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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. And instead of giant reptiles,
the villains are insurance companies. Just like in real life.
--DiGiovanna
CAN'T HARDLY WAIT. This movie rocked my world. Jennifer
Love Hewitt stars as a high-school princess at a really ganga
all-night graduation party. She just got the big dumpola from
her hunky jock boyfriend, Peter "Hey, I'm Tom Cruise's look-alike
and there's no stoppin' me" Facinelli. But no prob, 'cause
the totally sweet Ethan "Look out Matthew McConaughy, I'm
takin' over" Embry has been in love with her for like eons,
and he's telling her tonight! But guess what? Embry's cynical
best friend, played by Lauren "Mind if I borrow your attitude,
Ms. Garofalo?" Ambrose, loves him even more painfully than
Mary Stuart Masterson loved Eric Stoltz in Some Kind of Wonderful!
Ouch! If you think that's brutal, wait till you get a load of
Seth Green, a dweeby wannabe who has no idea where it's at; or
Charlie Korsmo, the genius geek who finally stands up and makes
everybody take notice! It's a kick-ass party that made me wish
I was invited. And it was rad to see a cameo by Sabrina the Teenage
Witch--without that stupid cat! Writer/directors Harry Elfont
and Deborah Kaplan are, like, the John Hughes of the '90s.
--Brittany Barnes
CLOCKWATCHERS. Finally, a movie that takes on the most
pathetic area of corporate America: the world of temporary workers.
Stuffed into cubicles, monitored by cameras, denied benefits or
living wages, and treated with such disregard that few bother
to remember their names, the temps in Clockwatchers try
to use friendship to fight against their nowhere existence. Will
office pettiness get the best of them? The answers are simultaneously
hilarious and depressing, buffered by the kind of details that
only someone who has endured the mind-numbing banality of temp
work could know. Kudos to the writing-directing team of Karen
and Jill Sprecher, sisters who in their first outing have out-classed
99-percent of other filmmakers by focusing on an unaddressed yet
wholly relevant social subject. Well-realized performances by
Toni Collette, Lisa Kudrow, Alanna Ubach, and especially Parker
Posey keep the film a constant treat. Definitely one of the best
movies of the year. --Woodruff
DIRTY WORK. Norm Macdonald has the sort of face and attitude
that's funny even if he just stands there doing nothing. Unfortunately,
in Dirty Work, Macdonald runs around spewing stillborn
half-jokes and pulling unimaginative revenge schemes on stereotypical
villains. Big dogs hump big dogs; skunks hump little dogs; Macdonald
gets ass-raped in jail; the highly obnoxious Artie Lange (Mad
TV) and highly dead Chris Farley try to squeeze laughs out
of their corpulence; Gary Coleman and Adam Sandler appear for
so-over-the-top-they're-under-the-bottom cameos; Chevy Chase and
Don Rickles do what they always do, tiredly--and none of it is
funny. Then again, if you willingly go to a movie directed by
Bob Saget (of America's Stupidest Home Videos fame), you
have no one to blame but yourself.
--Woodruff
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
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
MULAN. Disney storytelling is catching up to the 21st century,
slowly but surely, by reaching ever farther into the past (about
the 5th century, in this case). Mulan recounts the mythical
Chinese tale of a daughter who disguises herself as a boy in order
to take her aged and ailing father's place in the emperor's army.
The crisis is that the Huns have crossed the Great Wall of China,
with plans of deposing the emperor; and in the Disney version,
a band of ragamuffin peasants, lead by a handsome young captain
(singing voice provided by Donny Osmond) and the heroine Fa-Mulan,
are China's last hope. Say what you will about the Disney empire,
the animation here is so arresting at times--from the magic of
watercolor strokes on the film's opening credits, to the breathtaking
vistas of torches bursting into flame all along the Great Wall,
and the Hun army descending a snowy cornice--you may be inclined
to forgive all sins, such as the corny contemporary soundtrack,
and the regrettably undignified ending. Eddie Murphy is a kick
as the demoted spirit-dragon Mushu; and The Single Guy's
Ming-Na Wen offers some much-needed spine to the first Disney
character we know of to suggest the girl worth fighting for might
be "a girl who always speaks her mind." This is the
summer action flick for the wee ones.
--Wadsworth
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
SHOOTING FISH. A cute caper comedy from Britain, Shooting
Fish piles on the winks and smiles and skimps on anything
you might actually feel in your gut. Dan Futterman and Stuart
Townsend play twentysomething orphans who keep pulling off quick
scams so they can save up to buy a mansion. Kate Beckinsale's
pixie hair and perfect teeth star as the guys' perky love interest.
Will Kate fall for the fast-talking, ever-smirking playboy, or
the shy, socially awkward technical wizard? The movie hardly pauses
for an answer, whisking our protagonists off for still more mini-adventures.
For all its mobility, though, Shooting Fish never really
catches you off guard, and gets about as sexy as a science fair.
It would make a nice double feature with Cold Comfort Farm.
Emphasis on the word "nice." --Woodruff
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
THE TRUMAN SHOW. Though it has an exciting premise and
Peter Weir directs the film beautifully, it's a little annoying
how much praise has been heaped upon The Truman Show. Does
the story really have anything to say about mass-media and invasion
of privacy that hasn't been exposed by countless Orwellian knock-offs
and the media itself? Not really. What the picture needs is an
extra twist, something juicy, to push it over the edge. You'd
think Jim Carrey could supply it, but he's toned himself down
here, because (in a twisted bit of casting) he's supposed to play
a non-actor in a world full of actors. His escape from the sunnily
phony Norman Rockwell bubble created by Ed Harris' "Christof"--a
scary portrait of what can happen when you give an artist too
much power--remains fun, but more for the details of the deception
than for Carrey's performance. The Truman Show is well
worth a look, but as far as I'm concerned Albert Brooks' Real
Life retains the kingship in this media-overboard genre. --Woodruff
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