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 THE DEVIL'S OWN. Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford team up for
this trite, far-fetched "action" movie about an Irish
Republican Army freedom fighter/terrorist. Rory Devaney/Frankie
McGuire (Pitt) flees to America to escape a wrongful death, develop
a heartwarming relationship with the Irish-American family of
a Boston beat cop (Ford), and buy a bunch of missiles from a prototypically
sleazy American nightclub owner/hustler. Lots of people, mostly
Irishmen, die violently, lots of people wear ski masks, and lots
of people cry. We don't care, though, because the plot is so insidiously
stupid we know early on all their personal dramas will all be
for naught. Pitt's character is fond of saying, "I told you,
it's not an American story; it's an Irish one." Nothing could
be further from the truth. Strangely enough, the most believable
aspect of the film is Pitt's affected accent. --Wadsworth
KAMA SUTRA: A TALE OF LOVE. Mira Nair, the director of
Mississippi Masala and Salaam Bombay! delivers a
sexy, good-natured, and slightly self-indulgent meditation on
love and sex in 16th-century India. Indira Varma plays Maya, a
saucy servant girl talented in the art of love. Her beauty and
cunning take her from the palace to the street and back again
in this sexy Cinderella story featuring bare-chested hunks wrestling
and dark-eyed beauties making out with each other. Nair's visual
sense is stunning and lush, cinnamon and rose-colored; you can
practically smell the spices on the breeze. The sex scenes are
torrid too--Nair has apparently confounded the censors in India,
who allow depictions of violent sexuality like rape but prohibit
the portrayal of direct physical contact. It's easy to commend
Nair for wanting to introduce positive images of sexuality to
Indian cinema; it's a little more difficult to sit through the
second half of Kama Sutra, after the plot starts to wind
down and all the principals have already done the deed with each
other. --Richter
LIAR, LIAR. A haiku: a disturbing man contorts himself
like a spaz he is a lawyer --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
SHINE. A wonderful, uplifting movie about a child prodigy
who is damaged, then saved, by his art. Based on the true life
story of David Helfgott, Shine weaves together scenes from
his extremely lousy childhood and his very eccentric adulthood.
Geoffrey Rush is terrific as Helfgott, a man who's a mass of neurotic
habits and annoying tics, but who can create beautiful music as
well. Occasionally director Scott Hicks is a little too
direct in his method--you can see certain events coming miles
off, and he occasionally veers into the forbidden realm of sentimentality--but
on the whole Shine is visually unusual and fresh. --Richter
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 Thornton 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 Thornton's performance
as the practical, slow-witted, vaguely monstrous Karl that helps
make this one of the best movies of 1996. --Richter
SUBURBIA. Director Richard Linklater continues his investigation
of Gen-X angst in this adaptation of the play by Eric Bogosian.
A great cast helps counteract the lingering theatricality of the
production--sometimes it seems like guys in black leotards are
about to run on screen and start moving furniture around. But
despite the films limitations, Linklater tackles his subject--disaffected,
alienated white kids--with energy and wit. If you're young and
confused, or if you used to be young and confused, or if you plan
to be young and confused sometime in the future, this film will
give you a few pointers on how to conduct yourself. --Richter
WAITING FOR GUFFMAN. A savage little piece of satire, very
funny and equally cruel. Christopher Guest, the guitarist from
Spinal Tap, directs and co-writes this fake documentary
about a small-town theatrical production of Red, White and
Blaine, a musical greeting card to the salient moments in
the rise of a tiny town known for its stool industry. From the
earnest and pathetic auditions of the townsfolk--including Catherine
O'Hara and Fred Willard, travel agents who do their own rendition
of Midnight at the Oasis--to the final production, complete
with paper maché spaceships and the dopiest choreography
ever captured on film, Waiting for Guffman captures all
the sad and funny nuances of being a nobody in the middle of no
place. Guest plays Corky St. Clair, a frustrated refuge from off-off
Broadway who collects My Dinner With Andre action
figures and throws one mean little temper tantrum. If you hated
your high school music teacher, this film will finally bring you
revenge; the rest of the citizens of small-town America probably
don't deserve such rough treatment, even when it's this funny.
--Richter
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