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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.
Broken Arrow. It's good guys against bad in this zippy
action flick from acclaimed Hong Kong director John Woo. John
Travolta plays an appealingly evil nuclear weapons thief trying
to waste the world for fun and profit while Christian Slater and
Samantha Mathis do their spunky best to stop him. Travolta's giddy,
over-the-top performance along with Woo's creative, reckless directorial
style raise Broken Arrow above the humdrum predictability
of most action flicks. (The opening boxing sequence alone is worth
the price of admission.) Once the initial dose of characterization
is administered, the plot just whizzes along, punctuated by regular
explosions. Don't expect to have your moral and intellectual horizons
broadened; do expect to be entertained.
Diabolique. A remake of Georges Clouzot's classic, boring
thriller of 1955 about a wife and mistress who plot to kill the
man they share. With Sharon Stone in the role of the mistress
it has been updated into that thoroughly modern genre, the psychosexual
thriller. Unfortunately, not much else has changed from the
1955 version. The women seem to be wearing the same clothes, the
boys boarding school where they teach is as gothic as ever, and
Isabelle Adjani, as the abused wife of Chazz Palminteri, still
doesn't seem to have heard of divorce. Come on ladies, get empowered!
Kathy Bates does turn in a refreshing performance as the grizzled
old police detective though.
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!
Fargo. A wonderfully deadpan thriller/comedy about a couple
of mediocre psychokillers being chased by a mediocre cop. Frances
McDormand is terrific as Marge Gunderson, a patient, pregnant
chief of police plodding along after Jerry Lundergaard (William
H. Macy), a financially insolvent car dealer who has his wife
kidnapped so that he can scam the ransom money for himself. Of
course, the plan goes awry, and half the fun of this movie is
watching the perky, have-a-nice-day citizens of the northern Midwest
getting caught in the cogs of gruesome crime. Only the Coen brothers
could pull off such a effortless blend of humor and gore.
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.
Race The Sun. Wave upon wave of clichés pummel the
audience in this movie about Hawaiian high schoolers who go to
Australia to race a solar car. Halle Berry plays the perky science
teacher. Jim Belushi plays the worn-out shop teacher. Boy, do
they ever teach those spunky kids a lot about life and perseverance!
For masochists only.
TWO BITS. The word is out--Al Pacino has been cloned! How
else do you explain his appearance in a new movie every other
month? The latest, Two Bits, has Pacino (or his clone)
playing an old Italian grandfather dispensing packets of wisdom
to his 12-year-old grandson in depression-era Chicago. This movie,
with its unabashed nostalgia for an imagined past, is as drenched
in amber haze as a Country Time lemonade-style drink mix commercial.
In the midst of this pandering, sentimental dross, Pacino (or
his clone) relentlessly hams up the dying man shtick. In fact,
the entire movie is essentially an hour-and-a-half death scene
for Pacino. Watch him (or his clone) droop, sputter and fade!
Watch his grandson learn stuff! See how aesthetically pleasing
the depression really was!
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.
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
LESBIAN LOOKS. The Lesbian Looks video series continues
Friday, March 29, with the following screenings: The Lesbian
Impress Card (Indgrid Wilhite, 1990), a satirical comedy on
the inflated importance of fashion; Greetings from Africa
(Cheryl Dunye, 1994), a wry rumination on interracial dating;
and Brincando el Charco (Frances Negron-Muntaner, 1994),
a combination of fiction, archival footage, processed interviews
and soap opera drama used to create the story of Claudia, a Puerto
Rican lesbian photographer living and working in the U.S. All
screenings are free and begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Modern Languages
Building auditorium on the UA campus.
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