Filler

Filler Film Clips

AMERICAN BUFFALO. If you like that sort of thing, you can't beat David Mamet for writing the strangest, most mannered and yet wonderful dialogue an ear has ever enjoyed. If you are the type to savor dialogue as you would music, then American Buffalo is a rare gem. If, on the other hand, you watch movies for like, content and story and all the pretty pictures, then American Buffalo is bound to disappoint. Dustin Hoffman and Dennis Franz star as a couple of losers, Teach and Don, who are basically obsessed with a buffalo head nickel. Their depopulated world looks like an Edward Hopper painting and their moral palate is just as bleak. The regular Mamet themes of manhood, friendship, betrayal and disappointment are all touched on, but never satisfactorily developed or resolved. Rent Glengarry Glen Ross if you want to see it done right.

BIG NIGHT. In the tradition of Like Water For Chocolate and Eat Drink Man Woman, Big Night revolves around the preparing and eating of food, Italian food. The story follows the adventures of Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Stanley Tucci), brothers from Italy who open an Italian restaurant on the Jersey shore in the 1950s. Jersey isn't ready yet for salads of radiccio and plates of risotto, and most people go across the street to a joint that serves a "criminal" version of Italian food (according to master chef Primo), spaghetti and meatballs. But the brothers have a chance to save their ailing business by throwing a party for jazz great Louis Prima and generating a ton of publicity. Like an elaborate meal with many courses, Big Night takes its time delivering its many pleasures, including fabulous, indirect dialogue and great acting. In its emphasis on the relationships between characters and its tackling of meaning-of-life themes, Big Night resembles European movies more than Hollywood ones. But it's in English!!

EMMA. The glut of 19th-century literary adaptations continues with a new version of Emma, Austen's most lighthearted novel. Gwyneth Paltrow stars as a young woman with the unfortunate habit of meddling in other people's affairs. The plot is the same as in Clueless, except the women in Emma wear nightgowns and the guys ride horses. Emma is not as good as Sense and Sensibility, but if you like to see meek girls find husbands, it's a perfectly solid movie; and Paltrow has such a beautiful smile it's a delight to watch her, even when she's not quite in stride.

FIRST WIVES CLUB. White ladies are doing it for themselves in this gleefully man-bashing tale of the fury of women scorned. Bette Midler, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn play the discarded first wives of wealthy husbands who have cast them off in favor of beautiful, young, ditzy girlfriends. The wives mourn their fate, bond, then set about getting even in mildly amusing ways. Though the movie is predictable and silly, and though the victimhood of women is stressed, celebrated and monumentalized here (even as the wives take matters into their own hands), First Wives Club is still engaging because of the fresh subject matter. It's no All About Eve, but it's still interesting to see middle-aged women depicted on screen as something other than happy mothers for once.

FLY AWAY HOME. Anna Paquin stars in this dignified kid's movie about a young girl who's adopted by a gaggle of orphaned Canadian geese. Amy (Paquin) is lonely and withdrawn after the death of her mother, but the discovery of the goslings invigorates her and leads to a round of bonding with her dad, nature, the news media and her own little self. An even directorial style and great cinematography help to keep the corniness from getting out of hand as Amy learns to fly an ultralight plane and leads the wild geese in their migration south. Beautiful footage of geese flying beside the enthusiastic Paquin will warm the chilliest heart.

LAST MAN STANDING. Director Walter Hill pulls out all the stops in this stylized western set, oddly enough, in a 1930s border town. Bruce Willis stars as a wandering gangster who plays both sides of rival bootlegging gangs against each other, with only one god to answer to: The god of cash. This amoral behavior can't last though--not while there are skirts around that need a little savin'. As the title suggests, nearly everyone in this movie perishes, the only question is when and maybe how. Hill scrambles together hard-boiled dialogue, Old West ambiance and 1990s gunplay to create an inadvertently funny and wholly unmoving story. Or maybe it's intentionally funny? Who can tell anymore.

NELLY AND MONSIEUR ARNAUD. A moving, unsentimental film by Claude Sautet (Un Coeur en Hiver) about the friendship between a beautiful young woman (Emmanuelle Beart, fresh from her role in Mission Impossible) and an older man (Michel Serrault). Nelly is a stunning but poor woman living in Paris with a depressed husband who won't get out of bed. She falls under the kind patronage of Monsieur Arnaud, a wealthy but lonely older man. With his help, she leaves her husband and starts to move forward in life, while Monsieur Arnaud simultaneously begins to examine his past. Their relationship, though not sexual, comes to involve far more complex elements of love, romance, dependency, hate and desire. Though quite reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieslowski's Three Colors: Red, the film is anything but derivative.

Special Screenings

UFVA FESTIVAL. The University Film and Video Association presents its yearly Student Film and Video Festival this weekend at the University of Arizona. It's the world's largest student festival, and the only one that tours, showing different films at different venues. This year's offerings include narrative, documentary and experimental films from energetic young filmmakers concerned with punk rock, talking bowls of oatmeal, dysfunctional families and army brats. This is a rare chance to see high-quality student work that might otherwise pass Tucson viewers by. The screening takes place in the Modern Languages Building auditorium, at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 3. Admission is free.
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