 |
 Antonia's Line. This flick received this year's Academy
Award for best foreign picture, and it has all the banal mediocrity
and pre-fab pathos we've come to expect from the Academy. Antonia
is an old, dying farm woman, and the plot is a Cliff Notes version
of the highlights of her life, given to us swiftly but succinctly,
presumably so we may experience sorrow when she dies. The film
produces so many rapidly growing babies that it's hard to feel
connected to any of the characters, and the plodding narration
keeps us further at a distance. This is the kind of ground best
covered in novels, and the filmmaker struggles without much success
to make her very long story visually dynamic. The occasional jolt
of magic realism just makes the whole project more derivative
and embarrassing.
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 plans get 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.
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?
Fargo. A wonderfully deadpan thriller/comedy about a couple
of mediocre psycho killers 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.
Flirting With Disaster. David O. Russell, director of Spanking
the Monkey, continues his investigation of the zany problem
of instability in one's parents in Flirting With Disaster,
the story of an adopted guy (Ben Stiller) who goes to look for
his birth parents. He takes along his wife (Patricia Arquette)
and a sexy adoption counselor (Tea Leone), who keeps matching
him up with the wrong set of parents. This movie is funny but
ultimately quite predictable, with a theme borrowed from the Wizard
of Oz and a final ascension of family values. Comedy/insight/entertainment-wise,
it's about at the level of Seinfeld, only longer. Check
out the wickedly funny performance by Mary Tyler Moore.
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.
Sgt. Bilko. A made-from-TV comedy based on the series from
the Fifties, Sgt. Bilko is the tale of a lovable, greedy
Army man just trying to make some money and have a little fun.
Bilko (Steve Martin) doesn't believe in discipline, and he encourages
his men to gamble, drink and cheat. Bad casting drags this movie
down--Steve Martin is just too handsome and likable to pull off
his underdog role, and Phil Hartman as his arch-rival Thorne turns
in an incredibly flat performance.
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.
Special Screenings
LESBIAN LOOKS. The Lesbian Looks video series concludes
Friday, April 12, with the following screenings: Homoteens
(Joan Jubela), five autobiographical portraits of young gays and
lesbians in New York City; Bird in the Hand (Melanie Hope
and Catherine Saalfield), a passionate investigation of issues
surrounding co-dependency and obsession; and Alice Unplugged,
an excerpt from a work-in-progress by UA professors Joyan Saunders
and Beverly Seckinger, in which Alice B. Hapless tunes in to late-night
TV and finds a pair of provocative infomercials on lesbian life
in the '90s. All screenings are free and begin at 7:30 p.m. in
the Modern Languages Building auditorium on the UA campus. Call
621-1239 for information.
|
 |
