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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
BABE: PIG IN THE CITY. Remember George Miller, director
of the post-apocalyptic Mad Max trilogy? He's back, but this time
his props have changed from leather and asphalt to talking animals
and stunning production design. It's a wild film: Unlike the first
Babe, which had a gentle storybook quality, Babe: Pig in the
City has expansive imagination, palpable danger and veering
momentum. Believe it or not, many of its scenes directly mirror
adrenaline-pumping moments from the Mad Max pictures. (Then there's
the voices: If you close your eyes there's an uncanny similarity
to Wez and The Humongous besieging the oil farm in The Road Warrior.)
Sure, Babe is still a winningly sweet little pig, but this time
Miller has molded the story to fit his apparent obsession with
Joseph Campbell's book The Power of Myth--he turns Babe
into the porkular embodiment of an archetypal loner hero. Then
he adds a huge entourage of other archetype-animals, which includes
dogs both vicious and cute; a clumsy duck strangely reminiscent
of The Road Warrior's gyro captain; an orangutan whose performance
has surprising human dimension; and a sad-faced kitten who mews,
"I'm hungry." Colorful, dream-like set design--centered
around an amalgamated Everycity--breathes credibility into Miller's
myth-making pretensions. Babe: Pig in the City's biggest
problem? It's what you might call "over-ambitious."
This is especially a problem if you think children's movies shouldn't
be challenging. --Woodruff
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
THE FACULTY. Scriptwriter Kevin Williamson (Scream),
the John Hughes of the '90s, updates the horror-science fiction
classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers for a hilarious
and clever teen film that explores something we all suspected--that
our high school teachers were aliens. Piper Laurie, Jon Stewart,
et al. play teachers whose bodies play host to alien parasites
that strive to take over the world...or if that doesn't work out,
Ohio. A handful of students, among them Zeke the Burnout (Josh
Hartnett), Casey the Nerd (Elijah Wood), and Delilah the Socialite
(Jordana Brewster), figure this out and spend much of the film
searching for the Queen Alien. The well-written script places
these incompatible teens in numerous Breakfast Clubesque
situations, such as one in which all have to snort crushed caffeine
pills to prove they're still human. As with Scream, The
Faculty is very much of its time, with the now-obligatory
references to popular culture, Neve Campbell, and poking fun at
the slasher film convention of showing teenage T&A. --Higgins
GODS AND MONSTERS. Ian McKellen (check out his web site
at www.mckellen.com, I swear to god) turns in another excellent
performance in this sad and partly true story of early Hollywood
director James Whale. Whale was the force behind Frankenstein
and Bride of Frankenstein (the latter being one of the
best films of its era), who was used up and cast out by the Hollywood
system. Recounting his memories of WWI, his monster movies, his
life as a gay swinger in old Hollywood, and the debilitating illness
that is causing his mind to flood with memories, Whale enchants
and repulses his beautiful gardener, played by the heavily muscled
Brendan Fraser. Whale's homosexuality strains their relations
and provides a center point for director/writer Bill Condon's
well-made story of a man who tries to create a monster that will
destroy him.
--DiGiovanna
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
THE PRINCE OF EGYPT. It's always comforting to see the
Barbie beauty aesthetic upheld. I haven't seen the Moses or Zipporah
dolls yet, but I'm guessing they're as cut as their on-screen
animated counterparts. That must make it easier to just lop off
Ken and Barbie's heads and replace them with those of the appropriate
Dreamworks characters. In case you haven't read the book, Moses
is called upon by God to lead the enslaved Hebrews out of Egypt,
but the Pharaoh doesn't give up his laborers until after Egypt
is stricken with a number of plagues (locusts, maggots, frogs).
The story is more or less accurate to the Book of Exodus, with
some changes ostensibly made to increase dramatic tension; in
the film, for instance, Pharoah's wife finds the baby Moses, though
in the Bible, it's his daughter who finds the orphaned infant.
Much of the animation is amazing, especially the representations
of the final plague and the parting of the Red Sea. I don't think
there was originally quite as much singing, but I guess we'll
need some bathroom breaks during the 1999 Oscars. --Higgins
STEPMOM. Joan Collins and Linda Evans taught us how to
take care of deep hatred when they had knockdown brawls on Dynasty.
Sadly, but a decade later, Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon have
forgotten this very satisfying solution to sisterhood gone awry.
And we the viewers are the ones who suffer most, because I would
have liked nothing better than to see those two end up scantily
clad in a fountain, flailing and screaming "take that, you
witch!" and "nice dye job!" Unfortunately, the
lesson of Stepmom is not so wholesome, though it is
one we've gotten before: If you want to be a good mom, you can't
work. So all we get are a few G-rated verbal insults dished out
by the dying Susan, such as, "You were late picking my kids
up!" and "You don't know how to be a good mother!"
Julia then quits her glamorous job as a high-fashion photographer
and loses her leather pants to hang out with Susan and learn how
to properly rear the bratty kids of her suspiciously absent fiancée
(Ed Harris). If forced bonding is your thing, go for it; but I
think it's kind of sick. I'd rather stay home and watch Heather
Locklear kick everybody's ass on Melrose Place.
--Higgins
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