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 AFTERGLOW. Somewhere there must be a great script for Afterglow,
because short stretches of brilliant dialogue show up in this
otherwise intensely mediocre and cowardly film. The plot concerns
a middle-aged married man (Nick Nolte, whose new hair piece is
apparently from outer space) having an affair with a young married
woman (Lara Flynn Boyle, who looks so good she figures she doesn't
have to do anything besides pout and flounce). Meanwhile, unbeknownst
to them, their spouses carry on a parallel affair, in a story
that is apparently inspired by some odd hybrid of Days of our
Lives and Three's Company. Gee, I wonder if the two
couples will run into each other at the bar they both frequent,
and I wonder if Nolte and wife Julie Christie will ever find their
long-lost daughter, and I wonder if there isn't some chance that
an adult drama can be produced without using the most familiar
of story elements and the safest of endings? --DiGiovanna
THE BIG LEBOWSKI. The latest comedy from the Coen brothers
never really comes together as a whole; but the texture of it,
as it spills across the screen, is funny, strange and wonderful.
Jeff Bridges plays a type-B personality called the Dude, a chronically
unemployed pot smoker dedicated to nothing except his bowling
buddies, and bowling itself. A case of mistaken identity leads
the Dude into some uncool, high-stress situations: kidnapping,
gunplay, robbery, and the like. All this seems like an excuse
to introduce a palette of oddball characters from the California
spectrum. The Coen brothers have a great time concocting visual
subplots and dream sequences that reference everything from Busby
Berkeley musicals to spaghetti westerns to detective films, but
they give their most loving attention to the bowling sequences.
Who knew bowling was such a photogenic sport? --Richter
THE BORROWERS. One thing The Borrowers don't need to "borrow"
is good old-fashioned fun! That's because in this movie, they
"borrow" their way right into your heart! In fact, The
Borrowers "borrowed" my attention for the full one-and-a-half
hours of their delightful film! No doubt they'll need to "borrow"
a cart to bring home their Oscar! Now I know what you're thinking:
neither a borrower nor a lender be. But forget about that, 'cause
here's one set of "borrowers" who promptly return what
they've borrowed -- in the form of entertainment! So beg, steal,
or "borrow" a ticket to The Borrowers as soon
as you can! You won't regret it! --Rex Siegel
DANGEROUS BEAUTY. This is why we love Hollywood! Dangerous
Beauty mixes the crass and melodramatic with the lofty and
noble, extruding trashy entertainment that's wildly enjoyable,
even if it does leave you feeling used and guilty. Catherine McCormack
plays Veronica Franco, a courtesan plying her wares in a strange
version of 16th century Venice where everybody speaks English
and appears in soft focus. Oh well, whatever--she's a plucky one,
and her plain speaking, bawdy intelligence eventually charms most
of the Venetian ruling class, including hunky Marco Venier (Rufus
Sewell), who risks it all to be her boyfriend. Dangerous Beauty
transplants progressive '90s sexual politics to the repressive
16th century, where uneducated wives were kept safely inside but
courtesans read whatever they liked and had the run of the place.
Veronica's pleas for independence, sexual equality, and erotic
freedom resonate across the centuries, making her far more spicy
than any 20th century spice girl. --Richter
DARK CITY. It's always dark in Dark City. So dark that
the working titles for this film were Dark Empire and Dark
World, so we can be assured of darkness. There are villains
who wear outfits left over from Hellraiser, with make-up
borrowed from Nosferatu, as they roam the back lot vacated
after the shooting of City of Lost Children. Interiors
from The Crow are peopled with characters out of Naked
City, and an evil doctor who seems to have borrowed everything
he owns from Terry Gilliam's prop closet. The story, dark as it
is, moves along at a decent clip, except towards the end when
the main characters get in the Boat of Expository Dialogue in
order to discover the secret of the Dark City, and just why it's
so damn dark there. A decent level of entertainment, though completely
devoid of the originality that would've given it punch, there
are still a few visual delights in this derivative sci-fi thriller.
And it's so dark. So very, very dark. --DiGiovanna
HUSH. Jessica Lange does an over-the-top crazy lady in
the most predictable film since The Ten Commandments. In
what is one of the oddest decisions a director has ever made,
most of the action in this film occurred 20 years prior to its
start, and instead of showing it in flashbacks, it's all told
in dialogue. It's as close to radio as a movie can get. On top
of that, instead of following the normal thriller formula of tossing
in plot twists, maguffins and false scares, everything is precisely
what it seems to be and the story--what little there is of it--just
heads straight to its obvious conclusion. After what would normally
have been the scene right before the murdering mother goes psycho,
I turned to my movie companion and said, "Wouldn't it be
funny if it ended right here?" And then it did. It ended
right there. And nobody got hurt. --DiGiovanna
KRIPPENDORF'S TRIBE. In Mr. Holland's Opus, Richard
Dreyfuss reaffirmed the heroism of teaching and won himself a
best-actor Oscar nomination in the process. Perhaps the good karma
was just too much for the guy, because in Krippendorf's Tribe
Dreyfuss plays a disorganized anthropologist who squanders his
grant money and then pretends he's discovered a unique new culture
in hopes of maintaining the cash flow. When colleagues demand
evidence, Dreyfuss and his three kids dress up in the Papua New
Guinea equivalent of blackface and film each other performing
crude (in more ways than one) rituals in their back yard. Wouldn't
you know it, further kooky comic hijinks ensue. There's a hint
of social satire here on the level of "See? We're the really
primitive ones," and Dreyfuss is somewhat sympathetic because,
sniff, he's a single parent. But the movie's one offensive joke
and sitcom-style wackiness gets mighty painful mighty fast. That
Dreyfuss, Lily Tomlin (as a skeptical academic) and Jenna Elfman
(as an aggressively peppy love interest) try to reduce the agony
via self-mocking exuberance didn't stop me from praying for their
characters' swift and merciless deaths. --Woodruff
KUNDUN. The most annoying thing about the Tibet vogue that
has swept Hollywood is that the actors and trendies who have hopped
on this bandwagon are under the impression that Lhasa was some
kind of delightful Shangri-La prior to the coming of the Chinese.
In fact, it was run by a brutally oppressive and corrupt theocratic
regime. Somehow, director Scorcese had the courage to at least
hint at the atrocious state of affairs in Tibet under monastic
rule. Further, his cast is made up exclusively of Tibetan, Chinese
and Indian actors, despite what I'm sure was an overwhelming urge
to call up Keanu Reeves to play the role of the Dalai Lama. The
Himalayan landscapes (mimed by Moroccan mountains) are hard to
shoot poorly, and Scorcese makes good use of Tibetan sand painting
as a transitional device. Oddly, in spite of his dedication to
authenticity in every other area, he largely eschews the rich
musical tradition of Tibet in favor of a limp soundtrack by experimentalist-turned-new-age-shlockmeister
Philip Glass. All of Glass' noodling drones turn the atmosphere
to overly reverential mush, and the film often takes on the emotionally
manipulative mode of a television movie of the week. Nonetheless,
it's beautiful to look at and takes enough risks to make the viewer
wish that other films would be this daring, and that this one
had been a little more so. --DiGiovanna
MA VIE EN ROSE. Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink)
is an original little movie from Belgium about a 7-year-old boy
who's thoroughly convinced that he would rather be a girl. Ludovic's
(Georges Du Fresne) cross-dressing antics are received with tolerance
at first; but with time, parents school mates and neighbors learn
to hate the tyke for being different. Filmed in bright, splashy
colors, with a lot of ultra-femme dream sequences on the pink
planet of a Barbie-esque character named Pam, Ma Vie en Rose
has the sweet, harmless look of a store-bought birthday cake.
This stands in stark contrast to the gritty disintegration of
Ludovic's family, who find themselves buckling to peer pressure
in the community. Though adults in the family get to change and
grow, poor little Ludovic basically gets booted around through
the whole thing, which is kind of hard to watch. --Richter
TWILIGHT. This film noir project seems to have been started
in 1955, when characters had names like Gloria Lamar and L.A.
was full of dangerous broads who would kill to keep their reputations
clean. Suddenly, the cast and crew fell asleep à la Rip
Van Winkle, and woke up 40 years later, skin sagging and hair
graying, but knowing that they must finish what they started.
The only modification made to the script in response to this time
warp is the scene where Paul Newman and James Garner discuss their
prostate glands. Reese Witherspoon, sporting newly enhanced breasts,
and Liev Schrieber, also with new breasts, are brought in as fresh
blood to nourish the aging cast and crew. Schrieber bleeds real
good, too. Real good. --DiGiovanna
U.S. MARSHALS. In Hollywood, if a sequel only brings back
half of the original's stars, it's called a "spin off."
If it brings back half the original's stars and none of its suspense,
it's called U.S. Marshals. Tommy Lee Jones stars as the
same squinty, no-bullshit character he played in The Fugitive.
But because Harrison Ford was busy working on a movie about a
president armed only with a bullwhip who commandeers a spacecraft
in order to save an Amish community from IRA assassins, now Wesley
Snipes is the dude on the run. After a big, noisy plane crash,
Snipes escapes and soon enters the Phonebooth of Expository Dialogue,
where we learn: (1) He's innocent; (2) he has top-secret info
and is wanted dead; and (3) he's not nearly as fun to root for
as Ford. Then Robert Downey, Jr. shows up as a federal agent with
no sense of humor, and you know what that means--he's the dreaded
two-armed man! As for poor Jones, he tries hard, but needs more
to work with than the jumble of suitcase trades, gun switches
and likable- good- guys- who- look- like- Judge- Reinhold- so- you- know- they're- dead- meat that the film supplies. As a result, U.S. Marshals maintains
the peculiar distinction of being impossible to follow yet completely
predictable. --Woodruff
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