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 ABSOLUTE POWER. Clint Eastwood stars and directs this thriller
about an aging, master thief hoping to pull off one last, spectacular
heist before retiring for good. His plans are botched, however,
when he discovers the wife of the wealthy businessman he hopes
to rob is having an affair with none other than the President
of the United States himself. Murder, intrigue, and conflicts
of supposed interest ensue. With Ed Harris, Melora Hardin, E.G.
Marshall and Gene Hackman as The President. --Richter
DANTE'S PEAK. It's man versus nature in this disaster movie
about a small town nestled beneath a rumbling volcano in the Northern
Cascades. The interests of developers clash with the predictions
of seismologists as the townspeople waste time, debating the dangers
of the percolating peak. Liquefied rock, steam, and clouds of
pumice and ash are the real stars in this inferno of special effects,
though Pierce Brosnan also stars as the scientist who tries to
warn the townspeople of impending doom and Linda Hamilton plays
the Mayor who falls in love with him. --Richter
DONNIE BRASCO. Zesty Italian mobsters shoot, hack and smash
each other to smithereens one more time in this reprise of the
Mafia flick. There's nothing new here, but if you're a fan of
the mobster drama, this one's entirely passable. Johnny Depp,
that pretty, pretty man, is really quite good as Donnie Brasco
(a.k.a. Joe Pistone), an undercover agent burrowing deep into
the structure of the Brooklyn (or is it Queens?) Mafia. His special
gangster friend is Al Pacino, an aging, rat-like professional
killer who somehow elicits more love and loyalty from Brasco than
his adorable daughters and hot-fox wife. The sweeping themes of
loyalty, honor, manhood, and manly death seem to aim for some
sort of marriage of the worlds of Shakespeare and John Wayne;
but Brasco lacks sincerity and originality and really only
succeeds in invoking other, better, gangster movies. -- Richter
FIERCE CREATURES. John Cleese and Michael Palin, refugees
from the Monty Python comedy troupe, try to reprise the success
of A Fish Called Wanda with mediocre results. Boob displays,
bedroom farces and jokes that are visible from miles away dominate
this fanciful plot about a zoo that must become profitable or
else be closed. Too much of this movie seems to have been transported
from old Benny Hill re-runs--Jamie Lee Curtis does nothing but
stand around, looking stacked, while Kevin Kline seems to be in
another movie, one where everyone yells. The animals are cute
and there are some funny moments, but we expect more from the
people who once brought us the Confuse-a-Cat sketch. --Richter
GRIDLOCK'D. Actor Vondie Curtis-Hall directs an action/art
film hybrid about a pair of junkies desperately trying to both
score drugs and get into rehab. The late Tupac Shakur is
probably the main draw for this film. He does a decent job playing
Spoon, a smooth, likable drug addict, but this film is a lost
cause from the start. Curtis-Hall can't decide if he wants to
make an action flick, complete with car chases and shoot outs,
or an art film that mocks the Kafka-esque workings of the bureaucratic
welfare system. He ends up combining the two in a schizophrenic,
uneven effort that left one viewer commenting: "That was
weird." --Richter
MICROCOSMOS. Microcosmos, a nearly wordless film
of close-up shots of insects, seems to have been conceived under
the influence of Roger Dean record covers and wimpy 1970s fusion
rock. Clearly, those who are most stoned will most enjoy the "hey-we-have-a-macroscopic-lens-let's-shoot-some-bugs!"
randomness of this movie. Plotlessly moving from one tiny drama
to another, the filmmakers hope to keep the audience's attention
solely through the power of images. Unfortunately, even at its
short, 80-minute run, this tactic grows wearying. Worse still
is the Moody Blues-inspired monologue that Kristen Scott Thomas
reads at the opening and close of the film. Go see it only under
the influence of a recently rediscovered bag of dope you forgot
you stashed in your Yessongs album during a toke-fest in
1978. --DiGiovanna
ROSEWOOD. In the early 1920s, a small, prosperous black-owned
and -operated town was brutally wiped out by an angry mob of whites
from next door. This true story, which only came to light recently
when the few remaining survivors finally broke their silence,
would seem a powerful statement of prejudice and mob-rule hatred
against well-adjusted, self-empowered African Americans. But in
the hands of director John Singleton, it instead descends disappointingly
into vacuous, hokey Hollywoodism. There are moments, especially
in the first half, of anxiety and outrage, and credible acting
from Ving Rhames and Jon Voight, among others; but Singleton and
his screenwriters veer wildly from known accounts in order to
make the film "marketable," mixing in elements of westerns,
after-school special sermonizing, and unlikely (however welcome)
moments of good fortune on which the actual survivors almost certainly
could not have counted. Care and effort have been put into this
film. It's a shame Singleton was unable to trust the material
to stand on its own. --Marchant
SLING BLADE. A movie that's both grim and oddly feel-good,
this low-key, independent production has a terrific script and
an even better cast. Billy Bob Thorton plays Karl, a man who,
as a child, murdered two people with a big knife; 17 years later
he's "well," according to the state institution where
he's been warehoused, and is summarily ejected into the big, wide
world. He meets up with kind strangers, including a little boy
(Lucas Black), who adopts him like a lost puppy and takes him
home to live in his mother's garage. The mother's boyfriend (Dwight
Yoakam) is a prick, though, and soon Karl finds himself in the
middle of a domestic drama that seems to remind him of his own
twisted childhood. Sharp, understated performances from J.T. Walsh
(who's really terrifying as a sex offender), John Ritter, and
Robert Duvall round out the movie, but it's really Thorton's performance
as the practical, slow-witted, vaguely monstrous Karl that helps
make this one of the best movies of 1996.
THAT DARN CAT. An update of the 1965 Disney family comedy,
this version stars Christina Ricci as a black-clad, angst-ridden
version of Hayley Mills. Her teen boredom is relieved by her precocious
tomcat, who delivers an important clue in a mysterious kidnapping.
Ricci and F.B.I. agent Kelso (Doug E. Doug), along with that Darn
Cat, band together to form an unstoppable, cross-species crime-fighting
team. --Richter
VEGAS VACATION. Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo make the
perennial mistake of going on vacation, this time to Las Vegas,
where their family is seduced by the sex, greed and glitz of Sin
City. Wayne Newton, Shae D'Lyn and Wallace Shawn all play various
aspects of devilish temptation as the family succumbs to vice
and disintegrates, only to find redemption at the hands of Cousin
Eddie (Randy Quaid), a trailer-dwelling good guy. --Richter
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