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 A CIVIL ACTION. This true story of a lawsuit gets off to
a rousing start, with snappy, somewhat Mamet-esque dialogue and
an extremely promising cast. William Macy, Robert Duvall and that
Vinnie Barbarino guy all turn in crisp performances, though sadly
the versatile Tony Shalhoub (Big Night, The Siege) is wasted
in a tiny role. The plot concerns a sleazy personal injury lawyer
who gets overly involved in a case against some polluters. There's
a lot of good moments, but the film gets desperately lost about
three quarters of the way through and trails off like a drunk
telling a story. Things get so out of hand that director Stephen
Zaillian finally resorts to the very non-cinematic move of just
putting text on the screen. Hey Stephen, if we wanted to read
we could have stayed home. Nonetheless, the fact that I enjoyed
the film at all implies that it must have been pretty good, since
my viewing of it was marred by an audience of corpulent half-wits
who babbled like a convention of Tourrette's syndrome sufferers.
Seriously, if you have nothing interesting to say, just write
it down and send it to the Arizona Daily Star's letters
page instead of barking it out like a trained dog every time something
your Paleolithic intellect is capable of understanding happens
to flicker across a movie screen. And if one more of you cretinous
semi-literates brings a laser pointer to a movie theater I'm gonna...(editor's
note: here the crayon-written text breaks off into an illegible
smear).
--DiGiovanna (on his way to a well-deserved rest at a quiet
place where he will be properly cared for)
A SIMPLE PLAN. Director Sam Raimi takes the campy, violent
and juvenile sensibility that he honed to perfection on such films
as Evil Dead and Darkman, and such television productions
as Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena, Warrior
Princess, and chucks it out the window for this subtle and
very grown-up film noir piece. An accountant (the omnipresent
Bill Paxton), his mentally challenged brother (the also kind of
omnipresent Billy Bob Thornton) and his brother's trashy, drunken
friend (the largely unknown Brent Briscoe) find four million dollars
inside a wrecked plane in a snow covered forest. They decide to
hide the money until they know whether or not the heat is on.
In standard noir fashion, double crosses, murders and intrigues
ensue. The script is, obviously, not terribly original; but it
is perfectly paced and plotted, a flawless rendition of this time-worn
story. And Bridget Fonda wears this incredible fake-pregnant-belly
prosthesis...probably the finest fake-belly prosthesis since they
made the waif-like Marlon Brando look fat in The Island of
Dr. Moreau. Although you should probably see it for the disturbing
and evocative story of ordinary evil, rather than for the fake-belly
prosthesis. But it's a really good fake belly prosthesis. Really.
--DiGiovanna
WAKING NED DEVINE. Ah, the clever Irish. When they're not
plotting world domination or making those Tamagotchis and lederhosen
that they're so famous for, you can usually find them doing those
slithery, funky, dances to those crazy jungle beats. So, what
could be more fun than watching a village of 52 Irish persons
try to con the Irish National Lottery out of nearly seven million
Irish pounds ("pound" or "punt" is a zany
Irish word for 1.4695 dollars)? I'll tell you: nothing. Waking
Ned Devine is good, clean Irish fun, even if it does include
some shots of naked Irish men. Really old naked Irish men, so
don't get all excited. Naked old Irish people are in no way pornographic.
And Waking Ned Devine is full of non-naked fun and surprises,
too, like village intrigues, fake eulogies, pints of Guinness
and a swiftly moving plot that unfolds against gorgeous landscapes
that were shot on location in the Isle of Man. Which is just so
Irish, to shoot a movie about Ireland in another country. So rather
than waste your time going to some Babylonian or Akkadian movie
that will just try to numb you with explosions and pseudo-snappy
catch-phrases, go see this refreshing and crisp Irish film that
features spot-on acting by Ian Bannen and David Kelly as Irish
men, and funny, believable dialogue by the extremely Irish writer/director
Kirk Jones. Well, okay, Kirk Jones is English, but he's so good
he should be Irish.
--DiGiovanna
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