Short Subjectives August 12 2000

Capsule reviews of films by CL critics

By Unknown Author Saturday August 12, 2000 12:04 AM EDT

Opening Friday

AUTUMN IN NEW YORK (PG-13) Richard Gere and Winona Ryder star as ill-timed lovers who have to make the most out of one season in New York City.

BLESS THE CHILD (R) Kim Basinger fights against evil and other forces that keep her from mothering her adopted daughter.

THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE This documentary takes a behind-the-scenes look at the woman at the center of the PTL controversy and biggest makeup crisis of the past 20 years.

I’M THE ONE THAT I WANT Margaret Cho’s stand-up routine makes it to the big screen as she discusses her unique cultural role and near brush with fame.

THE REPLACEMENTS (PG-13) Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman star in this story of butter-fingered football players whose love for the game may be the only thing that can save them.

SAVE THE LAST DANCE An interracial teen romance with Ten Things I Hate About You star Julia Stiles, who falls for a Chicago boy from the wrong side of the tracks.

Duly Noted

THE CASTLE This quirky Australian film shows what family life is like at the end of an airport runway. Aug. 12 at 7:30 p.m. Cinevision, 3300 Northeast Expressway, Building 2.

DIVINE TRASH A behind-the-scenes-look at some of celluloid’s most raucous films, this documentary shows the cuddlier side of John Waters and his unique approach to filmmaking. Aug. 11-24 at GSU’s cinéfest.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR A documentary about porn star Stacy Valentine, this film portrays the troubled woman as someone who seized an opportunity to break free from an abusive marriage and inferiority complex, even if it was to become a starving, collagen-injected cheesecake. Aug. 4-10 at GSU’s cinéfest.

GLADIATOR (R)
There still hasn’t been a great gladiator movie since Spartacus, but stunning cinematography and fast and furious fight sequences that border on the surreal save this belabored but lovely period epic about an enslaved general (Russell Crowe) who becomes a champion fighter in Rome’s spectacular and bloody gladiatorial games in order to take revenge on a treacherous twerp of an emperor (Joaquin Phoenix). Fans of the late Oliver Reed will surely enjoy one of his final performances as a crusty ex-warrior who runs a stable of gladiators. Aug. 10 at 8 p.m. Coca-Cola 2000 Summer Film Festival at the Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. — EM

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANK GREENBERG Hank Greenberg’s life and career served as a model for Jewish Americans when the baseball player challenged Babe Ruth’s hitting record. This showing of the documentary benefits IMAGE Film and Video Center and the Ciesla Foundation. Aug. 16 at 8 p.m. at the Tara Theatre, 2345 Cheshire Bridge Road.

OCEAN OASIS An IMAX film (followed by martinis at Friday’s show) about the undersea flora and fauna of Baja, Calif. August 11 and 13 at 6 p.m. Fernbank Museum of Natural History, 767 Clifton Road.

PINK FLAMINGOS A paragon of the John Waters’ canon, this film starring the late Divine, portrays the battle between two families for the coveted title of the Filthiest People Alive. Aug. 11-17 at GSU’S cinéfest.

SCARY MOVIE (R)
A ribald comedy from the creators of I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, this spoof of horror films and teen sex comedies leaves no cliché (nor any supporting character) unskewered. Although weakened by vulgar jokes aimed at retarded and gay characters, it amply illustrates that comedy always has a victim; and though there are human victims aplenty here (including American Pie’s shapely Shannon Elizabeth), Scary Movie most gleefully eviscerates Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Blair Witch Project. Aug. 17 at 8 p.m. at the Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St.-- GN

Continuing

BLOOD SIMPLE (R)
It loses half a star for some film-school shenanigans, derelict dialogue and an unforgivable dream sequence, but the seeds of future greatness can be seen stirring in the director’s cut of this thriller about adultery, betrayal and murder-gone-awry in Texas that launched the career of Joel and Ethan Coen, one of the American cinema’s most influential and innovative teams. True, it may not have aged too well, and it’s no Raising Arizona, but it can still stand up to just about anything out there. — EM

BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER! (R)
Director Jamie Babbit’s first feature-length film is a queer coming of age story about an otherwise American-as-apple-pie girl. Megan (Natasha Lyonne) is a cross-wearing, pom-pom toting cheerleader, going steady with the captain of the football team. Her parents, however, are worried about the posters of Melissa Etheridge on her wall, her boyfriend suspects she doesn’t enjoy kissing him, and her fellow cheerleaders think she’s overly affectionate. They stage an intervention to save Megan from her homosexual tendencies, and send her off to a rehabilitation camp for homosexuals, True Directions, where RuPaul, out of drag, plays an “ex-gay” counselor. — KL

BUTTERFLY (R)
Set on the eve of Fascist rule in 1930s Spain, this sugary tale of youthful innocence snuffed out by adult politics centers on a 7-year-old tailor’s son growing up in a small Spanish village and his rapt fascination with the kindly teacher who opens the boy’s eyes to the world around him. — FF

CHUCK & BUCK (R)
It starts as a painfully funny/sad, gay Fatal Attraction as 27-year-old eternal boy Buck (Mike White) stalks his childhood best friend Chuck, now Charlie (Chris Weitz), hoping to rekindle their friendship and pre-adolescent sexual games. A dork from his past doesn’t fit into Charlie’s life, which includes the woman he intends to marry. When things seem totally headed for tragedy, the intensity peters out with far less catharsis than you’ve been anticipating. You don’t want anything really bad to happen to Buck or Charlie, but after all they put you through they shouldn’t get off scot-free either. — SW

COYOTE UGLY (PG-13) Jerry Bruckheimer directs this romantic comedy about a 21-year-old woman who leaves home for New York, where she tries to break into the music industry and launch a career as a singer/songwriter. But the girl’s dreams are dashed by her job at a notorious hot spot where she works with other sassy women and learns how to make drinks.

?CROUPIER
This look at a would-be novelist’s venture into the seamy aspects of a London casino reveals fascinating details of gambling and has a crisp, efficient directing style. But though Clive Owen, in the title role, is meant to be detached and voyeuristic, the twists at the end muddy the precedings rather than illuminate them. Alex Kingston affirms her acting potential as a quirky and enigmatic high roller. — CH

DINOSAUR (PG)
This family-friendly story about an abandoned dinosaur who is raised by mammals and returns from exile after a meteor shower to save the herd, may be nothing more than a bundle of cartoon clichés that clash with the dazzlingly authentic digital dinosaurs, but this intricately detailed prehistoric world is still a joy to behold. In fact, some of the scarier moments may be a little too realistic for some younger viewers. — EM

GONE IN 60 SECONDS (R)
Written by Scott Michael Rosenberg, this is a collection of the worst guy-flick clichés imaginable. The only thing more remarkable is the butcher job done by the director, Dominic Sena. As the movie is totally devoid of tension, Sena employs the old ticking-clock-on-the-screen ploy to keep us on the edge of our seats. Snore! Every single actor in this film, including Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie and Robert Duvall, is wasted. Instead of going to see this one, spend your time driving your car like it was stolen. — DJ

HOLLOW MAN (R)
Four-star special effects can’t save the latest let-down from the man who gave us Showgirls. Kevin Bacon plays a scientist turned now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t sociopath who uses his miraculous invisibility mostly to sexually harass his co-workers, then switches to serial murder. This ugly, adolescent thriller might have worked as a satire if the plot devices and clichés weren’t as transparent as the protagonist. — EM

HUMANITE
An award-winner at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, Humanite follows a slow-witted policeman, Pharaon (Emmanuel Schotte), as he laboriously investigates the rape-murder of an 11-year-old girl in the French town of Bailleul. Shot in wonderously crisp Cinemascope, which endows the town’s working class banality and people with poetic importance, Dumont’s film focuses on the minute details of Pharaon’s dull existence. It’s an almost real-time approach to Dumont’s characters and plot that, at 148 minutes, will be tortuously slow to some, but to others, will go a long way to render the texture of its protagonist’s life. — FF

THE IN CROWD (PG-13)
Slickly directed by Mary Lambert and featuring reasonably talented young actors (Susan Ward, Lori Heuring, etc.) this teen trash looks like a failed pilot for the WB. It starts out like Girl, Coitus Interruptus and ends up like The Untalented Ms. Ripley, with the two stars involved in sexless triangles, both hetero and lesbian. Their careers have nowhere to go but up. — SW

JESUS’ SON
The modestly comic, tragic and surreal life of a hapless junkie (Billy Crudup) both captures the episodic nature of Denis Johnson’s original, semi-autobiographical book and the non-sequiturs of a drug addict’s conversation. The redemptive final act isn’t as compelling as the hallucinatory comedy that comes before, but the film features fittingly casual performances from Crudup, Samantha Morton, Denis Leary and Holly Hunter, as well as the fiendish scene-stealer, Jack Black. — CH

THE KID (PG) Russ Duritz (Bruce Willis)is a 40-year-old image consultant who bends the space-time continuum when he’s given the chance to meet himself at age eight in Disney’s latest celluloid venture.

LOSER (PG-13)
Amy Heckerling’s uncredited remake of The Apartment owes a lot to its teen leads, Jason Biggs and Mena Suvari, because no matter how incredible things the script has them do, they look cute doing them. He’s a Midwesterner on scholarship to a New York college, used as a doormat by an unholy trio of roommates; she’s more worldly but exploited sexually by lit professor Greg Kinnear. They have to wind up together because they’re the only nice people on the Planet of the Assholes. — SW

MAD ABOUT MAMBO (PG-13)
In working class West Belfast, young Danny (William Ash) dreams of becoming a professional soccer player. Thinking the way to improve his game is to get rhythm, Danny takes up samba lessons, which take him out of his element and into upper class Belfast. Once there, he falls in love with Lucy (Keri Russel), a spoiled daddy’s girl who wants to prove she can make it on her own by winning the Regional Latin Dance Finals. Each with something to prove, Danny and Lucy draw and repel each other like human-sized magnets and make for sweet eye candy as lovers from opposite sides of the tracks. — KL

ME, MYSELF & IRENE (R)
Jim Carrey only plays two of the three title roles — two personalities of a Rhode Island State Trooper — in the comedy that reunites him with filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farrelly. There’s all the outrageous humor you expect, and more — too much more; the editors should have tightened it considerably. Anthony Anderson, Mongo Brownlee and Jerod Mixon, who play Carrey’s black teenage sons, can spin off into a franchise if they want to continue as a team. A movie by the Farrellys isn’t over until it’s over, so stay in your seat through the closing credits. — SW

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 (PG-13)
John Woo’s grand opera ballet of stylized violence, redemptive revenge and heroic love features Tom Cruise as special agent Ethan Hunt, who must recruit a lovely jewel thief (Thandie Newton) to prevent Ambrose Pierce (Dougray Scott) from taking over the world by controlling the antidote to a genetically engineered germ. Mission: Impossible 2 has all the makings of a thrilling and aesthetically seamlesscartoon strip but for one critical element: suspense. — KL

Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (PG-13)
Eddie Murphy adds to the shortage of African-American movie roles by playing half the cast in the frantic, sporadically funny follow-up. Rotund Sherman Klump remains Murphy’s most endearing comic creation, but the story’s sci-fi conceits are more contrived, while the coarse jokes prove more cruel and scattershot. — CH

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (NR)
Painstakingly rendered for IMAX by Russia’s Alexander Petrov, 29,000 slides convey the essence of Hemingway’s novel about a Cuban fisherman and a marlin, the catch of his life, in 22 minutes. The film precedes a crash course in the author’s life and work, Hemingway: A Portrait, an equally brilliant piece by Erik Canuel that’s even shorter but, thanks to the director’s commercial background, gets everything in. Weekends at Fernbank Museum of Natural History. — SW

THE PATRIOT (R)
It’s Braveheart in buckskin as Mel Gibson fights the English again in an epic war drama whose individual moments are as predictable as the outcome of the American Revolution. I didn’t like it and don’t recommend it unless you like unabashed flag-waving — the twin flags of the USA and family values — but I must concede it’s well made. The hypocrisy is amazing as Mel’s South Carolina farmer spouts anti-war sentiments when he’s not hacking men to bits with his hatchet. It’s interesting, though hardly believable, to see how African Americans are worked into the story. — SW

THE PERFECT STORM (PG-13)
The movie may not be perfect, but the storm sequence sure is, with the special effects offering a terrifyingly realistic treatment of a tempest at sea. Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen credibly captures the lives of six ill-fated fishermen, but the film proves flat and unengaging until the weather starts getting rough, and it becomes the cinematic equivalent of a ride like “Splash Mountain.” — CH

POKEMON THE MOVIE 2000 (G)
As TV ratings dwindle, Warner Bros. plays off the Japanese features. This one follows the pattern: an innocuous short, Pikachu’s Rescue Adventure, leads into the main event, The Power of One, which is far less violent than last year’s Mewtwo Strikes Back. Most of the action involves creatures battling the elements, rather than each other, as Ash foils a Pokemon collector (with a cool, Jules Verne-ian flying machine) whose acquisitiveness upsets the balance of nature. The climax is too long, the anti-climax still longer. Blame lowered expectations, but I enjoyed it considerably more than Pokemon the First Movie. — SW

ROAD TRIP (R) MTV prankster Tom Green is one of the few bright spots in this inane, uneven comedy about a college kid racing cross country to retrieve an incriminating sex video before his girlfriend sees it. Booted by hollow characters and paper-thin plotting, Road Trip‘ll make you laugh; but you’ll have to put your brain in neutral and let it tow you from gag to gag to do it. — EM

SHAFT (R)
In the best of the pre-solstice “summer movies,” John Singleton reinvents ’70s “blaxploitation” films for the new millennium. Samuel L. Jackson is perfectly cast as the coolest motherfucker on the planet and supporting players — especially scene-stealer Jeffrey Wright, Toni Collette and Christian Bale — get a chance to shine. Richard Roundtree’s on hand to pass the torch to his nephew (Jackson), who quits the NYPD to enforce the law his way. The script has wit and intelligence, even as the action sequences get progressively wilder and more absurd, and racial humor we can all laugh at together. — SW

SHOWER
(PG-13) Set among the customers of a traditional Chinese bathhouse, Shower concerns the clash between old China represented by the bath’s owner, Master Liu (Zhu Xu), and the fast-paced, modern life of his eldest businessman son, Da Ming (Pu Cun Xin), who comes to visit him in Beijing. The story of a world of intimacy and ritual supplanted by so-called “progress,” Shower is an often moving affirmation of a rich Chinese culture. Though it starts out light, and has a veneer of cutesy-pie throughout, director Zhang Yang manages to endow an oft-told tale with deeper significance. — FF

SPACE COWBOYS (PG-13)
I don’t know how much charm weighs but in Space Cowboys it’s measured by the ton. Directed by Clint Eastwood, the film’s about a pride of old lions, Eastwood, James Garner, Donald Sutherland and Tommie Lee Jones, called upon to repair an obsolete Russian satellite about to fall out of orbit. Its heroes may be too old for teenagers to identify with but for boomers, it’s a hoot. It’s predictable in many ways but it contains genuine tension, belly laughs and human warmth. Go see it. — RJ

THOMAS AND THE MAGIC RAILROAD (G)
Britt Allcroft’s spinoff from her “Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends” and “Shining Time Station” TV series combines live actors (Alec Baldwin and Michael E. Rodgers strike the right tone; Mara Wilson thinks she’s too old for this stuff, and Peter Fonda thinks he’s playing Hamlet) with animated model trains that roll their eyes but can’t move their lips. If you think this is “good enough for kids,” you should be setting higher standards for your kids. I took my inner child to see it, but he went to sleep. Sometimes he has more sense than I do. — SW

TITAN A.E.
(PG) Feature animation grows up, or at least makes it to middle school, in this flashy, fast-paced space opera about an Angry Young Man who holds the key to finding a new habitat for humanity left homeless after the Earth gets demolished by a bunch of really cool looking aliens. Definitely not Rocket Science, but it still has enough zero-G gunfights, dizzying spaceship chases and neato machines to make its target market happy. — EM

TRIXIE (R)
A dizzy misstep from director Alan Rudolph, Trixie stars a squandered Emily Watson as the titular lame-brain security guard, with a talent for mixed metaphors and foggy logic, who becomes mixed up in a sex scandal at a lakeside casino populated by a freaky clan of nymphos, hookers, crooks and horny senators. Rudolph is straining so hard for lighthearted here you can almost hear his blood-vessels popping, but any hoped-for wackiness evades his grasp in this lifeless snafu. — FF

WHAT LIES BENEATH (PG-13)
After 1 3/4 hours of routine filmmaking, a lengthy, largely terrifying climax tells you whether you’ve been watching a ghost story or a domestic drama. Directed by Robert Zemeckis with standard shocks and excellent photographic effects, it showcases Michelle Pfeiffer as Claire, who forms an outwardly perfect couple with Norman (Harrison Ford). But Claire has been seeing — or thinks she’s been seeing — a ghost. Which is in greater danger, their marriage or one or both of their lives? This is a fair-to-middlin’ tale of a fair-to-middle-aged couple and whatever comes between them — or brings them together. — SW

X-MEN (PG-13)
Breaking the a long run of lamentably lame superhero movies, the big-screen version of Marvel’s best-loved book pits misunderstood mutant heroes against their own kind, with humanity caught in the middle. Splashy effects, flashy fights and a slam-bang performance by Ian McKellen as metal-bending master criminal Magneto make this one of the most successful comics adaptations of recent years. It ain’t Citizen Kane, but it ain’t Tank Girl, either. — EM

ROAD TRIP (R)
MTV prankster Tom Green is one of the few bright spots in this inane, uneven comedy about a college kid racing cross country to retrieve an incriminating sex video before his girlfriend sees it. Booted by hollow characters and paper-thin plotting, Road Trip‘ll make you laugh; but you’ll have to put your brain in neutral and let it tow you from gag to gag to do it. — EM