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 AMERICAN HISTORY X. Films that tell me what to think are
boring and insulting, and that's generally what I expect from
movies that address race issues. That's not the case with American
History X, and that alone makes it satisfying. It tells the
story of Nazi skinhead Derek (a buff Edward Norton) and his turnaround
while imprisoned for brutally murdering two black men. Largely
told via beautifully shot black-and-white flashbacks, it focuses
on the impact of Derek's hatred on his younger brother Daniel
(the under-cast Edward Furlong). This gives the film resonance
as it comments on how impressionable and willing to seek out simple
answers we are when we're young, and we watch Daniel spout propaganda
that's been fed to him by his brother and White Power guru Cameron
(Stacy Keach). The film is also troubling, because much of the
story revolves around hatemonger Derek and his clear articulations
of his position; in this sense the revelatory ending has less
of an impact. Also, Derek's turning point is the result of being
raped by another skinhead, so his hatred for non-whites is simply
transferred to the group he once supported rather than growing
out of realizations about any wrongdoing on his part. The film
is certainly thought-provoking in that it brings up more questions
than it answers; and avoids the disingenuousness of having the
final word on race relations summed up in two hours. --Higgins
A BUG'S LIFE. Antz may've beat Pixar's computer
animated insect-o-rama to the big screen, but A Bug's Life is
the far superior of the two, both for enchanting animated life
and a serviceable kids' storyline. Where one hopes in vain for
Antz' whiny, accidental hero (Woody Allen) to get irrevocably
smashed, Bug's Flik (Dave Foley--whoever he is) is a far
more dynamic instigator. Essentially a story about two engaging
screw-ups--one a princess (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and the other
an unsinkable everyman (Foley)--who make good in the end, the
most engaging aspects here are the cinematic direction and the
zippy one-liners (yes, they saved a few for the paying audiences).
Celebrity voices are well-matched to their insectine counterparts,
including Kevin Spacey as the evil grasshopper leader, Phyllis
Diller as the queenly cut-up, and Denis Leary as a ladybug at
odds with his feminine side. If you go, be sure to stay through
the credits for the animated outtakes. --Wadsworth
CARLA'S SONG. This film begins with the almost unpardonable
sin of having a woman fall in love with a man who stalks her and
breaks into her apartment. After that, it makes an odd political
shift and becomes a pedantic, but informative, series of monologues
about CIA involvement in the Nicaraguan civil wars of the '80s.
Robert Carlyle (from Trainspotting and The Full Monty)
plays the obnoxious but golden-hearted bus driver George, who
drives a double-decker in Glasgow. Newcomer Oyanka Cabezas plays
the woman he becomes obsessed with after he helps her get away
from the police. The two of them fall in love (after the stalking
and assault) and go to seek out her missing ex-boyfriend in the
war-ravaged Nicaragua of 1987. It's hard to get past the incomprehensible
Scottish accents and sickly sexist opening of this film, but some
might enjoy its heavy-handed and preachy second section, which
features gorgeous Central American landscapes and a series of
anti-CIA speeches. --DiGiovanna
CELEBRITY. Remember Woody Allen? Well he's back...in Kenneth
Branagh form! Branagh plays Woody down to the last tick and hiccup
in this rehash of Stardust Memories. Consistently entertaining
and occasionally funny, Celebrity is the story of a screenplay
writer who leaves his wife and gets obsessed with a much younger
woman, begging the question, Where does the endlessly creative
Mr. Allen get the ideas for his films? Woody is at his funniest
when he's drawing from his infinitely deep well of hatred, and
here he gets good effect from his distaste for ordinary people,
using the terms "dentist," "salesman" and
"antique dealer" as though they were deeply derogatory.
Luckily, he also lets fly with his hatred of artists, actors,
and directors, leaving, as far as I can tell, only writers and
editors amongst the chosen people. If he could just eliminate
editors he'd have it perfect. Bebe Neuwirth, Judy Davis, Isaac
Mizrahi, Melanie Griffith, Hank Azaria, Leonardo DiCaprio, Famke
Janssen, Joe Mantegna, Winona Ryder, Charlize Theron, and even
Andre Gregory show up here, just so they can say that they were
in a Woody Allen film. The cinematography is by Sven Nykvist,
easily one of the two or three greatest cinematographers of all
time, though he never does his best work when he's shooting for
Woody. (Check out his imagery in Pretty Baby, What's
Eating Gilbert Grape or any Bergman film from the '60s to
see why his drooling fans refer to him as "master of darkness,
master of light.") --DiGiovanna
ELIZABETH. Cate Blanchett plays the Virgin Queen, who ruled
England during Shakespeare's time. She's a sassy wench, according
to this version--a bejeweled rebel bucking the Catholic system
and following the dictates of her royal heart in all things. It's
ridiculous, but kind of fun. The court is perpetually bathed in
inky gloom, and a series of stabbings, beheadings, stake-burnings
and exotic poisonings make Elizabeth's castle look a lot riskier
than any old sorority house in a horror movie. All pretensions
to high art are abandoned early here anyway, so if it's lusty
cads in short pants and fine ladies in satin gowns you want, this
is your one-stop shopping place. If you're hoping for an intelligent
story of any sort, however, browse elsewhere. --Richter
ENEMY OF THE STATE. This tribute to Francis Ford Coppola's
early masterpiece The Conversation takes the star of that
film, Gene Hackman, and hands him a heavy-handed action script,
Will Smith's bubbly Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes as a co-star, and lots
of explosions in order to deaden any of the impact that Coppola's
film had. Enemy of the State tries to raise questions about
the surveillance society through a story wherein a young lawyer
(Smith) is observed and undermined by the NSA, which utilizes
every security camera and spy satellite in the world just to track
one guy who's running around D.C. in his pajamas. For good measure,
it throws in offensive stereotypes of Asians, Italians and Mexicans,
as well as some unconvincing speeches, a cute little boy and a
series of deus-ex-machina rescues. No doubt Coppola's aesthetic
sensibilities are spinning in their grave. --DiGiovanna
HAPPINESS. A funhouse view of varieties of suffering from
Todd Solondz, creator of Welcome to the Dollhouse. A New
Jersey family, featuring two miserable parents (Louise Lasser
and Ben Gazzara) and three tortured grown daughters, put themselves
and others through as much pure hell as possible. We witness a
series of sex crimes, failed relationships, bitter rejections,
and doomed quests for self as Solondz struggles to situate himself
as the Hieronymus Bosch of our times. Happiness is a comedy,
though a disturbing one, that exaggerates misery just enough so
that some people--maybe a few--might laugh at it. In any
case, it's a cheering antidote to the pat, happy endings of Hollywood
movies, and this director has a real knack for capturing the nuance
of suburban ugliness. Chairs that match the wallpaper! Endless
cubicles of office space! The doings in Happiness are more
exaggerated than in Welcome to the Dollhouse, and this
film is less likely to evoke that complex, nauseating God-that-happened-to-me
feeling of his earlier film. Nonetheless, it's an interesting,
disturbing, and sometimes amusing tour of the downside of being
alive. --Richter
HOME FRIES. Dark comedies aren't generally sweet, but cast
a ringlet-adorned Drew Barrymore as a pregnant, small town drive-thru
attendant, and you can skip those M&Ms at the concession stand.
The enjoyably convoluted story centers around two families, the
white trash, big-hearted Jacksons and the upper-class, insane
Levers, and the adultery that brings them all together. Sally
Jackson (Barrymore) dates the much older Henry Lever (Chris Ellis),
but only until she discovers he's married. His wife (Catherine
O'Hara) finds out about the affair and decides that one way to
cure a cheating heart is to manipulate her sons, Dorian (Luke
Wilson) and Angus (Jake Busey), into killing it. Dimwitted Angus
suspects Sally knows of the murder, so Dorian goes undercover
as a fry cook at the Burger-Matic where she works. In addition
to lots of cute with a capital K between Dorian and Sally, Home
Fries offers a cynical and funny look at the idealized bourgeois
family, a great cast, and practical advise, such as, "a relaxed
jaw means an open vagina." If that's not enough of a recommendation,
at least go to see the ever-enchanting Shelley Duvall as Ma Jackson.
--Higgins
JACK FROST. Sitting through this family flick is kinda
like flossing with piano wire. The bloody mess begins when Jack
Frost (Michael Keaton), who's a perfect dad in every way except
for the fact that he sometimes says "no" to his son
in order to pursue his career as a blues singer, dies. Oddly enough,
he dies after he decides that family should always come
first--almost like he's being punished for believing the movie's
message. A year later, Frost becomes a snowman due to a magical
harmonica, which could have solved all the family's woes years
ago if they'd known it was magical. Oh well. Now he's a snowman
with a creepy rubberized computer-animated face, and "better
a snow dad than no dad." With his twiggy arms, he finally
teaches his son the game-winning hockey moves, and they bond.
For unexplained reasons, this Snuffleupasnowman avoids everybody
else from his life, including his hot mama of a wife played by
Kelly Preston; perhaps he's worried she'll ask him to "Sing
me a smile" again. It's nice that filmmakers can smoothly
animate snowmen and whatnot, but when will they program computers
to smooth out logic problems in the plot, like the fact that horny
men aren't beating down Kelly Preston's door a year after her
husband snuffs it? Or that Jack Frost lets his son risk his life
trekking to the Colorado Rockies to keep dad from melting, when
Frosty knows darned well he can't stick around anyway? Kids who
have lost a parent may get something therapeutic from this poorly
thought-out McMovie, but I'd recommend actual therapy. --Woodruff
JERRY SPRINGER: RINGMASTER. In the 1920s, Robert Musil
wrote his magnum opus, The Man Without Qualities, in which
he bemoaned the excessively refined culture of his age. He expressed
the belief, prevalent amongst intellectuals of the time, that
the mannered, overly civilized society of the modern world had
robbed humanity of all possibility for genuine self-expression
by virtue of its insistence on historical knowledge and schooled,
aestheticist sensitivities. Musil was wrong. Jerry Springer has
brought us living proof that humanity's most immediate and unmediated
desires are still capable of unfettered expression; that mankind
still has the capacity to push aside the constraining sublimations
of culture in order to be, freely and without shame, that which,
at basest heart, it truly is. To stress this point, here's the
finest bit of dialogue from Ringmaster: Stepfather: "Do
that other thing." Stepdaughter: "What thing?"
Stepfather: "That thing your mother won't do." I thank
God almighty that the nightmare world of literate, cultured, effete
snobs that Musil imagined so brilliantly has not overwhelmed the
world, and that there is still room for a TV show about men who
love their girlfriends' pet goats. Pull up a 40-ouncer and slide
into Ringmaster, where hope reigns supreme and foley artists
have perfected the slurpy noises that accompany oral lovemaking.
--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
MEET JOE BLACK. That's right, Brad Pitt plays Death in
Meet Joe Black. Imagine The Seventh Seal remade
as a three-hour episode of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and
you might get some idea of how pretentious, repetitive, and boring
this movie is. What happens is this: Death comes to earth for
a vacation, where he falls in love with a strange, wealthy, young
woman (Clair Forlani), a doctor who can't stop squinting. Her
father is Anthony Hopkins, and he is stinking rich, and quite
understandably does not want his daughter to marry Death. All
this occurs within a leisurely three-hour time frame. Somewhere
in there is the least sexy sex scene from a non-porno movie ever,
featuring super close-ups of the pores on Brad Pitt's nose. This
reviewer recommends you stay home and clean the grout between
your tiles with a toothbrush. You'll have a better time.
--Richter
PSYCHO. Director Gus Van Sant has made a shot-by-shot edition
of Hitchcock's 1960s masterpiece, a sort of 101 Strings
version of your favorite hit. The result is a film that's interesting
only in its pointlessness. Why mess with something as trashy and
fine as Psycho, Gus? What's the big idea? The new Psycho
features some updated props, like a Walkman; and an updated cast,
like psychohunk Vince Vaughn, who plays Norman Bates as a big,
knife-wielding sexpot. Hitchcock, that famous, repressed romantic,
would blush in his grave if he could see his own Norman Bates
waxing the bishop while spying on a girl through his peephole.
It's wrong, oh so wrong! The title sequence, updated with some
puke-green accents, is still stunning, as is Bernard Herrmann's
sublime score. The rest is for the birds. --Richter
SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Measure for measure, this is not playwright
Tom Stoppard's best work. Still, it's a reasonably decent comedy
of Eros, wherein young Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) spends
his midsummer's nights dreaming about the beautiful Viola (Gwyneth
Paltrow), trying to write Romeo and Juliet, and avoiding
the vengeful Lord Wessex, who wants to kill Will for messing with
his woman. All this stirs up a tempest in the court of Queen Elizabeth,
played by perennial noble Judi Dench (Mrs. Brown). Say
what you will about the witty use of Shakespeare's titles and
plots in this script (slightly altered scenes from Romeo and
Juliet and Twelfth Night form the basis for this story
about a girl named Viola who dresses as a boy to get a part in
Shakespeare's play), it's all much ado about nothing as there
are too many long pauses between funny bits. Still, if you'd enjoy
seeing lots of Paltrow and Fiennes, both of whom are attractive
and talented young actors, then this film is as you like it. --DiGiovanna
YOU'VE GOT MAIL. Okay, let's clear this up: "You've
got mail" is not grammatically correct. It is, in fact, redundant:
it should be "You have mail," or even just "You've
mail," if you want to give it a 19th-century feel. It's just
the absence of 19th-century sensibilities that bugged me about
this cute and intermittently funny romantic comedy. It tells the
story of a petit bourgeois bookstore owner (Meg Ryan, who's
maintained her pixie-like looks for far longer than should be
naturally possible) who is driven out of business by a grand
bourgeois owner of a chain of bookstores (Tom Hanks, who is
either wearing a toupee or has an atrocious dye job, or both).
Think they'll fall in love? While there's lots of sentimental
whining about the loss of small businesses, I wondered why anyone
should care when the exploited workers were as far removed from
the means of production under one boss as the other. It's the
hallmark of late 20th-century capitalism that production facilities
have been moved away from the politically sensitized "first
world" and into the emerging economies, where 19th-century
conditions are not yet considered appalling and inhuman, and where
child labor and cramped, dirty factories are far from the eyes
of concerned do-gooders. Which isn't to say that a lot of people
won't like You've Got Mail; if they liked Nora Ephron's
other films (When Harry Met Sally and They Made Unchallenging
Witty Comments for 90 Minutes Before Falling in Love, and
Sleepless in a Very Cleaned-Up, Middle of the Road Version
of Seattle). If so, then they'll have to like this one, as
it's a virtual carbon copy of those earlier efforts...but why
not read Volume I of Karl Marx's Kapital instead? It's
informative and stars Meg Ryan as the bookish but sexy...oh, never
mind.
--DiGiovanna
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