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 The Birdcage. Mike Nichols' big-budget remake of the 1978
La Cage aux Folles involves a gay drag club owner, Armand
Goldman (Robin Williams), who lives with his star performer and
longtime boyfriend Albert (Nathan Lane), and the imminent marriage
of Goldman's son (Dan Futterman) to the daughter of a right-wing,
homophobic, antisemitic senator played by Gene Hackman. Though
funny at times, the plot jerks from one unsettling relationship
to the next, as the already oxymoronic couple (raging queens who
strangely show no affection toward one another) try to act like
straight people to impress the senator. The hilarious dinner party
scene aside, the humor-with-a-message plot is a bit too saccharine
for grown-up tastes.
Executive Decision. This deeply predictable action thriller
shows evil, dark skinned men killing senselessly and practicing
their religion while noble white guys bond with each other and
try to stop them. The racist, stereotypical treatment of the Middle
Eastern villains is so cheap and unnecessary it's enough to make
you convert to Islam. Meanwhile, in the white guys' camp, Kurt
Russell plays the reluctant leader of an anti-terrorist squad
sent on a daredevil mission to stop extremist hijackers. Most
of the action takes place in the aisles and bowels of a 747. Some
Mission Impossible-style gadget sequences spice up the
otherwise monotonous plot, but if you've ever seen a movie before
you can pretty much figure out exactly what's going to happen
after thirty minutes. There is one and only one surprise--Steven
Segal gets killed!
French Twist. A zippy French sex farce about a husband,
a wife and the wife's butch girlfriend that generously expands
the notion of what it means to be a family. Loli (Victoria Abril)
is married to Laurent (Alain Chabat), a handsome and charming
philanderer. One day while he's out carousing with his mistress,
Marijo (Josiane Balasko) has car trouble and stops by to use Loli's
phone, and I think we all know what that means. The story
occasionally leans too heavily on the apparently exotic fact that
the wife is having an affair with a woman, but the story is so
good-natured that it manages to overcome its fascination with
its own "daringness."
If Lucy Fell. Sweet, sentimental and utterly stupid, this
romantic comedy stars Sarah Jessica Parker and Eric Schaffer as
Lucy and Joe, two friends who agree to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge
if they haven't found love by Lucy's 30th birthday. Parker plays
a bored psychotherapist comfortable discussing everyone's psychological
shortcomings but her own, while Joe is a sensitive, guy-next-door
painter committed to his five-year fantasy with the scantily clad
rear-window girl (Elle Macpherson). Despite its superficial moralizing
(beware lines like "Congratulations, you finally discovered
the girl in your heart is not the girl of your dreams"),
the dialogue is just great at times. Ben Stiller's performance
as Bwick, Lucy's unlikely love interest, is downright hilarious.
A welcome diversion for star-crossed lovers half-heartedly contemplating
suicide.
Mary Reilly. The tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde told from
the point of view of Jekyll's house maid, Mary Reilly (played
by Julia Roberts). The film is essentially a character study of
Reilly, and the question is Why? Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a strange, intelligent story that has
a point. The story of Mary Reilly (based on the novel by Valerie
Martin) is slow, predictable and empty. Half of the movie is taken
up by shots of Julia Roberts walking around in the fog, or wandering
around the stunning sets by Academy Award-winning production designer
Stuart Craig. The sets are pretty, Roberts plays the pretty victim
to perfection, and even John Malkovich is kind of good-looking,
but the question is, what's the point?
Mr. Wrong. Ellen DeGeneres plays the straight man (so to
speak) in this horrific romantic comedy about a 30-something career
gal fending off attacks on her status as single older sibling.
Bill Pullman plays the boyfriend turned stalker with such convincing
psychosis it's hard to decide where the humor ends and the horror
begins. Far from a simple romantic comedy about exploded expectations,
this twisted tale exploits every fear you've ever had about intimacy.
And if you never had any, it'll give you a few to consider before
ever again saying, "I just want you to be yourself."
A hilarious black comedy that starts on the set of a San Diego
morning show and ends in a Tijuana jail.
Rumble In The Bronx. Whether or not you have a history
with kung fu movies, this martial arts ballet starring Jackie
Chan will have you suffering sympathy pains with the best of them.
Chan, who trained in Chinese kung fu as well as opera, has an
irresistible magnetism as the naive nephew visiting his uncle
for a week in the Bronx. Low production values combined with million-dollar
stunts and an impossibly campy screenplay make Rumble in the
Bronx a perfect parody of itself, complete with a grizzly
plot twist straight out of a Carl Hiassen novel. Comes complete
with audio overdub. This is more than 90 minutes of kick-ass fight
scenes (though that element definitely isn't lacking), it's vengeance
with a Hovercraft. Don't forget to stay for the out-takes at the
end.
Up Close and Personal. This B-side to Broadcast News
stars Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford as earnest TV journalists
struggling to lead meaningful lives in a trivialized profession.
Up Close and Personal chronicles the rise of a tough-but-unseasoned
trailer-park Cinderella (Pfeiffer) and her sexist but savvy Prince
Charming (Redford). What's more, the movie is a Cinderella story
unto itself: What appears to be the makings of a sappy and clichéd
story actually triumphs as a relatively dramatic, touching and
at times believable love story between characters struggling to
decide who to love more: each other or themselves.
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