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 THE BIG HIT. Mark Wahlberg plays that new breed of comic hero, the Funny Hit-Man.
Hopelessly insecure and yet super-competent when it comes to killing,
Wahlberg's character is about as funny as a whimpering Doberman
that occasionally mauls babies. One minute he's cute and soft-spoken,
the next minute he's chopping off somebody's leg. Taken as an
irreverent joke for the hipster teenage set, The Big Hit
does have some amusing ideas (the climax revolves around Wahlberg's
efforts to return an overdue video while evading assassins), but
the empty-headed screenplay can't keep up with them. This movie's
idea of witty dialogue is when somebody says "Do you want
the truth?" and somebody else shouts, "You can't handle
the truth!" That's not parody; that's parroty. Hong Kong director Che-Kirk Wong directed
this slam-bang action/comedy/parody slush, providing yet another
reason for ending our love affair with tongue-in-cheek violence.
--Woodruff
BUTCHER BOY. A disturbing adaptation of Patrick McCabe's
disturbing novel, Butcher Boy follows the sad and tempestuous
formative years of Francie Brady (Eamon Owens), a 10-year-old
Irish boy facing the problems Irish boys inevitably face in literature
and movies: alcoholic, violent da's, crazy ma's, and viciously
provincial townsfolk. Francie manages to escape the horror of
his everyday life by retreating with his buddy Joe (Alan Boyle
II) into a fantasy world fueled by comic books and movies. As
the tragedies in his life mount, the volume of his fantasy world
goes up, until all sorts of violent and insane acts seem, well,
fun--both to Francie, and to the spirit of the movie. Director
Neil Jordan mixes elements of Trainspotting, The English Patient,
Sling Blade and The Wonder Years into a goulash that's
both original and unsettling, reminding us how scary and beautiful
the world can look to a child.
--Richter
HE GOT GAME. Spike Lee can't help himself--he's always
taking on the grand themes, with varying levels of success. Here,
he takes on The Game, i.e. Life, i.e. Basketball--and he scores!
We Got Game is a long, ambitious movie about the country's
best high-school basketball player negotiating the difficult terrain
of success. Everyone wants a piece of Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray
Allen), a focused, talented, and personable kid--including his
father Jake (Denzel Washington), a murderer who's been let out
of prison briefly to try to persuade Jesus to sign up with a university
referred to only by the Kafkaesque moniker, "Big State."
The plot is so contrived that it actually turns a corner and becomes
believable again. (Who could make this up?) Somehow Lee pulls
it all off with aplomb. His filmmaking style is as fresh and wonderfully
visual as ever, and the story has some of the heart-stabbing tension
of Hoop Dreams. The score is by Aaron Copeland and Public
Enemy--which gives some indication of Lee's territorial range.
--Richter
MEN WITH GUNS. John Sayles takes us on a tour through a
jungle full of evil soldiers, exploited workers, and ruthless
guerrillas in Men With Guns, the latest offering from America's
most determined independent filmmaker. Our guide on this tour
is a complacent, middle class, Central American doctor (Federico
Luppi), who acts as a sort of stand-in for all complacent, comfortable
audience members. The doctor, safe in his shell, doesn't believe
the tales of atrocities and power abuse that he hears until he
voyages into the jungle himself, in search of a group of students
he trained to give medical care to isolated peasant villages.
Once there, he finds that most of his students have fled or been
murdered in the aftermath of a brutally suppressed peasant rebellion.
On his journey, the doctor picks up traveling companions, Wizard
of Oz-style, as he searches for some shard of justice and
humanity. Sayles tells this difficult story with style and grace,
despite a certain amount of visual clunkiness. And he had the
guts to write the dialogue in Spanish.
--Richter
NIL BY MOUTH. Gary Oldman directs this story about unpleasant
Englishmen who attack each other, beat their wives, take drugs,
and shout at each other for no reason. This film is the cinematic
equivalent of a two-hour drum solo by a one armed drummer: the
tone is relentlessly loud and becomes mind-numbingly dull after
the third or fourth beat(ing). Imagine having your head stuck
in a vise while a drunken cockney screams in your ear, and you've
pretty much summed up this unfortunate attempt at a career shift
for the rapidly fading Oldman.
--DiGiovanna
SLIDING DOORS. Suppose that at a crucial moment, your life
branched in two directions: In one, you become Gwyneth Paltrow
with a bad haircut, and have to support your cheating, lay-about
husband by working two jobs in the food service industry. In another,
you become Paltrow with a great haircut, and fall in love with
that cute guy who played "Matthew" in Four Weddings
and a Funeral. Now imagine that every line of dialogue you
and everyone else utters sounds exactly like the way people really
talk, which is to say largely without wit or charm. Now imagine
that for 99 minutes an audience must watch this incessantly talky
scenario. Wouldn't you at least do a nude scene to keep things
interesting? Sadly, in spite of the fact that there are technically
two Paltrows in this film, and therefore four Paltrow nipples,
none ever appears, as though the film were shot in some nipple-free
alternate universe. An eerie, disturbing experience, to say the
least.
--DiGiovanna
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
TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY. Caspar Van Dien of Starship
Troopers anonymity stars in this uninteresting outing wherein
Tarzan must defend his beloved Africa from white looters. The
film gains points by portraying the Indiana Jones-styled Nigel
Ravens, an archeologist who thinks nothing of stealing local treasures,
as a ruthless and cowardly villain. I never understood why we
were supposed to cheer at the beginning of the first Indiana Jones
movie when he robs those people of their sacred gem. If only they'd
killed Indy and feasted on his imperialist flesh. Oh well. Jane
March, of The Lover, loses the last of her art-house cred
by appearing as Tarzan's fiancée Jane, but she at least
provides a beautiful face to distract audiences from this poorly
paced tale, which eschews clever storytelling for a deus-ex-machina
ending and several improbable assists from an African shaman with
the supernatural power to fill in plot holes. Maybe youngsters
would enjoy the scenes of Tarzan freeing trapped and caged animals,
and teaming up with gorillas to fight the white boys, but Tarzan
and the Lost City's 100 minutes will feel quite a bit longer
to adult moviegoers.
--DiGiovanna
TWO GIRLS AND A GUY. James Toback wrote the screenplay
for this playful, one-set movie, but much of the dialogue and
action was improvised. It shows: Not only does Robert Downey Jr.
have an extended scene babbling weird noises in front of a mirror,
but there are times when Two Girls and A Guy comes to a
complete standstill, or heads off at a 90-degree angle for no
clear reason. Toback's smart, machine-gun-fast dialogue, which
abruptly kicks in whenever the actors run out of improvisation,
is so good it left me wishing Toback had spent more time developing
the story. Hovering over the movie like a bad smell is the question
of why the two female leads, Heather Graham and Natasha Wagner
(the most vital and engaging of the three), even bother to stick
around Downey's studio apartment after they learn he's been cheating
on each of them for 10 months. We get an answer, but not soon
enough. Toback does have some challenging things to say about
the battle between sexual fidelity and emotional reality, but
he hasn't said enough here, and the film feels terribly unfinished.
Send it back! And while you're at it, rewrite the cop-out ending!
--Woodruff
WINTER GUEST. This slow moving film follows four couples
through a largely uneventful day in an English coastal town. A
mother and her adult daughter walk the icy beaches arguing about
everything; two schoolboys smoke cigarettes and play with fire,
two elderly women attend a funeral, and a teenage girl taunts
and then falls in love with a teenage boy. Mostly, the appeal
of this film is in its cinematography. Lensman Seamus McGarvey
has a sense of composition that could only be compared to John
Toland's. Each shot has the balance and sensitivity of an Ansel
Adams photograph, with objects interacting by virtue of shape
and position to produce pleasing geometries. Unfortunately, the
interactions of the characters are often much less interesting,
though the story of the teenagers finding love is compelling--if
frustratingly limited and interrupted by the other three scenarios.
--DiGiovanna
Special Screenings
THE SCREENING ROOM. The Last New York Innocent,
a 15-minute short by UA student Kevin B. Robbins, screens at 7:30
p.m. Monday, May 11. Admission is free. It's based on the true
story of a teenaged boy found in a small apartment with the body
of his father; the boy had apparently not been outside in 12 years.
Due to unfortunate equipment failure, Robbins project is one of
the few films to come out of the UA film program this year. (Most
of the student films were ruined; this one used other equipment
and made it to the big screen). Filmed on 16mm, it will be projected
from a Beta Master. Admission is free.
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