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 AFTERGLOW. Somewhere there must be a great script for Afterglow,
because short stretches of brilliant dialogue show up in this
otherwise intensely mediocre and cowardly film. The plot concerns
a middle-aged marred man (Nick Nolte, whose new hair piece is
apparently from outer space) having an affair with a young married
woman (Lara Flynn Boyle, who looks so good she figures she doesn't
have to do anything besides pout and flounce). Meanwhile, unbeknownst
to them, their spouses carry on a parallel affair, in a story
that is apparently inspired by some odd hybrid of Days of our
Lives and Three's Company. Gee, I wonder if the two
couples will run into each other at the bar they both frequent,
and I wonder if Nolte and wife Julie Christie will ever find their
long-lost daughter, and I wonder if there isn't some chance that
an adult drama can be produced without using the most familiar
of story elements and the safest of endings? --DiGiovanna
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's already proven himself
to be a spellbinding actor--has shown himself to be an intelligent
writer and director as well. --Richter
THE BORROWERS. Set in an anachronistic city that's part
'90s and part '40s, part Dickensian London and part Spielbergian
America, The Borrowers is far more inventive and detailed
than you'd expect from a movie that could be titled Honey,
I Shrunk the Stereotypical Red-Haired Limeys. The dumb plot,
which involves John Goodman as an obnoxiously evil real-estate
lawyer who wants to destroy the home where the Borrowers hide
out, can be overlooked when it leads to this many clever little-people-in-a-big-world
scenes. Whether the Borrowers are in the refrigerator (with product
placement galore, of course), sneaking among toy soldiers or hopping
from bottle to bottle in a dairy factory, the special effects
remain impeccable and there's always a palpable sense of danger.
I actually worried the Borrowers might be squished at any moment.
Kids really seemed to enjoy themselves, too--especially the girl
who held up her teddy bear throughout so it could see the movie.
When interviewed, the teddy bear said, "That was terrific!
I very much liked it!" in a cutesy voice that became muffled
as it was put away in a small, pink backpack. --Woodruff
GREAT EXPECTATIONS. If only Ethan Hawke could have been
surgically removed from the universe, this film would only have
fallen 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
KUNDUN. The most annoying thing about the Tibet vogue that
has swept Hollywood is that the actors and trendies who have hopped
on this bandwagon are under the impression that Lhasa was some
kind of delightful Shangri-La prior to the coming of the Chinese.
In fact, it was run by a brutally oppressive and corrupt theocratic
regime. Somehow, director Scorcese had the courage to at least
hint at the atrocious state of affairs in Tibet under monastic
rule. Further, his cast is made up exclusively of Tibetan, Chinese
and Indian actors, despite what I'm sure was an overwhelming urge
to call up Keanu Reeves to play the role of the Dalai Lama. The
Himalayan landscapes (mimed by Moroccan mountains) are hard to
shoot poorly, and Scorcese makes good use of Tibetan sand painting
as a transitional device. Oddly, in spite of his dedication to
authenticity in every other area, he largely eschews the rich
musical tradition of Tibet in favor of a limp soundtrack by experimentalist-turned-new-age-shlockmeister
Philip Glass. All of Glass' noodling drones turn the atmosphere
to overly reverential mush, and the film often takes on the emotionally
manipulative mode of a television movie of the week. Nonetheless,
it's beautiful to look at and takes enough risks to make the viewer
wish that other films would be this daring, and that this one
had been a little more so. --DiGiovanna
PALMETTO. Oklahoma authorities recently made themselves
look stupid when they outlawed Volker Schlöndorff's 1979
film The Tin Drum for what they construed as child pornography.
They would have looked smarter if they'd instead outlawed this
Schlöndorff film for mediocrity. It's a neo-noir about a
Florida schlub (Woody Harrelson, in full density mode) who gets
caught up in a poorly planned fake-kidnapping scheme. Despite
a humid, tropical setting and some steamy scenes, the film has
the dramatic resonance of a TV special--when it's hot, it's not
that hot and when it's cool, it's not that cool. Worse yet, the
casting's all mixed up: Gina Gershon plays the nice, dependable
girlfriend while Elisabeth Shue plays the crazed, pointy-bra-wearing
femme fatale. You keep waiting for the devilish-looking Gershon
to do something nasty, and hoping the white-bread Shue will stop
embarrassing herself by trying to mimic Gershon. Playing against
type is one thing; playing against type ineffectually or without
an (intentionally) humorous payoff is another. --Woodruff
SPHERE. What if your deepest fears came to life? Would
they all involve snakes and tentacled sea creatures? Glazed donuts,
perhaps? If you're prone to hazy Freudian interpretations, Sphere
has a kind of goofy camp appeal, but as a thriller it's only average.
A group of scientists descend to the bottom of the ocean, where
they greet an alien entity that looks just like giant, gold marble.
But it shows them the depths of themselves, you see. And then
all their deepest fears, desires etc., come to life, and all of
these things conveniently involve sea creatures. It's probably
for the best: Why waste a good underwater set? Dustin Hoffman
plays a cuddly psychologist; Sharon Stone plays an independent
but sensitive marine biologist; Samuel L. Jackson plays a brilliant,
weird mathematician. Remember: even if Sphere were based
on Michael Crichton's very best novel, it would still be based
on a Michael Crichton novel. --Richter
THE SWEET HEREAFTER. Kurt Vonnegut once described the literature
of a race of beings who were not bounded by time. Their books
were essentially read all at once, and contained a series of unordered
sentences that, when taken as a whole, produced a still image
of ideas, emotions, and histories. Atom Egoyan has directed films
that work in much the same way, weaving their stories back and
forth across time until the mystery of the characters' actions
and reactions becomes clear in the light of devastating, defining
or punctative events. In Sweet Hereafter, Anthony Hopkins
stars as a lawyer out to use a small-town tragedy for personal
gain, and his overly mannered performance is the film's weakest
link. Otherwise, all the actors, many from Egoyan's usual troupe,
play their parts with a stiff naturalism that perfectly complements
the horrific central event that practically disanimates an entire
community. Two stories of the worst possibilities in father-daughter
relations further accentuate the bland unpleasantness of quotidian
existence, and as each thread of the tale is slowly unwound, a
final image of pointless hope and senseless loss is formed. Definitely
one of the bleakest, most despairing, and best films of last year.
--DiGiovanna
WASHINGTON SQUARE. In biographies written before 1990,
Jennifer Jason Leigh claims to have been born in 1958. Recently,
she's changed that to 1962. In either case, she definitely looks
a bit odd playing a 20-year-old opposite the youthful Ben Chaplin.
Even stranger is the fact that she's been cast as the ugly girl;
after all, she was voted one of America's 10 most beautiful women
by Harper's Bazaar. Still, this film captures the stiffness,
self-importance, and general boredom of Henry James' prose. --DiGiovanna
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 and 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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