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 GADJO DILO. How many times have you searched in vain for
a fresh, derogatory term for white people? Well, search no more,
because now you can add "gadjo" to that delightful list
that includes honky, haole, and ofay. "Gadjo Dilo,"
which is Romani for "Crazy-Ass White Motherfucker,"
is a meandering film about a young French man who moves in with
a group of gypsies while searching for the mysterious Nora Luca.
Seems Nora Luca is a gypsy singer, and, for no apparent reason,
this crazy-ass white boy is obsessed with finding her. He doesn't,
but he does get a taste of gypsy life, which apparently revolves
around telling other people to place their mouths on your genitals...everyone
from the tiniest children to the wizened elders seems to do this
at least 10 times a day. Gadjo Dilo is either a moving
and accurate portrait of life amongst the Romanian gypsies, or
just two plotless hours with intermittent scenes of hot sex, great
music and eye-catching costumes. In French, Romanian and Romani,
with English subtitles, and, for no known reason, Italian credits--I
kid you not. --DiGiovanna
I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. The killer might
have a good memory, but he's still pretty boring. And, as far
as horror films go, if the maniac's a yawn so's the movie. Julie
(Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray (Freddie Prinze Jr.) hit a man
with a car and left him for dead in I Know What You Did Last
Summer, and apparently, he's still rather upset about it.
The script cleverly isolates Julie and her friends on a tropical
island during hurricane season, but other than that it's pretty
standard fare. It takes the worst of straight-to-video horror
films (underdeveloped characters, lack of a plot, bad music) but
not the best (nudity, gore, camp), and the minimal suspense consists
mostly of painfully long sequences of Hewitt looking for her stalker.
--Higgins
LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. When you heard about the plot to Life
is Beautiful, you probably thought, "Oh no, not another
zany comedy about the Holocaust!" Roberto Benigni plays a
Jewish bookstore owner in 1940s Italy who, along with his son,
is carted away to a Nazi concentration camp. Benigni seeks to
shield his son from the terrors by convincing him that they are
on vacation, and that the degradations of the camp are actually
part of a game. The first to collect 1,000 points through starvation,
hard labor and quiet obedience to "the scary men who yell"
will win a tank. Unfortunately, the first half hour of this film
is an overwhelmingly annoying series of slapstick routines, but
once Benigni and family are carted off to the camps the movie
achieves a nearly perfect balance between comedy and terror. It's
definitely worthwhile to tolerate the first section in order to
see something so rare as the second. This week Life is Beautiful
was nominated by Italy as its Academy Award submission. --DiGiovanna
LIVING OUT LOUD. This journey-of-self-realization flick
has the same problem a lot of movies have these days: It's entertaining
but annoying. The ever-charming Holly Hunter plays Judith Nelson,
a wealthy doctor's wife who loses it when she discovers her husband
is in love with a younger woman. She slowly pulls herself back
together with the help of some quirky new friends, a saucy nightclub
singer (Queen Latifah) and the building's elevator operator (Danny
DeVito). The ad campaign for this movie points out that director
Richard LaGravenese also wrote The Fisher King and the
screenplay for The Bridges of Madison County, as though
this were a good thing. Living Out Loud suffers from the
same gut-kick episodes of sentimentality and overwrought meaning-of-life
moments as in LaGravenese's earlier movies, cheap shots all of
them. Does anyone really need a movie to show them how to connect
more deeply with their fellow humans? Even so, this could have
been a decent film if LaGravenese had cut out the kids-dying-of-cancer,
crack-baby-rescue subplots. The performances are quite good and
the story zips along; yet, at the end of it all, it feels awfully
fake for a movie about "authenticity." --Richter
MEET JOE BLACK. That's right, Brad Pitt plays Death in
Meet Joe Black. Imagine The Seventh Seal remade
as a three-hour episode of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and
you might get some idea of how pretentious, repetitive, and boring
this movie is. What happens is this: Death comes to earth for
a vacation, where he falls in love with a strange, wealthy, young
woman (Clair Forlani), a doctor who can't stop squinting. Her
father is Anthony Hopkins, and he is stinking rich, and quite
understandably does not want his daughter to marry Death. All
this occurs within a leisurely three-hour time frame. Somewhere
in there is the least sexy sex scene from a non-porno movie ever,
featuring super close-ups of the pores on Brad Pitt's nose. This
reviewer recommends you stay home and clean the grout between
your tiles with a toothbrush. You'll have a better time.
--Richter
PLEASANTVILLE. A charming movie with teeth, too. Two bored
teenagers of the '90s get zapped into a bland, black-and-white
family inside a 1950s sitcom, a land with a veneer of harmony
over a thick, deadening layer of repression. It's pretty cute
watching '90s teens trying to cope with the peppy mores of the
'50s while subtly undermining them; but even better, once the
'50s folk start getting laid, their gray world begins to turn
colors. This is one of the best-looking, smartest uses of computerized
special effects so far, and this Capra-esque story of a threatened
community is just the right place for it. --Richter
PRACTICAL MAGIC. Survey a bunch of witches about what they
want most, and nine out of 10 will tell you good, old-fashioned
love. The other 10-percent will insist that their true desire
is a soundtrack that masquerades as a script. Sally (Sandra Bullock)
and Gillian (Nicole Kidman) are sisters (but, really, aren't we
all?) who are witchy and cursed--if they fall in love, their men
will die. Sally resolves to beat it with normality (husband, kids,
etc.), while Gillian accepts it and pursues a good time. This,
of course, means that Gillian must be punished, so her boyfriend
returns from the dead to torture her. Sally exorcises him, then
falls in love with a cop (Aidan Quinn) and makes out. The more
interesting story--the one of their aunts (Stockard Channing and
Diane Wiest)--is unfortunately of lesser importance. But at least
Wiest gets to utter the line, "There's a little witch in
all of us." Gals, this is empowering stuff. --Higgins
THE SIEGE. The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
(ADC) has expressed grave fears about the potential effects of
this film, which they believe could increase hatred and suspicion
towards members of the Muslim and American-Arab communities. The
Siege tells the story of a wave of terrorist bombings that
occur in New York City. In response, the U.S. government declares
martial law and imprisons all Arab men (which here seems
to mean anyone of Persian, Middle Eastern or North African descent)
between the ages of 14 and 30. The film does attempt to address
the issue of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice in the United
States; however, in its broad Hollywood way, it employs stereotypes,
simplifications and sometimes offensive misrepresentations of
Islam. Perhaps most egregious are the images of the terrorists
(who are only referred to as "Muslims" and "Arabs,"
as though those terms could constitute a cohesive identity or
a terrorist organization) performing ritual hand washing prior
to their attacks: the film implies that this is something specifically
done in preparation for acts of violence, when in fact this is
a daily ritual that Muslims engage in prior to prayer. When the
army places all of Brooklyn's young males of Arab descent in a
camp, the scene shows an unrealistically homogenous crowd of people,
all with the same pigmentation and clothing. The effort to mute
this effect by casting Tony Shalhoub as one of the FBI agents
in charge of the investigation is itself muted by having him play
sidekick and second-fiddle to leading man Denzel Washington. Still,
interesting issues are raised here: in several scenes, disembodied
voices point out that this kind of government action would not
be tolerated against Jewish or Black Americans; the army is definitely
portrayed as villainous in their treatment of the Arabic prisoners;
and there are (fairly awkward) assurances that "most"
Arabs are decent, law-abiding citizens. The very fact that the
film begins to question the prejudices against Arabs and Muslims
shows a radical leap forward in Hollywood thinking. In spite of
the very reasonable reservations of the ADC, the history of American
cinema shows that clumsy first steps like The Siege are
often signs of real progress. --DiGiovanna
SOLDIER. Marx once said that the proletariat must "safeguard
itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them
all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment."
Wow, he could have written the script for Soldier, wherein
a team of super-soldiers are replaced by newer, even superer soldiers,
who go on an evil killing spree (as opposed to the good killing
sprees of the original super-soldiers). See, while the original
super-soldiers are nearly soulless automatons trained from birth
only to blow things up and destroy human life, the newer, superer-soldiers
are almost entirely soulless automatons, trained from before
birth only to blow things up and destroy human life. Kurt Russell
plays one of the original super-soldiers, who, while speaking
only 62 words during the course of the film (Entertainment
Weekly counted 69 words, but I stand by my figures), shows
himself to be nearly almost human-like in defending some poor
interstellar settlers against the superer-soldiers. The superer-soldiers,
see, are all bald, whereas the super-soldiers have some hair.
So they're, like, our friends. Caution: This film contains some
scenes of hugging. --DiGiovanna
TOUCH OF EVIL. Thirty years after its original release,
this version of Orson Welles' film is re-edited according to changes
the director requested after viewing the studio cut that significantly
altered his vision. A beautifully shot film noir, the story follows
the investigation of a car bombing in a small town on the Mexican
border. Newlyweds Mike (Charlton Heston) and Susan Vargas (Janet
Leigh) witness the explosion during their honeymoon, so Mike joins
a nasty American police chief, Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), in
the investigation. In true noir style, Welles creates a claustrophobic
world with a slippery definition of morality, where the cops are
sometimes as corrupt as the criminals. Though the murder is solved
by the end of the film, the most compelling question--why Heston
is playing a Mexican--remains unanswered.
--Higgins
URBAN LEGEND. Did you ever hear the one about the Hollywood
movie that was actually satisfying? A friend of my second cousin's
friend heard about it, and it's true! Several of those scary stories
you believed as a kid are compiled here for a by-the-book but
nonetheless clever horror film. The tortured female this time
is Natalie (Alicia Witt), a coed with a past that includes the
death of a teenage boy because of her enactment of an urban legend.
Well, somebody knows what she did last summer and is playing out
other terrifying tales on her friends, such as hiding in the back
of a car with an ax and killing her roommate while she sleeps
in the next bed. Robert Englund (best known as Freddy Krueger
from the Nightmare on Elm Street series) plays one of the
main suspects, Professor Wexler, and doe-eyed Jared Leto and clean-skinned
Rebecca Gayheart offer lots of frightening cuteness.
--Higgins
VAMPIRES. Please benefit from my suffering and don't waste
two hours of your life hoping that director John Carpenter's (Halloween,
Escape from New York) latest effort will be bad-good rather
than bad-offensive. James Woods, showing his wood in particularly
tight jeans, and Daniel Baldwin, struggling to stay awake, play
vampire slayers who pursue the father of all vampires. Along the
way they pick up Sheryl Lee so that Baldwin can take off her clothes,
tie her up, call her a bitch and eventually fall in love; and
a priest, so Woods can talk about his penis. Interesting ideas
surface--such as the mixing of the horror genre with the western
and viewing vampirism as a virus--but only for about 30 seconds.
After that, it's back to Lee's rope burns. If you hate women,
this film could be for you, but I still think you'll be tripped
up by the bad dialogue, clichéd revenge plot, and hokey
music. Oh, and there's some homophobic stuff thrown in for extra
flavor. --Higgins
THE WATERBOY. Going into an Adam Sandler movie, I expected
his aren't-mentally-challenged-people-funny persona, an aren't-gay-guys-funny
joke or two, and maybe a cameo from a Saturday Night Live cohort.
I got all this, and so much more. This is no mindless comedy,
it's a message movie--proof that those Hollywood CEOs do care
about our futures, and the futures of our children. No one wants
that "Mommy, what were trees like?" bumper sticker to
come true, so the masterminds behind The Waterboy demonstrate
the importance of environmental consciousness by recycling the
Forrest Gump script. It killed enough trees, so these eco-friendly
folks simply took the story of an oddly athletic man with a IQ
of 90 and set it on a football field. And to fill in plotholes
without wasting additional paper, there's lots of recycled music
(from Rush to Anita Ward) to help you along. For example, when
Waterboy is awfully lonely, "Lonely Boy" plays in the
background. Get it? Apparently careers are reusable, too, as witnessed
by the dynamic screen presence of Henry Winkler as a coach. The
funniest parts, though, are the recycled stereotypes. Southerners
are especially hee-larious, what with those durn accents and all.
--Higgins
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME. Hamlet fretted over what dreams may
come when we shuffle off this mortal coil, but Robin Williams
doesn't have to worry, because he's already been to heaven. And
Annabella Sciorra has been to hell. This well-intentioned but
stupid mutation of the Orpheus story (based on the novel by Richard
Matheson) concerns a very happy couple who like each other a lot.
In fact, Christy and Annie Nielsen (Williams and Sciorra) are
soulmates. They have it all: an upscale life, a nanny, expensive
objects, until their kids die in a car crash, and then Christy
dies in one, too. Eventually he ends up in heaven, and his wife
ends up in hell--Max Von Sydow plays the shrink-turned-ferryman
who navigates between the two. The special effects are pretty
darn nifty here, and as a welcome relief, they don't involve any
shooting or blowing up. But the freshman-level philosophy ("You
know who you are because you think you do!" ) and tons of
painful psychoblather shove this movie into the fiery depths of
banality. There is one good part: We get to hear Robin Williams
called "Christy" for two hours, evoking images of a
freshly scrubbed teenage girl in a tennis skirt. --Richter
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