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 DIRTY WORK. Norm Macdonald has the sort of face and attitude
that's funny even if he just stands there doing nothing. Unfortunately,
in Dirty Work, Macdonald runs around spewing stillborn
half-jokes and pulling unimaginative revenge schemes on stereotypical
villains. Big dogs hump big dogs; skunks hump little dogs; Macdonald
gets ass-raped in jail; the highly obnoxious Artie Lange (Mad
TV) and highly dead Chris Farley try to squeeze laughs out
of their corpulence; Gary Coleman and Adam Sandler appear for
so-over-the-top-they're-under-the-bottom cameos; Chevy Chase and
Don Rickles do what they always do, tiredly--and none of it is
funny. Then again, if you willingly go to a movie directed by
Bob Saget (of America's Stupidest Home Videos fame), you
have no one to blame but yourself. --Woodruff
GODZILLA. In the original pictures, Godzilla was like an
overgrown child throwing a tantrum, and I don't know about you,
but that's why I loved him. In the new Godzilla, he exists
on a purely biological level, motivated only to eat and to breed.
With neither political themes nor anthropomorphism to sustain
him, the sole reason to root for Godzilla is to see him destroy
things while protecting his territory. Even then, this over-marketed,
under-scripted special-effects vehicle doesn't deliver enough;
in fact, director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin eliminate
the big lizard from the movie's entire second act! Instead, we're
introduced to Godzilla's spawn, several dozen man-sized babies
who move, cast shadows, and produce visual puns exactly, and I
do mean exactly, like Steven Spielberg's velociraptors. Yes, this
is the Jurassic Park 3 you didn't know was coming. Sure,
Godzilla turns up again, but his revival can't save the movie
any more than that last-minute blue, singing alien could save
The Fifth Element. As for the actors, Godzilla stars
Matthew Broderick and Maria Pitillo in a wimpy love story that
has no business being in a Godzilla picture. Fortunately, Jean
Reno was thrown in to liven up the mix. He's the movie's one saving
grace: a sleepy-eyed action hero who cusses in French. --Woodruff
GONE WITH THE WIND. While it may seem confusing at first
why a film that doesn't star John Travolta is in re-release, it
all makes perfect sense when you consider the long-movie madness
that's afflicted Hollywood in recent years. (Anybody wish they
had the three-and-a-half hours they wasted at Titanic back?)
So it was only a matter of time until the four-hour, 1939 Gone
with the Wind was recycled. It's a brand-new Technicolor print,
but you can thank Ted Turner for less-than-spectacular results.
Just in case you're very young or have been living with Nell your
whole life, this epic film follows the Civil War-era adventures
of feisty southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and the
fall of her family's aristocratic empire. But, not to worry: Bourgeois
bliss is restored as Scarlett discovers the economic advantages
of a well-researched marriage. The man who tries hardest to tame
this unruly entrepreneur is the fabulously dressed Rhett Butler
(Clark Gable) and his arsenal of pomade--though he's more successful
at trimming his mustache and killing children. A note to parents:
The film's "G" rating is not reflective of its horrendously
stereotyped black characters; narrative support of drunken marital
rape (which sure puts a skip back into Miss Scarlett's step);
and Gable's creepy capped teeth. At the very least, we can take
comfort in the fact that Hollywood is ecologically minded. My
only hope is that a director's cut of Travolta's full-length exercise
video, Perfect, is similarly pulled out of the recycling
bin sometime soon. --Polly Higgins
HAV PLENTY. Christopher Scott Cherot wrote, directed, and
stars in this exceedingly inconsequential romantic comedy. Based
on a "true story," the film follows Lee Plenty (Cherot)
during a New Year's Eve weekend he spent in Washington, D.C.,
with a high-society female friend named Havilland (Hav Plenty--get
it?). We watch as Plenty, a struggling book writer, resists the
advances of Hav's friend and sister, all the while holding out
for Hav, who's too self-absorbed to realize she loves him back.
The picture has the dry staginess and spotty performances of a
low-budget first feature, with absolutely nothing resembling good
comic rhythm; but the characters slowly grow on you, and their
specific situation becomes amusing--if not actually romantic--for
its smartly detailed observation. Great movie-within-a-movie ending.
--Woodruff
HIGH ART. "High melodrama" would be a more apt
description of this ambitious but annoying soap opera by first-time
director Lisa Cholodenko. Radha Mitchell plays Syd, a twenty-something
Manhattanite stuck in a boring heterosexual relationship. When
her ceiling starts to leak she goes to meet the Bohemian upstairs
neighbor, Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy), a heroine-snorting lesbian.
Syd seems to have no choice but to fall for Lucy, given the boringness
of her job and the one-dimensionality of her boyfriend. It's a
walk on the wild side, but a predictable one. Cholodenko has a
good eye and the cinematography is appropriately lush, but rather
than being beautiful, it just makes it all seem pretentious. --Richter
JUNK MAIL. The postman subgenre is back yet again with
this Norwegian film about a voyeuristic mail carrier named Roy.
The protagonist's life is a simple one structured by a daily routine
of committing mail-related felonies, such as hoarding junk mail
and reading other people's letters, until he becomes obsessed
with a Frosted Flakes fetishist named Line. Line seems like a
quiet, perfectly objectifiable woman until Roy discovers, after
sneaking into her apartment to eat soggy leftovers of the aforementioned
sugared cereal, that her felony of choice is robbery. This is
okay by Peeping Roy, though, because he gets to prove he has the
strength of Tony the Tiger by saving her from a suicide attempt
and from her temperamental cohort Georg. The film's blues and
grays create an appropriately dull backdrop for its protagonist;
and the cramped spaces and off-balance minor characters contribute
to an understanding of his mental state. Though the story seems
aimless at times, it does provide one possible answer to what
your mail carrier is smiling about. --Polly Higgins
THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. With genuine nostalgia edged with
spite, filmmaker Whit Stillman (Barcelona, Metropolitan)
chronicles the night life and loves of a group of budding Yuppies
in the early 1980s. Chloe Sevigny plays Alice, a straight-talking
innocent looking for fun. Kate Beckinsale is Charlotte, her conniving
roommate. Together they charm half a dozen young men at a Studio
54-like nightclub in New York, without ever actually having a
very good time. Stillman's characters are funny, non-stop talkers
who recite clever dialogue and seem to be interchangeable. They're
entertaining, but they don't seem very authentic. They all keep
saying how much "fun" the nightclub is, but it doesn't
actually look like very much fun. The most notable thing about
it is that characters can sit around talking all night, and they
never have to shout over the music, and no one ever says what?
Perhaps the amazing thing about The Last Days of Disco
is that it does manage to evoke the spirit of the time, and to
portray a group dynamic among friends, despite all the talking.
--Richter
MULAN. Disney storytelling is catching up to the 21st century,
slowly but surely, by reaching ever farther into the past (about
the 5th century, in this case). Mulan recounts the mythical
Chinese tale of a daughter who disguises herself as a boy in order
to take her aged and ailing father's place in the emperor's army.
The crisis is that the Huns have crossed the Great Wall of China,
with plans of deposing the emperor; and in the Disney version,
a band of ragamuffin peasants, lead by a handsome young captain
(singing voice provided by Donny Osmond) and the heroine Fa-Mulan,
are China's last hope. Say what you will about the Disney empire,
the animation here is so arresting at times--from the magic of
watercolor strokes on the film's opening credits, to the breathtaking
vistas of torches bursting into flame all along the Great Wall,
and the Hun army descending a snowy cornice--you may be inclined
to forgive all sins, such as the corny contemporary soundtrack,
and the regrettably undignified ending. Eddie Murphy is a kick
as the demoted spirit-dragon Mushu; and The Single Guy's
Ming-Na Wen offers some much-needed spine to the first Disney
character we know of to suggest the girl worth fighting for might
be "a girl who always speaks her mind." This is the
summer action flick for the wee ones. --Wadsworth
OUT OF SIGHT. In the hierarchy of adaptations based on
Elmore Leonard books, this one ranks up there with Get Shorty.
The direction (by Steven Soderbergh, of Sex, Lies and Videotape
fame) expresses the Leonard style perfectly, nudging humor out
of naturalistic dialogue and displaying a whimsically carefree
attitude about matters of life and death without letting all the
steam out of the story. George Clooney, as a bank robber, and
Jennifer Lopez, as his police pursuer, make an extremely good-looking
couple; and their two verbal tennis matches (one in a car's trunk,
the other in a hotel) are the film's sexual-spark-filled highlights.
The smoothly developing romantic mood begins in sunny Miami and
ends in snowy nighttime Detroit, so even if you see Out of
Sight during the middle of the day you might walk out expecting
a cool, dark sky. A standout supporting cast includes Albert Brooks,
Catherine Keener, Ving Rhames, Get Shorty alumnus Dennis
Farina and a couple of uncredited surprises. --Woodruff
A PERFECT MURDER. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the impossibly
beautiful young wife of evil, aged investment banker Michael Douglas
in this remake of Dial M For Murder. When Douglas realizes
Paltrow is having an affair with a young artist (played by smoky-hot
Viggo Mortensen), he hatches an elaborate plot for revenge. The
suspense film is one of the more difficult genres to pull off,
but director Andrew Davis, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and
composer James Newton Howard synergistically combine to drop all
the elements into place. Wolski, best known for inventing the
neo-gothic style of cinematography seen in The Crow and
Dark City, uses a much more subtle approach here, courageously
shooting empty rooms and static scenes to create a threatening
atmosphere and keep the viewer off-balance. The film is also notable
for the Arabic-speaking police detective who's portrayed as smart,
efficient and sympathetic, a rare departure from the normally
stereotyped representation of Muslim peoples in Hollywood movies.
The only flaws in this nerve-wracking outing are Michael Douglas'
exaggerated performance and a slight loss of momentum in the final
confrontation. Still, this is precision filmmaking that will leave
you reaching for the nitroglycerin tablets.
--DiGiovanna
SIX DAYS, SEVEN NIGHTS. For our summer enjoyment,
Six Days, Seven Nights allows us to relive the dimmer aspects
of African Queen, and with pirates. Anne Heche plays a
fashionable magazine editor stranded on an island with a daddy-esque
Harrison Ford. She's a feisty talker; he's a tough man of action.
They hate each other, then they love each other, and it's all
shot in a lush vacation-porno setting. Anne Heche is adorable,
and you can see through most of her shirts. Harrison Ford is a
charming piece of aging beefcake, though if you remember what
he looked like in the Star Wars era, it's hard not to feel
like we're missing something. This is puréed entertainment,
easily digestible.
--Richter
THE TRUMAN SHOW. Though it has an exciting premise and
Peter Weir directs the film beautifully, it's a little annoying
how much praise has been heaped upon The Truman Show. Does
the story really have anything to say about mass-media and invasion
of privacy that hasn't been exposed by countless Orwellian knock-offs
and the media itself? Not really. What the picture needs is an
extra twist, something juicy, to push it over the edge. You'd
think Jim Carrey could supply it, but he's toned himself down
here, because (in a twisted bit of casting) he's supposed to play
a non-actor in a world full of actors. His escape from the sunnily
phony Norman Rockwell bubble created by Ed Harris' "Christof"--a
scary portrait of what can happen when you give an artist too
much power--remains fun, but more for the details of the deception
than for Carrey's performance. The Truman Show is well
worth a look, but as far as I'm concerned Albert Brooks' Real
Life retains the kingship in this media-overboard genre.
--Woodruff
THE X-FILES. Help! I can't get that whistling theme music
out of my head! That's just one of many reasons to avoid the movie
version of The X-Files. On TV, the X-Files successfully
exploited the conspiratorial secrets and creepy things lurking
in the dark shadows, but the bright light of big-movie translation
reveals them as rather cheap. Although the film delivers more
special effects and a broader geographic scope, all the promised
Big Answers turn out to be big nonsense, and the relationship
between agents Mulder and Scully remains teasingly chaste (not
to mention stiff). Plus, the plot takes too many asinine steps,
from Mulder's easy discovery of a bomb in a building tastelessly
similar to the one destroyed in Oklahoma, to his quick recovery
from a point-blank gunshot wound to the head. The truth may be
out there, but these aren't the sorts of truths about which The
X-Files is supposed to leave you wondering. --Woodruff
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