Film Clips

IN & OUT. Mainstream cinema seems to have embraced the coming-of-gay story, and the fact that it's moved from "serious" melodramas devoid of same-sex kissing to this light comedy replete with a hot smooch between he-man Tom Selleck and funny guy Kevin Kline is proof that homosexuality has become acceptable enough to be joked about. In fact, there are more jokes in this film than in the average episode of Laugh-In, and about the same percentage (1 in 6) hit the mark. Still, that's 1,246 percent more laughs than all Pauly Shore movies combined. Even the obligatory "touching" ending seems to work OK, neither gaining laughs at the expense of the emotional weight of the issue, nor becoming so sappy as to ruin the flow of the film. While this film is never great, and the directing by Frank Oz always has a muppet feel to it, it's better than most of what's at the movies these days; and did I mention the long lip-lock between Selleck and Kline? And that Selleck looks like a Tom of Finland character who shed the chaps for Brooks Brothers suits? And that he and Kline kiss? For a long time? Mmmmm. --DiGiovanna

Film Clips KULL THE CONQUERER. Kull is essentially a porno film without the hardcore: hyper-muscular guys, and women in bad Frederick's of Hollywood outfits mouth inane dialogue that they seem to have just memorized, all in the name of getting to the sex scenes. Kevin Sorbo, TV's Hercules, plays Kull, who goes from barbarian peasant to King in the first five minutes of the film. He then moves swiftly to marry evil goddess Akivasha, played by Tia Carrera's leather-uphostelered breasts. This is obviously a big mistake, and leads to a number of swordfights choreographed to heavy metal music. In fact, with all the men in long hair, bangs and codpieces, Kull sometimes seems to be a collection of MTV videos from the late '80s. In spite of all this, Kull is campy in a way that's not overly cute and moves at a swift enough pace to keep adults from falling asleep while junior thrills to the manly fight scenes and makes faces at the yucky parts where Kull kisses girls. --DiGiovanna

L.A. CONFIDENTIAL. Glamour girls! Scandal! Gunplay! Nose Jobs! The place is the City of Angels; the time is the 1950s. The thrills starts when honest but prissy officer Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) opens the door to the men's room of the Nite Owl Café and finds a half dozen bullet-pierced bodies strewn across the linoleum. From then on it's seedy characters, clever plot twists and bracing moral dilemmas as a precinct full of cops harass, pummel and caress each other and the smelly underbelly of Los Angeles. Ed Exley goes head to head with his nemesis, fellow officer Bud White (Russell Crowe), a thug known for his brawn but not his brains. The two tackle the Nite Owl mystery with a passion while their suave, detached colleague Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) coolly observes. L.A. Confidential courses down the same clotted drainage ditch as Chinatown, but without Polanski's dark and brooding spirit. L.A. Confidential is sort of like Chinatown lite--a taut and rousing thriller that's well worth seeing. --Richter

PILLOW BOOK. Peter Greenaway applies his lush, layered cinematic style to the customarily austere Japanese aesthetic, with mixed results. Pillow Book is an extravagantly beautiful film, but like Nagiko (Vivian Wu), the empty, self-obsessed fashion model at the center of the story, it's doubtful whether all this beauty means anything. When she was a young girl, Nagiko's father used to paint calligraphic characters on her face for her birthday; as an adult, Nagiko is obsessed with having her lovely body written upon as a sort of Whitman-esque celebration of herself: "I need writing," she says. "Don't ask why. Just take out your pen and write on my arm." Later, Nagiko becomes an author and starts inking up the bodies of men, notably Ewan McGregor, who along with a host of other taut young men, graces us with that rare, sought-after cinematic moment: Full-frontal nudity. Greenaway's slavish devotion to form is dazzling, but the lack of content becomes painfully apparent as this two-and-a-half hour movie winds along. --Richter

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


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