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 AMERICAN BUFFALO. If you like that sort of thing, you can't
beat David Mamet for writing the strangest, most mannered and
yet wonderful dialogue an ear has ever enjoyed. If you are the
type to savor dialogue as you would music, then American Buffalo
is a rare gem. If, on the other hand, you watch movies for like,
content and story and all the pretty pictures, then American
Buffalo is bound to disappoint. Dustin Hoffman and Dennis
Franz star as a couple of losers, Teach and Don, who are basically
obsessed with a buffalo head nickel. Their depopulated world looks
like an Edward Hopper painting and their moral palate is just
as bleak. The regular Mamet themes of manhood, friendship, betrayal
and disappointment are all touched on, but never satisfactorily
developed or resolved. Rent Glengarry Glen Ross if you
want to see it done right.
BIG NIGHT. In the tradition of Like Water For Chocolate
and Eat Drink Man Woman, Big Night revolves
around the preparing and eating of food, Italian food. The story
follows the adventures of Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Stanley
Tucci), brothers from Italy who open an Italian restaurant on
the Jersey shore in the 1950s. Jersey isn't ready yet for salads
of radiccio and plates of risotto, and most people go across the
street to a joint that serves a "criminal" version of
Italian food (according to master chef Primo), spaghetti and meatballs.
But the brothers have a chance to save their ailing business by
throwing a party for jazz great Louis Prima and generating a ton
of publicity. Like an elaborate meal with many courses, Big
Night takes its time delivering its many pleasures, including
fabulous, indirect dialogue and great acting. In its emphasis
on the relationships between characters and its tackling of meaning-of-life
themes, Big Night resembles European movies more than Hollywood
ones. But it's in English!!
EMMA. The glut of 19th-century literary adaptations continues
with a new version of Emma, Austen's most lighthearted
novel. Gwyneth Paltrow stars as a young woman with the unfortunate
habit of meddling in other people's affairs. The plot is the same
as in Clueless, except the women in Emma wear
nightgowns and the guys ride horses. Emma is not as good
as Sense and Sensibility, but if you like to see meek girls
find husbands, it's a perfectly solid movie; and Paltrow has such
a beautiful smile it's a delight to watch her, even when she's
not quite in stride.
FIRST WIVES CLUB. White ladies are doing it for themselves
in this gleefully man-bashing tale of the fury of women scorned.
Bette Midler, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn play the discarded
first wives of wealthy husbands who have cast them off in favor
of beautiful, young, ditzy girlfriends. The wives mourn their
fate, bond, then set about getting even in mildly amusing ways.
Though the movie is predictable and silly, and though the victimhood
of women is stressed, celebrated and monumentalized here (even
as the wives take matters into their own hands), First Wives
Club is still engaging because of the fresh subject matter.
It's no All About Eve, but it's still interesting to see
middle-aged women depicted on screen as something other than happy
mothers for once.
FLY AWAY HOME. Anna Paquin stars in this dignified kid's
movie about a young girl who's adopted by a gaggle of orphaned
Canadian geese. Amy (Paquin) is lonely and withdrawn after the
death of her mother, but the discovery of the goslings invigorates
her and leads to a round of bonding with her dad, nature, the
news media and her own little self. An even directorial style
and great cinematography help to keep the corniness from getting
out of hand as Amy learns to fly an ultralight plane and leads
the wild geese in their migration south. Beautiful footage of
geese flying beside the enthusiastic Paquin will warm the chilliest
heart.
LAST MAN STANDING. Director Walter Hill pulls out all the
stops in this stylized western set, oddly enough, in a 1930s border
town. Bruce Willis stars as a wandering gangster who plays both
sides of rival bootlegging gangs against each other, with only
one god to answer to: The god of cash. This amoral behavior can't
last though--not while there are skirts around that need a little
savin'. As the title suggests, nearly everyone in this movie perishes,
the only question is when and maybe how. Hill scrambles together
hard-boiled dialogue, Old West ambiance and 1990s gunplay to create
an inadvertently funny and wholly unmoving story. Or maybe it's
intentionally funny? Who can tell anymore.
NELLY AND MONSIEUR ARNAUD. A moving, unsentimental film
by Claude Sautet (Un Coeur en Hiver) about the friendship
between a beautiful young woman (Emmanuelle Beart, fresh from
her role in Mission Impossible) and an older man (Michel
Serrault). Nelly is a stunning but poor woman living in Paris
with a depressed husband who won't get out of bed. She falls under
the kind patronage of Monsieur Arnaud, a wealthy but lonely older
man. With his help, she leaves her husband and starts to move
forward in life, while Monsieur Arnaud simultaneously begins to
examine his past. Their relationship, though not sexual, comes
to involve far more complex elements of love, romance, dependency,
hate and desire. Though quite reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieslowski's
Three Colors: Red, the film is anything but derivative.
Special Screenings
UFVA FESTIVAL. The University Film and Video Association
presents its yearly Student Film and Video Festival this weekend
at the University of Arizona. It's the world's largest student
festival, and the only one that tours, showing different films
at different venues. This year's offerings include narrative,
documentary and experimental films from energetic young filmmakers
concerned with punk rock, talking bowls of oatmeal, dysfunctional
families and army brats. This is a rare chance to see high-quality
student work that might otherwise pass Tucson viewers by. The
screening takes place in the Modern Languages Building auditorium,
at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 3. Admission is free.
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