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 BULWORTH. Warren Beatty's hilarious and intelligent new
film successfully resurrects the political comedy. The fast-moving
plot follows Senator Jay Bulworth through the final weekend of
his campaign to win the democratic primary for California. Having
hired someone to kill him so that his daughter can collect a large
life insurance policy, Bulworth is suddenly liberated from his
need to win and begins saying what's on his mind. The script is
full of extremely funny and politically astute commentary by the
increasingly demented Bulworth, and it doesn't lose steam throughout
its 107 minutes. Everything about this movie seems to run contrary
to the current style of filmmaking: There's a plot which unfolds
and deepens; the hip-hop soundtrack is fresh and adds mood, rather
than emphasizing what is already obvious; there's a rhythm to
the pacing that keeps things moving without pandering to an imaginary
attention-deficit disordered audience; the comedy is cerebral
and profanity is used only in service of the larger theme. And
instead of giant reptiles, the villains are insurance companies.
Just like in real life. --DiGiovanna
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. Hunter S. Thompson's semi-journalistic
novel of panic, drugs, and despair makes the leap to the big screen
in this good-intentioned adaptation by director Terry Gilliam.
Gilliam struggles to translate Thompson's stream-of-consciousness,
hallucinogen-addled prose into a series of coherent scenes with
some success. Special effects are nicely used to simulate acid
trips, and a loopy sense of time sends Duke (Johnny Depp) and
Dr. Gonzo (Benecio Del Toro) sliding along the already surreal
streets and casinos of old-time Vegas. Depp is pretty annoying
as the cigarette chomping Raoul Duke, and Benecio Del Toro steals
the show with his dark, menacing portrayal of a drug-crazed hippie
fiend. A rampant, insider's sense of nostalgia for the sixties
makes the story a little hard to "get" for those of
us who don't share in the longing for the Summer of Love, but
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is still an entertaining
ride that serves to remind us all that it's fun to watch people
on drugs. --Richter
GODZILLA. In the original pictures, Godzilla was like an
overgrown child throwing a tantrum, and I don't know about you,
but that's why I loved him. In the new Godzilla, he exists
on a purely biological level, motivated only to eat and to breed.
With neither political themes nor anthropomorphism to sustain
him, the sole reason to root for Godzilla is to see him destroy
things while protecting his territory. Even then, this over-marketed,
under-scripted special-effects vehicle doesn't deliver enough;
in fact, director Roland Emmerich and producer Dean Devlin eliminate
the big lizard from the movie's entire second act! Instead, we're
introduced to Godzilla's spawn, several dozen man-sized babies
who move, cast shadows, and produce visual puns exactly, and I
do mean exactly, like Steven Spielberg's velociraptors. Yes, this
is the Jurassic Park 3 you didn't know was coming. Sure,
Godzilla turns up again, but his revival can't save the movie
any more than that last-minute blue, singing alien could save
The Fifth Element. As for the actors, Godzilla stars
Matthew Broderick and Maria Pitillo in a wimpy love story that
has no business being in a Godzilla picture. Fortunately, Jean
Reno was thrown in to liven up the mix. He's the movie's one saving
grace: a sleepy-eyed action hero who cusses in French. --Woodruff
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!
He 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
HOPE FLOATS. After Birdee Pruitt's (Sandra Bullock) husband
leaves her for her best friend on national TV, Birdee goes into
a deep depression. She spends most of the day sleeping, waking
only to have whiny fits. This goes on for 90 minutes while her
childhood sweetheart (played by muscled man-flesh love-god Harry
Connick Jr.) makes long speeches about the American dream and
tries to get Birdee to quit pouting and have sex with him. This
incredibly slow and largely plotless film was supposed to be Bullock's
"reward" for agreeing to make Speed II, but why
anyone would think this maudlin tripe would make an amusing movie
is beyond me. If watching moss grow while embarrassingly trite
dialogue plays in the background is your idea of fun, don't miss
Hope Floats. --DiGiovanna
THE LAST DAYS OF DISCO. With genuine nostalgia edged with
spite, filmmaker Whit Stillman (Barcelona, Metropolitan)
chronicles the night life and loves of a group of budding Yuppies
in the early 1980s. Chloe Sevigny plays Alice, a straight-talking
innocent looking for fun. Kate Beckinsale is Charlotte, her conniving
roommate. Together they charm half a dozen young men at a Studio
54-like nightclub in New York, without ever actually having a
very good time. Whit Stillman's characters are funny, non-stop
talkers who recite clever dialogue and seem to be interchangeable.
They're entertaining, but they don't seem very authentic. They
all keep saying how much "fun" the nightclub is, but
it doesn't actually look like very much fun. The most notable
thing about it is that characters can sit around talking all night,
and they never have to shout over the music, and no one ever says
what? Perhaps the amazing thing about The Last Days
of Disco is that it does manage to evoke the spirit of the
time, and to portray a group dynamic among friends, despite all
the talking. --Richter
LOVE AND DEATH ON LONG ISLAND. Distinguished British actor
John Hurt teams up with not-so-distinguished pretty boy Jason
Priestly in this at first quirkily comic, then sublimely haunting
film. Hurt plays a reclusive old novelist who accidentally catches
a Porky's-like teen movie called Hotpants College II
and finds himself obsessed with its star, who, in an amusing case
of art imitating life, is a none-too-talented heartthrob played
by Priestly. Because Hurt's character is so nervously out of touch,
you're never quite sure whether his is an uncovered Lolita
complex with a homosexual spin, or simply high culture falling
(hard) for pop culture--and that makes the film funny. Cute gives
way to disturbing, though, during the second half, when Hurt journeys
to Long Island to actually meet Priestley. Fantasy and reality
aren't supposed to butt heads, especially for someone as desperate
as Hurt's character. But the conclusion, while inevitable, is
both surprising and touching. Director Richard Kwietniowski owes
most of the film's success to Hurt's richly great acting, but
he also uses Priestly very well here, gently mocking his position
in the acting world and getting the most out of his looks. The
expression on Priestley's face at the end will stay with you long
after the dialogue has faded away. --Woodruff
A PERFECT MURDER. Gwyneth Paltrow plays the impossibly
beautiful young wife of evil, aged investment banker Michael Douglas
in this remake of Dial M For Murder. When Douglas realizes
Paltrow is having an affair with a young artist (played by smoky-hot
Viggo Mortensen), he hatches an elaborate plot for revenge. The
suspense film is one of the more difficult genres to pull off,
but director Andrew Davis, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski and
composer James Newton Howard synergistically combine to drop all
the elements into place. Wolski, best known for inventing the
neo-gothic style of cinematography seen in The Crow and
Dark City, uses a much more subtle approach here, courageously
shooting empty rooms and static scenes to create a threatening
atmosphere and keep the viewer off-balance. The film is also notable
for the Arabic-speaking police detective who's portrayed as smart,
efficient and sympathetic, a rare departure from the normally
stereotyped representation of Muslim peoples in Hollywood movies.
The only flaws in this nerve-wracking outing are Michael Douglas'
exaggerated performance and a slight loss of momentum in the final
confrontation. Still, this is precision filmmaking that will leave
you reaching for the nitroglycerin tablets.
--DiGiovanna
SIX DAYS, SEVEN NIGHTS. For our summer enjoyment,
Six Days, Seven Nights allows us to relive the dimmer aspects
of African Queen, and with pirates. Anne Heche plays a
fashionable magazine editor stranded on an island with a daddy-esque
Harrison Ford. She's a feisty talker; he's a tough man of action.
They hate each other, then they love each other, and it's all
shot in a lush vacation-porno setting. Anne Heche is adorable,
and you can see through most of her shirts. Harrison Ford is
a charming piece of aging beefcake, though if you remember what
he looked like in the Star Wars era, it's hard not to feel
like we're missing something. This is puréed entertainment,
easily digestible.
--Richter
WILD MAN BLUES. It's little surprise that Woody Allen,
who uses his films to confess every sordid aspect of his personality
(see Deconstructing Harry if you haven't figured this out
yet), would be happy to let a famous documentary filmmaker (Barbara
Kopple) into his private world--provided he had the right to OK
the final cut, of course. And it's little surprise that Kopple's
footage of Allen and his companion Soon-Yi Previn reveals a functional,
if sorely isolated by fame and notoriety, relationship. So why
bother to see this document of Woody's progress as his old-style
New Orleans jazz band tours Europe? Good question. Despite occasional
nuggets of amusement--like Woody's trademark kvetching or Soon-Yi's
blithe admission that she hasn't seen Annie Hall, thought
Interiors was "tedious," and best loves Manhattan
(the one in which Woody dates a teenage Mariel Hemingway)--there's
little to recommend this glorified home movie. Call it a portrait
of an artist if you wish, but at this point Woody's well past
his artistic prime, and his clarinet dilettantism, while sweetly
impressive, hardly merits a full-length motion picture. --Woodruff
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