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Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 00:36:24 -0700
From: Jason Cormier <movieman@netcom.ca>
Subject: [MV] Ronin review
This is the porno of all chase movies. This movie is one long chase in
which multiple parties are vying for ownership of a case whose contents are
cheaply mysterious. This movie begs for audience members to care for what
is in the case more than the characters after it. The thing about chase
movies is that if you don't care for the characters at all then the
sequences are just very boring and exhausting. Take the chase scene in
Terminator 2 with Arnold after the boy - that was exciting because we knew
a little bit more about the situation. Too often critics and audience
members confuse smart, intelligent script with muddled and confusing.
People would rather say "Wow that must be a smart thriller!" than confess
that they didn't get it. This is such a film - much like
Mission:Impossible - but less understandable and less suspense. Robert
DeNiro is always fun to watch but he was just Robert DeNiro in this movie
and not a character that would require any kind of acting. I guess I have
to fail this flick - even though I didn't entirely hate it.
Jay the Movieman
movieman@netcom.ca
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Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 17:11:16 -0400
From: maillist@moviejuice.com
Subject: [MV] MovieJuice! - "What Dreams May Come" and "Ronin"
This week, a MovieJuice double feature! The 4-1-1 on Ronin, plus a special preview of Robin Williams' What Dreams May Come! Read it all and weep.
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WHAT DREAMS MAY COME - I'M A SOUL, MAN
by Mark Ramsey
http://www.moviejuice.com
September 27, 1998
Welcome to class, students. I'm professor Beer-pak Chopra. Today's lesson in Metaphysics is called What Dreams May Come. It stars misty-eyed Robin Williams and a misty-eyed cast from the mist-shrouded island of misteria, mister. And it'll have your inner child cheering for more - more milk and a blanket, anyway. Even the Way of the Wizard is pointing toward the exit.
If my Id liked it, but my Superego thought it sucked, am I doomed to schizophrenia or just plain doomed? If this movie is therapy, is my $7.50 covered by Aetna?
"When I was young...." voiceovers Robin at the very beginning of this flick, as the soundtrack teeters on the edge of an Eric Carmen moment. Robin's goal, once dead, is to bring his wife back from Purgatory or a really messy house (they seem to be the same thing). Yes, death, insane asylums, funerals....this flick's a real two-hanky charmer. All aboard for Heaven and Hell. Everybody off at Hell.
What do you want from a flick where most of the cast is dead for most of the movie? Cuba Gooding Jr. spends his first on-screen minutes in a misshapen fuzz, having gained posthumous possession of the infamous Romulan cloaking device mysteriously set on "Photoshop Blur."
"So if you're aware you exist, then you do," proclaims Cuba, as Ushers sweep down the aisles passing out Descartes Cliff Notes. Consider it the Cuban Revelation.
Look for Max Von Sydow as the afterlife guide. This poor guy is going through a lot of exertion here, but Max hasn't aged a bit. He looked 80 when he tussled with vomit-spewing demons way back in The Exorcist, and now he looks maybe 81.
According to ancient Greek philosopher Pat Benatar, "Hell is for Children," and there are tons of kids in this afterlife. Some flit, some fly, some have no mouths, but all, it seems, have Twyla Tharp dance training and stage moms with Culkin-like aspirations just off camera.
On the way out, somebody said "It's kinda like Ghost." Yeah, sure. Exactly like Ghost. Except Demi's a dead psycho, Whoopi is played by that light-hearted, laugh-a-minute, jolly joker Max Von Sydow, and - most incredibly of all - Patrick Swayze is an Oscar winner. Exactly like Ghost!
"It was...interesting," noted another hapless audience member, praising the film with the kind of enthusiasm usually reserved for intensely sobering NYU student films and the thrills and chills of NPR's All Things Considered. Why, that was the most...interesting...time I've had at the movies since last Summer's event-film spectacular: PBS - The Movie.
Much will be made of the exotic look of this movie, as Robin prances and dances across the painterly afterlife landscape, proving what every CGI programmer already knew: Heaven is a SUN workstation at ILM!
In this computerific Garden of Eden, Robin walks on water, just like he does in real life, to chase down Annabella Sciorra, which almost nobody does in real life. Say, isn't that Annabella Andrews singing "the hills are alive with the Sound of Music"?
Pretty as this panorama is, Robin soon finds his way to Hell - or as they call it in L.A., the Santa Monica Freeway. Robin trots gingerly over a garden of heads - and I don't mean lettuce, pal. In fact, there's so much jumping, diving, and swimming in this flick I thought I was watching a Summer Olympics highlight reel.
There are lots of lessons to take away from What Dreams May Come. For starters:
- - If you die, move to a place in the sun
- - Art fans get the best cribs
- - All dogs really do go to Heaven
- - Max Von Sydow isn't dead
- - Folks in Heaven look like Max or Cuba Gooding, never like Patricia Arquette (Hey, why bother even calling it Heaven? If it were Heaven, wouldn't everyone look like Patricia Arquette?)
Can love conquer all? Will Robin ever give up? Will Robin kick my frickin' ass?
Thank God Wild Things' Denise Richards wasn't the object of Robin's affection, despite the appropriateness of the term "object." You see, Denise has had more body parts replaced than the Bionic Woman and a '67 Chevy combined. In fact, scientists estimate that if Denise were to die nothing would decompose except for her brain.
This must be why Denise has offered to donate her brain to science - in her words - "just like I did last time."
Copyright 1998 Mark Ramsey. All rights reserved. NO PORTION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
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RONIN - MISSION IMPLAUSIBLE
by Mark Ramsey
http://www.moviejuice.com
September 27, 1998
What's this? A movie from United Artists? I haven't seen one of these in a while. Are Mary Pickford and Doug Fairbanks back in front of the camera? Is Chaplin out of retirement? And it's a talkie yet!
Let's play MGM Jeopardy (and before you folks at MGM get defensive, I don't mean that as a pun - even though it works as one):
Answer: Ronin.
Question: Where can you find every former Bond actor in the universe?
Hey, I'm not kidding. This is some kind of shaken, stirred reunion! All the Spies Who Loved Me, the former heavies and not so heavies, are here. It's like when PBS brought every worldwide cast of Les Miz together in London on one stage - even the Eastern European casts who couldn't carry a tune if their lives depended on it but know how to dodge bullets like nobody's business.
The producers of this flick put out a casting call far and wide for every actor in Europe with deep bags under their eyes, and they're all here, folks! Robert DeNiro is DeRonin, he's a Soldier of Fortune. As usual, he's deMasterful. Costarring with Bob is all of France, which is lacking bags but is plum full of baguettes. This movie may not win an Oscar, unless of course there's a category for espresso consumption.
Why, this is a veritable French travelogue. Not only do I feel like I just visited France, I feel like I've killed a few people there. Not bad for a guy whose French is limited to "cherchez les femmes" and the fried variety. De Gaulle of de French to call a city "Nice." Isn't that a reach? What could be nicer? I just love those little cop cars that look like ice cream trucks with that annoying siren. Are you going to arrest me, Officer, or release an ice cream sandwich on its own recognizance?
This Tour de France shows a nation where everyone's white and dresses in black. All stare suspiciously at each other, but absolutely nobody thinks the name "Seamus" is funny. Go figure.
Ronin has Jean Reno cast once again as the French equivalent of the unmade bed. Natascha McElhone and former Infiniti guy Jonathan Pryce are Irish terrorists whose dialogue is typical of this:
She: Have yeww seen Daniel Day Lewis, Seamus?
He: Shiite! No! Have yeww? Is he in this Foookin' movie?
Everyone's out to get a briefcase - or as they call it in Europe - a valise. Nobody seems to tell you what's in the valise, but everyone's after it. Hitchcock used to have stuff like this all the time. Because of his ravenous appetite, he called it a "McMuffin" - or something like that. In fact, entrepreneur Ray Kroc liked the term so much, he licensed it for his nascent fast food restaurant, resulting in the only thing Hitchcock ever made that appeals to folks under 20. Hitch had Egg McMuffins and Sausage McMuffins and - during the making of The Birds - Puffin McMuffins. What he really wanted were Grace Kelly's McMuffins, but that's another story.
Despite the once Bondaged cast, this is what a Bond flick should be. Great action, rockin' car chases (believe it or not), and great DeNiro. No silly gadgets, no ridiculous stunts, no trumpety theme song, no cheesy, glib one-liners, and best of all, NO BOND!
Help me understand something. Here's Bobby and the crew zig-zagging madly around the narrow roads of France. But somehow, in the midst of these dramatic, frenzied chases, the cars signal and flash their lights to pass! What kind of bizarre, high speed, near fatal collision courtesy is this? This is the most gentlemanly death race I've ever seen! Shouldn't DeNiro lean out his window to say "so sorry, chap" as he passes every bewildered motorist? Is he tossing out samples of Grey Poupon as he switches lanes?
Is France some kind of scumbag magnet? Everyone in this movie is trying to cheat and double-cross each other. Double-cross, triple-cross. There's enough Cross here to open a pen factory. Why can't we all just get along?
Don't miss the most highly anticipated acting debut of the year when figure skater Katarina Witt shows her chops (and, sadly, little else), thus paving the way for songbird Jewel, who has already conquered the worlds of music, poetry, and soon movies, proving we're all a bunch of fucking idiots.
Ronin is Rock and Roll adrenaline. Murderous, speed-deadly fun for the whole family. As Unmade French Bed says, "no questions, no answers. That's the beeezness we're in." Here's a flick that proves there's no beeezness like show beeezness, brother.
Copyright 1998 Mark Ramsey. All rights reserved. NO PORTION MAY BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.
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Hey, kids, don't forget to visit the MovieJuice! Site at http://www.moviejuice.com. The pictures are half the fun (and sometimes more than half the laughs)!
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Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1998 19:15:16 EDT
From: FTWeekly00@aol.com
Subject: [MV] Film Threat Weekly : 9-28-98 : Slate II, Take 40
FILM THREAT WEEKLY
"Hollywood's Indie Voice of the New Millennium"
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Slate II, Take 40 : September 28th, 1998
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http://www.filmthreat.com
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"But I'm pretty broke right now."
- - Band member from the Ultimate Losers from Richard LinklaterÆs "Slacker"
