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 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
GINGERBREAD MAN. Director Robert Altman evokes a dark,
gothic vision of the South in this adaptation of a John Grisham
story. Kenneth Branaugh plays a lawyer who gets himself involved
with a spooky waitress with a deranged stalker father. He tries
to save her, but, predictably, she's not the helpless waif he
thinks she is. The atmosphere in this movie is wonderful; a hurricane
named Geraldo threatens the cast from beginning to end, and the
countryside is perpetually choking on ash-colored Spanish moss.
But the plot is limp and inconsistent, and isn't it time that
we all faced the fact that lawyers make lousy heroes? --Richter
GREASE. Bill Clinton is back and better than ever. He plays
a young '50s high school stud, and let me tell you, his John Travolta
impersonation is dead-on. Stockard Channing also stars, as a girl.
It's systematic, automatic, hyyyydromatic--why, it's re-released
lightning!
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
LOST IN SPACE. A family of scientists is sent into space
with insufficient dialogue to fight alien spiders and plot-holes.
The first half-hour is comically stupid, but boredom sets in after
all the cute lines from the original television series have been
used up. Nonetheless, this film deserves a special award for least
cohesive cast: Putting Matt Leblanc, Mimi Rogers, William Hurt
and Gary Oldman together is like casting Moe Howard, Katherine
Hepburn, Laurence Olivier and the Great Glildersleeve in a remake
of Dracula Vs The Wolfman. Be sure to keep track of the
ratio of real dialogue to expository lines: For every "Watch
out for the killer robot!" there's five "If my father
wasn't a war hero I would have been able to lend emotional support
to my son Billy Jr. when he was growing up as a boy genius in
the ecologically challenged world we are forced to live in...."
--DiGiovanna
MEET THE DEEDLES. Two crrrrazy surfer boys foil an insidious,
wacky plot at a National Park. Joel Shalit says, "The best
comedy since Good Burger!" And Michael Medved calls it, "A
delightful romp!" Not to be confused with Peter Jackson's
gory, zany Meet the Feebles, about rapist cannibalistic
muppets.
MERCURY RISING. Looking for something completely unchallenging?
Mercury Rising awaits. Not only do Bruce Willis and Alec
Baldwin play clones of their past roles (as hero and villain,
respectively), but the film lifts key elements from such familiar
territory as Rain Man, Three Days of the Condor, Witness
and War Games. The resulting story has Willis running around
trying to prevent the assassination of a hapless Rain Kid who
has inadvertently cracked a billion-dollar government code. This
nonsense barely holds together, yet the film does supply some
small pleasures. The supporting cast of assassins and encryption
geeks has amusing moments, Willis shows delightful restraint and
Baldwin is thoroughly watchable as blue-eyed evil in a suit. The
two leads' few scenes together (during which Willis manages to
interrupt one of Baldwin's typically arrogant speeches with a
swift kick to the chest) satisfy nicely. Maybe I'm just a sucker
for movies with John Barry soundtracks, but Mercury Rising
could have been a lot worse. --Woodruff
MR. NICE GUY. In a stunning departure from his previous
films, Jackie Chan plays a martial artist who must fight vicious
criminals. He is aided in this pursuit by Gabrielle Fitzpatrick,
who mysteriously drops out of the film about halfway through and
is never seen again. But Mr. Nice Guy isn't about consistency
of plot, character and setting, but rather about Chan doing things
that could get him seriously injured. As usual, after the story
ends the audience is treated to the outtakes wherein Chan actually
is injured. There's nothing funnier than seeing a guy get his
butt stuck in a garbage can--and then not be able to get it
out!!! I think this is the first time that Chan has had to
speak in English throughout a film, and he does an admirable job
of acting like he knows what he's saying. Maybe he could give
Ethan Hawke a lesson. --DiGiovanna
MRS. DALLOWAY. Robin Williams stars as a man who can't
get the courts to let him have time with his children, due to
a messy divorce, so he dresses up in drag as a thick-framed older
woman and gets hired as their nanny! Oh my god! Oh wait, that's
Mrs. Doubtfire. Mrs. Dalloway stars Rupert Graves and Vanessa
Redgrave in a very "grave" tale of people whose lives
have complications, and then their complications have complications.
It's complicated. Based on a Virginia Woolf novel, with lots of
narration and flashbacks and minutiae about consciousness and
the like. From the director of Antonia's Line.
THE NEWTON BOYS. Richard Linklater directs that triumvirate
of hunky studliness, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew McConaughey and Ethan
Hawke. I'm biting down on my knuckles they're so fab. Julianna
Marguiles, Vincent D'Onofrio, and Chloe Webb are also in there.
The story follows some famous bank robbers called, get this, the
Newton Boys. In between robberies they discover gravity. This
is Linklater's first film that does not take place during a 24-hour
period. Also part of the excitement of this movie: How will they
wear their goatees? And will they touch their goatees while thinking
about stuff? Oooooh.
OSCAR & LUCINDA. I used to think movies like this were
over my head, but now I realize they're just ineptly conceived
and flatly directed. Unless you've read the Peter Carey novel,
you'll have no idea what Oscar & Lucinda is supposed
to mean or why you should care--picturesque cinematography and
Oscar-nominated costumes notwithstanding. Made in Australia and
set in the late 19th century, this loooong drama follows the lives
of Ralph Fiennes, a timid, sickly religious student with a bad
gambling habit; and Cate Blanchett, a rich heiress who's obsessed
with glass and also gambles. They're too repressed or otherwise
quirky to act on their love for each other, so Fiennes runs off
to the jungle so he can deliver a glass church to a man Blanchett
used to like. The whole experience is very PBS; Fiennes, with
blowzy orange hair and a red-cheeked, womanly face, is even the
spitting image of Lady Elaine Fairchild from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
At any moment I thought some twirpy volunteer might break in and
ask for a pledge, and let me tell you, it would have been a welcome
relief. --Woodruff
PRIMARY COLORS. In this wide-ranging, thought-provoking
movie, director Mike Nichols takes a hard look at how our political
system methodically churns out idealistic hypocrites just aching
to run the country. in This thinly disguised account of the 1992
Clinton primary campaign centers on Governor Jack Stanton (John
Travolta), a manipulative skirt-chaser with a big, throbbing heart;
his lovely wife Susan (Emma Thompson), a behind-the-scenes power
player; and the starry-eyed Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), the
campaign manager who wants to believe that Stanton truly cares
about the common man. Governor Stanton's supporters stick by their
man through bimbo flare-ups and a general array of dirty tricks,
but they suffer from his lack of moral sense. Nichols raises some
interesting questions about who believes in what, and why they
even bother, without being pedantic about it. --Richter
THE PROPOSITION. Willy Hurt, Kenny Branagh, Maddy Stowe,
Doogie Howser and Bobby Loggia head up the cast of this film,
which is something about a surrogate adoption, or an artificially
inseminated dancing baby...or something. From the director who
brought us Then and Now and left it on our doorstep and
set it on fire and ran away.
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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