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 BILLY'S HOLLYWOOD SCREEN KISS. This is gay romantic comedy
as whipped non-dairy topping: light, sweet and cloying. Tommy
O'Haver wrote and directed this trifle about a struggling photographer
who falls for an empty-headed pretty boy who likes to drink beer.
The twist is that the pretty might be straight...or is he? Billy
(the charming Sean P. Hayes) is darned sure going to find out!
This is clearly not the stuff of high drama, and it seems like
Screen Kiss goes out of its way to have absolutely no substantive
content. There certainly are some funny scenes though, and near
the end of the film the script tends to loosen up and dares to
take a few digs. Unfortunately, they come too late. This is one
of those movies that tells us that whether gay or straight, on
some level we're all the same. It's sort if like a very long episode
of Ellen, but full of men. --Richter
54. This is essentially Whit Stillman's Last Days of
Disco and Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights mixed
together and mildly dumbed down. It tells the story of Shane (played
in Greek-god-with-a-lobotomy style by Ryanne Phillippe), a beautiful
New Jersey boy who comes to the big city and finds happiness in
the drug-crazed party atmosphere of legendary discotheque Studio
54. While we're treated to endless images of tasty men cavorting
shirtless in the club of dreams, the movie lacks substance beyond
the free play of manly nipples. Mike Meyers is particularly awful
as Steve Rubell, Studio 54's Quaalude-loving impresario, hamming
it up like a drunker, gayer version of Austin Powers. Director
Mark Christopher may have meant to make a downbeat, moralizing
film, but in failing at that he at least makes something that
shows how much fun the New York club scene was. There seems to
be no consequence to any action in this fairy-tale version of
the late '70s/early '80s: Shane's drug use is condemned but never
gets him into any trouble; the marriage of his two closest friends
is strained by their club life, but not terribly so; and even
Rubell's prison sentence seems like nothing more than a brief
vacation from the rigors of all-night partying. This film manages
to capture the ambiance of the disco scene in a way that other
films have not, making 54 a lightly pleasant nostalgia
piece that casts an unwittingly kind and loving glance at that
magical era that brought us Donna Summers, the herpes epidemic,
and glittery spandex posing straps. --DiGiovanna
THE GOVERNESS. Minnie Driver plays Rosina, a beautiful
and spirited 19th-century Jewish girl whose life changes after
her father dies, leaving the family destitute. To survive she
must either marry a smelly old fishmonger, become a whore, or
pass for a gentile and go work among the uptight goyim.
So she becomes a governess (disguised under the vaguely Goth pseudonym
Mary Blackchurch), and somehow manages to combine all three. She
finds a position on an island and ends up falling for the man
of the house, Mr. Cavendish (the utterly unappealing Tom Wilkinson),
a brooding man of science. The two invent photography, oddly enough,
but Cavendish is so repressed he freaks out because Rosina/Mary
Blackchurch is forever wanting to get naked with him. (If you're
dying to see Minnie Driver in the buff, this film is for you.)
Meanwhile Cavendish's hot young son is swooning for Rosina, rolling
around in her bedcovers and such, but she'll have nothing to do
with him. This has the feel of a once-good script that's been
homogenized and dumbed down by the movie studio for ease of digestion.
First-time writer and director Sandra Goldbacher shows some spunk,
but this ends up being just another one of those pointless period
movies where everyone's always overcoming repressive times by
having sex. --Richter
ONE TRUE THING. Poor Rene Zewiggler--she perpetually looks
like she's about to cry. At least that probably made her a shoo-in
for this weepie about how a family handles their dying mother/wife
(Meryl Streep). Daughter Ellen (Zewiggler) has a crush on her
father (William Hurt and runaway goatee), and is therefore successfully
manipulated into postponing her promising writing career to play
caretaker. In the process she discovers how devalued her mom has
been as a homemaker and that her dad would not be a fun date.
While it's nice to see a film that focuses on a mother-daughter
relationship, it seems a bit cruel to show the underdeveloped
characters wading through the contrived scenes with the assistance
of alcohol without offering any to the audience. Most recent Hollywood
films about women over 40 are just plain boring, though in this
case it probably has a lot to do with the insane amount of Bette
Midler music on the soundtrack. For you Beverly Hills, 90210
fans out there, you'll be glad to see that Mr. Walsh (James Eckhouse)
has expanded his range to include a supporting role as a lawyer.--Higgins
PERMANENT MIDNIGHT. If you hate Ben Stiller's acting, you'll
want to avoid Permanent Midnight like it was a weekend
with Richard Simmons. If not, this is definitely worth checking
out. Although not long on originality, this true story of Jerry
Stahl, the heroin-addicted writer for the TV series Alf,
has some creative and engaging moments, including the best crack-smoking
scene ever filmed. In the role of Stahl, Stiller does his entire
quivering, double-talking, hyper-active shtick here, and it works
well in conveying the excited desperation of someone on the edge
of fame. Still, I know a good number of people who find Stiller
unbearable, and this is him at his most intense. Maria Bello (of
ER) turns in a creditable performance as the anonymous
woman who finds him working at a drive-through burger stand after
his rehabilitation; and Elizabeth Hurley plays her standard role
as Stahl's beautiful green-card wife, but really it's Stiller's
show. Even if you can't stand him, at least slip in for the last
few minutes where, as Stahl, he goes on all the talk shows for
the obligatory post-modern, post-addiction, post-recovery, public
self-flagellation. --DiGiovanna
RUSH HOUR. Although this is the first Jackie Chan movie
to score big at the box office in its opening weekend in America,
it's probably his worst film. Other than the five jokes that have
been spread out over the 90 minutes of this films length, all
the dialogue is incredibly painful. When asked why he's so gung-ho
about capturing the villain, Chan is even forced to utter the
line, "He killed my partner." There's a couple of good
acrobatics/martial arts sequences, but not enough to make this
worth sitting through. On the other hand, if you think you'd like
to watch Chris Tucker do an exaggerated impression of an Asian
while Jackie Chan tries to get "funky" and "down"
to some soul music, then this film's for you.
--DiGiovanna
SIMON BURCH. Hollywood has the Oscars on its mind, and,
since films about mentally and/or physically challenged people
are surefire Oscar bait (Children of a Lesser God, Rain
Man, Forrest Gump), Disney goes for the jugular with
a story about the very, very tiny Simon Burch (Ian Michael Smith).
The unfortunate result is an assemblage of loosely related scenes
which milk the shock value of Smith's physical appearance in an
attempt to force viewers onto an emotional roller coaster. A weak
plot does surface about two-thirds into the movie, but by then
the audience has already been subjected to at least a dozen references
to Simon as a miracle/hero/instrument of God, a Forrest Gump-ian
use of an overly obvious soundtrack, and a whole lotta wooden
child acting (not Smith). The real tragedy of the film is that
its dramatic impact derives not from Simon's character, and the
obstacles a norm-obsessed society tosses his way, but rather from
exploiting how different Smith looks. Jim Carrey provides
cutesy narration and the always likable Oliver Platt contributes
to the few digestible scenes. --Higgins
SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS. This manipulative, cautious and
contrived comedy came out of the stifling Sundance Workshop, and
it shows. Like every other movie these days, it's set in the '70s.
The won't-this-be-touching story focuses on a young girl coming
of age, and her efforts to accept her body and her family, who
are a little off-beat, but not so off-beat as to challenge the
audience's beliefs or sensibilities. Alan Arkin does his usual
decent job playing the aging single father. (God forbid there
should be a single mother in a lighthearted film...single mothers
equal tragedy and pain.) The jokes are all reasonably funny, there's
enough sex to make it titillating but not enough to push it into
controversy, and there's a general lack of plot. Perhaps the most
interesting thing about this intentionally forgettable film are
the body doubles: both Marissa Tomei and newcomer Natasha Lyonne
must show their breasts at least twice, but their faces are never
in the shot, and the actresses hired to stand in for them sport
bodies with no visual relation to the ones they're supposed to
represent. A real oddity, that: There's Tomei, she gratuitously
opens her robe, and suddenly there's a shot from the neck down
of someone else's body. I guess if you're doing tits-for-tits-sake
you might as well bring in the best you can find, and damn the
torpedoes. Other than the curious interest that provides, though,
the film refuses to take any chances or do anything risky, and
winds up being so benign as to be a bit boring. Perhaps this can
be blamed on the heavy and notoriously treacly hand of Robert
Redford, who produced this cowardly, if somewhat humorous, project.
--DiGiovanna
YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. Pessimistic filmmaker Neil
LaBute follows up his much-lauded first film The Company of
Men with this bleak and funny look at couple-dynamics. Everyone
is named Cary or Jerry or Barry or Cherry or Mary or something
here, and they all hop in and out of bed with each other in search
of something like satisfaction. Of course, they just end up feeling
more despair. LaBute really pushes things over the top with some
wonderfully evil characters (Jason Patrick plays a wildly misogynistic
gynecologist), and by stubbornly refusing all the characters the
tiniest shard of redemption. It's mean, but it's funny too--sort
of like if Woody Allen had written Carnal Knowledge. --Richter
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