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 THE BIG HIT. Hong Kong director Che-Kirk Wong directed
this slam-bang action/comedy/parody slush, providing yet another
reason for ending our love affair with tongue-in-cheek violence.
Mark Wahlberg plays that new breed of comic hero, the Funny Hit-Man.
Hopelessly insecure and yet super-competent when it comes to killing,
Wahlberg's character is about as funny as a whimpering Doberman
that occasionally mauls babies. One minute he's cute and soft-spoken,
the next minute he's chopping off somebody's leg. Taken as an
irreverent joke for the hipster teenage set, The Big Hit
does have some amusing ideas (the climax revolves around Wahlberg's
efforts to return an overdue video while evading assassins), but
the empty-headed screenplay can't keep up with them. This movie's
idea of witty dialogue is when somebody says "Do you want
the truth?" and somebody else shouts, "You can't handle
the truth!" That's not parody; that's parroty. --Woodruff
BUTCHER BOY. A disturbing adaptation of Patrick McCabe's
disturbing novel, Butcher Boy follows the sad and tempestuous
formative years of Francie Brady (Eamon Owens), a 10-year-old
Irish boy facing the problems Irish boys inevitably face in literature
and movies: alcoholic, violent da's, crazy ma's, and viciously
provincial townsfolk. Francie manages to escape the horror of
his everyday life by retreating with his buddy Joe (Alan Boyle
II) into a fantasy world fueled by comic books and movies. As
the tragedies in his life mount, the volume of his fantasy world
goes up, until all sorts of violent and insane acts seem, well,
fun--both to Francie, and to the spirit of the movie. Director
Neil Jordan mixes elements of Trainspotting, The English Patient,
Sling Blade and The Wonder Years into a goulash that's
both original and unsettling, reminding us how scary and beautiful
the world can look to a child. --Richter
CITY OF ANGELS. Meg Ryan plays a doctor who operates on
human hearts, but is--oh so ironically--unsure of the nature of
her own. Nicolas Cage plays Seth, a creepy angel of God who falls
in love with her. Though reportedly inspired by Wim Wenders' wonderful
Wings of Desire, City of Angels has none of the
intelligence or charm of its predecessor. Instead, Cage follows
Ryan around Los Angeles in a late-eighties trench coat, striking
poses as though in an Aramis commercial. Who wants a guardian
angel if all he does is stare at you, and touch you all the time?
The rest of the time he hangs out with the other angels, who are
as thick as flies at the public library, where they "live."
Living, in this case, consists of shuttling from one side of the
library to the other with zombie-like detachment. I don't think
anyone in the audience would have been surprised if the angels
started feasting on human flesh like actual zombies, their salient
characteristic being that they are not human (as opposed to, say,
spiritual). Seth perks up a little when he becomes Ryan's boyfriend,
but overall this movie falls tantalizing close to the so-bad-it's-good-category,
without actually making it over the hump. Not surprisingly, annoying
drone/chant music is featured throughout. --Richter
DEEP CRIMSON. From director Arturo Ripstein comes this
remake of the '70s cult film The Honeymoon Killers, itself
based on a true story. At first, Deep Crimson seems to
be a black comedy in the spirit of Pedro Almodovar: Nicolas, a
vain, weasely thief who preys on lonely women, is caught by the
fat, dangerously manic-depressive Coral, and -- for reasons completely
pathetic -- they fall in love. She offers to help him swindle widows,
and in a whirlwind series of developments that would do any soap
opera (or parody thereof) proud, they plot a victim-by-victim
tour through the 1940s Mexican countryside. But the movie turns
horribly grim when Coral, overcome by jealousy, keeps killing
the women Nicolas is trying to seduce -- over, and over, and over.
By film's end, they've even offed someone's daughter. Some may applaud
Deep Crimson because it never romanticizes its characters,
but so what? We already know how loathsome these people are, and
the film's matter-of-fact storytelling offers nothing beyond that.
Three cheers for swift Mexican justice, though. --Woodruff
HE GOT GAME. Spike Lee can't help himself--he's always
taking on the grand themes, with varying levels of success. Here,
he takes on The Game, i.e. Life, i.e. Basketball--and he scores!
We Got Game is a long, ambitious movie about the country's
best high-school basketball player negotiating the difficult terrain
of success. Everyone wants a piece of Jesus Shuttlesworth (Ray
Allen), a focused, talented, and personable kid--including his
father Jake (Denzel Washington), a murderer who's been let out
of prison briefly to try to persuade Jesus to sign up with a university
referred to only by the Kafkaesque moniker, "Big State."
The plot is so contrived that it actually turns a corner and becomes
believable again. (Who could make this up?) Somehow Lee pulls
it all off with aplomb. His filmmaking style is as fresh and wonderfully
visual as ever, and the story has some of the heart-stabbing tension
of Hoop Dreams. The score is by Aaron Copeland and Public
Enemy--which gives some indication of Lee's territorial range.
--Richter
THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION. This film has been deceptively
marketed and shot as a fuzzy-wuzzy romantic comedy. Actually,
it's a difficult and long-winded melodrama. Jennifer Aniston plays
a pouty Brooklynite who dumps her boyfriend because she's smitten
with her gay male roommate; Paul Rudd is the sweet-faced love
object who reluctantly agrees to help the pregnant Aniston raise
her child. Their intimate but sexually frustrating relationship
would be plenty compelling if the movie could focus on it for
more than two seconds. Instead, peripheral characters are repeatedly
introduced and developed while the leads become disturbingly remote.
The more the plot shifts in emphasis (with Rudd flaking out on
the increasingly whiny Aniston to pursue a male lover), the more
the two come across as outsiders in their own story. Not much
rings true here: For all the script's insights about unrequited
love and the meaning of "family," the picture is too
leaden to be effective. One plus: Nigel Hawthorne (The Madness
of King George) almost saves the show as a gay theatre critic
who struggles to maintain dignity in the face of romantic humiliation.
--Woodruff
SLIDING DOORS. Suppose that at a crucial moment, your life
branched in two directions: In one, you become Gwyneth Paltrow
with a bad haircut, and have to support your cheating, lay-about
husband by working two jobs in the food service industry. In another,
you become Paltrow with a great haircut, and fall in love with
that cute guy who played "Matthew" in four weddings
and a funeral. Now imagine that every line of dialogue you and
everyone else utters sounds exactly like the way people really
talk, which is to say largely without wit or charm. Now imagine
that for 99 minutes an audience must watch this incessantly talky
scenario. Wouldn't you at least do a nude scene to keep things
interesting? Sadly, in spite of the fact that there are technically
two Paltrow's in this film, and therefore four Paltrow nipples,
none ever appears, as though the film were shot in some nipple-free
alternate universe. An eerie, disturbing experience, to say the
least. --DiGiovanna
SUICIDE KINGS. Five cute boys, none of whom are named "Skeet"
or "Ethan," kidnap a mob boss in order to save one of
the boy's sister from some other kidnappers. The mob boss is played
against type by Christopher Walken, who has never played a mob
boss before, not even in King of New York or Last Man
Standing or True Romance. This film starts out with
a little style and humor, but quickly loses steam until it's reduced
to a pointless and boring series of flashbacks and speeches. Best
to wait for the video, and then not rent it. --DiGiovanna
TARZAN AND THE LOST CITY. Caspar Van Dien of Starship
Troopers anonymity stars in this uninteresting outing wherein
Tarzan must defend his beloved Africa from white looters. The
film gains points by portraying the Indiana Jones-styled Nigel
Ravens, an archeologist who thinks nothing of stealing local treasures,
as a ruthless and cowardly villain. I never understood why we
were supposed to cheer at the beginning of the first Indiana Jones
movie when he robs those people of their sacred gem. If only they'd
killed Indy and feasted on his imperialist flesh. Oh well. Jane
March, of The Lover, loses the last of her art-house cred
by appearing as Tarzan's fiancée Jane, but she at least
provides a beautiful face to distract audiences from this poorly
paced tale, which eschews clever storytelling for a deus-ex-machina
ending and several improbable assists from an African shaman with
the supernatural power to fill in plot holes. Maybe youngsters
would enjoy the scenes of Tarzan freeing trapped and caged animals,
and teaming up with gorillas to fight the white boys, but Tarzan
and the Lost City's 100 minutes will feel quite a bit longer
to adult moviegoers. --DiGiovanna
TWO GIRLS AND A GUY. James Toback wrote the screenplay
for this playful, one-set movie, but much of the dialogue and
action was improvised. It shows: Not only does Robert Downey Jr.
have an extended scene babbling weird noises in front of a mirror,
but there are times when Two Girls and A Guy comes to a
complete standstill, or heads off at a 90-degree angle for no
clear reason. Toback's smart, machine-gun-fast dialogue, which
abruptly kicks in whenever the actors run out of improvisation,
is so good it left me wishing Toback had spent more time developing
the story. Hovering over the movie like a bad smell is the question
of why the two female leads, Heather Graham and Natasha Wagner
(the most vital and engaging of the three), even bother to stick
around Downey's studio apartment after they learn he's been lying
to each of them for 10 months. We get an answer, but not soon
enough. Toback does have some challenging things to say about
the battle between sexual fidelity and emotional reality, but
he hasn't said enough here, and the film feels terribly unfinished.
Send it back! And while you're at it, rewrite the cop-out ending!
--Woodruff
THE WINTER GUEST. This slow moving film follows four couples
through a largely uneventful day in an English coastal town. A
mother and her adult daughter walk the icy beaches arguing about
everything; two schoolboys smoke cigarettes and play with fire,
two elderly women attend a funeral, and a teenage girl taunts
and then falls in love with a teenage boy. Mostly, the appeal
of this film is in its cinematography. Lensman Seamus McGarvey
has a sense of composition that could only be compared to John
Toland's. Each shot has the balance and sensitivity of an Ansel
Adams photograph, with objects interacting by virtue of shape
and position to produce pleasing geometries. Unfortunately, the
interactions of the characters are often much less interesting,
though the story of the teenagers finding love is compelling--if
frustratingly limited and interrupted by the other three scenarios.
--DiGiovanna
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