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 CITY OF ANGELS. Meg Ryan plays a doctor who operates on
human hearts, but is--oh so ironically--unsure of the nature of
her own. Nicolas Cage plays Seth, a creepy angel of God who falls
in love with her. Though reportedly inspired by Wim Wenders' wonderful
Wings of Desire, City of Angels has none of the
intelligence or charm of its predecessor. Instead, Cage follows
Ryan around Los Angeles in a late-eighties trench coat, striking
poses as though in an Aramis commercial. Who wants a guardian
angel if all he does is stare at you, and touch you all the time?
The rest of the time he hangs out with the other angels, who are
as thick as flies at the public library, where they "live."
Living, in this case, consists of shuttling from one side of the
library to the other with zombie-like detachment. I don't think
anyone in the audience would have been surprised if the angels
started feasting on human flesh like actual zombies, their salient
characteristic being that they are not human (as opposed to, say,
spiritual). Seth perks up a little when he becomes Ryan's boyfriend,
but overall this movie falls tantalizing close to the so-bad-it's-good-category,
without actually making it over the hump. Not surprisingly, annoying
drone/chant music is featured throughout. --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
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
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
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. --Woodruff
THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION. This film has been deceptively
marketed and shot as a fuzzy-wuzzy romantic comedy. Actually,
it's a difficult and long-winded melodrama. Jennifer Aniston plays
a pouty Brooklynite who dumps her boyfriend because she's smitten
with her gay male roommate; Paul Rudd is the sweet-faced love
object who reluctantly agrees to help the pregnant Aniston raise
her child. Their intimate but sexually frustrating relationship
would be plenty compelling if the movie could focus on it for
more than two seconds. Instead, peripheral characters are repeatedly
introduced and developed while the leads become disturbingly remote.
The more the plot shifts in emphasis (with Rudd flaking out on
the increasingly whiny Aniston to pursue a male lover), the more
the two come across as outsiders in their own story. Not much
rings true here: For all the script's insights about unrequited
love and the meaning of "family," the picture is too
leaden to be effective. One plus: Nigel Hawthorne (The Madness
of King George) almost saves the show as a gay theatre critic
who struggles to maintain dignity in the face of romantic humiliation.
--Woodruff
PAULIE. SKG Dreamworks finally got something right--a kids'
movie about a parrot. This is easily the finest talking-animal
story since Babe, with a tone just as sweet and effects
just as seamless. I tried my damnedest to locate the scenes where
animatronics or computer-generated effects replaced the real feathered
thing, only to fail miserably. The forgivably flimsy story follows
"Paulie" on a quest to reunite with a little girl he
once helped overcome stuttering. He flies and insults his way
from episode to episode, briefly teaming up with such thoroughly
watchable character actors as Gena Rowlands, Cheech Marin, Tony
Shaloub and Jay Mohr (who also provides the parrot's nasal-but-nice
voice). You know somebody's doing something right when even a
Buddy Hackett cameo is enjoyable. Okay, I might as well admit
it: This is the best parrot movie I have ever seen. --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
SPECIES II. According to this movie, we shouldn't send
astronauts to Mars, because apparently they'll be infected with
alien DNA, come home, have dimly-lit sex with lots of large-breasted
women, impregnate them, and then produce alien offspring that
burst forth from the poor women's stomachs with the force of a
massive, right-wing conspiracy. Then there'll be more nudity and
violence and more nudity and violence and more nudity and violence,
until sensitive parents are forced to remove their youngsters
from the theater (oddly, the parents who did this when I saw Species
II did it during the sex, and not the violence). In fact,
this film has more naked people bumping in bed together than most
HBO After Dark movies. Plus, the dialogue is so abysmal that normally
astute character actor Michael Madsen just grunts all his embarrassing
lines at Marg Helgenberger, who just shouts all her lines back.
The weirdest part is that this abomination was directed by Peter
Medak, who made such critically acclaimed films as The Ruling
Class, Romeo is Bleeding, The Krays and the
extremely dark and intelligent A Day in the Death of Joe Egg.
That one is about a couple who must care for their severely brain
damaged daughter. They pretend to speak for her, make odd little
jokes in her uncomprehending presence, and debate whether or not
it would be better to kill her. Not exactly the normal precursor
for a space-porno-horror flick that features alien sex fiends
and the highly naked "acting" of supermodel Natasha
Henstridge.
--DiGiovanna
WILD THINGS. If the previews hadn't given away the first
hour of this poorly directed film noir outing, it would probably
have been a lot less boring. Denise Richards makes her sophomore
appearance here, and she is a marvel of modern science. Luckily,
she didn't have the star power to demand a "no nude scenes"
clause in her contract like box-office draw/no-talent Neve Campbell,
so you can really get a good look at all the scalpel marks on
her surgically enhanced body. There's also some plain-old lesbian
sex between Richards and Campbell, shots of Theresa Russell's
butt, and, I think, a plot. It has something to do with a teacher
being framed for rape so that he can sue someone and split the
proceeds with everyone who's in on the scam, which turns out to
be just about everyone in southern Florida. Since there's no suspense
or tension, the task of keeping the audience interested is handed
over to the barely-legal sex and Bill Murray's comic-relief role
as a sleazy lawyer in a phony neck-brace. --DiGiovanna
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