The Postman (1998)

*The Postman* is not the worst movie I have ever seen, but I have seen a *lot* of really terrible movies. *The Postman* is overlong, boring, clumsy and laughable, and an utter waste of three hours, but it does have Bill. Bill is the Postman's mule, and a mighty fine ass he is. Poor Bill only survives the first 20 minutes of the movie, however, which is fortunate for the mule, but a real letdown for his fans.


The year is 2013, and the Postman (Kevin Costner) is a loner wandering the vast wasteland of a post-nuclear war America, which is exactly the same character Costner played in *Waterworld*, minus gills and water. The Postman is a Shakespearean "actor," moving from town to town performing plays with his mule in exchange for food. Bill is the better actor. Costner monotonously recites a dispassionate "Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this sun of York" as if he were reading a cereal box, but that Bill, he can really handle a sword.

Bill and the Postman are kidnapped and drafted into the United Army of Nathan Holn, which is the bunch who started the war and ruined the world. The Holnists, as they are called, are led by General Bethlehem (Will Patton, in the worst performance of 1997), a former copy machine salesman who also quotes Shakespeare, and commits numerous other misdeeds, as any villain must. Patton's bad acting is at the opposite end of the scale from Costner's: he egregiously overacts, adding meaningless pauses to his phrases and shouting a whole lot for emphasis where none is called for. "Who... is responsible... for that?" he bellows, pointing to an American flag. Then he repeats it about six times. Nothing gets Bethlehem's blood up like a flag.

After the Postman escapes from the Holnists, he finds a dead mailman and steals his uniform and mailbag, then makes his way to Pineview, where he delivers a pre-fin du monde letter to an old blind woman (Peggy Lipton), so everybody in town loves him. They give him food, and have a big ol' hoedown, with singing and dancing and guitar picking. It all looks and sounds pretty good for a post-apocalypse party -- there are pretty colored lights everywhere to frame Costner's noble visage, and mighty fine craftsmanship on the musical instruments, which is surprising since everybody in the world runs around dressed in rags and animal hides, the knowledge of weaving cloth and sewing garments apparently having escaped these goodly folks while the ability to make steel guitar strings did not. Pineviewers also have paper, and, more amazing, envelopes, with which they write many letters for the phony postman to deliver. This kind of inspires the Postman, who is a reluctant hero, this being one of two characters Costner plays (the other being reluctant sports hero). But the Postman is even more inspired by Abby (Olivia Williams), a comely young lass who wants to have his baby because her sweet husband is sterile on account of the mumps. The Postman delivers.

By bringing old mail, the Postman unwittingly gives the people hope, and they start thinking about the future and returning to a civilized society with real clothes. So when he leaves Pineview, the residents, led by a little girl, sing "America The Beautiful," which disturbs the fraudulent mailman and anyone else still conscious at this, the half way point in this sentimental marathon of mock patriotism and hollow idealism.

Meanwhile, Ford Lincoln Mercury (Larenz Tate), having been greatly moved by the Postman's deceit, reopens the post office and starts all kinds of trouble, making Bethlehem even madder than usual. During a long interlude when the Postman and Abby are sequestered in a snowbound cabin, Ford starts up a postal service, and a whole bunch of *Teen Beat* pretty youngsters sign up to ride horses and deliver mail all over the northwest. The postal carriers are a bunch of little rabblerousers, spreading seditious propaganda and making people happy like good counterrevolutionaries should. Bethlehem responds with murder and mayhem, and the Postman, back from his sabbatical, arms the mail carriers with big automatic weapons. Ford is a little hothead, as rebels go, but the Postman is a born leader because he has the nicest sweater in America (a turtleneck) and his hair is always perfectly coiffed, feathering back with the noble breezes that kiss his princely brow as he rides his great stallion in the pursuit of life, liberty and on-time delivery.

At this point, two hours into it, the movie turns absurdly heroic, with Costner just oozing strained nobility. Slow motion happens (as if this movie needed to be slower), and there is more dancing and carrying on, along with explosions and executions and whatnot, and it is all the most uninspiring thing you could ever hope to see. After an interminable period of increasingly corny heroism and romanticism, the Postman rides into Bridge City, where Tom Petty (acting very badly, consistent with the dominant style of the movie) is mayor. Everybody in Bridge City has nicely styled hair and a little boy asks what a postman is, which makes them all tear up because what kind of horrible post-apocalypse world is it where innocent children have never gotten birthday cards from their grandmothers? It's not a post-apocalypse world worth living in, that's what kind, so the Postman decides to do something about it and he raises a big army, and the final showdown with Bethlehem, which is indescribably ridiculous and lame, occurs.


There is some very pretty scenery in *The Postman* (you can hardly go wrong with the American west), and the idea of written communication and mail delivery being the bedrock of civilisation is actually a pretty interesting one. The script by Eric Roth and Brian Helgelund (based on the best-selling novel by David Brin) is occasionally funny. More often than not, however, it is unintentionally funny, and not at all helped by Costner's sluggish and monotonous directing. To add insult to injury Costner sings on the soundtrack as the credits roll (John Sebastian's "You Didn't Have To Be So Nice") and he sings as well as he acts.

If only Bill had found that mailbag first.

5Jan1998

Jackie Brown (1997)

The legions of Quentin Tarantino imitators always seem to miss the essential characteristics of a Tarantino film. Focusing on violence, Tarantinoesque movies are frequently more violent, both quantitatively and qualitiatively, than the genuine article. Violence in actual Tarantino films is oblique, suggested more than seen. Strongly suggested, granted, but it always occurs just outside the frame, or off at a distance, signified by a sound or a splatter of blood -- no victims clutching at blood-spurting arteries, no bullet-riddled dance of death. Someone's talking, and suddenly, they are not. A fine moment in *Jackie Brown* is a case in point: A gun dealer needs to eliminate a talkative employee. Convincing the gullible fellow to crawl inside the trunk of his car, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) drives around the block and disappears as the camera pulls way, way back. At a distance, a car appears and parks in a vacant lot, cloaked in darkness, only the song on the radio identifying it as Ordell's car. Shots are fired, but only two small flares are visible. Ordell drives away, as the same song ("Strawberry Letter 23") continues. No blood, no body, just two pops, and an old, innocuous pop tune with a fresh coat of taint.

*Jackie Brown* is full of fine, true Tarantino moments like that, moments built on small, cunning details. The director's first feature since the influential *Pulp Fiction*, *Jackie Brown* is based on Elmore Leonard's novel *Rum Punch*. It's a seamless adaptation (Tarantino has long acknowledged Leonard as an influence), full of the writer-director's distinctive, hyperactive hyperbole and visual flair. *Jackie Brown* makes obvious what is suggested by the handful of films written, but not directed, by Tarantino (*True Romance*, *Natural Born Killers*): Tarantino's unique and subtle visual style, his uncommon ability to pick out unlikely talent, his sense of timing and ear for the rhythms of speech and street dialects, and his immersion in film history are inimitable, elusive qualities that only emerge when all the elements are together. It isn't just the writing, or the acting, or the directing, but the whole magilla.

*Jackie Brown* is a dense, complicated, and thoroughly entertaining crime caper. Jackie (Pam Grier) is a flight attendant for Cabo Air, the worst airline in the industry. To make ends meets, she acts as a courier for Ordell, who keeps his funds in a Mexican bank. When she's busted by the ATF, Jackie, knowing that Ordell's plans for her don't include longterm survival, schemes to steal half a million from the gun dealer while pretending to sneak his money past the ATF. ATF agents Nicolet (Michael Keaton) and Dargus (Michael Bowen), meanwhile, think she's working for them.

*Jackie Brown* takes its sweet time getting to the heist, which is almost incidental to the elucidating, detailed study of the characters. The movie doesn't even get to Jackie for a good half hour or so, instead spending time with Ordell and his minions Louis (Robert DeNiro) and Melanie (Bridget Fonda). With the exception of movies about criminals (*The Godfather*, *Goodfellas*), it is the rare film that is so lavish and languorous in its devotion to the bad guy. Too many movies spend precious little time establishing any characters, and opt for off the shelf villlains with scars and accents and other telltale features that are supposed to substitute for personality and character. Ordell has a long ponytail and a skinny little braided beard, which give him the look of a kung fu movie villain, but he's more than a haircut baddie. Forever talking about guns, gun buyers, and the small fortune he's got stashed south of the border, Ordell is not psychopathic but frigidly businesslike -- he kills troublesome employees with all the conscience of a CEO plotting a round of layoffs. With a wink at anti media violence crusaders, Ordell is also a media-savvy entrepreneur: his top selling weapons are always the ones featured in the latest movies and TV shows.

Louis is none-too-bright, staring blank-faced while the garrulous Ordell pontificates. When she isn't provoking Ordell and Louis, Melanie, a beach bum stoner, gets high and watches TV all day in Ordell's beach-side condo.

All the time spent with Ordell and company doesn't make them remotely likable, but it makes Jackie so very likable by contrast. In Ordell's dog eat dog milieu, Jackie gets to be the crook *and* the heroine. Knowing Ordell so well, ethical shortcomings, quirks and all, reveals just how much Jackie is risking by double crossing him, and adds an excruciating sense of tension to the story once her scam finally gets under way.

Aiding Jackie is Max Cherry (Robert Forster), the bail bondsman Ordell hires to spring her from jail. Max, world-weary, ultra-cool and street smart, has a sweet spot for Jackie, which prompts him to help plot her early retirement with benefits. The complex sting, with Jackie scamming Ordell and duping the ATF has her risking life and freedom should anything go wrong. But Jackie, aside from being quick thinking and cool (even Ordell is a little intimidated), is desperate. She's middle aged and watching her already limited options get fewer and fewer, and she understandably feels little remorse about ripping off Ordell. The scheme she devises is so deliciously, deviously complicated that it is never entirely clear that she's really pulling it off -- it frequently looks like things are going terribly wrong.

*Jackie Brown* promises to resurrect the careers of Grier, 70's blaxploitation queen (*Foxy Brown*, *Coffy*), and Forster, who, for the most part has seen action in B movies. Grier, far less glamorous then usual, is really terrific as Jackie, playing a woman whose days as a hip, hot action babe left her smart, steely and tired. Forster is marvelously entertaining as a weary businessman, less ruthless than Ordell, but dealing with the same lowlifes. The two characters together, people with as much time behind as ahead of them, are fascinating in their maturity, their well-earned fatigue, their patience and self-possession, and their middle age cool.

Tarantino's love of crime genre literature and film is evident in *Jackie Brown*. Less flashy than Pulp Fiction, and slightly less perfect, *Jackie Brown* is nonetheless consistently entertaining and engrossing, a brisk, stylish film full of wit, smart writing, and shrewd, telling details. Accept no substitutes.


29Dec1997

Titanic (1997)

A band of latter-day pirates plunders a ghost ship, invading its lonely, watery grave with cameras, lights and robotic submersibles. The ship lies still in the serene waters of the ocean floor, looking for all the world like a decaying green corpse, its skin falling slowly away in mossy strands. A silent piano grins like a skull with 88 crooked teeth. Here a footless boot, there a decapitated doll's head, haunting reminders of the 2,200 souls who once waltzed and skipped and swabbed the decks of the Titanic.

The pirates are modern treasure hunters seeking a legendary blue diamond called the heart of the ocean. Instead of the gem, they find the girl who wore it, now 101 years old. As Rose DeWitt Bukater (Gloria Stuart) recounts the voyage of the Titanic in flashback, hers is as much a tale of colliding worlds as of colliding ships and icebergs, an engrossing, mythic, fiercely romantic tale of young love and social class.

Writer-director James Cameron perfectly recreates the ocean liner Titanic with exacting, obsessive detail, but far from being merely a spectacular replica of the ship, a precise but detached reenactment of her first and final voyage, Cameron's film is devastatingly personal, a unique recreation of the full horror and human tragedy of the ship's sinking. Where once the unsinkable Titanic was an abstraction, an example of human hubris and its consequences, in *Titanic*, Cameron, a brilliant technical innovator infamous for his own hubris (as well as spectacular, expensive films), achieves, through a virtuosic accumulation of meaningful details, the individualization of virtually every passenger aboard the ship, creating a dense, rich tapestry of human experience, of passion and love, greed and selfishness, and terrible loss.


Amid the hustle and bustle of Southampton, as excited, awestruck passengers board the "ship of dreams," young Rose (Kate Winslet) is a virtual prisoner, boarding the Titanic in symbolic chains. She is being pushed by her mother Ruth (Frances Fisher) into a loveless marriage with Cal (Billy Zane), destined to be the trophy wife of this callous, controlling and cruel man who is wealthy beyond imagination. Rose bristles at the restrictions of high society as much as the steerage passengers object to the pre-boarding lice inspections. Among the third class passengers is Jack Dawson (Leonardo DiCaprio), a vagabond artist who won his ticket to destiny in a card game. Jack is the resident dreamboat aboard the Titanic, charming, independent, carefree, and everything Rose, wilting in the hothouse atmosphere of a first class existence, wants to be. Like the proverbial two ships in the night, they will collide, with the desperate intensity of emotion only young lovers know.


From the start, *Titanic* is a story of the incompatibility of love and class distinction: the privileged rich are shallow and dull, obsessed with manners and appearances, while the poor are lively and down to earth. The decks of the ship recreate the strata of society, a microcosm for the larger world. Below decks, men sweat and toil in an inferno, shovelling coal into the fiery furnaces that will drive the massive engines. Above them, steerage passengers are crammed into tight quarters; second class is above them, and above all, the elegant accomodations of the first class passengers, the state rooms of Astors and Guggenheims. Rose will bring Jack up to her level, and he will take her down to his, their romantic union hinting at the dissolution of class demarcations that will come as the ship sinks and the literal barriers between the classes are crushed. Even the tragedy of the Titanic, the film makes clear, might have been avoided if not for class-conscious conspicuous consumption: laden with the luxurious trappings of wealth, the ship has too few lifeboats for its passengers and too small a rudder for its fast, powerful engines.

The swoony romance between Jack and Rose is the pure, old fashioned stuff of movies, but it effectively personalizes the disaster to come. Knowing that the Titanic will inevitably sink, knowing that Rose will surely survive the night of April 14, 1912, does not diminish at all the terrible sense of dread and suspense that permeates the film, for even before the catastrophic collision, there is a mood of aching and longing for these young lovers, two people for whom the very thought of separation is almost unbearable. Winslet and DiCaprio carry the full, enormous weight of the story ably -- from the first stirrings of love to fierce devotion and faith, Jack and Rose anchor the Titanic tragedy, reducing the scale of an almost incomprehensibly huge event, transcending history with experiences and emotions that are intensely personal and real.

When the iceberg finally rips into the ship, we know something about the other people on board the Titanic that night as well, something that transcends the abstractions of socio-economic class. There are parents and children, old couples well past the first hot blush of love; there are people in love with their own power, wealth and social position; and there are those who love the Titanic, men whose faith in technology and their own marvelous achievement is easily ripped asunder by the mountain of ice floating in the calm, dark sea. The destruction of the Titanic is excruciatingly played out, almost in real time, as the ship fills with icy water, slowly sinking into the North Atlantic, and the passengers remain largely oblivious to their impending doom. Early in the film, a computer animated recreation of the ship's sinking is studied by the treasure hunters -- it is a chilling portent of things to come, and one that will later guide the audience through each step of the sinking with terrible clarity.

For well over an hour, the horror of the Titanic disaster escalates, finally reaching a crescendo of hysteria and terror, the desperate screaming of passengers and the groaning of the ship, in her extended death throes, the only sounds in the eerily calm night. The flooding decks, the bursting of glass, the destruction of all the lovingly recreated details of the ship become merely symbolic -- what was once the soul and substance of our experience of the Titanic, a sort of detached, historical, technological perspective is made terribly real, replaced with a romantic ferocity as Rose and Jack fight to surive not for themselves but for the sake of true love and each other, as parents try to save their children, as the poor fight the rich for seats on the lifeboats, as the crew try to save the last vestiges of class that their ship once symbolized. As the ship of dreams goes down, crumbling, as the band plays "Nearer My God To Thee," *Titanic* remains fixed on individuals -- the enormity of the total loss is almost unfathomable, but not the loss of each and every person who falls into the icy North Atlantic. As Rose and Jack cling to the sinking ship, cleaving to each other, they come to represent everything that can be lost, everything that was lost that terrible night.


*Titanic* is a technical wonder, and a gorgeous, elegiac and poetic film that is haunting, moving and terrible to behold. This is art that makes life more real, that transforms historical facts and numbers into a meaningful, evocative and resonant accounting, a full measure of what was really lost to the dark sea that night.

21Dec1997

Scream 2 (1997)

Absolutely no time is wasted in getting to the point of *Scream 2*: the first two actors to appear on screen are Jada Pinkett and Omar Epps. They're waiting in line for the sneak preview of *Stab*, the movie based on the book based on the Woodsboro murders (which were the subject of *Scream*), while Pinkett's Maureen complains that slasher films historically exclude African Americans, in addition to being sexploitative and too violent. Maureen, needless to say, is not long for this movie, but her death will be memorably twisted and chilling, and one of the sharpest, most ingenious bits of mayhem ever committed to celluloid.

But there's more. Before her untimely death, Maureen was a coed at the very college where *Scream* survivors Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) matriculate their days away. And thus, *Scream 2* exploits two stinky cheese trends in slasher movie history: college girls and sequels (e.g. *Sorority House Massacre* and *SHM 2: Nighty Nightmare*). "Sequels," Randy reminds his film studies class, "suck. The horror genre was destroyed by sequels." He's right, of course, except that *Scream 2* doesn't suck.

In the same way that *Scream* both skewered and profited by the rules and conventions of the horror genre, *Scream 2* successfully manipulates the trademarks of the subgenre of horror sequels: the body count will be higher, the death scenes bloodier and more elaborate, and someone will survive to make another sequel. And, as in *Scream*, ignorance of horror conventions inevitably leads to death while a firm grasp of the rules (never, never, never run up the stairs!) offers only scant protection to the potential victims of the psycho du jour.

Having proved with *Scream* that the combo of movie smarts, humor and horror could work in a big way, writer Kevin Williamson and director Wes Craven are free to take the whole concept even further with the sequel, and they run like mad with it. *Scream 2* is even funnier and more self-aware than the original, hacking away at both the conventions of the genre and the motifs (like ubiquitous cell phones and media obsessed youth) of its progenitor.

A serial killer isn't the only one stalking fair Sidney this time: Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), chilly, hard-as-nails reporter who wrote the exploitative book that inspired the movie that inspired the copycat killer that killed the coed, etc. is also on hand, sniffing for a new story. She's being stalked herself by an idol-worshipping wannabe reporter (Laurie Metcalf). Deputy Dewey (David Arquette), now sporting a John Waynesque limp courtesy of the original killers, arrives on campus to protect Sidney, while Cotton Weary (Liev Schreiber), once falsely accused by Sidney, now politely pesters her in a desperate bid for his 15 minutes of fame. They're all possible killers, naturally, in addition to Sid's roommate Hallie (Elise Neal), a sorority pledge (which in itself makes her suspect), new boyfriend Derek (Jerry O'Connell) (the boyfriend did it last time) and film freak Mickey (Timothy Olyphant) (never trust the film buff). *Scream 2* belongs as much to the murder mystery genre as to the slasher-horror because it so adroitly juggles all of these characters, setting them up as suspects so effectively that only by being murdered can they eliminate themselves from the list of possible killers, which is a poor bargain given the lucrative potential of *Scream 3*.

The cast, fortified with a few ringers (*Buffy the Vampire Slayer* star Sarah Michelle Gellar is a doomed sorority sister), is whittled away by a knife-wielding maniac in most clever and imaginative ways as *Scream 2* hacks through idyllic Windsor College's list of future alumni donors. To reveal more would spoil the frightful surprises, but suffice it to say that *Scream 2* will, if nothing else, condition a Pavlovian response to the familiar electronic ring of the telephone through the most negative reinforcement imaginable.

As the climactic final scene is played out on the very college theatre stage where Sidney plays Cassandra, *Scream 2* achieves an elaborately over the top frenzy of meticulously plotted violence, self-referentiality, intentional staginess and hugely hammy acting (psycho killers always being the talkative type given to theatrical histrionics). Were it not for its acute pop culture hipness and the awareness on the part of the players that this is one of those weird life imitates art moments that only happens when art imitates life imitating art ("Life is life. It doesn't imitate anything," Randy boldly and foolishly declares), the scene might crumble under the weight of its own cleverness. Instead, it's a deliciously cheeky and smart denouement that dares to wink and nail the audience to their seats at the same time. In other words, it doesn't suck.

15Dec1997

Eve's Bayou (1997)

The narrator of *Eve's Bayou* begins her tale with a startling confession: "The summer I killed my father, I was ten years old." Louis Batiste will indeed die before story's end, but in the potent family drama of *Eve's Bayou*, Louis is but a catalyst, a ghost who haunts his family even before he dies, inspiring in his own child both great love and the desire for murderous revenge.

Novice writer-director Kasi Lemmons has crafted a rich and intense drama in *Eve's Bayou*, mixing elements of classic tragedy and Creole Southern Gothic with the many and opposing spiritual influences at work in this dreamy tale of feminine power, of memory, love and family bonds and the slippery, mutable nature of truth.

In a Louisiana backwater, where the cypress trees are draped in Spanish moss and human emotions run as hot and thick as the steamy summer air, Eve Batiste (Jurnee Smollett) catches her father Louis (Samuel L. Jackson) *in flagrante delicto* with Matty Mereaux (Lisa Nicole Carson). Louis is the town doctor, a smooth talking philanderer and charming rogue irresistible to every woman in the parish but his angry, betrayed wife Roz (Lynn Whitfield). Eve is the first in her family to discover what everyone else in town knows, and what her mother already suspects: Louis' housecalls aren't always medically necessary. The discovery marks a turning point for Eve -- she views her father with growing suspicion despite his calm reassurances and easy, blameless manner, ready to believe the worst of him, feeling acutely his betrayal of her mother, and sensing in the man both his sexual strength and masculine vulnerability.

Eve's older sister Cisely (Meagan Good), her father's favorite child, finds her own relationship to Louis changing and growing more complex as she gets older. She assumes the wife's role, abandoned by Roz, of waiting up for the husband and father who always returns home late. As Eve is fiercely devoted to Cisely, Cisely is fiercely protective of Louis. Most protective of all is Roz, on the verge of a breakdown as she watches over her children with a knowing eye. Roz is aided by Louis' sister Mozelle Batiste (Debbi Morgan), a thrice widowed woman with the gift of sight, who is always tragically blind to her own future. Eve, too, has the gift of seeing the future, but it is her sister Cisely who has the more potent power, inherited from her father, of twisting lies like yarn and weaving them into self-serving new truths. And, like her father, Cisely's weakness is a sexuality she can neither understand nor control.

This already incendiary situation of opposing family loyalties and powers is further inflamed by the introduction of voodoo, practiced by both Mozelle and Elzora (Diahann Carroll), a fearsome, swamp-dwelling voodoo witch. Through the eyes of young Eve, the corporeal world and the spiritual world are seen as inextricably mixed -- the dead walk, invisibly and at will, in the world of the living, working their unseen influences. In the matriarchal world of *Eve's Bayou*, it is both the irresistible allure and the powerful wrath of women that will be Louis' undoing, but it is also clear to young Eve that voodoo, hatred and desire are potent enough to murder her father. There is little doubt that Eve has a hand in killing Louis, although exactly how she accomplishes the deed is left ambiguous.

That Lemmons keeps *Eve's Bayou* from veering into a simplistic, overwrought melodrama is quite an accomplishment. She guides the film, with its psychologically complex characters and atmospheric setting, with real delicacy and a Bergmanesque touch. There are no villains in *Eve's Bayou* -- each character is drawn with such loving precision and understanding that no sin, no weakness or abuse of power is unforgiveable. It would be too easy, given the early prediction of Louis' death, to simplistically draw him as an evil man in order to justify a preordained death. Likewise, to make of Eve a simple child unaware of her own abilities and actions. But both Eve and Louis are weak and strong, knowing and unwise, reckless and full of regrets -- it is Louis' ability to craft a lie and Eve's ability to believe one that ultimately results in a tragedy neither has the power to prevent.

Smollett's performance is fine and open -- her acting lacks the self-conscious cuteness of many child actors, and there's a real maturity, complexity and sense of understanding to her portrayal of Eve. Jackson's smooth, easy manner makes him an appealingly flawed man, a man who is hard to hate despite his infidelities and weaknesses. Debbi Morgan's performance is fiery and vivid -- she has never exhibited such force and vigor on screen. Mozelle has a pivotal role as a conduit between the living and the dead and Morgan plays it with serious conviction and without hamminess.

With cinematography by Amy Vincent, *Eve's Bayou* is visually rich and atmospheric, the gorgeous, dreamy landscape of the bayou echoing the otherworldly visions of the women who live there. It is also rich with intricate, complex drama, and suffused with tragedy and magic, spirituality and sensuality, as the Batiste women confront their weaknesses, exorcise their demons and embrace the strange powers that are their birthright.

8Dec1997

Alien Resurrection (1997)

*Alien* was a movie experience I remember more vividly than most. Arriving at the theatre at the last minute, we were forced to sit in the front row where it looked and felt like the monster's acid saliva was dripping right on us. We were appropriately terrified, grossed out and thrilled. That film was full of striking images and characters that have since become part of the science fiction movie vernacular: blue collar space travellers, the dilapidated, low-tech ship, the creepy-crawly sci-noir atmosphere, and screaming baby aliens exploding out of chests at the dinner table. *Alien* in 1979 was a cool, dark, exhilarating reaction to the wholesomeness of *Star Wars* and its space cowboy imitators, and it succeeded in carving out a place in both pop culture consciousness and the crowded wrinkles of my brain.

*Alien* also succeeds where so many movie franchises fail, with sequels that are as good as, even better than, the original. While most sequels eventually lapse into unintentional self-parody, the *Alien* movies have always featured fine writing and influential directors who leave distinctive, frequently divergent stylistic imprints on the series. Jean-Pierre Jeunet (*The City of Lost Children*) is the latest director to make his mark, with one of the most original and thoughtful of the bunch. *Alien: Resurrection*, the fourth coming of the alien, is both stylishly creepy and surprisingly poignant, a scarifying and emotionally resonant film.

Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) died in *Alien 3* (1992), sacrificing herself rather than allow the alien queen incubating inside her to live. Thanks to the endless possibilities of science fiction, she's back, 200 years later, in *Alien: Resurrection*, having been cloned by the United Systems Military. USM wants the alien fetus Ripley's clone incubates, and after eight cloning attempts, they succeed. There is, of course, a catch: during the cloning process, Ripley and the alien exchanged a bit of DNA, leaving Ripley a strangely predatory human with animal strength, blood that can melt metal, and a creepy psychic and emotional connection to the aliens.


A freighter ship, peopled by a crew of heavily armed smugglers, arrives with an illicit cargo just as scientist Gediman (the always weird and wonderful Brad Dourif) learns that the aliens he is breeding are quick to learn and difficult to tame, having picked up a few nasty traits from the genetic soup in which they were spawned. It isn't long before the aliens run amok, people are eviscerated, and Ripley and the smugglers are forced to fight their way to escape through the dark, deadly space station where metal grill walkways, with the attendant something-under-the-bed foreboding that is a hallmark of the *Alien* series, are still a prominent architectural feature (apparently ship designers are not troubled by alien infestations).


*Alien: Resurrection* revisits the maternal theme of James Cameron's *Aliens* (1986), and revisits it with a vengeance. Written by Joss Whedon (*Buffy the Vampire Slayer*), a twisted thread of freakish maternity runs throughout *Resurrection*: Ripley is surrogate mother to the alien queen, making her grandmother to all the alien spawn. Ripley wants to kill the patriarchal military figures who created both her and the aliens (the computer that controls the ship is known as "The Father"); the aliens want to kill their human progenitors, and every other biped on board, as well. It all makes for a very Greek family tragedy, as the severely dysfunctional alien clan battles to the death with the ersatz family of smugglers, Ripley caught in the middle, her loyalties divided and sorely tested. The consequences of patriarchal hubris are surprising and wrenchingly poignant: killing aliens is, for Ripley, no longer a simple matter of life or death because the line between humans and aliens has been blurred by human intervention.

Whedon's script is funny and witty, and loaded with surprising, imaginative moments of skin crawling dread, gory violence and inventive revelations about the aliens. After three movies, one might think that the ways in which aliens and humans kill each other had been exhausted, but this is apparently not so. *Alien: Resurrection* features devious, thinking aliens who plan ahead, lay traps, and, as always, unexpectedly emerge from under the floors. The cast of characters is also fresh, from the self-conscious, self-loathing auton (a rebellious robot built by other robots) to the lowlife smugglers. Particularly memorable are two *City of Lost Children* veterans: Ron Perlman, commandingly nasty as the testosteroneous, explosively capable brute Johner, and Dominique Pinon as the paralyzed Vriess. Weaver is striking, tough and fascinating as the ever-evolving Ripley. By comparison, Winona Ryder is a bit too pixie-ish as her doe-eyed nemesis-turned-compatriot -- she isn't very commanding squeaking orders at a crew of high caliber thugs.


Jeunet, with cinematographer Darius Khondji, maintains the visual obfuscation that enhances the sci-noir scariness of all *Alien* movies, but adds memorably freaky, Bosch-like images (a cloning lab scene is especially arresting). The director adds a soupcon of teasing, artful dread to the gory, gooey, deadly primordial moisture motif used effectively throughout the film. Whereas the often reviled but highly underrated *Alien 3* was extremely stylish but cold and austere, *Alien: Resurrection* is, despite the nifty stylization and slimy innards, the most emotionally charged and touching film of the series, a soulful family freakshow with a dark, broken heart.

1Dec1997

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)

In Savannah, the lunatics don't wait for the moon to come out. They carry on night and day, partying, drinking, casting voodoo spells and walking invisible dogs. Or so it seems from the portrait of Savannah painted by director Clint Eastwood in *Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil*. Based on John Berendt's best-selling book, the main plot of *Midnight* concerns the true crime story of antiques dealer Jim Williams, a wealthy, flamboyant smoothie who murdered his lover, a young hustler. But plots aside, and the plot is mostly an aside in this film, *Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil* celebrates the colorful characters of Savannah -- Jim Williams included -- in a series of vignettes that highlight the high life of the eccentric Southern town.

John Kelso (John Cusack) arrives in the cypress draped town to write a magazine article about Williams' notorious annual Christmas party at Mercer House, former home of Savannah's own Johnny Mercer. A New Yorker, Kelso (a creation of the movie, and not a character in the book) mostly stares, stupefied, at the quirky antics of Savannah's drunken, heavily armed citizenry as they chatter, guzzle punch and produce small pistols from their party gowns. But when the party's over, Williams (Kevin Spacey) has shot and killed Billy Hanson (Jude Law), claiming self defense. (Savannah parties so relentlessly, even the crime scenes are catered.)

The murder supplies Kelso with an excuse to poke around town. It doesn't take much poking to turn up something weird and wonderful, and for the rest of the film, Kelso acts as an ersatz guide on a tour that includes layabouts and lounge singers, a toothless voodoo priestess (Irma P. Hall) communing with the dead Billy Hanson and a show stopping performance by drag queen The Lady Chablis (playing himself).

A breezy but sprawling and messy film, *Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil* is enjoyable as a fanciful portrait of Savannah, but as courtroom drama or murder mystery, it's pretty lightweight. When it comes out that Williams is gay, he is excoriated by the town that once coveted his favor, a fact that is neither played up nor down, in particular. Ably defended by his sharp, good ol' boy lawyer Sonny Seiler (Jack Thompson), and junior detective Kelso, Williams stands trial, but the trial itself, aside from the presence of Williams' cat Shelton as a defense witness, is mostly boilerplate stuff, neither especially exciting nor surprising. Likewise Williams' moral slipperiness -- he tells different versions of his story to suit changing circumstances. This disturbs Kelso's moral compass, but is otherwise not very compelling because Williams is always more sympathetic and likable than his trashy, menacing victim. All of which makes for surprisingly little drama in a potentially highly dramatic story. *Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil*, scripted by John Lee Hancock, is a stone soup of a movie -- little supbplots are thrown into the pot as they are found, but there's no particular recipe, and neither the plot nor the soup ever thickens. The murder story seems almost an afterthought, a little salt thrown in at the very last.

Most of the performances are highly mannered in *Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil*. When someone as outrageous as The Lady Chablis (think RuPaul without inhibitions) is in the house, everyone else is practically forced to ham it up, and ham it up they do. Spacey's Williams is an astute combination of languor and alertness, a sleeping cat ready to spring into action. Cusack's role is largely reactive -- he's a wide-eyed innocent trying to make sense of a freak show. The rest of the cast includes a lot of actors low profile enough and talented enough to look and sound like authentic Savannahians. This adds immeasurably to the fun of *Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil*. Take away the boilerplate courtroom plot and what's left is something like an Errol Morris documentary -- a potboiler set in a strange, colorful little Southern town whose most famous citizen used to be a bulldog named Uga.


24Nov1997

The Jackal (1997)

There are certain adjectives associated with political thrillers. They are the kinds of words, often followed by an exclamation point, that are featured prominently in advertisements for these films, words like "Taut!" and "Suspenseful!" and "A rollercoaster thrill-ride of edge-of-your-seat excitement!" None of those words apply to *The Jackal*. Not one. There are really only two words that acurately describe this soporific movie: BORE and ING. I would add an exclamation point to that, but it might give the misleading impression that there was something even remotely exciting about *The Jackal*. And there isn't.


A comatose remake of *The Day Of The Jackal* (1973), a taut, suspenseful, political thriller about an assassin hired to kill Charles DeGaulle, *The Jackal* features Bruce Willis as an assassin hired to kill the director of the FBI. Exciting, no? The director's name is Donald Brown, which is one of those generic names a writer would ordinarily use until he thinks of something more interesting. Apparently the unusually named screenwriter Chuck Pfarrer forgot to change Donald Brown's name to something interesting and exciting, and forgot to do the same for the movie as well.

"The Jackal," as the assassin is known, is a so-called master of disguises. He possesses a lot of wigs and an assortment of fake mustaches and phony identification papers which allow him to cleverly elude capture even though he always looks exactly like Bruce Willis in a bad wig. He is hired by a Russian mobster, disgruntled because his mobster brother was killed during a sting operation in a discotheque by Valentina Koslova (Diane Venora), a Russian operative working with the FBI in Moscow. "It's never easy taking a life..." the wise and noble FBI agent Carter Preston (Sidney Poitier) tells Koslova. So, after the brother kills one of his own henchmen by embedding an axe in his skull ("I took no joy in it..." he mopes), he hires "The Jackal" to exact his revenge.

Meanwhile, after exciting side trips to Helsinki and Montreal, the FBI and Koslova are back in the States after somehow uncovering the insidious plot to kill the director of the FBI. They enlist the help of Declan Mulqueen (Richard Gere), an IRA sharpshooter imprisoned in Massachusetts on a weapons charge. Mulqueen and "The Jackal" have a history, having something to do with Isabella Zancona (Mathilda May) a beautiful Basque separatist. According to Koslova, "Basques live by the vendetta. If they hate someone, it is to the death. It is the same when they love someone." These are important facts to remember, because Isabella hates "The Jackal," and she loves Declan, so somebody is bound to wind up dead.


After about two hours of mind-numbing boredom, during which "The Jackal" carefully but impassively plans his job, and Declan attempts to figure out what his next move will be (something he does with amazing skill, but always about ten minutes too late), *The Jackal* finally lurches into second gear, where it stays until the bitter, boring end. The less than exciting climax features a textbook subway tunnel chase, a shootout with hostages, and a not very surprising surprise.

Directed by Michael Caton-Jones (*Rob Roy*), *The Jackal* is really a very bad movie. The dialogue is preposterous and the action is bloody but anemic. "The Jackal" is a totally formless character -- the movie is a lot more interested in his great big gun and minivan than in exploring why he is such a cold-blooded and passionless zombie. Willis could have played this one in his sleep, and one suspects he did. Gere's Irish brogue is serviceable, and he's appealing enough as Declan, but he doesn't have much to work with here -- the passionate IRA man has been done, and this movie covers nary an inch of new ground with the character. Basque separatists, on the other hand, are something you don't see a lot of in movies these days.

*The Jackal* is prime cheese -- Swiss cheese, with plot holes big enough to drive a minivan through, which makes for an insensible, pointless story full of meaningless details. If you can keep from nodding off, the movie is easy to follow, but that's only because *nothing ever happens*. You could sleep through the first two hours, wake up for the last five minutes and have no trouble figuring out what's going on, but that would only ruin a good nap.


17Nov1997

Boogie Nights (1997)

There's a weird temporal convergence to *Boogie Nights*, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson's chronicle of the rise and fall of a porn star. On the one hand, *Boogie Nights* attempts to recapture the hedonistic heyday of the late 70s, the pre-plague years when sex and drugs could seemingly be indulged without consequence. On the other hand, *Boogie Nights* as a *film* is very much influenced by the 90s, recalling both *Pulp Fiction* and *Trainspotting* (through which 70s film influences are filtered), with the attendant moral relativism, matter-of-fact decadence and depravity, and de riguer violence. In that world, only stupidity is a punishable sin. Then again, aspects of *Boogie Nights* have the moralistic ring of the 50s, with appropriate chastisement meted out to all wayward sinners.

This strange, anachronistic conflation of movie Zeitgeist and historical Zeitgeist is unsettling, because *Boogie Nights*, although largely about the 70s, is a film that never would have been made *in* the 70s. It leaves in its wake lingering questions about the relationship between movies as pop culture, and society. It's a chicken-and-egg quandary -- which came first, pop culture or Zeitgeist, or are they the same thing? It gets even more dicey when you jump back two decades and are forced to consider the changing social influence of cinema. Can a movie that is stylistically and narratively shaped by one era accurately reflect the psychological mood of another? *Boogie Nights* doesn't provide a conclusive argument for either side, because what starts out as a fresh, exciting, ecstatically stylish film eventually loses its way.


*Boogie Nights* begins on a night in 1977, with a visual plunge into the darkness of a California discotheque, where all the players are assembled. It is there that high school dropout Eddie Adams (Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg) first catches the discerning eye of porn director Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds, in a terrific, solid performance). Eddie's only talent is a generous natural endowment that Horner can readily appreciate ("Everyone is blessed with one special thing," Eddie modestly tells his admiring girlfriend). Horner, weary and paternal, is surrounded by his surrogate family: leading lady Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), sad and dysfunctionally maternal; Rollergirl (Heather Graham), who never removes her skates, even during her many sexual escapades; and porn stars Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), Buck Swope (Don Cheadle), and Becky Barnett (Nicole Parker). What these characters all have in common is the guileless perspective of the big fish in a little pond-- they don't seem to realize that theirs is, at best, a low-rent, third-rate celebrity. Eddie shares their capacity for self-delusion. Oddly wholesome, gentle and polite, he's also familiar with Horner's work, and eager to be a star. When his Mom kicks him out of the house because she doesn't like his girlfriend (a very 70s, movie-of-the-week plot device), he gets his chance, and is quickly absorbed into the adult entertainment demimonde of sex, drugs and rock and roll. The wholesome California boy renames himself Dirk Diggler, drops his pants, and a star is born.

Dirk's career hangs on his hang, (extraordinary enough to attract attention even among Horner's jaded, seen-it-all film crew), and he quickly rises to the top of the skin flick scene, remaining boyishly wholesome despite the permanent house party atmosphere of his new life. As the decade winds down, Dirk's star continues to rise -- he's soon got his own bachelor pad and sports car, and life is a hedonistic joyride.

The decline begins on New Year's Eve, 1979, as drugs and violence assume a more prominent role in the lives of Dirk and company. This second half of *Boogie Nights* loses steam as it chronicles the rapid decline of the whole dysfunctional family (except Horner who is only forced to compromise his artistic integrity to the fiscally obsessed 80s, by switching from film to video). Part one of the movie is a giddy, camp-free slice o' life that, although about a small subculture, neatly captures the spirit of the late 70s and the post-war, eat, drink and be merry mood reflected in the pop culture of the period (whether life on Main Street was ever like that is an entirely different question). The nostalgia trip of *Boogie Nights* is far more titillating than the fairly discreet sex and nudity. The film is exacting in all its details, from Qiana shirts and platform heels to 8-track Hi-Fi and disco music, and seeing the horrible form-fitting pants and gigantic collars, the hideous furniture and ankle-spraining heels displayed with such earnestness, such conviction, is rather intoxicating. There's not a hint of condescension about all that tacky glitz in Anderson's film, and there's something strangely touching about the genuine fondness for, and sense of innocence about, these far from innocent fashion victims. That same sense of fondness and utter lack of camp pervades the often hilarious filmmaking scenes, with their amateurish acting and production values -- the movie respects the artistic pretensions of these pornographers, even while it fully exposes their aesthetic shortcomings. Thus, when the lives of these characters hit the skids, it is less tragic than disappointing -- there's something retributive about it that is out of place, as if Anderson forgot that their lives were already pretty sorry, that the glamor was just a facade plastered over empty, lonely lives.

This second half of *Boogie Nights* feels rigged from the start -- from the way the movie is neatly bisected into the last three years of the 70s and the first three years of the 80s (which it treats as mostly a 70s hangover, the inevitable morning after, with all the attendant regret), to the familiarity of the sudden, downhill path taken by virtually all of the characters. The story feels preordained in a way that mitigates against surprise, and almost negates the freshness, vividness and vibrancy of the first half of the film by creating a sense that it was there only to portend inevitable doom, as if time and history looked backwards and set these people up. This second part of *Boogie Nights* just doesn't ring true -- it *feels* like a movie (this is especially true of the tidy coda), whereas the first and far better half feels exuberantly real.

10Nov1997

Wind in the Willows (1997)

One might expect a bit of imaginative anarchy, a touch of licentiousness from a movie featuring the Monty Python crew, even if it is a movie made wth kids in mind. And that's just what one gets in *The Wind In The Willows*, Pythoneer Terry Jones' adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's classic novel of anthropomorphic woodland dwellers. Many liberties are taken with the text, but it is altogether a fitting, if loose, adaptation that captures well the spirit of the book and its mix of human and animal characters, forest idyll and mechanical menace.

Jones is Mr. Toad -- just barely. Leaving less to makeup and more to the imagination, Toad and his mates Mole (Steve Coogan), Ratty (Eric Idle) and Badger (Nicol Williamson) are realized as mostly humanoid creatures. Toad has only a touch of green in his skin, although his tongue is quite long and adept. Ratty the river rat has a long, hairy tail and whiskers that jut out from his mustache, but his tweeds are always tidy, and he is uncommonly fond of picnics. Sad, timid Mole wears glasses, while bristly Badger sports big mutton chops and a bushy tail. The various humans in the tale generally occupy positions in law enforcement and motor car sales. One of the delights of *The Wind In The Willows* is the way that the distinction between humans and animals is so fuzzy -- at times, a big bushy tail peeking out from under hoop skirts is the only hint that a fair lady isn't quite what she seems. Nine out of ten residents in this neck of the woods is a rabbit, and although the species is equipped with long ears and cotton tails, they are most recognizable for their always amorous and forever multiplying ways.


*The Wind In The Willows* concerns, as does the book, Mr. Toad's utter obsession with motor cars. He's an appalling driver, which results in a great many crack ups, and the frequent need for new cars. T'is there the movie diverges rather sharply from the book, as Mr.Toad's financial salvation, the local weasel gang who are only too happy to assist him in funding his extravagant lifestyle, turn out to be somewhat more menacing than your average collection agency. The weasels, it seems, are woodland loan sharks, and they have plans to build a dog food factory on Toad's soon-to-be-forfeited ancestral estate. Naturally, being weasels, they are dangerous villains, with nasty little teeth and plans for world domination. Their black and red W logo looks suspiciously like the emblem of the Third Reich.

So while Ratty, Mole and Badger try to cure Toad of his motor mania, the fascist weasels scheme, laying waste to the woodland while they're at it. (A side trip to the local court features a hilarious apperance by John Cleese, demanding, as Toad's defense attorney, that the book be thrown, quite hard, at his car thieving client.) Adventures ensue, as adventures must, when the friends try to save Mr. Toad's home, and eventually, Mr. Toad himself, from a dog food factory fate.

Does *The Wind In The Willows* make trenchant, even educational points about protecting the environment and fighting totalitarianism? Does it advocate loyalty and friendship over narcissism, gluttony and materialism? Well, of course it does, but it has a great deal of fun doing it, which is to say, this is no *Sesame Street* outing. The unexpected frequently occurs, although, this being a movie mostly for kids, certain plot points are, like Toad's titanic tongue, rather obvious when revealed.

*The Wind In The Willows* makes fine and fanciful use of English scenery, castles and all. The cast, heavy on Pythoneers (Michael Palin is luminous and loopy as the know-it-all Sun) is kid-friendly, but the performances have a fun, devil-may-care audacity about them, coupled with an unexpected quantity of conviction for a bunch of blokes wearing tails and whiskers.


3Nov1997