place for them because immediately after
somebody gets popped, doctors can swarm around and perform on-the-spot
emergency surgery. (3) If you're a tough, smart female surgeon
played by Marcia Gay Harden, and you konk the killer unconscious
with a large metal object, make no attempt to restrain him. Instead,
just run off. That way the ridiculous plot can continue. (4) Even
if hero Andy Garcia gets real intense and wild-eyed, villain Michael
Keaton becomes 100 times more animated than he was in Batman,
child actor Joseph Cross overcomes his precocious courage-in-the-face-of-death
lines with an excellent performance, and Barbet Schroeder directs
with his usual stylish competence, that still doesn't mean
the movie's going to be any good. --Woodruff
GREAT EXPECTATIONS. If only Ethan Hawke could have been
surgically removed from the universe, this film would have fallen
just slightly short of excellence. As it is, it's still pretty
decent. DeNiro has a cameo that shows he can still fill up the
screen, and Gwyneth Paltrow is a surprisingly good actor for someone
with no visible body fat. The real star of this film, though,
is director of photography Emanuel Lubezki. In the last 20 years,
cinematographers seem to have become universally technically competent,
but they squander their skills on difficult-to-shoot explosions
and special effects. Lubezki, on the other hand, uses his considerable
talents in the service of this well-designed genre romance, and
in the process produces one of the longest, and most complicated,
unbroken tracking shots ever filmed: the camera follows artist
Finnegan Bell (Hawke) through a revolving door, into a black tie
party, around the room, weaving between guests, until he finds
his beloved Estrella (Gwyneth Paltrow), who walks away from him,
and, still without cutting, he chases her out the revolving doors,
down the street, into a restaurant, where she is seated at the
very back with her fiancee (Hank Azaria). Still without a cut
(except perhaps a well-hidden one as Hawke walks past a column),
Finnegan takes her hand, they dance, walk out of the restaurant,
into the street, and the camera rises in a crane shot as they
run down the sidewalk and out of the frame. Now if only Ethan
Hawke could be convinced to give up acting, writing, and looking
pouty. --DiGiovanna
THE REPLACEMENT KILLERS. Where executive producer John
Woo's Hong Kong action films register triple-digit deaths with
many thousands of bullets fired, this gringo homage, directed
by Antoine Fuqua, manages a mere 32 fatalities, making Replacement
Killers a marvel of understatement. It's all about family
values: A hard-boiled cop (Michael Rooker) kills the sneering
son of very bad guy Mr. Wei (Kenneth Tsang) in a bust gone sour.
The mighty Chow Yun-Fat, the perennial hero of Woo's best films,
is sent to dispatch the cop's kid as payback. But Yun-Fat's John
Lee, a lean and mean assassin, suffers a fit of conscience--he's
a devoted family man in his free time--and calls off the mayhem.
Hounded by Mr. Wei's backup assassins, he falls in with a gun-toting
forger with a heart of gold, a character nicely played by Mira
Sorvino's expressive underwear. Jurgen Prochnow and Clifton Gonzalez
vie for the role of evildoer with the worst complexion, while
Yun-Fat looks mostly amused as he dances through mad acts of car-wash
fu, fire-escape fu, and movie-within-a-movie fu. --McNamee
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
THE WEDDING SINGER. This film calls into question the value
of the very large brain and the opposable thumb possessed by our
species. Really, what's the point in creating cultural artifacts,
if they're as stupid as The Wedding Singer? Adam Sandler
plays a crooner who specializes in weddings (though he quits near
the beginning and is a wedding singer no more); Drew Barrymore
plays the sugar cube he falls for. There are a few little obstacles
to their love, but nothing serious, and a few little jokes thrown
in, but nothing funny. The '80s clothes are the best part of the
whole thing, and that's not saying much. --Richter
ZERO EFFECT. Yes, it is a little like eating rice cakes
and yes, the title does describe what you're left with a few days
after seeing it, but Zero Effect is still a pleasant experience
while it's actually happening. Bill Pullman can't help coming
across as deeply affable, even when he's playing a psycho detective
with a serious mood disorder (proving he is indeed the Jimmy Stewart
of the '90s). Ben Stiller is similarly likable as Arlo, Detective
Zero's faithful sidekick. The two of them go about solving mysteries
with a Watson-and-Holmes routine, complete with amazing deductions
gleaned from mere shreds of evidence, and, for master detective
Zero, a nagging drug problem. The script leans towards the goofy
end of the spectrum, rather than the ironic/witty, which is a
nice change for a comedy in our Sienfeld-dominated era. We award
five special bonus points for the tender age of writer/director
Jake Kasdan, who is just 22. --Richter
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