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 THE EDGE. Grrrrr! A big bear threatens rich, glamorous
men in this Hemingway-esque adventure tale with a Hollywood aftertaste.
Anthony Hopkins plays a bookish billionaire with a head full of
unused facts; Alec Baldwin plays his young, taut rival. Together
they take a three-hour tour into the Alaskan wilderness where
they battle the elements, each other, and a bear with an appetite
for human flesh. Director Lee Tamahori and screenwriter David
Mamet really go macho with this one: throbbing music, tight close-ups,
and a series of tribal, coming-of-age-style obstacles to be overcome
by the mostly male cast. It's big, it's fun, it's adolescent,
but in a good way. Breathtaking alpine scenery and Mamet's offbeat
dialogue save this from being just another boy-meets-boy-and-pretends-he's-his-father
story. And the bear is excellent. --Richter
GANG RELATED. It's not "gang related" at all;
the title is undoubtedly an attempt to capitalize on Tupac Shakur's
death. The actual story follows two cops, played by Shakur and
Jim Belushi, who spend their off-hours setting up phony drug deals
so they can murder the dealers and make some quick money. When
they unknowingly kill an undercover DEA agent, their attempts
to find a suitable scapegoat lead them on a downward moral spiral
that would make Harvey Keitel's Bad Lieutenant character
proud. In spite of the script's excuses for them--Belushi dreams
of buying a sailboat, Shakur has a bad gambling debt and a torturous
guilt complex--there's really no feeling of sympathy for these
guys, or caring about their fate. The filmmakers seem to know
this, because they play up Belushi's despicable behavior for laughs,
though that doesn't work either. Things improve slightly with
the introduction of seasoned actors like Dennis Quaid, as a hapless
transient accused of the crime (the exact same role he played
in Suspect), and James Earl Jones, as a lawyer who calmly
tears the case apart. While their presence makes the movie more
watchable, it doesn't make it any less pointless. You'll spend
most of the movie counting the multitudes of F-words in each scene,
and marveling at how little "acting" it takes for Belushi
to make a convincing asshole. --Woodruff
KISS THE GIRLS. Few girls get kissed, and when they do
they don't like it. If that's your idea of a good time, you might
enjoy this derivative sicko flick about a kidnapper of beautiful
women who locks them in a dungeon and forces them to act like
they love him--but don't count on it. Morgan Freeman, as a detective
trying to track "Casanova" down, seems positively bored
by his role, and the ennui is contagious. I'm sure having to play
a carbon copy of his Seven character, deliver knowing lines like
"This guy's a collector," and wear a Mod Squad-ish leather
jacket without any accompanying groovy music didn't help Freeman's
enthusiasm any. Perhaps he was attracted to the film because it
teams him up with Ashley Judd, whose tough-spirited character
escapes the kidnapper/rapist/killer and tries to help Freeman
solve the case. Unfortunately, there's no room in the script for
the feisty Judd and the sagely Freeman to display any romantic
tension or even personality, so the movie just turns into another
by-the-numbers killer thriller with a few predictable "twists."
Ho hum. The only original, amusing moment happens at the end,
when Freeman fires a gun point-blank through a carton of milk,
prompting one viewer to comment, "Got Milk?" But that's
nothing you couldn't try at home. --Woodruff
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. Glamour girls! Scandal! Gunplay! Nose
Jobs! The place is the City of Angels; the time is the 1950s.
The thrills starts when honest but prissy officer Ed Exley (Guy
Pearce) opens the door to the men's room of the Nite Owl Café
and finds a half dozen bullet-pierced bodies strewn across the
linoleum. From then on it's seedy characters, clever plot twists
and bracing moral dilemmas as a precinct full of cops harass,
pummel and caress each other and the smelly underbelly of Los
Angeles. Ed Exley goes head to head with his nemesis, fellow officer
Bud White (Russell Crowe), a thug known for his brawn but not
his brains. The two tackle the Nite Owl mystery with a passion
while their suave, detached colleague Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey)
coolly observes. L.A. Confidential courses down the same
clotted drainage ditch as Chinatown, but without Polanski's
dark and brooding spirit. L.A. Confidential is sort of
like Chinatown lite--a taut and rousing thriller that's
well worth seeing. --Richter
THE MATCHMAKER. You can bet your lucky four-leaf clover
this travesty won't stick around the theaters for more than a
couple of weeks, so if your idea of a great movie is a thin plot
about a slimy U.S. senator who sends his surly campaign flunky
(Janeane Garofalo) to drum up endearing relatives in his supposed
ancestral town in rural Ireland--populated, of course, by every
pathetic Irish stereotype to wash up on the dreary shores of Hollywood
comedy writing--don't delay another minute: Face your destiny
and meet The Matchmaker. Supposedly, this is a romantic
comedy about a lonely American political junkie and a jaded, small-town
Irish journalist; but it's terminally unfunny and there isn't
a single spark between Garofalo and leading lout David O'Hara.
On the plus side, the scene starring a shitbucket, a narcoleptic,
and a demented, cursing patriarch makes the rest of the ordeal
almost worthwhile. --Wadsworth
MOST WANTED. Keenan Ivory Wayans stars as an ex-Marine
who must blow things up when he's framed in a secret government
plot to make the world's worst movie. Don't miss the special guest
appearance by Jon Voigt's career as it spirals down the drain.
--DiGiovanna
MRS. BROWN. Foul-mouthed Scottish comic Billy Connolly
seems like an odd choice for the lead in this relentlessly somber
film, but he aptly gives the sense of a free spirit increasingly
fettered by the Byzantine rules of the English royal household.
The story, set over 15 years, but always during autumn, concerns
the long mourning of Queen Victoria (Judy Dench) after the death
of her husband, Prince Albert, and her difficult friendship with
Connolly's Mr. Brown. While director John Madden shows a remarkable
control of the mood, he doesn't allow enough life or activity
into this tale of sorrow and stifling morals, and the film becomes
noticeably dull as it wears on. Nonetheless, it escapes the sickly
sweetness and quaint cuteness of many recent movies set in the
19th century; and when Madden allows the camera out of the dark
and stuffy palaces and into the autumnal Scottish and English
countryside, the results are spectacular. --DiGiovanna
ROCKET MAN. You may remember Harland Williams from Dumb
& Dumber, as the highway patrolman who unwittingly drank
a beer bottle filled with urine. That scene pretty much sums up
all of Rocket Man, which is essentially a big-budget excuse
for fart jokes in space. Williams, who looks like a runty Kevin
Costner and is about as funny, plays a goofy computer-programming
nerd who, at the last minute, is enlisted to be the third man
on a NASA expedition to Mars. His oblivious idiocy turns out to
be one of his strengths, somehow, and he manages both to make
a fool out of his egotistical male shipmate and to woo the female
one with childlike affection and low-voiced renditions of "When
You Wish Upon A Star." It's sort of Oedipal, really; too
bad it isn't also fun. --Woodruff
SHALL WE DANCE? This elegant, sweet-spirited comedy focuses
on Shohei Sugiyama (Koji Yakusyo), a quiet-tempered 42-year-old
businessman who starts secretly taking dance lessons to ward off
his mid-life crisis. As his dancing gradually improves, he begins
feeling less empty, and that's great for him but not for his wife,
who worries he's having an affair. Which, in a way, he is--though
you can bet they'll be two-stepping by the end of the movie. Writer/director
Masayuki Suo's use of dancing as a metaphor for marriage and life
certainly qualifies as corny, but the story addresses its characters'
need to rise above their regimented existence with touching amiability;
and the supporting cast, a combination of frustrated dance instructors
and bumbling would-be waltzers, is terrific. The film's real strength,
though, lies in its pleasantly flowing dance scenes, which eschew
editing in favor of wide shots so that the screen becomes the
dance floor. Shall We Dance? won all of Japan's 13 Academy
Awards, and it's the only movie I've ever seen that inspired a
couple to dance in the parking lot afterwards. --Woodruff
A THOUSAND ACRES. Based on Jane Smiley's Pulitzer prize-winning
novel, A Thousand Acres is a weeper about brave farm wives
that has some fine moments despite its sentimentality. Michelle
Pfieffer and Jessica Lange play a pair of sisters battling against
their powerful, angry father for the possession of the family
farm and, metaphorically, possession of themselves. The story
is a twist on King Lear--as told from the point of view
of the selfish daughters. Here, we get to finally see what the
daughters are so pissed off about. Family secrets, illness, court
battles, love affairs: Unfortunately, there isn't enough time
for all this stuff to develop. It just keeps coming at
ya, and if you haven't read King Lear lately, it's even more perplexing.
--Richter
U-TURN. Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, Jennifer Lopez, Jon Voight,
Powers Boothe, Claire Danes, Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Bob Thornton,
Bo Hopkins and Liv Tyler just want to get out of Arizona, but
get so disoriented by pointless camera tricks and meaningless
close-ups that they wind up talking with Southern accents. Then
there's lots of blood and shooting and double crosses and cheating
and backstabbing and surprise revelations, and when there are
no more film noir clichés left the movie is over. In spite
of all the killings, the character of the Incompetent Director,
played by Oliver Stone, remains alive at the end of the film,
threatening to come back again to slash audience sensibilities
with his deadly pretense and sharpened vacuity. --DiGiovanna
Special Screening
GERMAN FILM SERIES. UA Modern Languages Auditorium. The
UA Department of German Studies presents its Fall German Film
Series. On Thursday, October 23, see Die Mörder sind unter
uns. Screenings are at 7:30 p.m., and admission is free.
Call the Department of German Studies at 621-7385 for information.
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