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 ANASTASIA. Against all odds, Anastasia eventually
won me over. The movie gets off to a typically lame-brained start
by attributing the fall of the Czar to a magical spell by Rasputin,
conveniently ignoring the rest of the Russian Revolution. Glossing
over Anastasia's amnesia and the murder of her parents doesn't
help. But once the "could she be the princess?" fantasy
kicks in and leaves history behind, Anastasia becomes a
pleasant little movie full of first-rate animation and mercifully
brief musical sequences. The love story between the title character
and Dmitri (a con-man who unknowingly trains Anastasia to pretend
to be Anastasia) is so effective, in fact, that the evil schemes
of Rasputin (now half-dead) and his droll bat sidekick Bartok
(hilariously voiced by Hank Azaria) almost seem tacked on. I'm
not so sure Anastasia will be a hit with kids--it scores low on
the easily hummable tunes and cute animals meter--but I enjoyed
it. Moreover, it's great to see 20th Century Fox steal some of
Disney's fire (definitely see this before sitting through The
Little Mermaid again). Besides, even when it was slow I had
a swell old time closing my eyes and picturing Meg Ryan and John
Cusack as the voices. --Woodruff
FAST, CHEAP, AND OUT OF CONTROL. Documentary filmmaker
Errol Morris (Thin Blue Line, Gates of Heaven) turns his
considerable talents to the world of work. Four men, each obsessed
with their difficult, quirky occupations, are profiled in this
looping, affectionate meditation on the lucky few who've managed
to make their passion into their lives' work. A gardener with
a gift for topiary, a robot designer, a wild animal trainer and
a mole-rat specialist are the subjects of this exuberant film
about talent, dedication, and the pleasures of marching to the
beat of a different drummer. --Richter
THE ICE STORM. The '70s seem to be the hot decade in the
movies right now, and The Ice Storm is one of the few films
that treats that era as something other than camp. Based upon
the novel by Rick Moody, this quiet, intelligent story of a family
lurching through the chaos and disillusionment of the sexual revolution
and Watergate treats the decade as a time of lost innocence, dirty
secrets, and ungraceful quests for meaning. Kevin Kline and Joan
Allen play Ben and Elena Hood, a WASPy Connecticut couple whose
only fight has been over whether to quit "couples therapy."
We soon learn that this isn't due to a harmonious marriage; rather,
they're simply too dedicated to disguising their emotions to consider
fighting. Their teenage kids, Wendy (a terrific performance by
Christina Ricci) and Paul (Tobey Maguire) have absorbed this lesson
well and are already nurturing their own secret lives. Though
all four seem to long for closeness, all they can manage is to
edge farther apart, as the worst storm of the decade glazes the
trees and roads of their Connecticut town in a beautiful, treacherous
layer of ice. Director Ang Lee (Sense and Sensibility, Eat
Drink Man Woman) continues to do what he does best--chronicle
complicated family relationships with sensitivity and compassion.
--Richter
THE JACKAL. An assassination plot is about to be carried
out by a ruthless hit-man who's a master of disguise, and the
only man who can stop him must be released from prison in order
to do so. Now that's originality! For all who haven't seen The
Rock, In the Line of Fire, The Professional, The Day of the Jackal,
or about 17 dozen other films about über-assassins and experts
let out of jail so they can stop them, this is the most daring,
innovative movie since Godard's Breathless. For the rest
of us, it's an expensive-looking but constipated series of preparation
scenes, as cold-hearted meanie Bruce Willis checks into airports
wearing various frizzy wigs, and former IRA sniper Richard Gere
anticipates where that rascally Jackal will strike next. Willis
has hardly any lines, Gere has too many (at least with that Irish
accent, it's too many), and good-guy FBI agent Sidney Poitier
basically stands around and watches. There's some nasty business
in which Willis seduces a gay man to gain security clearance,
and shoots somebody's arm off with a big gun. Director Michael
Caton-Jones approaches Willis' smirking sadism in much the same
way he did Tim Roth's character in Rob Roy--that is, he
lets mind-numbing evil permeate the entire picture, hoping we'll
be relieved when the accent-voiced hero finally saves the day.
Aye, isn't it time for a new approach, laddie? --Woodruff
A LIFE LESS ORDINARY. The third film from the team that
brought us Trainspotting and Shallow Grave has the
same startling sense of composition and color as these previous
efforts, but none of the wit. Ewan McGregor plays a poor janitor
who falls in love with a beautiful rich girl (Cameron Diaz) due
to the influence of some bizarre angel-creature-things. The film
lurches from fantasy to romance to road movie without rhyme or
reason; even worse, the Boy and Girl don't even seem to like each
other, much less light up each other's lives. If you crossed the
1932 Hollywood romance It Happened One Night with Touched
by an Angel and stirred in a little bit of Tommy
and then doubled your dose of Prozac, then you'd be watching A
Life Less Ordinary. The question is, why would anyone want
to do this? --Richter
THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE. Okay, so this movie only has
one joke. And so its one joke could have been much better exploited
here, with genuinely hilarious results instead of merely amusing
ones. Still, I had a fun time watching Bill Murray good-naturedly
goof his way around London, and even at its worst the film deserves
tolerance. Murray plays a Des Moinesian dimwit who, on holiday
for his birthday, signs up for "The Theatre of Life,"
an audience-participation program where actors help you act out
a heroic mini-adventure in real-world settings. Somehow Murray
stumbles upon an actual espionage scheme (can you spell "contrivance"?)
and (the big silly) he thinks it's all part of the game. Murray
spends the rest of the movie blithely "acting" while
real hit-men and other shady characters come at him from all directions.
Idiot luck and conversations full of double-meanings ensue. If
this had been any other comic (say, Jim Carrey), the film would
probably be unwatchable; but Murray's easygoing yet well-tempered
mania saves the day. The gimmicky material is putty in Murray's
hands: He plays with it, rolls his eyes, winks, shrugs, dances
around a bit, and the show's over. Also starring the attractive
Joanne Whalley and Peter Gallagher as foils. --Woodruff
MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION. Let's see: The women are beautiful,
the men are ugly, there's tons of cheesy techno music, the plot
is skeletal, and the film follows a predictable pattern that alternates
between inept talky scenes and heavy-duty action every ten minutes.
Yep, basically this is a porno movie for kids. You might call
it a porno trainer. The only differences are that there's fighting
instead of fucking, the "special effects" cost more,
and for a quarter you can play a video-game version in the lobby
afterwards. If you want your kids to see a fun, inventive martial-arts
film, wait for the next Jackie Chan picture. If you want to introduce
them to the aesthetics of skin flicks, why not just cut to the
chase and take them to Boogie Nights? --Vincent
THE MYTH OF FINGERPRINTS. I must confess I have absolutely
no idea what the title means. Which is par for the course since
the movie, about a dysfunctional family which reunites for Thanksgiving,
left me equally confounded. Two brothers (Noah Wyle, Michael Vartan)
and two sisters (Julianne Moore, Laurel Holloman) come home to
find Dad (Roy Scheider) as aloof and moody as ever while Mom (Blythe
Danner) remains blissfully co-dependent. The story has something
to say about how the parents' warped psyches and repressions trickle
down to all the children, infecting their own love relationships
in ways they recognize yet can't control. But the characters are
sketchy and the scenes just don't seem to fit together. Whether
the effect of a bad screenplay or an overzealous editor, I'm not
sure, but the result is that The Myth of Fingerprints comes
across like a half-baked TV melodrama with Chekovian pretensions.
--Woodruff
ONE NIGHT STAND. Mike Figgis, the director of Leaving
Las Vegas, brings us another bummer of a love story with One
Night Stand. Max (Wesley Snipes) is a sell-out director of
TV commercials who has a brief affair with Karen (Nastassja Kinski)
on a business trip to New York. When he returns to L.A. he has
an epiphany: His life sucks. His wife is annoying. His job is
degrading. To top it off, his best friend Charlie (Robert Downey
Jr.) is dying of AIDS, and the sight of Charlie's suffering reminds
Max that life is brief and death is final. Figgis has a great
visual sense, but this movie is filled with silly coincidences
and mean-spirited characterizations. Figgis treats Max's marriage
and family life with such animosity that it's hard to believe
love is possible for this guy at all, even with Nastassja Kinski.
--Richter
THE RAINMAKER. John Grisham's story of a courtroom battle
between a fledgling lawyer and a corrupt insurance company may
be too slight for the big screen, but (shhh!) don't tell Francis
Ford Coppola--he thinks he's directing an epic. He's turned this
TV-movie-of-the-week into a two-and-a-half-hour, star-studded
opus complete with an irrelevant and equally TV-like sub-plot
involving Claire Danes as an abused wife. In spite of its generic
underpinnings, however, The Rainmaker is a fine film: The
pacing's smooth, the cinematography and Memphis locations lovely,
and the performances kick butt. Jon Voight is snaky as ever as
a conniving corporate lawyer; and newcomer Johnny Whitworth is
well-restrained as a leukemia victim who dies because the insurance
company won't honor his claim to get a bone-marrow transplant.
Best of all are Mickey Rourke, chewing up the scenery as a shifty
lawyer named "Bruiser," and Danny DeVito as Damon's
unscrupulous but practical-minded assistant. I usually find DeVito
annoying, but he almost steals the show here. Mary Kay Place,
Dean Stockwell, Roy Scheider, Danny Glover and the great Teresa
Wright also star. --Woodruff
TEMPTRESS MOON. The cinematography and sets are beautiful,
and the portrayal of the changing social rules of China in the
1920s fascinating in this period film about a handsome seducer
who victimizes the rich women of Shanghai. Leslie Cheung plays
Zhongliang, an intense gangster with a flair for melting the ladies'
hearts. He visits the traditional estate of the Pang clan, hoping
to squeeze the beautiful opium smoker Ruyi (Gong Li) for her fortune.
The plan, of course, goes horribly awry, and everybody ends up
falling in love with the wrong person. The plot tends to get melodramatic;
best to just relax and look at the pretty pictures assembled by
Chinese director Kaige Chen. --Richter
WINGS OF THE DOVE. This adaptation of one of Henry James'
lesser-known novels is faithful to the original plot, but loses
something of James' famous psychological complexity on screen.
A beautiful, wealthy American travels to Europe to grab one last
jolt of life before she'll surely die of a lingering illness.
Her friend arranges for her boyfriend to marry the sick girl,
so that he can inherit her money when she dies. But the young
man can't help but be moved by the sick girl's courage and spirit,
and a complicated triangle springs up between the three. There's
some hot bedroom sex in here that James didn't write into the
original, but even that can't save this movie from getting predictable
and dreary. But the lavish art nouveau costumes and sets are so
lovely they're practically worth the price of admission. --Richter
Special Screenings
BLOW UP. Michelangelo Antonioni's great 1966 film Blow
Up plays at The Screening Room as part of the fall Shutterbugs
series. This groovy, wonderful ramble on the theme of the obsessive,
erotic, and subjective nature of photographs is both entertaining
and intelligent. David Hemmings plays a hip fashion photographer
in swinging '60s London. He drives around in his roadster, makes
out with sexy teen models, and in his spare time, he becomes curiously
fixated on one of his own photographs, which he believes contains
evidence of a murder.
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