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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
BOOGIE NIGHTS. This film about porno actors in the 1970s
is nice 'n' sleazy, but in a good way. Boogie Nights tracks
the career of Eddie Adams (porno name: Dirk Diggler), a sweet
kid from The Valley who's not really all that bright. But, as
he says, "everyone is blessed with one special thing,"
and his is located in his pants. The best and worst of '70s cultural
detritus forms the perfect backdrop for the story of Dirk, who
believes fervently, despite all evidence to the contrary, that
adult movies are a force for good. There's dissolution, loss of
innocence, and a strange, fragile sense of triumph in this movie
that is, at the core, about a bunch of untalented people struggling
to make art. --Richter
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 his difficult, quirky occupation, are profiled in this looping,
affectionate meditation on the lucky few who've managed to make
their passions 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
FLUBBER. In this remake of The Absent Minded Professor,
Robin Williams plays the Fred MacMurray role not just absent-humoredly,
but with that saccharine vocal lilt he always uses in kids' movies--the
one that makes him sound like he's trying to reassure a baby.
The flubber itself is anthropomorphized to the point where it
becomes a Gummi human, thus saving us the tedious task of imagining
its personality ourselves. Then there's Weebo, an intelligent
flying robot/secretary whose crush on Williams is, to be honest,
rather sick. Basically, everything in Flubber is blibber-blubber.
Screenwriter John Hughes and his team of corporate filmmakers
have turned the once-charming Disney story into an effects-dominated
rehash that's lost nearly all of its bounce. --Woodruff
KISS OR KILL. Just in case you haven't seen enough variations
on the young-lovers-on-the-run movie, here's one set in the desolate
Australian outback. The twist is that the lovers, played by Matt
Day and Frances O'Conner (both last seen in Love and Other
Catastrophes), have good reason to suspect each other of the
throat-slitting murders that mysteriously occur wherever they
go. Though the film feels cool, with its grainy cinematography,
enigmatic minor characters and listless narration, it's loosely
executed to a fault. Key narrative elements are left so sketchy,
so "whatever," that suspense drains through the cracks.
Somebody please tell director Bill Bennett that excessive jump
cuts and other forms of purposeful sloppiness no longer qualify
as style. --Woodruff
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. Director Michael
Caton-Jones approaches Bruce 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 (Richard Gere) finally
saves the day. Aye, isn't it time for a new approach, laddie?
--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
PLAYING GOD. David Duchovny plays a drug-addicted doctor
in this laughably bad thriller about medicine, crime, and the
shocking redness of human blood. Duchovny is Dr. Eugene
Sands, a surgeon who's had his license revoked for slicing a patient's
artery while zoned out on an Elvis-style cocktail of speed and
barbiturates. He's not only a drug addict, he's a junkie for practicing
medicine, and when a bad guy offers to make him a surgeon again,
he jumps at the chance to feed his evil habit. The result? More
white clothing covered in spurting blood. There's something very
odd about the directorial style of this movie--it's definitively
'80s, with a 1970s drive-in edge. The clothes are out of style,
the furnishings are out of style, and the music is weird. Far
more interesting than the movie itself is the question of what,
exactly, the director thought he was doing here. Being hip? Retro?
Low budget? Straight to video? God only knows. --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 Matt 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
RED CORNER. After a one night stand that finds his Chinese
lover dead and her blood on his shirt, an American lawyer on business
in China gets inserted into the Chinese penal and judicial systems.
Trapped like a gerbil stuck in an unfamiliar dark maze from which
there's no escape, the cocky businessman, played by Richard Gere's
stylishly tousled hair, must rely on his wits and his plucky female
Chinese lawyer to save his life. The movie's vision of China is
like Steve Martin's old stand-up routine on France: everything
is different there! The courts aren't like ours, cameras everywhere
spy on the populace, and sometimes people with butcher knives
chop the heads off chickens! The conspiracy is a recycled one
and the characterizations are wafer thin, but fans of Gere's buttocks
may find solace in a couple of seconds of his nude backside as
he is tossed into a prison cell. -- McKay
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
SWITCHBACK. Jeb Stuart, the scribe behind such moneymakers
as Die Hard and The Fugitive, directed this low-key
but reasonably good thriller based on one of his early screenplays.
The plot, which leads from Texas to the beautiful, snow-clogged
Rocky Mountains, has an FBI agent (Dennis Quaid, sad-eyed and
brooding) tracking the serial killer who kidnapped Quaid's son.
Action-movie clichés abound, but Switchback has
a surprisingly honorable feel to it; all the main characters,
even (inexplicably) the villain, are granted heavy doses of sympathy
and integrity. Danny Glover and Jared Leto are interesting as
an unlikely pair of travelers (one of whom may be the killer);
but the best is R. Lee Ermey as a scrupulous sheriff. Ermey, best
known as the sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, has been cool
in nearly everything he's done. --Woodruff
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
FLASH-FRAME. Upstairs Film presents FLASH-FRAME!,
an evening of independent films by Tucson filmmakers. A vintage
clothing store, a paleta cart, and a late-night diner are some
of the settings for this eclectic group of shorts showcasing our
local filmmaking and acting talent. The films to be screened are
"MOLT!" by Rob Sabal; "Number 13," directed
by Michael Toubassi and produced by Melinda Ritter; "In Between
Friends," by Reginald Spangler; and "Open 'til 3,"
directed by Ari Lieberman and produced by Carol Knorr. Screenings
are at 7 and 9 p.m. Tuesday, December 16, at The Screening Room,
127 E. Congress St. Tickets are a bargain at $3.
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