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 ADDICTED TO LOVE. There's so much wrong with this movie
that you'd need a chart to explain it all: Amongst other things,
it glorifies stalking, promotes violence against innocent French
people, and stars Meg Ryan. Matthew Broderick plays a sweet-natured
but deeply deranged astronomer who destroys the life of his ex-fiancée's
new boyfriend (Tchéky Karyo). He is helped in this endeavor
by some illegal listening equipment, his collection of cockroaches,
and a violently unstable woman (Ryan) who was Karyo's last girlfriend.
Of course, while making their ex-beloved's lives miserable, Broderick
and Ryan fall in love. Nonetheless, I couldn't help thinking this
whole plot could have been avoided with a simple restraining order.
--DiGiovanna
AUSTIN POWERS. Saturday Night Live castaway Mike
Meyers 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
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 Prêt à 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
JERUSALEM. During the 1800s, a radical sect of Swedish
Christians decided to move to Jerusalem to prepare for the Second
Coming of Christ. Okay, so it doesn't sound like a rip-roaring
good time at the movies, but it was much better than I expected,
even with a three-hour running time and freezing Loft air-conditioning.
Director Bille August (Smilla's Sense of Snow) dramatizes
this historical footnote in the usual way: With sober pacing,
he chronologically details the lives of a handful of agrarian
Swedes. But the story and setting are not usual, and once you
settle into the movie's languorous rhythm, a sadly meditative
sensation takes hold. Cleanly divided between Sweden and Jerusalem,
the film provides a haunting glimpse into the love lives, moral
struggles, cultural customs and religious fervor (in that order)
of a group of people about whom I'd otherwise never have thought
twice. The impeccably subtle actors, who are mostly internationally
unknown save for Olympia Dukakis and the great Max Von Sydow,
constantly reveal hints of repression and suffering, so when they
finally crack you can feel it. (The movie definitely has emotional
after effects.) August layers it all with only the faintest--and
therefore effective--touches of magical realism, perhaps reacting
to a lesson he learned from his laughable House of Spirits.
--Woodruff
TRIAL AND ERROR. A predictable, flatline Hollywood legal
comedy (a perfunctory cross between My Cousin Vinny and
Something Wild) without an ounce of bite or innovation.
The leads make the most of a formulaic script dealing with an
actor (Michael Richards) pretending to be a lawyer to fill in
for his high-strung, Type A attorney buddy (Jeff Daniels) while
he gets lost in the Nevada desert, falls in love with a beautiful
blonde and discovers all the important things in life. The film
strives for a surface kind of cynicism, only to invoke the Love
Conquers All escape clause in the end. One of the perennial, and
most irritating, of Hollywood messages: We all need to let our
hair down and stop trying to overachieve in order to find ourselves.
If it's so damn easy to drop all your over-reaching, money grubbing
material ways and fulfill your inner self, then why is Spago double
booked through the end of the millennium? --Marchant
WARRIORS OF VIRTUE. This movie is about a boy named Ryan
Jeffers, who slips and falls through a dimension portal into a
weird world called Tao. He has this manuscript in his backpack,
and when he gets to Tao, the bad guys steal it. The bad guys are
Komodo and his soldiers, who are stealing the power from Tao's
last life spring; and the good guys are the Warriors of Virtue--Water,
Earth, Metal, Wood and Fire--who are these giant kangaroos who
do Kung Fu. Ryan helps the warriors save Tao by helping them put
their powers together, using the book. The best part is when the
Roos combine their powers and destroy Komodo. (Ross) likes the
martial arts action, when they do kicks and blocks and use swords.
Tao means "The Way." This movie is cool because it teaches
kids that they should believe in themselves, so when they fail,
or break a leg, they don't think it's the end of the world. They
know it works out.
--Ross and Glenn Shambach, ages 7 and 9
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