-- SUMMER 1999 MOVIE REVIEWS
-- Summer time movies tend to be aimed at teenagers and leave something
to be desired, but while I checked out a couple of those usual types, I
also found some great exceptions to that rule. The summer reviews
below are in alphabetical order:
| Analyze This! | ***1/2 |
| Austin Powers II -- The Spy Who Shagged Me | ** |
| Blair Witch Project | *1/2 |
| Bowfinger | ** |
| Election | *** |
| Eyes Wide Shut | *** |
| Run Lola Run | ** |
| Tea With Musolini | ***1/2 |
| The Three Seasons | ***1/2 |
| Twin Falls, Idaho | *** |
Analyze This! -- This tightly written script delivers chuckles, guffaws and an occasional belly laugh. Robert Deniro is as adept at comedy as he is at drama, although occasionally you could tell that he was having just too much fun. Billy Crystal was in fine form as well, and even though one would not normally think of putting the two actors in the same sentence, there seemed to be more than sufficient chemistry between them. For what this movie was intended to do, I'm hard pressed to find serious weaknesses in it. ***1/2 out of four stars.
Austin Powers II, The Spy Who Shagged Me -- People may debate which of the two Austin Powers movies was better, but for me, it was the first one, hands down. Much of what was most creative about the first movie was reprised for the second, but this second one also "dumned down" further and spent more time with the adolecent toilet humor. I saw the first one on video, and no one had to tell me when to laugh. In the theater, as I watched the second one, it seemed that the audience (in DC's most hip and free spirited neighborhood) wasn't always sure whether what they were seeing was worthy of a laugh, though they occasionally would force a chuckle anyway, and others would feel obliged to join in. Mike Myers may deserve the kind of recognition Peter Sellers got from Dr. Strangelove for playing three comic roles very well, although his Dr. Evil certainly outshines his Fat Basterd and is far more impressive than his now tired Austin Powers. Okay, it was a fun movie, though I wouldn't take my parents and nephews to it, and I kind of wish that our culture didn't have to resort to so much potty humor to get our kicks. **
Blair Witch Project -- When this movie ended, one could almost feel a collective "That's it?" from every movie goer, unable to believe they'd forked over the full $7.50 for something they may have wished to have waited to see on video, if at all. Another person commented that they not only wanted their money back, they wanted their 80 minutes back! The movie was less about witches than it was about getting along with one's companions when you're lost in the woods. Having been in that situation, that might have been scary enough for me had there not been so much exaggerative pre-movie hype raising expectations for more. The movie was more tiring than scary, and laughably overacted by nonprofessionals. Only the last five to ten minutes seemed scary, and had the movie gone on for another 20 minutes at that intensity, it may have warrented a higher rating (perhaps a couple more stars) from me. I don't think the producers had any more hope than that this might become something of a cult film. Instead, it has become the most profitable film of all time, based on return for investment (in excess of $100 million for a mere $35,000 pony up). That has scared the poop out of Hollywood, learning that any joker with a video camera can outdraw their multi-million dollar investments. Unfortunately, people may stay away from future such projects based on what they've seen here, although there are suckers born every minute. Fool me once ... shame on you. Fool me twice ... shame on me. The movie does deserve accolades for its creative concept and its attempt at realism, albeit frequently flawed. *1/2
Bowfinger -- One can always depend on absurdity from Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy. Steve Martin plays Bowfinger, a down-on-his-luck movie producer/director who is sort of a 1990s take on Ed Wood, the 1950s director widely noted for making some of the worst movies of all time (notably, Plan 9 from Outer Space). Eddie Murphy is hilarious in his role as Kit Ramsey, an arrogant but ridiculously paranoid movie star, who is clandestinely filmed by Bowfinger and his crew. Murphy is even funnier as Kit's younger brother Jif, a naive and geeky-looking errand boy, whom Bowfinger trys to cast as Kit. While Steve Martin deserves kudos for writing a mostly funny script that is refreshingly devoid of the recent onslaught of toilet humor, and director Frank Oz (of Muppets fame) undoubtedly added his magical touch, there are nevertheless many unfortunate moments during which the dialog falls flat or the script relies upon weak and half-silly chase scenes as filler. As time went on, the movie lost me. The absurdity occasionally gets way out of hand, and the characters are often too characatured and too unbelievable to be funny. If you're bored and have nothing to do, the movie has enough charming moments to make it a reasonable pastime. Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend going out of your way for it. **
Election -- I liked this one. Based on an election for student council president, it is a dark comedy in the gendre of last year's way off-beat Rushmore, but one that is rather more touching and thoughtful. Mathew Brodderick, long in the role of a student in his films, gets to play a rather bland but conflicted teacher, mostly as a serious straight-man to the absurd goings-on around him, but not without his own moral dilemmas and weaknesses to which he yields. The ensemble cast of young students work well together. ***
Eyes Wide Shut -- Stanley Kubrik is back again, and thankfully he lived long enough to make a final cut of his new film before dying earlier this year. He's back at his dreamiest, darkest best. Actually, I've been rather critical of some of his movies in the past. 2001, A Space Odyssy seemed insubstantial and left me feeling a bit cheated. I'm a guy who needs more explanation in a movie as to why things are occuring and why I should care. The Shining also inadaquately explained what it was about the history of the mountain hotel that made the Jack Nicholson character suddenly become possessed, insane and homicidal. Was it merely to scare the poop out of us? That's just too simple. I need more. I'm not asking for transparency of plot or too much depth or meaning ... just a few more gaps filled in. A Clockwork Orange ... now there's a movie I think to be the pinnacle of Kubrik's efforts, along with Dr. Strangelove. Aside from the dark view, it is to be expected from each Kubrik film that it will otherwise be completely different from those he's made previously, and Eyes Wide Shut meets that standard. To be sure, he fully exploits the sexual imagination of the public and their fascination with the real-life relationship between two of America's leading sex symbols, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. But, although sex is ostensively the draw of the movie, in some ways it's a bait-and-switch fraud that may disappoint those who are in it for that. It's greater focus is on an examination of the unclear line between dreams and desires, appearances and reality, and the darker side of our base instincts, particularly our fears, and our sense of guilt. At nearly three hours in length and paced to provide sufficient time for thought, it nevertheless sufficiently capitivates one's attention throughout the duration. There isn't a lot of meaning here. You probably won't feel rewarded by any epiphanies of insight. As with most Kubrik films, the ending is typically abrupt; but at least this time, he sufficiently tied up the loose ends that if you don't feel that you got what you paid for, at least you got closure. ***
Run, Lola, Run -- (In German, with subtitles) -- As frantically-paced as this movie is, one would think that the short attention span of the average movie goer would be satisfied, but what the movie gains from pacing, it sacrifices in redundancy. Centered on the premise of a drug deal gone awry (Where have we seen that before?), we get to see three possible outcomes based on slight differences in timing. At 80 minutes, it's a rather short movie even when you don't discount for seeing some of the same scenes multiple times. **
Tea with Musolini-- A strange combination of British high-brow, Italian bravado and American vulgarity which, although stereotypical and at times uncomfortably juxtaposed, nevertheless rewards the audience with an entertaining and at times touching portrait of strong-willed expatriot women who think of war as inconvenience and a childish preoccupation of men. The movie may deliver some best supporting actress nominees. British actresses Maggie Smith and Judi Dench outshine Cher and Lili Tomlin, but the latter two nearly hold their own. They all seem to be playing some aspect of their public personna, but it is still a delight to see the contrasts between them. Though historically based between 1935 and 1945, the movie is kind of a thinking person's Thelma and Louise. Virtually all of the men are either jerks, childish or meglomaniacal while the women are headstrong and by and large moral when not self-absorbed. ***1/2
The Three Seasons-- (An American film in Vietnamese, with subtitles) I really liked this flick, and although my tastes are hardly typical, the two people with whom I saw it (in a nearly empty theater) said they liked it as well. Set in present day Ho Chi Minh City, the movie contains four separate mini-plots, each of which have little or no connection to the others. While giving a very realistic flavor for many aspects of life in today's Vietnam, it touches on the traditional and leans a bit heavily on a darkly depressing vision before pulling itself out of the depths for some sense of renewal and rebirth -- hence the season analogy. Each of the subplots resemble things we've seen in other movies -- a man gently persuading a prostitute to leave her profession behind (a la Pretty Woman and others), a woman connecting to a man with a severely scarred face (as with the Elephant Man, The Man Without a Face, and others), the life of a child living on the streets (with similarities to Central Station), and a man who comes back to try to make things right with a child he fathered and abandoned (a la too many movies to count). The difference is that this is Vietnam, and the story is as much about the setting and circumstances as it is about the issues people face. Poverty, in this case, means working as a bicycle rickshaw driver in relentless heat and humidity, selling watches and trinkets on the street in seemingly endless monsoon rains while putting up with thieves, or picking lotuses from the swamps day after day only to have your market pulled out from under you by competition from the sale of cheaper plastic lotuses. The acting in this movie is great, and had it leaned less on the artistic and poetic, it may have compelled a somewhat broader audience. As it is, along with Tea with Musilini, this was probably my favorite movie of the summer, even though I wouldn't recommend it to most folks with more typical movie tastes. ***1/2
Twin Falls, Idaho -- This extraordinary love triangle between a prostitute and congenitally-joined twin brothers may be a little too sentimental, slowly-paced and/or strange for many movie goers. The fictional drama, created by twin brothers (not joined), is a very touching (though not tear-jerking) study of a variety of concepts relevant to human relationships -- dependency, privacy, loneliness, jealousy, commitment and abandonment -- particularly in a situation where abandonment is not an option. The movie does most things well and is not without a sense of humor. Just once though, I'd like to see a recently-made American movie that is believable throughout its duration. Most moments are fully plausable, but in any recent movie made in this country, I find one or two moments hard to buy. In this case, I sometimes found the reaction, or the lack of reaction, by people to the unusual looking twins to be rather unrealistic. For me, this weakness was dwarfed by the movie's strengths, and I would recommend it to anyone in the mood for a more thoughtful time than a mindless or light-hearted one. ***
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