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 AMISTAD. Sure, the story is important, but the movie's
not. Though Steven Spielberg capably navigates the complex 19th-century
politics that were preventing abolition, he fails to shape them
into an effective drama. The tale's catalyst--a black mutiny aboard
a slave ship on its way across the Atlantic--is powerfully, artfully
rendered in scattered, flashback sequences. The rest of the movie,
however, turns into a long, talky yawner full of courtroom scenes
and endless exposition. And unlike Schindler's List, there's
no central character to care about: Matthew McConaughy's quickly
becomes irrelevant, Morgan Freeman's has little to do, and even
Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the African who led the revolt, is reduced
to a banal noble-savage role. (Anthony Hopkins, playing John Quincy
Adams, shows up just long enough to give a terrific speech--which
John Williams manages to ruin with his intrusive, uninspired score.)
Amistad vividly re-imagines history, but there's no heart;
it's just a big-budget history lesson. --Woodruff
AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS. This goofy, exuberant cross
between a horror movie and a comedy is an unexpectedly refreshing
way to waste 99 minutes. Director Anthony Waller packs a whole
lot of snarling beasts, romance, rotting corpses and dare-devil
stunts into this energetic homage to John Landis' 1981 An American
Werewolf in London. Tom Everett Scott plays an American tourist
who just wants to make fun of foreigners, but ends up being pulled
into some beastly doings; Julie Delpy plays a young Parisian werewolf
trying to control her bitch of a monthly "lycanthropic cycle."
Of course, the two fall in love. One scene shows a detective carefully
fingerprinting someone's hand; the camera pulls back and we see
it's attached to a severed arm. That's the kind of movie this
is. --Richter
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
FAIRY TALE: A TRUE STORY. So which is it: a fairy tale,
or a true story? If only director Charles Sturridge and screenwriter
Ernie Contreras could make up their minds! As it stands, their
movie is a meandering pile of nothing: neither magical enough
to sustain children, nor thematic enough for adults. The facts
of the 1918 spiritualist sensation--which occurred after cousins
Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright photographed "fairies"
outside their Cottingley Glen, England, home--are served up right
alongside brief special-effects sequences that show actual fairies
mindlessly frolicking. Peter O'Toole plays Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
who'd become unhinged after the death of his son and desperately
championed the cause of fairy belief. Harvey Keitel, of all people,
plays Harry Houdini, an outspoken skeptic of such things. There's
a conflict there, but the wussy filmmakers don't pursue it--they
just want everybody to be happy so long as their delusions don't
directly hurt anyone (never mind the value of truth for its own
sake). The only way this movie could have worked is if the filmmakers
had scrapped their "true story" pretensions and agreed
to lie outright. That's what the little girls did, after all:
In 1981 one of the women admitted the fairies were cardboard cut-outs
they'd propped up with hat pins. --Woodruff
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
HOME ALONE 3. Sometimes, when awakened in the middle of
the night, as if by an unpleasant dream, even though no dream
is remembered, we will stare upwards, unable to move or to reach
for the light or to make a sound, in spite of the darkness and
the sense that something which is not frightening has in some
way scared us. If the bed is otherwise empty, the house devoid
of company, then there's no one to turn to for solace, no one
to whom we can say, "I don't know what it is; nor could I
explain it if I did know. I only know that what I am was felt
to be in jeopardy, or perhaps beyond that, unredeemable, irretrievable,
even undone and never made." On nights such as these, when
even our souls threaten to abandon us, we can truly, and with
deepest sensibility, say that we are Home Alone. So take
the kids because this is a slam-bang adventure where a single,
scrappy lad with Rube Goldberg's inventiveness and Errol Flynn's
panache manages to repeatedly thwart, humiliate, and thrash the
kookiest gang of international criminals this side of the IRA!!!
--DiGiovanna
JACKIE BROWN. Quentin Tarantino adapted his screenplay
from the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, with unexpectedly
lackluster results. Jackie Brown has the flat, literal
look of a made-for-TV movie, and about as much style and charm.
Tarantino does show his great knack for working with actors
and making interesting casting decisions. Pam Grier--best known
from her roles in '70s blaxploitation flicks Foxy Brown and
Coffy--does a great job playing Jackie, a down-on-her-luck
flight attendant who's a hell of a lot smarter than everyone else
thinks. Bridget Fonda is funny as a stoned surfer chick who likes
to hang out with criminals, and Robert Forster is wonderfully
deadpan as the bail bondsman Max Cherry. But despite some good
performances, Tarantino seems restrained, and concerned with keeping
things slow, smooth, and real easy to understand. There's plenty
of exposition, as well as intertitles to tell us where we are,
just in case you go for popcorn during one of the long explanations.
It's as though Tarantino doesn't trust himself to tell this story.
Even the settings--mostly apartments, shopping malls and offices--seem
tired and bland. --Richter
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 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
FOR RICHER OR POORER. A complete lack of effort marks this
"film." The plot, about an obnoxious land developer
and his stereotypical rich-bitch shopaholic wife, each redeemed
by spending a couple of weeks with an Amish family, is almost
too embarrassing to recount. Every element of this entertainment
alternative is so trite that I can only imagine it was written
by some kind of scriptwriting computer program which analyzed
all of the mediocre comedies of the last 10 years and reduced
them to their most banal moments. The only thing that stands out
is Kirstie Alley's incredibly grating performance, which almost
makes Tim Allen look good by comparison. Almost. While I was watching
this, two audience members actually fell asleep, and a third left
to rent a Pauly Shore film. --DiGiovanna
SCREAM 2. What? You say you didn't scream loudly enough
during Scream one? I can't hear you. Wes Craven brings
us more gory hijinks, including stabbing, slashing, blowing to
pieces, crucifying, splattering and of course, taunting. More
tired and blatantly formulaic than the first Scream, Scream
2 trundles out the same old slasher movie chops and tries
to make them shiny. But Craven has set himself an impossible task:
Could there be any way to make a sorority girl in a tight sweater
being chased by a psychokiller "new"? Neve Campbell
plays Sidney Prescott, the girl all the boys love to stalk. Now
she's a college girl; the film version of her last traumatic weekend
has just reached the big screen, and there's a copycat killer
hoping to mark her on his scorecard of innocent victims. Courteney
Cox and David Arquette provide additional bodies to butcher. --Richter
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
TOMORROW NEVER DIES. Prior to this year, only one James
Bond novel had been made into a film more than once: Thunderball.
Oddly, for the latest Bond flick, the producers decided to remake
Thunderball. That move sums up the lack of imagination
in this film, which is mildly brightened by a fine performance
by Judy Dench, who's inexplicably slumming here after her role
as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown. Also of note is hot Hong
Kong action star Michelle Yeoh, who plays a Chinese secret agent
who allies herself with Bond to capture the Rupert Murdoch-like
supervillain. Pierce Brosnan gives a characterless performance
as Bond, unenthusiastically killing his way through the international
cast of bad guys. The story is, of course, mostly nonsensical,
with Bond gaining and losing the superhuman ability to defeat
any number of heavily armed foes, as the plot demands. Thus, he
is repeatedly captured by two or three thugs, then escapes by
fighting his way past entire armies. For my part, I kept hoping
he'd get his snotty British ass blown off so that Michelle Yeoh
could take over and kick some Occidental butt, because, unlike
Bond, she didn't feel the need to make an insipid pun every time
she offed someone. --DiGiovanna
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