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 A Family Thing. It goes like this: A white man discovers
he's actually the son of a black woman and that he has a brother
(black) in the big city. He goes to the city to meet his brother.
Against insurmountable odds (you know, race) they strike up a
warm relationship. Because we're all just people inside! As
dumb, implausible and potentially offensive as this plot sounds,
it ends up being a kind of charming little tale of friendship
between the two brothers, due mostly to the skill and warmth of
Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones. I'm convinced Duvall is one
of our most talented living film actors--early in this movie,
before the plot chugs into absurdity, he's just amazing. It's
a little exhausting though, the way Hollywood movies have reduced
the questions of class and race in America to a simple plot device.
Oh well, what did we expect?
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.
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!
FAITHFUL. Chazz Palminteri and Cher star in this comedy
about a hit man having a job-related mid-life crisis. Cher plays
a housewife with a Rolls Royce and a fancy house--she has everything
except the love of her husband (Ryan O'Neal), who has apparently
sent a hit man to whack her on their twentieth anniversary so
he can run off with his secretary. His plan gets complicated though
when the wife and the hit man strike up a friendship. The screenplay,
based on a play by Palminteri, doesn't have quite enough twists
to carry the story off, and events never turn as complex as it
seems they should. But Palminteri and Cher have a nice chemistry
between them and the movie has a decent number of satisfying moments.
I just wish the actors didn't keep saying the word "faithful"
over and over, with an unsettling emphasis.
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
get caught in the cogs of gruesome crime. Only the Coen brothers
could pull off such an 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."
Girl 6. This film about an enthusiastic phone sex babe
has all of Spike Lee's typically brilliant style along with all
of his typically elliptical content. Theresa Randle, as Girl 6
herself, swoons in and out of fantasy so that it becomes hard
to tell what's real and what's inside her head. This might be
nifty if it weren't for the fact that Lee embeds it all in a male-oriented,
typically Hollywood world: All the phone sex girls are drop-dead
gorgeous and they all wear skimpy outfits. Is this Girl 6's fantasy
or Spike Lee's? Music from Prince livens up Girl 6 but
overall, the concept of this film seems so confused that it's
hard to tease any meaning out of it at all.
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.
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