A Kid in King Arthur's Court. This low-quality fare from
Disney features a lame script, bland direction and contemptible
acting. If you take your kids to see it, they might lead a violent
revolt against you using whiffle bats and plastic swords, so be
careful. Even Runaway Brain, the 5-minute Mickey Mouse
cartoon that precedes the movie, is second-rate all the way. With
the hundreds of Arthurian, time-travel and old Disney videos that
infinitely outclass this tripe, consider setting up your own round
table at home instead. Christen it with a VCR and let Merlin's
magical remote control be your guide.
Apollo 13. Ron Howard is a child of TV, so it's to be expected
that his latest film, like all the others, always tells you how
to react. That worked fine in Splash, Parenthood
and The Paper, enjoyable films with regular outbursts of
comedy. But Howard is at his worst when he takes things too seriously,
and he treats the near-fatal Apollo 13 mission with unquestioning
reverence: a historical symbol of American heroism. Rarely does
he touch upon the terror of dying in space or the weird spectacle
the mission became after the public learned of the impending doom.
It's a detailed, technically superb movie with a monotonous point
of view: that the astronauts suffered nobly. Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton
and Kevin Bacon star.
Babe. Animal training and animatronics blend seamlessly
in this terrific children's story about a polite piglet who breaks
through the rules of barnyard conformity to do her own thing--herd
sheep. Made in Australia, with perfectly-cast voices and an impressive
assemblage of good-looking animals, the movie has storytelling
chutzpah on its side: The scenes are playfully divided into episodic
chapters, and the atmosphere feels like it was painted onto the
screen directly from the most imaginative kids' books. Thankfully,
dark, Orwellian moments keep the cute bits in balance--something
more children's movies ought to do.
Braveheart. Writer-director Mel Gibson clobbers the audience
with three hours of blunt storytelling about a rebellious Scottish
clansman who led soldiers into effective battle against British
tyranny. Much of the movie's violence is grippingly effective,
especially a couple of well-orchestrated fight sequences that,
though aesthetically closer to the limbless knight scene in Monty
Python and the Holy Grail than the poetic violence of Sam
Peckinpah, are still quite powerful. But Gibson's relentless chant
of "Freedom!" and the film's overtones of romantic martyrdom
don't really stick; mostly, the movie leaves you with a dispiriting
sense of human brutality.
Clueless. This is the movie you'll hate to love, full of
innocent, likable characters with completely unbelievable lives.
Far from an offshoot of one of those Fox TV programs, this latest
effort by Amy Heckerling (who also delivered Fast Times at
Ridgemont High) is an original, engaging portrait of Beverly
Hills high school life in the '90s, which remains sincere however
fantastic the lives of her characters become. Clueless
is top of the line, "kids rule" cinema.
First Knight. A round table, a love triangle, a square
movie. Sean Connery plays King Arthur with his usual regal gravity,
Richard Gere reinvents Sir Lancelot as a manic-depressive (but
mostly manic) derring-doer, and Julia Ormond is Guinevere, the
doe-eyed, perpetually confused object of their love. The film
vacillates between blustery action sequences and moments of cheesy
romantic tension, including a rather pornographic scene in which
Gere channels rainwater into Guinevere's mouth via a big leaf.
The Net. Once again, Sandra Bullock gives a top-notch performance
as the accidental victim in a fast action thriller. This time
she's on her own, as the introverted, computer program analyst
who stumbles into the twisted world of cyberterrorism. Sci-fi
fans and computer phobics alike will appreciate the implications
of an Orwellian future in which our entire identities are stored
on the Internet, where the war of the Information Age is waiting
to break out. If you can willingly suspend your disbelief, this
one will keep you frozen over your popcorn throughout.
Operation Dumbo Drop. In this high-concept Disney movie,
kids will be sure to love the scenes in which elephant barf, human
barf and elephant poop play key roles. They may also love the
funky spectacle of an elephant being parachuted from a plane,
which as funky spectacles go ranks right up there. But neither
kids nor adults are likely to get too wrapped in the picture's
strained Vietnam-era story, the shrill friction between Danny
Glover and Ray Liotta, Denis Leary's one-note sardonic performance
or anything else that fills in the gaps between elephant excretions.
Pocahontas. In their depiction of the Native American woman
who helped forge peace between indians and colonists, Disney delivers
everything you'd expect: a tasteful message of anti-bigotry and
environmental harmony, cute animals, competent songwriting and
a heroine who looks like an animated supermodel. A few of the
key sequences are charming, but most of the film is so calculated
as to lack any viewing joy whatsoever.
A PURE FORMALITY. Two butt-nosed actors for the price of
one! Gerard Depardieu plays a murder suspect with a severe memory
problem and Roman Polanski plays the inspector who chips away
at Depardieu's story over the course of a night. Directed by Giuseppe
Tornatore (Cinema Paradiso), this dark, sumptuously detailed
film evolves from noirish cat-and-mouse game to metaphysical character
study with more than enough skill to keep the film's dreamlike
elusiveness endurable. Watching Depardieu and Polanski click is
a treat; their performances hold the film together long after
the mystery's grip has loosened.
Something To Talk About. From the screenwriter who gave
us Thelma & Louise comes this insightful yet directionless
tale of a Southern wife (Julia Roberts) who has to re-think her
life when she learns her husband (Dennis Quaid) has been having
several affairs. Crisp direction by Lasse Hallestrom, warmly vibrant
cinematography and a handful of fun performances (by Kyra Sedgwick,
Robert Duvall and Gene Rowlands) keep the film enjoyable long
after the story has lost sight of a point. And Roberts is surprisingly
good--after years of limited performances in dumb roles, she really
seems to be blossoming.
Species. Get ready for Jurassic Park meets Alien.
When an experiment with a human-extraterrestrial hybrid goes awry,
the government assembles a four-man team consisting of a biologist,
social scientist, empath and assassin to find the escaped E.T.
Species starts off in the right vein, creating a character
both humanistic enough for the audience to relate to and inhuman
enough to keep you on the edge of your seat. Despite an anti-climactic,
typical Hollywood ending, a half-way decent story and chilling
special effects mask most of Species' flaws.
UNDER SIEGE 2. There's no denying that Steven Seagal is
the dorkiest action star around. He only has a few expressions
he can handle, so his movie's scripts always do all the work for
him, writing in his sensitive side and crafting dozens of characters
to admire his all-American killing prowess. That's fine. Once
you have accepted Seagal for the buffoon he is, his latest film,
Under Siege 2, becomes altogether watchable. Here is an
action movie that works hard--really hard--to keep the audience
happy, piling on cat-and-mouse chases, impossible stunts and bizarre
fighting moves with uncontrolled gusto. Eric Bogosian is brilliantly
cast as the baddie, who takes over a train on his way to taking
over the world. And in banal Die Hard fashion, Seagal just happens
to be on board to pick off the henchman--each of whose deaths
are rendered in loving detail by the filmmakers. Seagal may not
be the ideal American patriot, but his latest movie has a very
American appeal: more bang for your buck.
Virtuosity. Brett Leonard, creator of The Lawnmower
Man, once again proves his skill at making slick, futuristic
movies with loads of glittery computer animation and not much
else. The movie spends its first half-hour setting up an impressively
elaborate explanation for how an artificially intelligent virtual-reality
program might find its way into the real world, then proceeds
to squander the premise's possibilities on an all-too-familiar
cop-versus-killer story. Denzel Washington gives a generic good
guy performance, but Russell Crowe plays the narcissistic, baby
faced villain with cackling glee--he looks like Bob's Big Boy
with a new suit and a mean streak. Overviolent and unimaginative,
add this to the long list of films that fail to find good cinematic
uses for cyber-technology.
A Walk in the Clouds. From Alfonso Arau, director of Like
Water For Chocolate, comes this pleasantly magical-realist
W.W.II-era romance about a GI (Keanu Reeves) who pretends to be
the husband of a lovely, troubled woman (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon)
to save her from the tradition-obsessed wrath of her father (Giancarlo
Giannini), head of a family-run vineyard in Napa Valley. Arau's
direction is smile-inducing and swift, and the actors are all
charming, especially Anthony Quinn as an unflaggingly earnest,
chocolate-chomping grandfather. But the movie's combination of
love, family and good cheer is almost too perfect, too postcardy.
Remarkably, what saves it is Reeves' laughably monotonous performance--just
the weird element the picture needs to keep its innocence interesting.
Waterworld. "Was this your big vision?" the tattooed
child asks at the end, and you might be thinking the same thing
after watching $200 million in sets and special effects wash away
in this ill-conceived spectacle. Good enough to sit through but
not nearly good enough to justify its magnitude, the film stars
Kevin Costner as a seafaring Mad Max type who eventually saves
a scruffy girl (Tina Majorino) and a bland love interest (Jeanne
Tripplehorn) from a gang of cigar-chomping baddies led, all-too-familiarly,
by Dennis Hopper. The sci-fi premise and watery atmosphere have
potential, but the picture evaporates into a series of bloated,
ineffective action set-pieces.
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