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 AMISTAD. Sure, the story is important, but the movie's
not. Though Steven Spielberg capably navigates the complex 19th-century
politics that were preventing abolition, he fails to shape them
into an effective drama. The tale's catalyst--a black mutiny aboard
a slave ship on its way across the Atlantic--is powerfully, artfully
rendered in scattered, flashback sequences. The rest of the movie,
however, turns into a long, talky yawner full of courtroom scenes
and endless exposition. And unlike Schindler's List, there's
no central character to care about: Matthew McConaughy's quickly
becomes irrelevant, Morgan Freeman's has little to do, and even
Cinque (Djimon Hounsou), the African who led the revolt, is reduced
to a banal noble-savage role. (Anthony Hopkins, playing John Quincy
Adams, shows up just long enough to give a terrific speech--which
John Williams manages to ruin with his intrusive, uninspired score.)
Amistad vividly re-imagines history, but there's no heart;
it's just a big-budget history lesson. --Woodruff
ANASTASIA. Against all odds, Anastasia eventually
won me over. The movie gets off to a typically lame-brained start
by attributing the fall of the Czar to a magical spell by Rasputin,
conveniently ignoring the rest of the Russian Revolution. Glossing
over Anastasia's amnesia and the murder of her parents doesn't
help. But once the "could-she-be-the-princess?" fantasy
kicks in and leaves history behind, Anastasia becomes a
pleasant little movie full of first-rate animation and mercifully
brief musical sequences. The love story between the title character
and Dmitri (a con-man who unknowingly trains Anastasia to pretend
to be Anastasia) is so effective, in fact, that the evil schemes
of Rasputin (now half-dead) and his droll bat sidekick Bartok
(hilariously voiced by Hank Azaria) almost seem tacked on. I'm
not so sure Anastasia will be a hit with kids--it scores low on
the easily hummable tunes and cute animals meter--but I enjoyed
it. Moreover, it's great to see 20th Century Fox steal some of
Disney's fire (definitely see this before sitting through The
Little Mermaid again). Besides, even when it was slow I had
a swell old time closing my eyes and picturing Meg Ryan and John
Cusack as the voices. --Woodruff
FLUBBER. In this remake of The Absent Minded Professor,
Robin Williams plays the Fred MacMurray role not just absent-humoredly,
but with that saccharine vocal lilt he always uses in kids' movies--the
one that makes him sound like he's trying to reassure a baby.
The flubber itself is anthropomorphized to the point where it
becomes a Gummi human, thus saving us the tedious task of imagining
its personality ourselves. Then there's Weebo, an intelligent
flying robot/secretary whose crush on Williams is, to be honest,
rather sick. Basically, everything in Flubber is blibber-blubber.
Screenwriter John Hughes and his team of corporate filmmakers
have turned the once-charming Disney story into an effects-dominated
rehash that's lost nearly all of its bounce. --Woodruff
HOME ALONE 3. Sometimes, when awakened in the middle of
the night, as if by an unpleasant dream, even though no dream
is remembered, we will stare upwards, unable to move or to reach
for the light or to make a sound, in spite of the darkness and
the sense that something which is not frightening has in some
way scared us. If the bed is otherwise empty, the house devoid
of company, then there's no one to turn to for solace, no one
to whom we can say, "I don't know what it is; nor could I
explain it if I did know. I only know that what I am was felt
to be in jeopardy, or perhaps beyond that, unredeemable, irretrievable,
even undone and never made." On nights such as these, when
even our souls threaten to abandon us, we can truly, and with
deepest sensibility, say that we are Home Alone. So take
the kids because this is a slam-bang adventure where a single,
scrappy lad with Rube Goldberg's inventiveness and Errol Flynn's
panache manages to repeatedly thwart, humiliate, and thrash the
kookiest gang of international criminals this side of the IRA!!!
--DiGiovanna
THE JACKAL. An assassination plot is about to be carried
out by a ruthless hit-man who's a master of disguise, and the
only man who can stop him must be released from prison in order
to do so. Now that's originality! For all who haven't seen The
Rock, In the Line of Fire, The Professional, The Day of the Jackal,
or about 17 dozen other films about über-assassins and experts
let out of jail so they can stop them, this is the most daring,
innovative movie since Godard's Breathless. Director Michael
Caton-Jones approaches Bruce Willis' smirking sadism in much the
same way he did Tim Roth's character in Rob Roy--that is,
he lets mind-numbing evil permeate the entire picture, hoping
we'll be relieved when the accent-voiced hero (Richard Gere) finally
saves the day. Aye, isn't it time for a new approach, laddie?
--Woodruff
KISS OR KILL. Just in case you haven't seen enough variations
on the young-lovers-on-the-run movie, here's one set in the desolate
Australian outback. The twist is that the lovers, played by Matt
Day and Frances O'Conner (both last seen in Love and Other
Catastrophes), have good reason to suspect each other of the
throat-slitting murders that mysteriously occur wherever they
go. Though the film feels cool, with its grainy cinematography,
enigmatic minor characters and listless narration, it's loosely
executed to a fault. Key narrative elements are left so sketchy,
so "whatever," that suspense drains through the cracks.
Somebody please tell director Bill Bennett that excessive jump
cuts and other forms of purposeful sloppiness no longer qualify
as style. --Woodruff
THE RAINMAKER. John Grisham's story of a courtroom battle
between a fledgling lawyer and a corrupt insurance company may
be too slight for the big screen, but (shhh!) don't tell Francis
Ford Coppola--he thinks he's directing an epic. He's turned this
TV-movie-of-the-week into a two-and-a-half-hour, star-studded
opus complete with an irrelevant and equally TV-like sub-plot
involving Claire Danes as an abused wife. In spite of its generic
underpinnings, however, The Rainmaker is a fine film: The
pacing's smooth, the cinematography and Memphis locations lovely,
and the performances kick butt. Jon Voight is snaky as ever as
a conniving corporate lawyer; and newcomer Johnny Whitworth is
well-restrained as a leukemia victim who dies because the insurance
company won't honor his claim to get a bone-marrow transplant.
Best of all are Mickey Rourke, chewing up the scenery as a shifty
lawyer named "Bruiser," and Danny DeVito as Matt Damon's
unscrupulous but practical-minded assistant. I usually find DeVito
annoying, but he almost steals the show here. Mary Kay Place,
Dean Stockwell, Roy Scheider, Danny Glover and the great Teresa
Wright also star. --Woodruff
FOR RICHER OR POORER. A complete lack of effort marks this
"film." The plot, about an obnoxious land developer
and his stereotypical rich-bitch shopaholic wife, each redeemed
by spending a couple of weeks with an Amish family, is almost
too embarrassing to recount. Every element of this entertainment
alternative is so trite that I can only imagine it was written
by some kind of scriptwriting computer program which analyzed
all of the mediocre comedies of the last 10 years and reduced
them to their most banal moments. The only thing that stands out
is Kirstie Alley's incredibly grating performance, which almost
makes Tim Allen look good by comparison. Almost. While I was watching
this, two audience members actually fell asleep, and a third left
to rent a Pauly Shore film. --DiGiovanna
SHALL WE DANCE? This elegant, sweet-spirited comedy focuses
on Shohei Sugiyama (Koji Yakusyo), a quiet-tempered 42-year-old
businessman who starts secretly taking dance lessons to ward off
his mid-life crisis. As his dancing gradually improves, he begins
feeling less empty, and that's great for him but not for his wife,
who worries he's having an affair. Which, in a way, he is--though
you can bet they'll be two-stepping by the end of the movie. Writer/director
Masayuki Suo's use of dancing as a metaphor for marriage and life
certainly qualifies as corny, but the story addresses its characters'
need to rise above their regimented existence with touching amiability;
and the supporting cast, a combination of frustrated dance instructors
and bumbling would-be waltzers, is terrific. The film's real strength,
though, lies in its pleasantly flowing dance scenes, which eschew
editing in favor of wide shots so that the screen becomes the
dance floor. Shall We Dance? won all of Japan's 13 Academy
Awards, and it's the only movie I've ever seen that inspired a
couple to dance in the parking lot afterwards. --Woodruff
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