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 AFTERGLOW. Somewhere there must be a great script for Afterglow,
because short stretches of brilliant dialogue show up in this
otherwise intensely mediocre and cowardly film. The plot concerns
a middle-aged marred man (Nick Nolte, whose new hair piece is
apparently from outer space) having an affair with a young married
woman (Lara Flynn Boyle, who looks so good she figures she doesn't
have to do anything besides pout and flounce). Meanwhile, unbeknownst
to them, their spouses carry on a parallel affair, in a story
that is apparently inspired by some odd hybrid of Days of our
Lives and Three's Company. Gee, I wonder if the two
couples will run into each other at the bar they both frequent,
and I wonder if Nolte and wife Julie Christie will ever find their
long-lost daughter, and I wonder if there isn't some chance that
an adult drama can be produced without using the most familiar
of story elements and the safest of endings? --DiGiovanna
THE BORROWERS. Set in an anachronistic city that's part
'90s and part '40s, part Dickensian London and part Spielbergian
America, The Borrowers is far more inventive and detailed
than you'd expect from a movie that could be titled Honey,
I Shrunk the Stereotypical Red-Haired Limeys. The dumb plot,
which involves John Goodman as an obnoxiously evil real-estate
lawyer who wants to destroy the home where the Borrowers hide
out, can be overlooked when it leads to this many clever little-people-in-a-big-world scenes. Whether the Borrowers are in the refrigerator (with product
placement galore, of course), sneaking among toy soldiers or hopping
from bottle to bottle in a dairy factory, the special effects
remain impeccable and there's always a palpable sense of danger.
I actually worried the Borrowers might be squished at any moment.
Kids really seemed to enjoy themselves, too--especially the girl
who held up her teddy bear throughout so it could see the movie.
When interviewed, the teddy bear said, "That was terrific!
I very much liked it!" in a cutesy voice that became muffled
as it was put away in a small, pink backpack. --Woodruff
CAUGHT UP. A wonderful surprise. I expected just another
black gangster flick, but Caught Up turned out to be an
exceedingly well-spun yarn that had far more in common with film
noir and twisty mysteries than Menace II Society. Bokeem
Woodbine stars as a tough, youngish ex-con who's determined to
go straight and build himself a respectable life. That proves
near impossible as the film keeps throwing strange, shady characters
in his path, including criminals, mean cops and a sultry psychic
played by the sexy Cynda Williams. The nothing-is-what-it-seems
plot convolutes continuously from there, but it's well-sustained
by a palpably surreal nighttime L.A. atmosphere, Bokeem's compelling
intelligence and director Darin Scott's terse screenplay. Scott,
who also wrote Tales From the Hood and Sprung, displays great skill at lacing standard genres (including the African-American
morality tale) into a fresh-feeling whole; and though at times
Caught Up heads way over the top, the storytelling remains
solid. --Woodruff
DARK CITY. It's always dark in Dark City. So dark that
the working titles for this film were Dark Empire and Dark
World, so we can be assured of darkness. There are villains
who wear outfits left over from Hellraiser, with make-up
borrowed from Nosferatu, as they roam the back lot vacated
after the shooting of City of Lost Children. Interiors
from The Crow are peopled with characters out of Naked
City, and an evil doctor who seems to have borrowed everything
he owns from Terry Gilliam's prop closet. The story, dark as it
is, moves along at a decent clip, except towards the end when
the main characters get in the Boat of Expository Dialogue in
order to discover the secret of the Dark City, and just why it's
so damn dark there. A decent level of entertainment, though completely
devoid of the originality that would've given it punch, there
are still a few visual delights in this derivative sci-fi thriller.
And it's so dark. So very, very dark. --DiGiovanna
KISSING A FOOL. This low-budget comedy with cute-guy substitutes
David Schwimmer and Jason Lee is reasonably entertaining, reasonably
funny, and reasonably moving. Basically, sleaze-ball sportscaster
and cocksman Schwimmer finds love with the one woman (Mili Avital)
who his sensitive and loving best friend Jason Lee could truly
love, and she loves Schwimmer, but then realizes, no, she loves
Lee, but then there's trouble, because even though Lee set her
up with Schwimmer he did it because he loves her and couldn't
express his love but then Schwimmer convinces Lee to try and bed
Avital in order to test her love for Schwimmer but, quelle
surprise, the plan backfires and Avital and Lee fall in love
but then she finds out about the test and the love thing takes
a downturn but the whole thing is told in flashback from a wedding
so we know it all worked out for somebody but we don't know who.
But we guess really quickly. Still, not an entirely unfunny film,
if that's your romantic comedy bag. --DiGiovanna
KRIPPENDORF'S TRIBE. In Mr. Holland's Opus, Richard
Dreyfuss reaffirmed the heroism of teaching and won himself a
best-actor Oscar nomination in the process. Perhaps the good karma
was just too much for the guy, because in Krippendorf's Tribe
Dreyfuss plays a disorganized anthropologist who squanders his
grant money and then pretends he's discovered a unique new culture
in hopes of maintaining the cash flow. When colleagues demand
evidence, Dreyfuss and his three kids dress up in the Papua New
Guinea equivalent of blackface and film each other performing
crude (in more ways than one) rituals in their back yard. Wouldn't
you know it, further kooky comic hijinks ensue. There's a hint
of social satire here on the level of "See? We're the really
primitive ones," and Dreyfuss is somewhat sympathetic because,
sniff, he's a single parent. But the movie's one offensive joke
and sitcom-style wackiness get mighty painful mighty fast. That
Dreyfuss, Lily Tomlin (as a skeptical academic) and Jenna Elfman
(as an aggressively peppy love interest) try to reduce the agony
via self-mocking exuberance didn't stop me from praying for their
characters' swift and merciless demise. If there's one thing Krippendorf's
Tribe teaches us, it's that when all else fails, you can always
pick on the minorities who don't have access to movie theaters.
--Woodruff
KUNDUN. The most annoying thing about the Tibet vogue that
has swept Hollywood is that the actors and trendies who have hopped
on this bandwagon are under the impression that Lhasa was some
kind of delightful Shangri-La prior to the coming of the Chinese.
In fact, it was run by a brutally oppressive and corrupt theocratic
regime. Somehow, director Scorcese had the courage to at least
hint at the atrocious state of affairs in Tibet under monastic
rule. Further, his cast is made up exclusively of Tibetan, Chinese
and Indian actors, despite what I'm sure was an overwhelming urge
to call up Keanu Reeves to play the role of the Dalai Lama. The
Himalayan landscapes (mimed by Moroccan mountains) are hard to
shoot poorly, and Scorcese makes good use of Tibetan sand painting
as a transitional device. Oddly, in spite of his dedication to
authenticity in every other area, he largely eschews the rich
musical tradition of Tibet in favor of a limp soundtrack by experimentalist-turned-new-age-shlockmeister
Philip Glass. All of Glass' noodling drones turn the atmosphere
to overly reverential mush, and the film often takes on the emotionally
manipulative mode of a television movie of the week. Nonetheless,
it's beautiful to look at and takes enough risks to make the viewer
wish that other films would be this daring, and that this one
had been a little more so. --DiGiovanna
MA VIE EN ROSE. Ma Vie en Rose (My Life in Pink)
is an original little movie from Belgium about a 7-year-old boy
who's thoroughly convinced that he would rather be a girl. Ludovic's
(Georges Du Fresne) cross-dressing antics are received with tolerance
at first; but with time, parents school mates and neighbors learn
to hate the tyke for being different. Filmed in bright, splashy
colors, with a lot of ultra-femme dream sequences on the pink
planet of a Barbie-esque character named Pam, Ma Vie en Rose
has the sweet, harmless look of a store-bought birthday cake.
This stands in stark contrast to the gritty disintegration of
Ludovic's family, who find themselves buckling to peer pressure
in the community. Though adults in the family get to change and
grow, poor little Ludovic basically gets booted around through
the whole thing, which is kind of hard to watch. --Richter
PALMETTO. Oklahoma authorities recently made themselves
look stupid when they outlawed Volker Schlöndorff's 1979
film The Tin Drum for what they construed as child pornography.
They would have looked smarter if they'd instead outlawed this
Schlöndorff film for mediocrity. It's a neo-noir about a
Florida schlub (Woody Harrelson, in full density mode) who gets
caught up in a poorly planned fake-kidnapping scheme. Despite
a humid, tropical setting and some steamy scenes, the film has
the dramatic resonance of a TV special--when it's hot, it's not
that hot and when it's cool, it's not that cool. Worse yet, the
casting's all mixed up: Gina Gershon plays the nice, dependable
girlfriend while Elisabeth Shue plays the crazed, pointy-bra-wearing
femme fatale. You keep waiting for the devilish-looking Gershon
to do something nasty, and hoping the white-bread Shue will stop
embarrassing herself by trying to mimic Gershon. Playing against
type is one thing; playing against type ineffectually or without
an (intentionally) humorous payoff is another. --Woodruff
SPHERE. What if your deepest fears came to life? Would
they all involve snakes and tentacled sea creatures? Glazed donuts,
perhaps? If you're prone to hazy Freudian interpretations, Sphere
has a kind of goofy camp appeal, but as a thriller it's only average.
A group of scientists descend to the bottom of the ocean, where
they greet an alien entity that looks just like giant, gold marble.
But it shows them the depths of themselves, you see. And then
all their deepest fears, desires etc., come to life, and all of
these things conveniently involve sea creatures. It's probably
for the best: Why waste a good underwater set? Dustin Hoffman
plays a cuddly psychologist; Sharon Stone plays an independent
but sensitive marine biologist; Samuel L. Jackson plays a brilliant,
weird mathematician. Remember: even if Sphere were based
on Michael Crighton's very best novel, it would still be based
on a Michael Crighton novel. --Richter
THE SWEET HEREAFTER. Kurt Vonnegut once described the literature
of a race of beings who were not bounded by time. Their books
were essentially read all at once, and contained a series of unordered
sentences that, when taken as a whole, produced a still image
of ideas, emotions, and histories. Atom Egoyan has directed films
that work in much the same way, weaving their stories back and
forth across time until the mystery of the characters' actions
and reactions becomes clear in the light of devastating, defining
or punctative events. In Sweet Hereafter, Ian Holm stars
as a lawyer out to use a small-town tragedy for personal gain,
and his overly mannered performance is the film's weakest link.
Otherwise, all the actors, many from Egoyan's usual troupe, play
their parts with a stiff naturalism that perfectly complements
the horrific central event that practically disanimates an entire
community. Two stories of the worst possibilities in father-daughter
relations further accentuate the bland unpleasantness of quotidian
existence, and as each thread of the tale is slowly unwound, a
final image of pointless hope and senseless loss is formed. Definitely
one of the bleakest, most despairing, and best films of last year.
--DiGiovanna
WASHINGTON SQUARE. In biographies written before 1990,
Jennifer Jason Leigh claims to have been born in 1958. Recently,
she's changed that to 1962. In either case, she definitely looks
a bit odd playing a 20-year-old opposite the youthful Ben Chaplin.
Even stranger is the fact that she's been cast as the ugly girl;
after all, she was voted one of America's 10 most beautiful women
by Harper's Bazaar. Still, this film captures the stiffness,
self-importance, and general boredom of Henry James' prose. --DiGiovanna
THE WEDDING SINGER. This film calls into question the value
of the very large brain and the opposable thumb possessed by our
species. Really, what's the point in creating cultural artifacts,
if they're as stupid as The Wedding Singer? Adam Sandler
plays a crooner who specializes in weddings (though he quits near
the beginning and is a wedding singer no more); Drew Barrymore
plays the sugar cube he falls for. There are a few little obstacles
to their love, but nothing serious, and a few little jokes thrown
in, but nothing funny. The '80s clothes are the best part of the
whole thing, and that's not saying much. --Richter
ZERO EFFECT. Yes, it is a little like eating rice cakes
and yes, the title does describe what you're left with a few days
after seeing it, but Zero Effect is still a pleasant experience
while it's actually happening. Bill Pullman can't help coming
across as deeply affable, even when he's playing a psycho detective
with a serious mood disorder (proving he is indeed the Jimmy Stewart
of the '90s). Ben Stiller is similarly likable as Arlo, Detective
Zero's faithful sidekick. The two of them go about solving mysteries
with a Watson-and-Holmes routine, complete with amazing deductions
gleaned from mere shreds of evidence, and, for master detective
Zero, a nagging drug problem. The script leans towards the goofy
end of the spectrum, rather than the ironic and witty, which is
a nice change for a comedy in our Seinfeld-dominated era. We award
five special bonus points for the tender age of writer/director
Jake Kasdan, who is just 22. --Richter
Special Screenings
LESBIAN LOOKS. The Lesbian Looks Film and Video Series
continues Friday, March 6, with a program of short works featuring
award-winning romantic comedies from Germany and the U.S. Highlights
include "Two Or Three Things But Nothing For Sure,"
a lyric portrait of author Dorothy Allison; and "The Heroines
of Love," a satiric look at silent movies and an unlikely
romance between soldiers. The series concludes on March 27 with
"Out At Work," a narrative about three American workers
dealing with workplace rights, legislation and labor. The film
will be followed by a panel discussion of workplace issues at
the UA. All screenings are free and begin at 7:30 p.m. in the
Modern Languages Building auditorium on the UA campus. For further
information, call 621-1239.
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