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 ANACONDA. It's been about 20 years since audiences were
scared out of the ocean by Jaws, so in these nostalgic
times why not another huge, man-eating creature flick? First off,
the snake sucks: Choose between really cheesy animatron rubber
snake puppet (smiling and looking for all the world like a reptilian
George Hamilton), or really fake-looking computer animated snake,
neither of which does much in the way of terrifying. Secondly,
the script is willfully poor ("Oh, shit, look!" one
character says upon seeing a snake the size of a space shuttle
coming towards him). On the plus side, though, you get an entertainingly
mismatched cast (Jon Voight, Eric Stoltz and Ice Cube),
a couple of beautiful, screaming women (only one of whom survives),
another look at Owen Wilson (Bottlerocket), and a snake
that kills its prey by first spinning it in a fast tango and then
twisting its head like the cap on a Bud Light (I've had worse
dates). Your call. --Marchant
AUSTIN POWERS. Saturday Night Live castaway Mike
Myers is in his element as "International Man of Mystery"
Austin Powers, a swinging '60s fashion photographer by day, mod
undercover British Intelligence agent by night. He's also his
own arch nemesis, Dr. Evil, who catapults the action 30 years
into the future by launching himself into outer space in a vessel
shaped like the Big Boy, in which he and his cat are cryogenically
frozen. This psychedelic romp through the spy-TV conventions of
the '60s is like a Monkees episode choreographed by Michael
Jackson on acid, with a bit of Get Smartness and James
Bondage co-opted to hilarious effect. It's not a spoof, really.
It's just Mike Myers having a blast veering between sophisticated
and juvenile as an unfrozen swinger chasing down evil and free
love in the inhospitable '90s. For revelers in cameo appearances
and pop culture references of days of yore, there's only one thing
you can say about this satirical carnival of cheap laughs: "Smashing,
baby!" --Wadsworth
BREAKDOWN. This is one of those small, seemingly inconsequential
movies that sneaks in and proves to be worlds more entertaining
than its "blockbuster" competition. The premise is simple
enough: While driving across the desert, yuppie Kurt Russell's
wife Kathleen Quinlan is cleverly kidnapped by yahoos, and Russell
has to save her with few resources and even less information.
Writer/director Jonathan Mostow neatly builds a queasy, stranded-feeling
tension that rarely ebbs, and smartly never lets Russell seem
like anything other than an ordinary guy. The resulting payoffs
are huge, and at its best Breakdown recalls Steven Spielberg's
Duel, or that great cropduster sequence in Hitchcock's
North by Northwest. The lubberly J.T. Walsh adds a healthy
dose of creepiness as a two-faced truck driver. --Woodruff
CHASING AMY. Director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Mallrats)
falters in his latest attempt when he tries to describe the experience
of young women, a group he seems to neither respect nor like.
Chasing Amy is the story of Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck),
an outsider who falls hard for Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams),
a sweet but sharp-tongued comic book artist. She's also a lesbian,
a fact Smith uses as a cute little obstacle to their love, which
of course prevails. Though Adams is delightful as Jones, no amount
of snappy dialogue can overcome the film's overt distrust of female
sexuality: While Holden is somewhat fascinated with Alyssa's lesbianism,
he's disgusted when he finds out she's had sex with other men.
This is the point where an annoying movie becomes insufferable.
Smith offers nothing new, even by way of misogynistic anxiety
on the subject of female sex. Hitchcock was doing the same thing
years ago, but at least he had the grace to be entertaining. --Richter
THE FIFTH ELEMENT. Writer and director Luc Besson sacrifices
sensibility for style in this excessively fashion-designed science
fiction movie. Besson, known for Subway, La Femme Nikita
and The Professional, tries here for a sort of Blade
Runner/Star Wars hybrid but ends up with something closer
to Stargate meets Pret a Porter. But it's not just
another sci-fi flop--the film has a distinct French flavor (even
hero Bruce Willis' cat looks French)--and you can't take your
eyes off the screen even when it's mind-numbing to watch. As with
The Professional, the story places intense emphasis on
the preternatural beauty of a young woman (Milla Jovovich) who,
this time, is turned into a half-naked, super-powerful-yet-sweetly-vulnerable
Raggedy Ann doll. Gary Oldman once again plays the villain; now
a new-wave Hitler cowboy with buck teeth. If Besson took any of
this seriously, the movie would reek; he didn't, so it's just
an eye-poppingly bizarre experience. --Woodruff
GROSSE POINTE BLANK. John Cusack and Minnie Driver hammer
out a love-hate relationship in a black romantic comedy so thick
with irony that watching it is like watching two people fall in
love on the David Letterman show, if you can imagine that. The
dialogue is hip and witty, but the love story is straight out
of a 1960s Doris Day movie, and at times, the script seems to
be groaning under decades of stress. Cusack plays a smooth, amoral
hit man who decides to return to the affluent suburb where he
grew up for his high school reunion. Driver plays the girl who
has been conveniently waiting for him for 10 years. Well, it's
convenient for him. Grosse Pointe Blank is funny,
forgettable, and aimed directly at viewers between the ages of
29 and 33. Everyone else may wonder what the hell is going on.
--Richter
KISSED. If it weren't for the incredibly annoying and pretentious
voice-overs, this film about a young necrophiliac would be merely
mediocre. As it is, it is nearly insufferable--every few minutes
the lead character presents mock-philosophical commentary on what
is already an obvious scene. It's too bad, really, because some
largely uncharted cinematic territory is explored here. Unfortunately,
Kissed winds up being just another boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl,
boy-kills-himself-and-girl-fucks-his-corpse story. --DiGiovanna
KOLYA. If Disney had a foreign film division, they might
produce something very like Kolya, a sweet movie verging
on sentimental that's just saved from being unforgivably cute
by its political content. Louka (Zdenek Sverák), a middle-aged
cellist forced from the Prague philharmonic by the communist regime,
makes a deal to marry a young Russian woman. He's a confirmed
bachelor, but she needs Czech citizenship and he needs money.
When she runs off to Germany, he's stuck caring for her adorable,
5-year-old son, who teaches Louka a little bit about love, life,
and family. Some of the filmmaking here is surprising and sensitive,
which makes the manipulative, cloying aspects all the more irksome.
--Richter
VOLCANO. Blows. --DiGiovanna, Woodruff, Richter
WHEN WE WERE KINGS. The legendary prize fight between Mohammed
Ali and George Foreman, set in Zaire in 1974, is the subject of
this terrific documentary. If you doubt, or have forgotten, that
Ali was at that time the coolest guy on the planet, this film
aims to remind you. The footage was shot in the '70s, but director
Leon Gast only obtained the funding to complete the film recently.
He added snappy narration from George Plimpton and Norman Mailer,
who've had more than 20 years to reflect on the big event. The
result is a tense but elegiac record of an exciting boxing match,
the most cinematic of sports. --Richter
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