|
 AIR FORCE ONE. A high-octane blend of action and patriotism
fuel this predictable, average action flick. Harrison Ford plays
one really worried looking Commander-in-Chief, scheming with all
his nation-building smarts to save his family and staff from the
clutches of savage terrorists. They don't believe in the sanctity
of human life! They speak English with Russian accents! There
are problems with fuel, problems with parachutes, guns, explosions--you
know the drill. Gary Oldman, as the rat-like terrorist leader,
is actually sort of charming; but Air Force One lacks the
ingenuity and humor that sometimes make this kind of movie fun.
Or, imagine Speed in the air, with Keanu Reeves as President.
--Richter
BRASSED OFF! This goofy, affable, golden-retriever of a
movie trots along offering modest pleasures and no real surprises.
The time is the 1980s; the place a coal-mining town in England
where Margaret Thatcher's policies are forcing the closure of
the pit that supports an entire community. And with it will go
the brass band that's offered a small slice of glory and culture
to men who spend most of their lives underground. To top it all
off, a girl wants to join the band! Underground heartthrob
Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting) portrays an angry young trumpet
player with his usual flair, and Pete Postlethwaite does a fine
job as the single-minded, ailing band leader; but Tara Fitzgerald
is flimsy and annoying as the city-girl horn player Gloria. Plus,
you could toss a tuba through the holes in the plot. Why doesn't
the band ever turn the pages of the sheet music on the stands
in front of them? --Richter
CONSPIRACY THEORY. Who does Mel Gibson think he's fooling?
In his role as a scruffy New York cab driver with an overactive
suspicion gland, Gibson constantly stutters, mumbles, and acts
like a coked-up manchild. It's ridiculous. Like Gibson, director
Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon) can't seem to find an appropriate
tone for what, in truth, is a disturbing portrait of an unhinged
paranoid. Inevitably Donner gives up and makes the weird choice
of directing Conspiracy Theory like just another fun-loving
Mel Gibson flick. That would have worked fine for a straightforward
mystery/thriller, but the film's plot makes so many sharp right
turns, and heads in so many contradictory directions, you end
up feeling pretty unhinged yourself. And though it's part of the
movie's selling point, the developing romantic tension between
Gibson and Julia Roberts (who, as a Federal agent, provides the
movie's only unembarrassing performance) just seems inappropriate.
--Woodruff
THE DESIGNATED MOURNER. Actor Wallace Shawn wrote this
strange, funny movie (based on his play) about a sort of alternate
future where the appreciation for literature--indeed, for all
nuance, irony and shades of meaning--has been purged by politically
sanctioned instant gratification. Despite the fact that the film
is very theatrical--the characters face the camera and are sitting
on a stage the whole time--the screenplay itself is such a wonderfully
nuanced one, full of irony and ambiguity, that The Designated
Mourner takes on a surprising dynamism. Mike Nichols (better
known as the director of The Graduate and The Birdcage,
among others) is terrific as Jack, a man stuck between two realms
of pleasure--the highbrow and the lowbrow, as he refers to them.
Really though, it's the lowbrow he prefers. Miranda Richardson
is prissy and moving as Judy, the last of the pretentious intellectuals.
Shawn's original, off-beat screenplay is less of a cautionary,
sci-fi tale than a parable about conflict between intellectual
elitism and the understanding, dignity and fellowship that book
learning seems to promise. --Richter
EVENT HORIZON. Whose idea was it to set a haunted-house
flick aboard a spaceship at the far reaches of the solar system?
It's not a bad concept, really, but the filmmakers don't have
a clue where to take it. Despite some of the best futuristic special
effects and set design of the year, director Paul Anderson keeps
dipping into a tired old bag of horror-movie tricks including
gushing blood, scary sequences that turn out to be dreams, and
vague discussions of "pure evil" that sound like even
more of a cop-out when couched in science-fiction terms. The cast--which
includes Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, and Kathleen Quinlan--couldn't
be better, but you end up wishing the script gave them more to
do than run around tortured by their own worst memories. It's
like a bad acid-trip combination of 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Hellraiser and Flatliners. Some have applauded Event
Horizon as an antidote to Contact's corny feel-good
view of space, but they can keep their cure--the disease was a
lot less depressing. --Woodruff
PICTURE PERFECT. Jennifer Aniston plays a Madison Avenue
copywriter whose boss, ludicrously, won't promote her unless he
senses she's headed for the stability of marriage. When her friend
solves the problem by inventing a fiancee based on a snapshot
of a stranger (Jay Mohr), everything works out great--until that
stranger becomes famous for saving a kid from a fire. Romantic-comedy
situations ensue: Aniston hires Mohr to pretend they're a couple,
Mohr falls for her, and the rest of the movie flips by like pages
in a photo album full of people you don't really want to know.
Despite an endless barrage of cleavage, Aniston just doesn't have
enough charm to recover sympathy after her character makes some
ugly manipulative moves; and though likable at first, Mohr loses
our respect by repeatedly reacting to Aniston's callousness with
nothing but sappy adoration. In the end, Picture Perfect
is a textbook example of the soullessness that results when filmmakers
place contrivance above characterization. Only Kevin Bacon, as
a womanizing coworker who can't find Aniston attractive unless
he thinks she's being "bad," emerges with any comic
dignity. --Woodruff
THE PILLOW BOOK. Peter Greenaway applies his lush, layered
cinematic style to the customarily austere Japanese aesthetic,
with mixed results. Pillow Book is an extravagantly beautiful
film, but like Nagiko (Vivian Wu), the empty, self-obsessed fashion
model at the center of the story, it's doubtful whether all this
beauty means anything. When she was a young girl, Nagiko's father
used to paint calligraphic characters on her face for her birthday;
as an adult, Nagiko is obsessed with having her lovely body written
upon as a sort of Whitman-esque celebration of herself: "I
need writing," she says. "Don't ask why. Just take out
your pen and write on my arm." Later, Nagiko becomes an author
and starts inking up the bodies of men, notably Ewan McGregor,
who along with a host of other taut young men, graces us with
that rare, sought-after cinematic moment: Full-frontal nudity.
Greenaway's slavish devotion to form is dazzling, but the lack
of content becomes painfully apparent as this two-and-a-half hour
movie winds along. --Richter
THE VAN. This third installment in Roddy Doyle's Barrytown
trilogy is written by Doyle and directed by Stephen Frears; despite
the talent involved, the film lacks spark. The story concerns
Bimbo and Larry, a pair of unemployed Irishmen who decide to employ
themselves selling fish and chips from a mobile food truck. After
an auspicious start, business bogs down as the two bicker and
snipe over the usual issues of ego and temperament. They go out
drinking, they get in fights, they have the standard set of conflicts
that can occur between blokes. Eventually, it seems this shared
business venture has put their very friendship at stake. This
film isn't as funny as it wants to be; perhaps the claustrophobic
setting of the inside of a truck puts a damper on things. --Richter
|
 |
