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 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.
Brain Candy. This first movie from the Canadian comedy
troupe Kids in the Hall is notable for its rampant weirdness and
Monty Python-esque, sketch-based humor. Each member of the all-boy
troupe plays a variety of parts, both male and female, and half
the fun of this movie is watching the actors transform themselves
from character to character. The story involves a conventionally
nerdy scientist who invents a happiness drug called Gleeminex,
then traces the sheer hell of the perky world where this drug
is sold over the counter. Elaborate sets, lighting and camera
work add to the surreal, original flavor of this film. It's funny
in a disturbing, nightmarish kind of way.
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 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.
James And The Giant Peach. Roald Dahl's children's classic
comes to life in this movie through the Disney magic of stop-motion
animation. The overgrown bugs are cute, young James is darling
and the animation is absolutely charming; still, if you're over
12, plan to be a little bored, especially during the singing part.
Those to the left of the political spectrum may enjoy the secret
embedded Marxist mythology being espoused here--James and the
bugs seize the fruits of their labor (the peach!) from the evil,
property owning aunts and take it across the ocean to share with
the masses. Apparently Disney has been brainwashing our young
for years, perhaps creating the Cold War through the seemingly
"cute" shenanigans of little dancing bugs and mice.
Probably with the cooperation of the phone company.
Primal Fear. Richard Gere is a lawyer in this courtroom
drama about an arrogant attorney who questions his own methods
after he begins representing a sweet, stuttering altar boy accused
of murdering a bishop who has sexually molested him. Gere is just
dandy in the role, alternately repugnant and charismatic, and
best of all, the years have not robbed him of his hunkiness. The
plot twists with predictable regularity but manages not to grievously
insult the intelligence of the audience. All the material here
has been covered by TV cops and lawyers shows, probably a little
better, but at least no one in the theater is going to stop everything
to try to sell you Pepsid AC.
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