Harvey Fierstein as a straight mob boss?
Well sort of. John Hamburg's latest exercise in silliness manages to bring it off, almost. It kind of fun to watch him try.
Eddie (Sam Rockwell) and Sam (Steve Zahn) are the worst musical duo on the east coast. It stands to reason that they are mistaken for the two top safecrackers in the country (Josh Pais and Mark Ruffino), right?
Of course right.
Mob boss Big Fat Bernie Gayle (Michael Lerner) needs a safe cracked and after giving them an offer they cannot refuse, gives our boys a series of tests to make sure they could do it.
Of course Eddie falls in love with an intended victim (Christina Kirk) and they keep on coming close to bumping into REAL safe men...
This isn't a good film by any means, but SOME of the jokes work, and the acting is fine. But what's the point?
This is basically a way for the actors and crew to keep practicing while they find decent roles.
Gods and Monsters
Directed by
Bill Condon
Bill Condon is a man to watch. For those who are wondering who the great directors of the '00s are going to be he must certainly be on the list. After a few minor films as, I guess, practice, he has come out with one of the best movies of 1998.
This is not your average Hollywood biopic, this is about power and fame, facination and sexual harrassment.á
James Whale (Ian McKellen) was as much the creator of Frankenstein as Mary Shelly. He designed and directed that classic film which gave the definitive image to the world. Out of the closet long before the gay movement even existed, he's also rich and retired and can do whatever he damn well pleased.
For instance, when a college student (Jack Platonic) doing an interview begins to bore him with questions about "Frankenstein," he turns it into a game of strip poker, one question for an article of clothing.
There's also one other thing to complete this picture, he's dying.
His disappoving-but-loyal housekeeper Hanna (Lynn Redgrave) had hired a new gardener named Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser), a drifter who's a bit on the thick side and who's latest relationship [with Lolita Davidovich] is going down in flames.
The relationship between Boone and Whale is a complex one. The former is facinated by what the latter has done, and his personality as a human being, while being repelled by the sexual advances.
But little by little he is seduced, and so are we.
One thing that makes the film so engrossing is the use of flashback. Every now and again we're in Edwardian England, the trenches of World War One or the set of "The Bride of Frankenstein," and all the while getting under Whale's skin.
Condon is leading us to an inevitable climax, one that is going to be the most controversial and politically incorrect of the year.
One would expect McKellan to give a masterful performance, and he'sindeed fantastic, but nobody would think that George of the Jungle would be able to match him.
This is Brendan Fraser's breakout role, and it has "Best Supporting Actor Oscar" written all over it.
Buffalo '66
Directed by
Vincent Gallo
Vincent Galloáis Billy Brown, the protagonist in this excercise in cinemagraphic mastrabation. He's just been let out of jail after doing a stretch for a crime he didn't commit, and now he has to go to the bathroom.
So he goes to Buffalo to find one. Makes sense. But he can't, and while our bladders begin to ache out of sympathy he decides to kidnap Layla (Christina Ricci), a tap dancing student he meets outside of a men's room of a dance studio he's snuck into.
He's been lying to his parents(Anjelica Huston and Ben Gazzara) about were he was for years, and needs a "wife" to show them while he makes a visit. She recluctantly agrees.
The problem with this movie is that everyone is wonderful but Gallo. Gazzara and Huston are a blast as the hideous, football crazed parents, Ricci is great as always, the two gratutitus production numbers are not really obnoxious at all.
But Gallo, while the performance is okay, is really not engaging or interesting. He's alot like Tarentino in this way.
His direction and writing are on the mark however. He should stick to those and he'll be just fine.
Jerry and Tom
Directed by
Saul Rubinek
When the film opens, we find hitmen Tom (Joe Mantegna) and Jerry (Sam Rockwell) sitting in a bar. Next to them is their victim Stanley (Peter Riegert) all tied up with a sack over his head. Jerry wants to kill the fellow and get it over with, but Tom says "no, we have to wait for the phone call" from their boss Billy (Maury Chaykin). The call finally arrives, but it seems Tom doesn't want to take it.
Why is what the movie is about.
This is a film about the banality of evil. Billy and Vic (Charles Durning) own a used car lot, but that is only a cover. What it really is is a murder-for- hire agency, and Tom is their number one agent. One day Jerry decides to go for a ride with Tom and Tom's friend Karl (William H. Macy). We're taken aback by what happens next because Sam Rockwell changes so dramatically that we don't recognize him as the hit man in the bar. Here, he's an innocent.
Most of the movie is conversation. About life, family and mostly about the business. Tom is full of stories, some banal and some outrageous. He tells how he got into the business, some of his favorite hits[pardon the pun], problems with his kids, technique. "The first time is Happenstance" Tom tells Jerry, "The second time coincedence. The third time, it's your choice."
The editing is amazing, the segues between scenes are some of the best ever done. Transitions in time and place that look as if it's all at the same place at the same time.
While he is grossed out by the first murder, Jerry wants to watch Tom rub out victim #2 (Ted Danson), who is given a wonderful little monologue.
Soon enough Jerry is eager to become an active participant. The film goes it's merry way to the obvious conclusion.
It's facinating to watch.
Six-String Samurai
Directed by Lance Mungia
This movie needed to be made. I'm not really sure why, but it definately did. Trust me.
Cervantes wrote "Don Quixote" to parody and destroy a genre that badly needed it. This is pretty much the same thing.
The mythic journey of the post nuclear hero wandering along the barren plain has been done to death. From A Boy and his Dog to Mad Max and its sequels to Kevin Costner's Gigabuck epics. This thing has been done to death.
Lance Mungia has come to bury it with a "Don Quixote" for the '00s:
Six String Samurai: It's a week from last Tuesday. The bomb was dropped in 1957, and the Russians have taken over. But not completely. Elvis, the King, is the king for real, that is until he died after forty years, and now every guitar strumming warrior is on his way to Vegas fight for the empty crown.
Jeffrey Falcon is Buddy [Holly?], the bispecticled lone hero, stoically travelling accross the postapocolyptic plain to get what's his.
The film opens with him saving a kid (Justin McGuire) who, much to his regret, sticks to him like glue. Rescuing him and needing to be rescued in a mythological sort of way.
It's cute, it's exiting, it's funny as hell.
We have parodies of everything from Clint Eastwood to the Flintstones and it all works. Falcon is the number one caucasian kung fu star in Hong Kong and the fight scenes are as good as anything in a Jackie Chan movie.
The music is performed by a group called the Red Elvises and is great. The cinematography is great, the kid is great. Hell, this is a great movie.
Although I don't know if Kevin Costner would agree with me. This is what The Postman Should have been.
pi
Written and directed by
Darren Aronofsky.
pi is about finding God. Not in the religious sense, but really FINDING God. This is a very weird film.
Max Cohen (Sean Gullette) is a reclusive mathametician who owns a mainframe computer and is using it to find the mathematical pattern behind the stock market. If he does this he'll be rich.
At the age of six he stared at the sun, temporarily blinding him and changing his psyche forever. Why this is important we never really find out, but it is. Also important is the fact that Max's work isn't secret. Others know, and they want it.
One of these is Marcy Dawson (Pamela Hart), the perky representative of a huge multinational corporation who wants to use it (whatever it is) to conquer the world.
One day, the computer goes blooey. It's predictions are totally weird and then
gives out a number of a certain length of digits.
What follows is a fever dream of paranoia, fear and self-doubt.
It turns out that Lenny is with a Kabbalic group who thinks Max has found the mathematical path to God.
It's a mindblower.
Wrestling Alligators
Directed by Laurie Weltz
The term mysandry is a synonym for reverse-misogyny. This is definatly a mysandrist film.
It's not an "all men are evil and all nonlesbians are tratiors!" type thing. No, but he message is clear: Men: can't live with 'em CAN live without 'em.
Maddy Hawkins (Aleksa Palladino) is a greasemonkey working in a beachfront resort in New Jersey. She lives at Miss Lulu's (Claire Bloom) home for unattached ladies, a place for the terminally weird.
Maddy looks and acts like a '90s kind of gal, but this is the early 1950s and she's clearly odd. The other residents are outwardly normal, however.
The movie begins with a betrayal. Maddy's best friend Mary (Adrienne Shelly) is getting married. Everybody else appears to be thrilled with this except You-know-who. The worst thing is that Mary gives Maddy a dress. HORRORS!
Now no one in this film is gay. Maddy meets and persues a traveling roustabout named Will (Sam Trammell), and there is a bit of a sex scene. But it is made clear that he's only there for a bit of temporary fun.
The main plot isn't about Maddy and Will, however. It's about Maddy's boss Rick (Jay O. Sanders) and another resident of Lulu's, a french widow named Claire (Joely Richardson).
Apparently Rick got Claire pregnant and is clearly evil because his would rather marry her than pay for an illegal abortion.
The rest of the film is winsome and offensive. A nicely made waste of time.
High Art
Directed and written by Lisa Cholodenko.
Syd (Radha Mitchell) is just starting out as an assistant editor at "Frame" an extremely pretentious photography magizine. The movie begins with her complaining about her job to live in James (Gabriel Mann). When he agrees with her, she blows up at him.
We can see where this is going a mile away.
James is right, of course. Syd's bosses Dominque (Ann Duong) and Harry (David Thornton) are depicted as arrogent jerks.
Then one day, while taking a bath, our heroine finds that there's a leak coming from the celing, and goes upstairs to complain.
What she finds are a bunch of drug addicts snorting smak, and here she meet the chief druggie Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy), who, Syd discovers, is a fabulous photographer.
Intregued by the photos and being a handy type, she comes up and tries to not only repair the leak, but insinuate herself with Lucy and get it in her magizine.
Lucy's girlfriend Greta (a very droll Patricia Clarkson) is always stoned and clings to Lucy like a limpet. She of course hates Syd with a passion.
Ally Sheedy is brilliant. The problem is not her, but the sheer bordom of the film. Syd uses sex to get convince Lucy to contribute, and then she appears shocked when her boyfriend leaves.
There is no one to identify with, no one to sympathize with. No one is the least bit likable. The ending is gratuitous and really doesn't fit in with the rest of the picture.
Lesbians on Heroin! Fun for the whole family. NOT.
Digging to China
Directed by Timothy Hutton
Movies are magical. They can hours seem like minutes, shrink weeks down to hours.
Unfortunately, this does the opposite.
This is a little film about a little girl named Harriet (Evan Rachel Wood) who wants more than anything to escape her totally dysfunctional family. She lives in a decrepit hotel in Minnesota with her mother (Cathy Moriarty)an inveterate drunk, and her promiscuous sister Gwen (Mary Stuart Masterson) whom she hates. She doesn't seem to get along with her schoolmates.
In other worlds life stinks.
But fortunately, into her life comes Ricky (Kevin Bacon) a retarded man being taken to a home by his dying mother (Marian Seldes).
It's okay as far as it goes, but the pacing is off. The action seems to take weeks, when in fact the action of the film takes only a few days.
Worse, the script is thoroughly predictable. There is little or no emotion when the mother dies in a car accident, and when Gwen confesses to Harriet that she is in fact the latter's mother, one is overwhelmed by deja vu.
Still, the film does have some charm. Hutten will do better next time.
The Real Blonde
Written and Directed by
Tom DiCillo
This is about a quest. No, not exactly, that's kind of tangential, it is about sex, love, careers, supermodels and unfunny jokes.
Bob (Maxwell Caulfield) is an actor working as a waiter for Ernst (Christopher Lloyd) at the Metropolitan Museum's restaurant along with Joe (Matthew Modine). It is he who is on a quest for a "real blonde" i.e. one who doesn't use peroxide on her hair. Meanwhile...
Sahara (Bridgette Wilson) is a supermodel. She works for Blair the photographer (Marlo Thomas) and is good buddies with Mary (Catherine Keener), a makeup artist.
Sahara, by the way, is sleeping with Bob. Mary is living with Joe, who has fantasies about Tina (Elizabeth Berkley), whom he passes on the street...get it?
Bob gets a job on a soap, something Joe dismisses as gouache, but hey, it pays, and he gets to bed down with soap star Kelly (Daryl Hannah).
It would be nice if this were funny, and there are a couple of good lines here and there but for the most part, the whole thing falls flat.
This is a mediocre, predictable attempt at comedy and it's amazing how such an unmemorable script attracted such a wonderful cast.
Sahara and Joe (who never meet) are the only ones who are the least bit sympathetic, and they're little more than ciphers. Everyone else is a cardboard cutout. Who cares if they have problems?
It makes one wonder why independent filmmakers can't make comedies...
The Big Lebowski
Directed by Joel Coen.áWritten by Ethan Coen,áJoel Coen
á There's a production number in the middle of the movie. The Coen brothers have put a production number in the middle of their latest movie and gotten away with it! [giggle]
Jeff "the Dude" Lebowski (Jeff Bridges) is a refugee from the '60s who's into bowling... and marajuana. He's a loser who's always late with the rent and is living his life in the way he likes it and has no ambitions beyond winning the local tournement. Cool.
Jeff "The Big" Lebowski (David Huddleston) is a famous millionaire with a beautiful wife half his age named Bunny (Tara Reid) who owes money all over town, and one day one of her creditors decides to teach her a lesson.
Unfortunatly, the only Jeff Lebowski in the phone book is the Dude.
So the creditor's thugs stick the Dude's head in the toilet and tinkle on his rug, and at the urging of his best buddy Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) the Dude goes to The Big Lebowski to get his rug, if not cleaned, replaced.
And after a slight verbal altercation, he takes a small one home and goes home to concentrate on pot and the upcoming bowling tournament against Knox Harrington (David Thewlis) and Jesus Quintana (John Turturro), serial sex offender and bowler par exellance.
Can Walter, the Dude and third stooge Donny (Steve Buscemi) win the tournament? Before the Coens can ever answer that question, there just HAS to be a kidnapping right?
So the Big's young new wife disappears, a ransom note is sent, and the Big gets his flunky Brandt (Philip Seymour Hoffman) to call the Dude up to be the bag man for the drop.
But Walter has other ideas. So has the Big's daughter Maude (Julianne Moore being very droll) an avante guard type who knows that something is up. She also wants the Dude's sperm. Does mayhem ensue? Is the Pope Polish?
Somewhere in this delightful mess is a drug induced [by porn king Jackie Treehorn (Ben Gazzara)] production number, conspiricies galore, a marmont in a bathtub and some wonderful music and cinematography.
The problem with this film is that it isn't Fargo. That, of course, was an almost perfect movie. Wonderful is less than perfect, but so what? This is well worth the seven bucks.
Price Above Rubies
Directed by
Boaz Yakin
á To name a child after someone who's still living is to wish the latter death. That's the Jewish tradition. Boaz Yakin seems to have missed that in his research for some reason.
It may seem like a nit-pick, but it's important. There is a scene in a car where the protagonist, Sonia (RenΘe Zellweger) and her husband are taking their son to his briss and he announces that the child is to be named after The Rebbe (John Randolph), and not after her dead brother Yossie (Shelton Dane). This slight on her feelings begins her alienation from Chassidic Judaism.
The movie is about the conflict between not only Judaism, but God, and Sonia. The baby has to be forced from her hands to be circumcised. The symbolism hits you over the head like a two-by-four.
Yakin and his wife and sister (I think) try in their screenplay to add a dash of magic realism to the movie. At the very beginning of the film, Yossie tells a young Sonia (Jackie Ryan) about an ancestor who was impregnated by a demon and walks the earth forever because the Lord wouldn't have her and Satan didn't think she belonged among the damned. Yossi's ghost shows up every now and then and so does the ancestor (Kathleen Chalfant). It's God vs. Lilith [Adam's first wife, and a big demon in Jewish mythology] and it's made quite clear that God is the bad guy.
While the cosmic stuff goes on in the background, Sonia has problems of a more earthy nature. Her brother in law Sender (Christopher Eccleston) offers her a off-the-books job as a buyer for his jewelry business (He also screws her[the phrase 'making love' just isn't appropriate here]), which liberates her and causes her husband Mendel (Glenn Fitzgerald) to complain about being neglected.
Here too, it's God who's the villain. When they make love at night for the first time in their new apartment, Mendel worries that his carnal thoughts are sinful and stops, leaving Sonia unsatisfied and depressed. She goes to the Rebbe trying to get help, but her description enflames his long-dead passion for his wife (Kim Hunter) , and he dies.
The disintegration of Sonia and Mendel's marriage is aided and abetted by a legalistic and misogynist Jewish faith (the marriage counselor begins the session by asking 'do you pray?' thus sending poor Sonia out the door). A completely chaste relationship with a talented young sculptor (Allen Payne) who's work she's trying to sell is misconstrued by the evil Sender as adultery, and gets her kicked out of her house and disowned by her entire family without her even being permitted to defend herself.
That doesn't ring true either.
Granted there's lots of hypocrisy in the Chassidic community (as there is everywhere else in the known universe) and this is a fascinating movie, no doubt about it.
But while Sonia and her dead brother are full blooded characters, her husband and his relations are not. They are stick figures that can be blown down with the slightest of breezes.
Let's be grateful that Yakin's Jewish. Otherwise the Jewish community would call him antisemitic.
They're going to be on him like a ton of bricks anyway.
The Spanish Prisoner
Directed by David Mamet
á Okay, this really won't spoil anything so let's get it out of the way now. There are no prisons in this movie and Spain is nowhere to be seen. "The Spanish Prisoner" is the name of a classic scam. Writer/Director David Mametácalls it a "light thriller."
Interesting term.
Joe Ross (Campbell Scott) and George Lang (Ricky Jay) are two scientists who have invented a maguffin called "the process" which will revolutionize the universe and make the company they work for wealthy beyond dreams.
So the president of the company, Mr. Klein (Ben Gazzara) brings Joe, George, and secretary Susan Ricci (Rebecca Pidgeon) down to a tropical island in the Atlantic to discuss it with some big brass.
While there Joe and Susan come into contact with a jetsetting businessman named Jimmy Dell (Steve Martin), who proceeds to seduce Joe.
Whenever Joe asks Klein about a raise or some perks, the latter begs off. Back in New York, confides in Jimmy. The trap is set.
This is a question of who do you trust. The clues are there but they are easy to miss. Is this a case of industrial espionage or is it an inside job?
Everyone gives a great performances Scott is wonderful as the intelligent-yet- befuddled scientist, Martin gives his best performance since L.A. Story and Mammet has his best script since Glengarry Glen Ross.
All in all a tasty pretzel.
Land Girls
Directed by
David Leland
With most of the boys off to World War II, and feminism yet to be invented, many women volenteered to go to the farms of Briton and replace them for the duration. Rural Rosie the riviters.
Prue (Anna Friel), Stella (Catherine McCormack), and Ag (Rachel Weisz) are three of them and they go off into the countryside to help feed Briton at it's time of peril.
The place is owned by Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence (Tom Georgeson and Marueen O'Brien) and their randy son Joe (Steven Mackintosh).
Not much happens. The three girls pine for their fiancees in the service, and while they aren't doing that or plowing fields or milking cows they are trying to get into Joe's pants. Joe doesn't complain about that much.
He does complain about being rated 4F though.
The performances are fine and the story isn't particularly boring.
Nothing special though.
Cube
Directed by
Vincenzo Natali.
The clichΘ goes that you damn a film by praising the sets, but not in this case.
It's the set is what makes it so good. Its a great gimmick.
Imagine a giant cubical maze made out of nearly identical cells. That way you can have one set which is cheap to construct and use it in a way to make it look like dozens.
Voila! You've got a movie that looks like it cost ten times as much as it really did. Definately cool!
With the gimmick in place and a couple of neat special effects[the movie starts with a fellow (Julian Richings) getting diced into bite-sized chunks], we get down to the real reason for the film, a study in character development.
The film begins with the protaganist, a cop named Quentin( Maurice Dean Wint) landing in the aformentioned set on top of another fellow named Worth (David Hewlett). They are angry and confused in the situation, and they are soon joined by some other people:Levin (Nicole deBoer), a high school student , a doctor named Holloway (Nicky Guadagni) a master thief named Rennes (Wayne Robson)and a idiot savant named Kazan (Andrew Miller).
A team of some sort has been set up. It's clear the object of this life and death game is to get out alive with as few casualties as possible. But the problem is that, aside from the booby traps, the members of this bunch are clearly incompatible with each other.
The question finally becomes: will the members of the group wind up killing each other before the booby traps do, or will everybody make it out alive?
who's going to crack first? All the actors give decent to memerable performances, and it's interesting seeing good guys become bad guys and vice versa as the strain becomes a bit too much and nerves frey.
The violence is mostly of the cartoon kind, and there really isn't much of it. This film isn't for everybody, it gets intense at times.
But those who enjoy a good fright and good writing this is a pretty good bet.
Hurricane Streets
Directed by
Morgan J. Freeman
One thing that bugs the hell out of me are movies where the "good guys" are wrong and the "bad guys" are right.
Hurricane Streets is a case in point. Well acted, nicely photographed and lovingly directed, this slice of life is a tale of hopelessness and nihlism.
Marcus (Brendan Sexton Jr) is sixteen today. He's a small time thief who robs local stores and sells the proceeds to children in the playground. But that's okay, he's the hero, right?
He and his friends like to hang out at a clubhouse made from an old bomb shelter. The friends are no great shakes either, they are also apprentace crooks, and we see them discussing plans for their future lives of crime. Ah, the joys of youth!
Marcus lives with his grandmother (Lynn Cohen), who owns a bar on Avenue A, and dreams of New Mexico where he was born.
Life in the big apple in a word, stinks, his mother is in prison for smuggling illegal ailens accross the border (or so he thinks), his friends have no future, HE has no future, the cops are after him...
...a perfect time to fall in love.
While fleeing the cops on his bike, Marcus meets Melena (Isidra Vega) who's attending summer school. Her father (Shawn Elliot) is abusive to a small extent, but it's clear that he has her best intrests at heart. He knows that Marcus is no good and that he'll wreck her life.
You see what I mean about the bad guys being right?
All of a sudden Melena is cutting school to be with Marcus. The worst part is that it's clear that director Freemanáwants us to think that this is perfectly okay!
The downer ending is predictable and hokey. This is a mostly useless movie who's one redeeming feature is a bunch of excellent young actors. Bummer.