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 Courage Under Fire. Meg Ryan and Denzel Washington star
in this Roshomon-style tale of a fighter pilot being investigated
to see if she deserves the Medal of Honor for her performance
in Operation Desert Storm. Not only is the pilot a girl,
but the stories of her surviving squad-mates don't match very
well and Washington must work overtime to try to sort the mess
out. What's more, the investigator has some skeletons to clean
out of his own closet before he can bask in the hard, clear light
of The Truth. The structure of this movie is interesting, but
the content is sort of revolting. Washington is consumed with
remorse for killing some of his men with friendly fire, but feels
nothing but lasting jingoistic triumph over blowing away scads
of faceless Iraqis, whom he also refers to as "fuckers."
If the thought of the strongest army in the world crushing a much
weaker force in order to protect its economic interests strikes
you as heroic, buy a ticket and have your patriotic chain yanked.
The Frighteners. Peter Jackson's follow-up after the critically
acclaimed Heavenly Creatures is a surprisingly unambitious,
B-style horror movie. Michael J. Fox stars as Frank Bannister,
a "psychic investigator" who uses his genuine ability
to commune with the dead to swindle the bereaved into using his
services. Then a real, totally malevolent ghost shows up and begins
knocking off townspeople left and right, and Bannister must finally
use his powers for good. Part horror movie, part comedy, The
Frighteners tries to play both ends against the middle and
ends up not being consistently funny or consistently scary. The
special effects are great though, and you can't beat that campy,
seventies, B-movie feeling.
HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF (LE HUSSARD SUR LE TOIT). A
beautiful-looking movie about two beautiful people clinging to
each other in times of plague. Juliette Binoche is an elegant,
married noblewoman; Olivier Martinez is a handsome Italian revolutionary.
Together they canter across the lovely French countryside, trying
to escape the ravages of Asiatic Cholera, which causes its victims
to vomit on themselves, tremble violently, then expire. Not only
must they escape the plague, they must escape the angry, fear-driven
mobs of peasants who blame any stranger for the spread of pestilence.
This seems to be another one of those movies where only beautiful
people are truly wise, noble and good and everyone else is an
ugly, ignorant lout. Nothing works very well in this movie, but
nothing really fails either; despite all the death, it's light,
pretty and insipid.
Independence Day. Good guys from Earth battle bad guys
from outer space in this latest incarnation of War of the Worlds.
The good guys are flawed but determined; the bad guys are tentacled
and covered in slime: What could be simpler? The special effects
are cool, the characters are likable, and there's never a dull
moment. A thoroughly fun, mindless little vacation, Independence
Day is sort of like an enema: eventful, and then you feel
empty.
Lone Star. Director John Sayles delivers an offbeat, thoughtful
examination of border life and love in this winding tale of one
lawman searching for his roots. Chris Cooper plays a divorced
Texas sheriff trying to sort out fact from legend, particularly
in regard to his father, who may or may not have been a bad kind
of a guy. His search leads him across the big, dusty state and
into a half-dozen different recollections of a puzzling past.
Though the characters have an annoying propensity for explaining
their motivations in gruesome psychological detail, and though
Sayles (as always) can't resist an opportunity to preach the liberal
cause; and though the production values of this movie are so shoddy
that nearly 20 annoying minutes of it are out of sync, Lone
Star still somehow manages to be an engaging, surprising film.
Phenomenon. It's hard to spell and even harder to watch:
Phenomenon, a corny, cloying, life-is-a-gift type of flick
that tries its darnedest to recreate the optimism of Frank Capra
movies like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and It's a
Wonderful Life. The marvel of Capra's movies though, is that
they're actually incredibly bleak stories with a burst of light
at the end, while Phenomenon keeps to a steady level of
saccharine drivel throughout. John Travolta stars as a dimwitted
mechanic who sees a light in the sky and then becomes breathtakingly
intelligents. Sentimental music and hazy, gold-filtered shots
sabotage any chance at dignity this project may have ever had.
This is one of those movies that might have been kind of good
if it wasn't so idiotic.
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