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 ANTZ. Remember Woody Allen? Well, he's back--in ant form!
Woody plays himself, only with more chitin, in this perverted
children's story about an ant who is emotionally unable to support
his colony's collective consciousness. He accidentally becomes
a war hero, kidnaps a princess, leads a Marxist revolution, and
has a fulfilling relationship with his wife's adopted daughter.
Well, three out of those four, anyway. I'm not really sure at
what audience this movie is aimed, since its "G" rating
and the fact that it's animated seems to direct it toward kids;
but Allen, as Z the Ant, makes comments like "Just for that
I'm no longer including you in my wild, erotic fantasies,"
which I'm not sure is kid stuff. (I haven't been a kid for a while
so I could be off-base here). Still, this is the most Woody Allen-like
Woody Allen film since Manhattan, so maybe it's for that
next generation of self-obsessed neurotic pre-schoolers who've
been looking for a voice for their generation. Still, there's
something a bit unnerving about this project--do we want Woody
Allen attracting underage fans? --DiGiovanna
APT PUPIL. If ever we needed proof that no one truly knows
how to beat an idea into the ground until it's mashed, bloody
and dead like Stephen King, proof has arrived. The master of overstatement
is back, this time with a lovable-Nazi-in-the-suburbs story. How
bad is the Nazi? He's so bad he puts kitty cats in the oven. King,
who wrote the novella on which the movie is based, should not
bear the blame for this alone; screenwriter Brandon Boyce and
director Bryan Singer (of The Usual Suspects fame) have
truly wasted their energies on this gorgeously shot, utterly boring
film. Ian McKellen makes a go of it as an aged Nazi officer living
quietly in an American suburb, but this role is simply too silly
for his talents. Teen heart throb Brad Renfro is eerily convincing
as the self-satisfied high-school senior who is at first fascinated
and ultimately corrupted by the older man, though he's so unlikable
it's hard to care. The first hour of this movie consists of Renfro
and McKellen sitting around talking about war crimes--a sort of
My Dinner With A Nazi. Then the long knives and sledgehammers
come out...but it's too late, much too late. --Richter
BELLY. In response to the assertion that Black English
is drifting away from standard English, Linguist John McWhorter
has recently tried to make the case that Black English is a fairly
stable dialect that is about as close to Standard English today
as it was 30, 50 or 100 years ago. Perhaps he could get a job
subtitling Belly, a story of inter-state, international,
inter-gang rivalries which is, at times, as visually engaging
as it is hard to understand. This "gangsta" film is
so artfully shot that you'll forget how hard the convoluted plot
is to follow. Its first 45 minutes are dedicated to visual excess,
with director Hype Williams employing a delicious palate of alternating
monotone scenes. One of the most notable segments cuts back and
forth between a blue-tinted boudoir and an all-in-yellow suburban
living room to smashing effect. Oddly, all the half-toned shots,
beautiful compositions and Fritz-Lang-on-Ecstasy lighting vanish
about half-way through, and suddenly the story starts to make
sense. Maybe it's an either-or thing, but both halves of the film
work, first as psychedelic-noir eye-candy, then as a reasonably
engaging story of gangsters searching for redemption. Starring
Nas (who co-write the script with video director Hype Williams)
as Sincere, and DMX as his gangsta pal Tommy. --DiGiovanna
BELOVED. A Hollywood film with a female protagonist is
rare enough, so a thought-provoking Disney movie with a black
woman as the central character is certainly even more unexpected.
Based on the Toni Morrison novel and directed by Jonathan Demme
(The Silence of the Lambs, Something Wild), Beloved
tells the story of Sethe (Oprah Winfrey), a former slave confronted
with the ghost of her dead child. Narrative devices such as flashbacks
and dream sequences help to maintain interest during the three-hour
running time, but the film is most notable, and enjoyable, for
the use of stylistic devices to reflect the psychology of its
characters. The set of the house, where Sethe lives with her daughter
Denver (Kimberly Elise) and, at times, with Paul D (Danny Glover)
and Beloved (Thandie Newton), is claustrophobic and worn, and
provides an important touchstone for this barely functioning family.
The variety of filmstocks as well as camera and soundtrack manipulations
also help convey the disjointed and uneasy existence of the characters.
Winfrey is distracting at times because, well, she's Oprah; but
Elise gives an excellent performance as her lonely dependent.--Higgins
THE CELEBRATION. Lars Von Trier received a lot of attention
last year with Breaking the Waves, and fellow Danish filmmaker
Thomas Vinterberg follows with a stylistically compelling investigation
of a bourgeois family. The director disposes of many standards
of commercial filmmaking, such as post-dubbed sound, artificial
lighting, and special effects, with a resultant fly-on-the-wall
look at a birthday dinner for the patriarch. Early on, Christian
reveals that his father sexually abused him and his sister throughout
their childhood, and during the remainder of the film the independent
camera travels from person to person to offer a family portrait
from a series of character vignettes. The lack of music and overly
structured shots help to maintain focus on the friends and relatives
and the game of emotional dominos they unwillingly play. The
Celebration is appropriately open-ended, as all such gatherings
are.--Higgins
HOLY MAN. Eddie Murphy must be blessed, because there's
no other way to explain his recurring leading roles. This is the
Oh God sequel you never expected nor wanted, with Murphy
getting in touch with his spiritual side as G, a pilgrim who befriends
infomercial director Ricky (Jeff Goldblum) and uses his vast powers
to aid Ricky's faltering career and love life. The really tough
choices, of course, Ricky must make for himself--such as whether
to endure a relationship with fashion-challenged Kate (Kelly Preston)
or set up situations to be naked with G. I don't want to give
away the ending, so let's just say that most major religious groups
won't be offended. --Higgins
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. When you heard about the plot to Life
is Beautiful you probably thought "Oh no, not another
zany comedy about the Holocaust!" Roberto Benigni plays a
Jewish bookstore owner in 1940s Italy who, along with his son,
is carted away to a Nazi concentration camp. Benigni seeks to
shield his son from the terrors by convincing him that they are
on vacation, and that the degradations of the camp are actually
part of a game. The first to collect 1,000 points through starvation,
hard labor and quiet obedience to "the scary men who yell"
will win a tank. Unfortunately, the first half hour of this film
is an overwhelmingly annoying series of slapstick routines, but
once Benigni and family are carted off to the camps the movie
achieves a nearly perfect balance between comedy and terror. It's
definitely worthwhile to tolerate the first section in order to
see something so rare as the second. This week Life is Beautiful
was nominated by Italy as its Academy Award submission. --DiGiovanna
LIVING OUT LOUD. This journey-of-self-realization flick
has the same problem a lot of movies have these days: It's entertaining
but annoying. The ever-charming Holly Hunter plays Judith Nelson,
a wealthy doctor's wife who loses it when she discovers her husband
is in love with a younger woman. She slowly pulls herself back
together with the help of some quirky new friends, a saucy nightclub
singer (Queen Latifah) and the building's elevator operator (Danny
DeVito). The ad campaign for this movie points out that director
Richard LaGravenese also wrote The Fisher King and the
screenplay for The Bridges of Madison County, as though
this were a good thing. Living Out Loud suffers from the
same gut-kick episodes of sentimentality and overwrought meaning-of-life
moments as in LaGravenese's earlier movies, cheap shots all of
them. Does anyone really need a movie to show them how to connect
more deeply with their fellow humans? Even so, this could have
been a decent film if LaGravenese had cut out the kids-dying-of-cancer,
crack-baby-rescue subplots. The performances are quite good and
the story zips along; yet, at the end of it all, it feels awfully
fake for a movie about "authenticity."--Richter
A MERRY WAR. I say, if you must get out of your flat because
there's nothing on the telly, perhaps you'd have a mind to pop
out and watch something so very English as this slow-moving film.
Sadly, itís a bit of a let down, entertainment-wise. Richard
Grant plays a poet who writes ad copy, but quits to lead a life
of starvation and artistic integrity. Helena Bonham Carter plays
the woman who has no rational reason for putting up with his behaviour
as he descends into drunken excess and poverty. Like all extremely
English films, this one is set in the past, tries for a dry wit,
and has an odd chastity about even its erotic scenes. If you like
PBS, but would rather pay $7 to watch it, do go to A Merry
War.--DiGiovanna
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
PLEASANTVILLE. A charming movie with teeth, too. Two bored
teenagers of the '90s get zapped into a bland, black-and-white
family inside a 1950s sitcom, a land with a veneer of harmony
over a thick, deadening layer of repression. It's pretty cute
watching '90s teens trying to cope with the peppy mores of the
'50s while subtly undermining them, but even better, once the
'50s folk start getting laid, their gray world begins to turn
colors. This is one of the best-looking, smartest uses of computerized
special effects so far, and this Capra-esque story of a threatened
community is just the right place for it.--Richter
THE SIEGE. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC) has expressed grave fears about the potential effects of
this film, which they believe could increase hatred and suspicion
towards members of the Muslim and American-Arab communities. The
Siege tells the story of a wave of terrorist bombings that
occur in New York City. In response, the U.S. government declares
martial law and imprisons all Arab men (which here seems
to mean anyone of Persian, Middle Eastern or North African descent)
between the ages of 14 and 30. The film does attempt to address
the issue of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice in the United
States; however, in its broad Hollywood way, it employs stereotypes,
simplifications and sometimes offensive misrepresentations of
Islam. Perhaps most egregious are the images of the terrorists
(who are only referred to as "Muslims" and "Arabs,"
as though those terms could constitute a cohesive identity or
a terrorist organization) performing ritual hand washing prior
to their attacks: the film implies that this is something specifically
done in preparation for acts of violence, when in fact this is
a daily ritual that Muslims engage in prior to prayer. When the
army places all of Brooklyn's young males of Arab descent in a
camp, the scene shows an unrealistically homogenous crowd of people,
all with the same pigmentation and clothing. The effort to mute
this effect by casting Tony Shalhoub as one of the FBI agents
in charge of the investigation is itself muted by having him play
sidekick and second-fiddle to leading man Denzel Washington. Still,
interesting issues are raised here: in several scenes, disembodied
voices point out that this kind of government action would not
be tolerated against Jewish or Black Americans; the army is definitely
portrayed as villainous in their treatment of the Arabic prisoners;
and there are (fairly awkward) assurances that "most"
Arabs are decent, law-abiding citizens. The very fact that the
film begins to question the prejudices against Arabs and Muslims
shows a radical leap forward in Hollywood thinking. In spite of
the very reasonable reservations of the ADC, the history of American
cinema shows that clumsy first steps like The Siege are
often signs of real progress.--DiGiovanna
SOLDIER. Marx once said that the proletariat must "safeguard
itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them
all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment."
Wow, he could have written the script for Soldier, wherein
a team of super-soldiers are replaced by newer, even superer soldiers,
who go on an evil killing spree (as opposed to the good killing
sprees of the original super-soldiers). See, while the original
super-soldiers are nearly soulless automatons trained from birth
only to blow things up and destroy human life, the newer, superer-soldiers
are almost entirely soulless automatons, trained from before
birth only to blow things up and destroy human life. Kurt Russell
plays one of the original super-soldiers, who, while speaking
only 62 words during the course of the film (Entertainment
Weekly counted 69 words, but I stand by my figures), shows
himself to be nearly almost human-like in defending some poor
interstellar settlers against the superer-soldiers. The superer-soldiers,
see, are all bald, whereas the super-soldiers have some hair.
So they're, like, our friends. Caution: This film contains some
scenes of hugging. --DiGiovanna
VAMPIRES. Please benefit from my suffering and don't waste
two hours of your life hoping that director John Carpenter's (Halloween,
Escape from New York) latest effort will be bad-good rather
than bad-offensive. James Woods, showing his wood in particularly
tight jeans, and Daniel Baldwin, struggling to stay awake, play
vampire slayers who pursue the father of all vampires. Along the
way they pick up Sheryl Lee so that Baldwin can take off her clothes,
tie her up, call her a bitch, and eventually fall in love, and
a priest, so Woods can talk about his penis. Interesting ideas,
such as the mixing of the horror genre with the western and viewing
vampirism as a virus, surface, but only for about 30 seconds.
After that, it's back to Lee's rope burns. If you hate women,
this film could be for you, but I still think you'll be tripped
up by the bad dialogue, clichéd revenge plot, and hokey
music. Oh, and there's some homophobic stuff thrown in for extra
flavor. --Higgins
THE WATERBOY. Going into an Adam Sandlar movie, I expected
his aren't-mentally-challenged-people-funny persona, an aren't-gay-guys-funny
joke or two, and maybe a cameo from a Saturday Night Live cohort.
I got all this, and so much more. This is no mindless comedy,
it's a message movie--proof that those Hollywood CEOs do care
about our futures, and the futures of our children. No one wants
that "Mommy, what were trees like?" bumper sticker to
come true, so the masterminds behind The Waterboy demonstrate
the importance of environmental consciousness by recycling the
Forrest Gump script. It killed enough trees, so these eco-friendly
folks simply took the story of an oddly athletic man with a IQ
of 90 and set it on a football field. And to fill in plotholes
without wasting additional paper, there's lots of recycled music,
from Rush to Anita Ward, to help you along. For example, when
Waterboy is awfully lonely, "Lonely Boy" plays in the
background. Get it? Apparently careers are reusable, too, as witnessed
by the dynamic screen presence of Henry Winkler as a coach. The
funniest parts, though, are the recycled stereotypes. Southerners
are especially hee-larious, what with those durn accents and all.
--Higgins
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. Hamlet fretted over what dreams may
come when we shuffle off this mortal coil, but Robin Williams
doesn't have to worry, because he's already been to heaven. And
Annabella Sciorra has been to hell. This well-intentioned but
stupid mutation of the Orpheus story (based on the novel by Richard
Matheson) concerns a very happy couple who like each other a lot.
In fact, Christy and Annie Nielsen (Williams and Sciorra) are
soulmates. They have it all: an upscale life, a nanny, expensive
objects, until their kids die in a car crash, and then Christy
dies in one, too. Eventually he ends up in heaven, and his wife
ends up in hell--Max Von Sydow plays the shrink-turned-ferryman
who navigates between the two. The special effects are pretty
darn nifty here, and as a welcome relief, they don't involve any
shooting or blowing up. But the freshman-level philosophy ("You
know who you are because you think you do!" ) and tons of
painful psychoblather shove this movie into the fiery depths of
banality. There is one good part: We get to hear Robin Williams
called "Christy" for two hours, evoking images of a
freshly scrubbed teenage girl in a tennis skirt. --Richter
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