The Full Monty (1997)

What's so funny about men taking their clothes off? Women taking their clothes off isn't funny, although recent movies on the subject (*Showgirls*, *Striptease*) have been laughably bad. Why should it be any different when the strippers are male?

It shouldn't, and that's really what makes *The Full Monty* such a delightful and winning movie. The men in *The Full Monty*, a ragtag group of unemployed steelworkers in Sheffield, England, are already stripped of their pride and dignity by life on the dole. Conceived as a plan to make quick cash, stripping unexpectedly becomes a means of empowerment and liberation for these blue collar blokes, a way to recover their manhood by, of all things, baring their manhood. They've got nothing to hide because they've got nothing to lose.

Led by Gaz (Robert Carlyle), who gets the idea when he sneaks into a Chippendales show, each of the men has his own desperate reasons for this most desperate measure. Gaz is about to lose custody of his son Nathan (William Snape), unless he can come up with child-support; Gerald (Tom Wilkinson), the lads' former supervisor, can't bear to tell his free-spending wife that he lost his job six months earlier, even when the repo men are knocking at the door. Lomper (Steve Huison) is depressed and suicidal, a lonely security guard watching an idle steel plant; Horse (Paul Barber) has a bad hip; Guy (Hugo Speer) is without means and without talent, although he is apparently spectacularly well-endowed; chubby Dave (Mark Addy) is impotent, racked with insecurity and feeling unlovable because of his ample love handles. Each man feels obsolete, emasculated and exposed -- with the comical logic of the desperate, they conclude that they, like the buff, well-oiled Chippendales, have what it takes to drive the employed women of Sheffield into a money-throwing frenzy.

One major source of comedy in *The Full Monty* is that the men are not traditional beefcake types (as they no doubt will be in the Hollywood remake of this movie). Pasty and flabby, they are absurdly bad dancers as well. Guy fancies himself another Donald O'Connor, but his footwork is more fanciful than fancy. Horse, a bit on the old side as exotic dancers go, can manage naught but the funky chicken these days, and as for the rest, the rhythm kings they are not. With young Nathan watching in horror, they attempt, with comical gravity, to put together their Hot Metal Revue, rehearsing to old disco tunes in the last place where they felt like real men: the abandoned steel mill where they were once employed. They have little to offer but their willingness to bare all, and there's some doubt in the ranks about the wisdom of that.

Written by Simon Beaufoy and directed by Peter Cattaneo, *The Full Monty* (Brit slang for butt-naked) is surprisingly heartfelt and sincere, a comedy tinged with real melancholy. The laughs are not really at the expense of these downtrodden blokes -- they're laughing themselves, after all, through the tears. But even while the g-string men are prancing about in ludicrous imitation of exotic dancers, this comic gem never loses sight of what brought them to this unlikely juncture -- the socioeconomic realities of modern-day England, which relegated them all to the scrap heap. Once the nuts and bolts of their working class town, now they're just the nuts, and rusty ones at that. In that context, their baring endeavor is a triumph over a failed economic system, unexpectedly liberating and, shall we say, uplifting.

The fine performances by Carlyle (best known as the psychotic Begbie in *Trainspotting*), Wilkinson, and Addy, in the three central roles, really reveal the not-so-quiet desperation of these working stiffs, and give *The Full Monty* its tragicomic edge. Despite the absurd circumstances in which they frequently find themselves, the characters in *The Full Monty* always ring true as more than the sum of their quirks, foibles and troubles. They bare their souls, and when the curtain finally goes up on their performance, it is an exhilarating moment of drama, comedy and relief as they bare something that, it turns out, is far less revealing.

29Sep1997

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

*Lawrence Of Arabia* was first released the year I was born, so I never saw it in its full Panavision glory. As an adolescent, I discovered this film, by then a late-night TV staple, and sat mesmerized, on countless occasions, watching it in all it's truncated splendor, in the wee hours of the morning. The sweeping desert vistas, the epic battles, Peter O'Toole's incredibly blue eyes -- no television could ever do these things justice, and yet this movie put a spell on me. I absolutely loved it, and was ready to throw off Levi's and turtlenecks for flowing white bedouin-wear.

My obsession with the enigmatic T.E. Lawrence began shortly thereafter, and lasted about as long as my obsession with the enigmatic Marilyn Monroe and the mysterious Kennedy assassination, and a variety of other things linked only by the fact that they were newsworthy back when I was in swaddling clothes.

The movie, on the other hand, remained a lifelong favorite. Restored and re-released in 1989, *Lawrence Of Arabia* is now playing in Manhattan at the Paris Theatre, with a beautiful new 70mm print. Watching it there last week, I was struck by how well this remarkable, passionate film has held up over the years.

An unusually literate film, *Lawrence Of Arabia* has a wonderfully witty script by Robert Bolt, and deals with complicated psychological and political issues succinctly but with depth. The dark complexity of Lawrence, the gnarly entanglements of politics, British imperialism and racism all add to the unapologetic ambiguity of this epic tale of an unapologetically ambiguous man.


The cinematography is magnificent, as is the general artistry of this David Lean film. Naturally, the stunning Arabian landscapes, oceanic in scale, help, but more than that, Lean used the landscape as a dramatic tool, influencing countless future films and filmmakers in the process. He loads the landscape with emotions so acute and grand that even the mountains of sand can barely contain them. The sheer, austere vastness of the settings and the brilliant intensity of the light in this movie lead to a sort of hypnosis -- and a psychological understanding of the appeal that the forsaken place had for Lawrence, a man accustomed to the damp greenery of Oxfordshire, one of that breed of Englishmen in love with the desert. The massive scale of *Lawrence Of Arabia* would be unimaginable today, when far less ambitious movies cost half the GNP of Saudi Arabia -- the sheer magnitude and ambition of such an artistic undertaking rivals the hubris of Lawrence himself.


O'Toole's complex portrayal of Lawrence is splendid. He reveals Lawrence as a man both in love with himself and horrified by his own impulses and megalomania, an arrogant masochist who tested himself in the crucible of the desert, and found himself lacking. While most epic adventures like this focus on battles and horses and glinting swords, *Lawrence Of Arabia* contains some of the most psychologically intimate and acute scenes -- however cryptic they were -- ever committed to celluloid. And there are, of course, glinting swords and horses and great battles, although these are presented with an almost pacifist ambiguity and horror of war.

The cast of *Lawrence Of Arabia* featured the cream of the crop at the time: Omar Sharif, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Claude Rains, Jose Ferrar. Most surprising is Guinness' portrayal of Prince Faisal. Despite obviously blue eyes and black eyebrow dye, Guiness really, truly pulls it off and is utterly convincing as the Arab sheik. That's a bit of casting that would be a howler of political incorrectness today, but Guinness' performance is a reminder that great acting transcends race, while it also, perhaps inadvertantly, echoes the anti-tribalist theme of *Lawrence Of Arabia*.


Much of the complexity, the dark mystery, of *Lawrence Of Arabia* was no doubt lost on me as an adolescent. But one thing was not: *Lawrence Of Arabia* was the first adult movie that I loved, and it was the movie that made me love movies forever. Seeing it again, and on a big screen, was like seeing it for the very first time. Stirring, magnificent and gorgeous, it reminded me, after a summer full of assembly line movies, what movies should be, and what they can be. If you have any reason to be in New York City in the next two weeks, and even if you don't, do not miss *Lawrence Of Arabia*. I'm thinking of becoming obsessed all over again.


15Sep1997

Excess Baggage (1997)

Alicia Silverstone, so engaging and energetic in her starmaking role in the ingenious *Clueless*, has a dud on her hands with *Excess Baggage*. Silverstone produced the film, in which she plays Emily Hope, a poor little rich girl who stages her own kidnapping in order to get some attention from her cold, unfeeling father, a shady business tycoon. Emily's plan backfires when a car thief steals her BMW, with the heiress still tied up in the trunk.

This is known as "meeting cute" for a movie couple, and there's little doubt that Emily and her unwitting kidnapper Vincent (Benicio Del Toro), the affably daffy car-thief-with-a-heart-of-gold, will be coupled by the end of *Excess Baggage*. This contrivance occurs because Emily, for reasons that are not entirely clear, refuses to leave Vincent despite his many efforts to ditch her, eventually winning him over with her pouty, bratty, clueless ways.

There is very little left to doubt in *Excess Baggage*, and few surprises in this by-the-book, couple-on-the-run, road trip romance. The biggest surprises in this lacklustre film are the performances, some surprisingly bad, some surprisingly good.

Silverstone's Emily is a generally unlikable, spoiled brat. Emily gets lots of close-ups of her big doe eyes and pouty lips, but little that makes sense is revealed about her character, except that everything she does is a desperate cry for attention. One minute she is a high kicking karate black belt, the next she's a whining, fearful little girl who smokes constantly, drinks even more, and suffers some pretty wild mood swings.

Del Toro (*The Usual Suspects*) easily walks away with the film. His oddly mannered performance, a sort of mumbly, Methody, monotonously comic James Dean riff, is utterly mesmerizing and hilarious. Del Toro's Vincent underreacts to everything (including ye olde groin kick), and wanders through *Excess Baggage* in an apparent state of constant bemusement that is the perfect counterpoint to Silverstone's erratic, overwrought performance.

Christopher Walken, as always, is another scene stealer, this time playing (no surprises here) Emily's menacing and mysterious "Uncle" Ray. Ray is Dad's Mr. Fixit, called in to take care of the inconvenient kidnapping situation so that the tycoon can attend to his important business meetings. Walken's gift is his ability to take seemingly innocuous statements and deliver them with such slippery venom that the very molecules in the air around him are malignant with dread, and he uses that talent to great effect in *Excess Baggage*. Walken and Del Toro, with their equally mannered and quirky portrayals, play off each other wonderfully, and supply all of the energy and interest present in this otherwise drab movie.

Uncle Ray somehow manages to track down Vincent and Emily just as Vincent runs afoul of a pair of venal henchmen out to recover a satchel full of money that was paid to the car thief for the stolen cars that were never delivered because Emily burned down the warehouse. This belabored plot twist provides *Excess Baggage* with some excess baggage of its own: Harry Connick, Jr. as Vincent's shifty pal Greg, and Nicholas Turturro as a fast talking thug. Another turn of the plot allows Emily's Dad (Australian actor Jack Thompson) to prove what a considerable cad he is -- even Uncle Ray is disgusted.

Directed by Marco Brambilla (*Demolition Man*), *Excess Baggage* is erratic and uneven, occasionally cute, occasionally funny, but mostly a baffling, inconsistent mess punctuated by spurts of violence and somewhat creepy romance. *Excess Baggage* would be a good video to watch with one's thumb on the fast-forward button; Savor the slippery, offbeat charms of Del Toro and Walken, and skip everything else.

8Sep1997

She's So Lovely (1997)

Hard drinking, hard living Maureen totters around on high heels in search of her absentee husband Eddie. Eddie has been making himself scarce ever since Maureen got pregnant. This is obviously not a politically correct couple. They smoke, they fight, they hang around in dark, seedy bars, then stagger home to the fleabag hotel they call home. Maureen and Eddie are crazy in love, though, and quite possibly, just plain crazy.


*She's So Lovely* is a crazy movie. Penned some two decades ago by the late indie film pioneer John Cassavetes, and directed by his son Nick Cassavetes, *She's So Lovely* (originally titled *She's Delovely*) is filled with incomprehensible characters who do incomprehensible things without apology or explanation. Maureen (Robin Wright Penn) and Eddie (Sean Penn) don't even understand themselves -- all they know, all they need to know, is that they love each other truly and madly.

When Eddie attempts to make sense of his irrational life, he launches into strange ruminations that lead him into genuine madness. And when he discovers that, during one of his absences, Maureen has been roughed up by a neighbor, he really goes off the deep end, dragging *She's So Lovely* right along with him. Eddie spends ten years in a mental institution, only to discover, when he's released, that he's in an entirely different movie.

Maureen has abandoned her urban lowlife ways and settled into suburban housewife mode with her successful husband Joey (John Travolta), and three daughters (one of whom is Eddie's). Despite the veneer of apparent normalcy, Maureen makes no secret of the fact that she still loves Eddie with most of her heart. Joey, in his own way as volatile and insensible as Eddie, sets up a confrontation -- Maureen will have to choose between Joey and the kids and Eddie.


In any other movie, it would be pretty obvious what Maureen's choice must be. But She's So lovely isn't any other movie. Maureen expects nothing less than acceptance of her choices, however illogical or immoral they might seem. The right thing to do is what feels right to her, and that might change from moment to moment. The same goes for this movie, which asks only two things of an audience -- suspend judgment, and enjoy the ride. It's an amoral sentiment that, back when this movie was written, would have been more or less accepted. Nowadays, however, it seems outdated and quaint, especially in movies, where snap moral judgments are all but demanded by characters who are obviously right or wrong, good or bad, and have the soundtrack music to prove it. Certainly, few films would dare to demand that Maureen, Eddie and Joey -- hard cases who make their own choices harder -- be accepted for who they are. These are the kind of people who, in 1997, would end up on a daytime talk show -- "My wife still loves her crazy ex" -- seeking public approval of their alternative lifestyles. Perhaps the most likable thing about Maureen and Eddie is that they don't need anyone's approval -- they only need each other.

*She's So Lovely* doesn't quite exist in 1997, or any other year, anyway. It's a fable, an oddly charming little tale of unbounded, undying, uncritical love that has no concern for consequences. The main pleasure of *She's So Lovely* is its complete unpredictability -- you never know what anyone in this quirky movie is going to do or say at any time.

The performances are superb -- Penn's Eddie, bewildered and bedeviled, is almost tragic, a puppet controlled by his own heartstrings. Wright Penn's performance is raw, daring and reckless -- Maureen is as wrongheaded as she can be, having neither beauty nor brains, but she has an open heart. Travolta wrings a lot of hurt, anger and humor out of a small role, and Debi Mazar, Harry Dean Stanton and hKelsey Mulrooney (as Eddie's daughter Jeannie) are fine in supporting roles.

Fittingly, Gena Rowlands, who starred in many of John Cassavetes' films, and is mother to director Nick, has a small supporting role in this Cassavetes family film. A unique collaboration between father and son, written with a unique voice, and directed with style, h*She's So Lovely* is a witty, funny and unsentimental movie of romance without rhyme, reason or regret.


1Sep1997

Career Girls (1997)

*Career Girls* hones in on that unfortunate tendency of humans to remember most vividly and inescapably the most painful and unpleasant things. So it isn't misty watercolor memories that Hannah and Annie, reunited six years after college, dwell on, but painful memories. They don't remember the good times, if they ever really had any. Instead, their psyches pick at the scabbed-over traumas of their volatile friendship in a series of sharp and poignant reminiscences, revealing, in the process, that it wasn't fun and games that solidified their friendship, but rather that they stuck together as they stuck it out through difficulties and emotional travails that are painfully familiar and ordinary.

The signature traits of a Mike Leigh film -- the writer-director seemingly feels no obligation to entertain as he tells a story, nor does he seem inclined to stray from the everyday matter of human existence -- are what make his films so fascinating and, oddly, entertaining. *Career Girls* is an engrossing, peripatetic little comedy that is far more bitter than sweet. Its laughs, tinged with regret, irony and disbelief, are the sort shared between friends who have seen the worst of each other, and, often enough, the worst of the world. Spending time with Hannah and Annie really is like spending time with old friends, people you know too much about and who know too much about you -- the sort of people who are altogether missing in the artificially attractive fantasy world of movies. *Career Girls* smacks of realism like a smack in the head.

Hannah (Katrin Cartlidge) and Annie (Linda Steadman) meet when the latter answers an ad for a roommate in college. It's an umpromising start. Hannah, tall and gawky, tends to angrily spit out streams of words in a hyperkinetic rant. She's as indiscriminate as a volcano, spewing destruction in all directions, but at the same time, she's not intentionally vicious. Anger seems to rise up out of her and explode before she can stop it. Squeaky-voiced little Annie is nervous and twitchy. Unlike Hannah, her traumas erupt not in words but in physical symptoms -- she is quite literally an open wound. Allergic to everything, her face scarred by dermatitis, she nervously smokes between puffs on her asthma inhaler, carrying her head tilted downward, never making eye contact. Somehow, Hannah and Annie connect through their woundedness. Their friendship doesn't produce any radical or artificial transformations of character -- they are not altered by each other, but sustained by each other.

The slim plot of *Career Girls* involves their reunion six years after college, as Annie visits Hannah in London. At first uneasy, just as they were ten years earlier, they gradually, over the course of a weekend, become accustomed again to each other's quirks and rhythms, settling into the yin and yang of their relationship. The reunion brings back a flood of memories for both, and in the course of their travels together, they stumble upon old friends and enemies from their college days, most notably Ricky (Mark Benton), who is more painfully screwed up and unstable than Hannah and Annie put together.

The title *Career Girls* is a doubly ironic reference to unfulfilled hopes and gradual maturation. Neither Hannah, a college Engligh major, nor Annie, a psychology major, have careers. Neither are they still girls, having grown up as they grew apart, in mutually surprising transformations. Hannah and Annie have settled, without satisfaction, into office jobs, but both have a desire to move on to better, less ordinary lives. Their reunion, however, causes them to move in the past -- and not in order to effect some dramatic character change by film's end. In moving backwards more than forwards, *Career Girls* shows the tortured path by which two friends gradually arrived at who they now are -- as they catch up on six years apart, we catch up on their four years together.

*Career Girls* doesn't have the mawkish weepiness of Leigh's last film, the mother-daughter reuinion tale *Secrets and Lies*, nor does it share the soapish qualities of that film's story. *Career Girls* is simpler, and therefore much sharper in its focus. It is more satisfying as well, even though nothing dramatic happens, nothing in particular is resolved by film's end. *Career Girls* is an acute, brilliantly acted slice of life, rich and insightful, bright and witty, as it follows two remarkably unremarkable women through years of ordinary misery. A quietly moving film about the small victories and setbacks that serve as signposts on a journey without end, *Career Girls* leaves a lingering sense of emptiness when it's over. It is precisely the same feeling that accompanies saying goodbye to friends.


25Aug1997

Cop Land (1997)

Remember when Sylvester Stallone used to act? It's been a while. Sometime back before he became a one-man sequel machine, before *Rocky VII* and *Rambo XIV* and all the variations on the theme of big, bellowing invincibility. About twenty years back, in fact, when he had a surprise hit in an influential little film about an underdog boxer achieving the American Dream. That was before the actor swapped character roles for caricature roles.

Stallone has gone big to go small in *Cop Land*, adding about 40 pounds of flab to his superhero frame to play Freddy Heflin, a small town sheriff with big city problems. This bit of stunt-casting backfires on both the actor and the film in this case, because Stallone has done such a thorough job of creating a movie persona around his pumped up physique that to see him flabby and ineffectual is a constant distraction -- one can't help but be conscious of his obvious bid for thespian respectability.

The search for respect is something Stallone has in common with Freddy, so it's a bit surprising that *Cop Land* isn't more effective and engaging. Freddy is the shambling, paunchy sheriff of Garrison, a tiny New Jersey town colonized by cops from New York's 37th Precinct. Appointed to his sinecure post by Garrison's founder, a shady cop named Ray Donlan (Harvey Keitel), Freddy is an NYPD wannabe; he lost the hearing in one ear after rescuing a girl from drowning, an act of heroism that cost him his dream. Now he's put down and pushed around by Garrison's clique of cops, shuffling about town doing good deeds and turning a blind eye, and a deaf ear, to the dirty deals going down around him.

Freddy is a sad, lonely man, an outsider in his own home, creeping around the edges, watching, but never participating. He spends most of his time under the George Washington Bridge, staring across the Hudson at the bright lights of the big city. All that begins to change when Garrison's tribe of cops starts to cannibalize itself. When Murray "Superboy" Babbage (Michael Rappaport), an off-duty officer, wrongfully shoots two joyriding teens after a traffic incident on the GWB, his precinct pals, including uncle Ray, make it look like he jumped from the bridge. From that point on, *Cop Land*'s plot meanders all over the map, turning on insurance fraud, murder, mobsters, marital infidelity, cops on the take, cops on the lam and cops on drugs. Freddy isn't so much in the middle of this muddle, but on the outside, trying to jam all the pieces together with his big sausage fingers.

The pieces don't really fit, making *Cop Land* disjointed and alienating. Writer-director James Mangold (*Heavy*) crafts a superficially precise story with *Cop Land* -- every tangent has an obvious set-up and follow-through, and all are weighted equally, as if a neat resolution could possibly tie everything together at the end. There are no red herrings here, no trails that don't lead precisely where they should, no incidents that don't point to some obvious wrongdoing. There's a whole lot of malfeasance in Garrison, all unrelated, much of it unlikely, but somehow, Freddy stumbles onto the whole shebang while looking for Murray.

All the complicated overplotting serves mostly as a distraction that tends to trivialize the real story of *Cop Land*, which is Freddy's internal struggle for truth, justice, redemption and self-respect. Freddy, suffering mightily from an inferiority complex, mopes and mopes until he's pushed into action. Even then he doesn't exactly spring into action, but sort of waddles into it, eventually realizing that he's more than equal to the big city cops, that he's actually better than they are. This character-driven part of the story is reminiscent of *Heavy*, Mangold's first (and better) feature about an overweight pizza chef who blossoms in crisis. *Cop Land* is a bigger film, but it lacks the quiet power of *Heavy*.

Freddy is the kind of role that requires really good, psychological acting. It's a subdued, subtle role where most of the action takes place behind an expressive, revealing face. Stallone only scratches the surface of the part, but he does achieve a touching humanity, which in itself is a refreshing change from the personality-free slabs of muscle he typically plays. With his hangdog face and nerdy uniform, Freddy is sad, sympathetic and likable, but Stallone never really comes alive in the role until the sheriff rather abruptly becomes a gun-toting, justice-wielding Old West-style lawman in the imaginative, nicely staged finale. Likewise Mangold's directing, which is fairly bland and workmanlike throughout the film, but finally sparks briefly to life at the end.

*Cop Land*'s all-star cast also includes Robert DeNiro as the jaded Internal Affairs investigator who stirs Freddy from his lethargy; Ray Liotta is Freddy's pal Figgis, a conflicted, one-man good cop/bad cop routine; Annabella Sciorra is the girl Freddy once rescued, now married to dirty cop Peter Berg. Stallone is the only actor in the bunch doing anything against type in *Cop Land*. DeNiro, Keitel and Liotta, in particular, are playing parts that they could do in their sleep.

The feeling that everybody is just going through the motions permeates *Cop Land*. The movie is essentially a modern-day psychological Western, complete with saloon, set in the wilds of suburban New Jersey. But *Cop Land* lacks the power, vitality and drama of that genre -- a drab raised ranch is a poor substitute for the OK Corral and there isn't a Gary Cooper in sight.


18Aug1997

Spawn (1997)

In the earliest days of cinema, audiences would sit through anything just because moving pictures themselves were so new and fascinating. Thus, folks actually paid to see the Kinetoscope *Fred Ott's Sneeze*, in which one of Thomas Edison's mechanics sneezes. *La sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumiere* (*Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory*) is a primitive 1895 film, historically significant, somewhat lacking in drama, and a regular blockbuster in its day. Although the visual language and narrative conventions of cinema, which we now take for granted, were still being created in those early films, cinema then was limited more by primitive technology than a lack of imagination on the part of pioneer filmmakers.

Today, the reverse is true. A few years ago, a film with really spectacular and innovative special effects could get away with a fairly marginal story and still be visually exciting, because the technology was new enough that there was something on screen that had never been seen before. Computer animation has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in moviemaking and cinematic storytelling. Unfortunately, as often as not, film stories have failed to keep up with advances in special effects technology. Ironically, the technological innovations are usually ushered in by pretty good films (*The Abyss*, *Toy Story* and *Star Wars*, for example), only to be exploited by bad films which rely entirely on special effects to shore up a dull, vacuous story. *Spawn* is in this latter category.

The prologue to this yawn-fest is some silly claptrap about an army from hell burning down the gates of heaven (as if they wouldn't be fireproof -- please!). The Devil is apparently a sort of administrator who chooses to delegate rather than lead the army himself, so he sends his minion Clown (John Leguizamo) to recruit someone on Earth. Al Simmons (Michael Jai White) is the unlucky winner. A government assassin, he is set up by his evil boss Wynn (Martin Sheen), a nutjob bent on world domination. Burnt to a crisp in a biological weapons factory explosion, Al dies and goes to hell. End of story? Oh, to be so lucky.

After five years in the fiery pit, which looks exactly like a computer generated cartoon version of Hell as Sid and Marty Krofft might envision it, Al is sent back to Earth, where a battle for his soul ensues. Clown wants him mad and evil and bent on revenge. An annoyingly cloying mentor type, a Saxon assassin named Cogliostro (Nicol Williamson), tries to steer him away from the dark side, so he can use his necroplasmic body armor for good. Assuming that the audience isn't sharp enough to get the *Star Wars* reference, the script makes a point of mentioning it. Likewise the references to *It's a Wonderful Life.* The influences this derivative movie doesn't mention are *Darkman*, *RoboCop* and *The Crow*, to name but a few.

So Spawn, as Al is now called, is all mad and irritable, and his skin hurts a lot, and Clown and Cogliostro keep pestering him, and his faithful dog Spaz follows him everywhere. Like everybody else from Hell, Spawn has a bad case of the vapors, and green fumes emanate from his body whenever he gets really steamed. Clown farts green fumes, which, of course, is the height of hilarity. Or at least, the height of hilarity in *Spawn*.

Based on the comic book series by Todd McFarlane, *Spawn*, written by director Mark A.Z. Dippe and Alan B. McElroy, shores up the confusing plot by relying on a comic book convention that is inappropriate to movies, even bad ones: characters who explain what's going on by talking to themselves out loud. Another handy source of plot exposition is the omniscient voiceover provided by Cogliostro, who also talks to himself rather a lot. These distracting bits of exposition are necessary to understanding *Spawn* because most of the action in the movie has nothing whatsoever to do with the various plots. Spawn is supposed to kill Wynn, but he mostly flies around and admires his own neato necroplasmic abilities (a subtle hint to the audience that they, too, should be filled with admiration and awe). Meanwhile, Wynn is being used by Clown in a plot to release a killer virus that will wipe out the entire planet. Clown goes to an awful lot of trouble to do something that should be quite simple to do for a demon beast such as himself. And I don't know what the Devil's problem is, but he's so lame his mouth doesn't even move when he talks. It just hangs open and his big grey tongue wiggles a little. Which is exactly what a Sid and Marty Krofft Devil puppet would do, which is why the world of the Kroffts was so morally simple, and all of their shows were a half hour long.

*Spawn* is substantially longer, and has lots and lots of sophisticated computer-generated special effects, some of which are almost interesting. I liked Spawn's big red cape, which looked a bit like molten lava, or cinnamon ribbon candy. But most of the special effects in *Spawn*, like the silly scenes of Hell, are not only unbelievable, they're totally unimaginative and uninspired. The technology is squandered in service of a dumb story and dimensionless characters who are given absolutely nothing interesting to do or say. I would rather watch Fred Ott sneeze.

The opening and closing title sequences of *Spawn*, designed by Imaginary Forces, deserve mention. Jiggly, off-kilter and hard to read, they were visually aggressive and assaultive. The film stock itself seemed to be disintegrating, creating an unsettling sense of instability and descent which, coupled with the fiery images, were genuinely hellish and much more interesting than the movie sandwiched in between.


11Aug1997

Air Force One (1997)

Harrison Ford brings an unimpeachable sense of integrity to all of his roles, even the President of the United States. As *Air Force One* begins, President Jim Marshall, sobered by the suffering of war refugees, publicly vows that the US will actively crush dictatorships, and will never negotiate with terrorists. "It's your turn to be afraid," he warns the villains of the world.

Apparently, a certain group of die-hard Communists weren't listening, because only hours later, they hijack *Air Force One*, taking hostage the first family and half the cabinet. The President is hustled aboard an escape pod by his Secret Service agents, and presumably parachutes to safety. But this is Harrison Ford here, not Gerald Ford -- rest assured that he would never leave his wife and daughter, his loyal staff and the fate of the free world to a bunch of wild-eyed Soviets. No sir. President Marshall, decorated war veteran, devoted family man, patriot and liberal idealist is no waffler. He doesn't consult the polls first, he isn't crippled by indecision. He springs into action, crawling around in the bowels of the impressively realistic 747, picking off terrorists with his bare hands when he has to. This chief executive can execute.

It's surprisingly fun to watch a world leader beat the tar out of the bad guys. This is something we'll never see in real life, of course, not even when we elect some withered old third rate movie star as president. But wouldn't it be a far better world if our leaders duked it out themselves rather than sending in the troops and killing a bunch of civilians? (I doubt that Clinton would win many fights, what with his bad knee and all, but I bet he could take Newt. Hillary could whup Milosevich. And should the need arise, Chelsea could easily make mince meat of Yeltsin.) Fear of nuclear weapons could be replaced by fear of black eyes and broken noses. Presidents would have to train for summits with punching bags and push-ups, the Marquess of Queensbury rules would replace the tired old rules of diplomacy. George Foreman would eventually be president, Evander Holyfield might be vice president. The major drawback is that Mike Tyson would have the president's ear.

In the mean time, Ford gets my vote. This is an inspired piece of casting, with Ford embodying all the attributes we would like to see in our dream president: brains, ideals, conviction, an inability to knuckle-under, and a mean right hook. So much of the satisfaction of *Air Force One* derives from the perfection of this presidential fantasy, from the pleasure of seeing a president do the right thing, or do anything, for that matter. Although it could easily lapse into rah-rah patriotism (and veers close to it at times), *Air Force One* is effective because it doesn't get red-white-and-blue-faced, because sets very high *personal* stakes for the President as a human being, putting the father-husband-friend at odds with his own role as head of state, where the stakes are only slightly less personal for him, and no less important.

Top terrorist Ivan Korshunov (Gary Oldman) is an ultra-nationalist who dreams of reuniting Russia under the rule of strongman Alexander Radek (played by Jurgen Prochnow with icily effective silence), currently imprisoned in Kazakhstan. Ivan gets all misty-eyed when he speaks of "mother Russia." He gets positively verklempt when he hears "Le Internationale." He gets apoplectic about Kapitalism -- the very word seems to leave a bitter taste in his mouth as he spits it at the Pres. And, although he is a raving lunatic and an arch villain, he makes some valid points about American foreign policy and government sanctioned aggression. But of course, the President isn't negotiating with terrorists today.

*Air Force One* is hardly the first movie to posit a hostage situation on an airplane. But director Wolfgang Petersen, whose *Das Boot* was an early model of the tube thriller, manages to wring a surprising amount of suspense and emotion out of a well-worn plot device. *Air Force One*'s plot is not especially innovative or surprising -- the restricted space of a jetliner imposes limits on action and story -- but the characters are developed well, putting the emphasis here on the psychological aspects of terrorism. Marshall and Ivan are engaged in a hearts and minds battle, a test of wills, where it is always obvious that Marshall has the most to lose. The President may have drawn a political line in the sand, but Ivan has no qualms about stepping over it and dragging real humans along with him -- he is true to his word about killing hostages, and the executions are jolting and dreadful. The President feels their pain, and so, it seems, does Ivan.

Back at the White House, another test of wills develops as loyal, stiff-as-starch VP Kathryn Bennett (Glenn Close) engages in a Constitutional tussle with an ambitious Defense Secretary (Dean Stockwell) who quickly and comically declares "I'm in charge here!" It's a dandy subplot, contrasting the ineffectual political maneuvering on the ground with the highly effective, nonpolitical (though highly dogmatic) action in the air.

Even though it mostly develops exactly as expected, *Air Force One* is rich and satisfying, taking an unlikely circumstance to every possible extreme and making it paradoxically convincing and highly entertaining. There are moments of real dread, a sense of genuine personal and national violation in this movie that keep the tension high, while the characters are real enough to make their fates matter. There are lighter moments as well -- apparently even presidents have problems with surly telephone operators and cell phone batteries. One of the most stirring moments, one of the most deeply patriotic moments in *Air Force One* occurs when a very important fax goes through -- the very personal joy of fax and minor technological triumph colliding with collective patriotism in a breathtaking instant that is both moving and hilariously low-key. I've sent faxes too, and doggone it, I'm an American! (I think it was a Sony fax machine.)

28Jul1997

Operation Condor (1997)

Abandon all reason, ye who enter here. In *Operation Condor*, Jackie Chan, action star par excellence, has done it again, crafting a spectacular movie that transcends the time honored rules of narrative and storytelling. Anyone stuck on sensible plots, character development, narrative arc and scintillating dialogue should just stay home, because *Operation Condor* can claim none of the above. Nonetheless it is a delightful trifle full of slapstick, supersonic stunts and amiable political incorrectness.

The plot, such as it is, is straight from the Indiana Jones files, with a little James Bond whipped into the mix. Chan is United Nations secret agent Jackie, code-name Condor, and his mission involves retrieving a fortune in Nazi gold hidden somewhere in the Sahara Desert. With a lovely U.N. attache as his guide, and aided by the granddaughter of the Nazi commandant who originally stashed the gold, Jackie battles Arab terrorists, spear-throwing Saharans (don't ask), Nazis and unaffiliated mercenaries.

None of which matters at all, of course, as the episodic story merely serves up occasions for spectacular fights and chases where Chan, performing his own stunts as always, laughs in the face of certain death again and again. *Operation Condor* features an imaginatively staged car chase that wreaks havoc on Barcelona, babies and ever-vulnerable produce merchants. An inspired, elaborate fight set in a wind tunnel gives rise to extended and hilarious gags as bodies fly about, stick to walls, and battle gales. Chan takes his inspiration from Buster Keaton, and his action sequences are every bit as inspired as those of the silent film master. Chan's physical prowess, also reminiscent of Keaton's, is unmatched in modern moviemaking. A natural acrobat who seemingly hops over ten foot walls as easily as he walks down the street, Chan brings an inimitable grace and elegance to movie mayhem that his muscle-bound action contemporaries, like Van Damme, Seagal and Schwarzenegger, just can't match.

The Chan movie persona is an affable, goofy fellow who never loses his good cheer even when surrounded by gun-toting villains. He is not unflappable, and not immune to pain, however, and much of the humor in Chan's movies is derived from the occasional fearfulness of a man who is so agile and fast, so obviously superior, so impervious to bullets, spears, and other projectiles. There is little in the way of character development beyond that, however. *Operation Condor* will not reveal anything about secret agent Jackie's homelife, his lovelife, nor his motivation, all of which are effectively non-existent. He's a good guy who does good things, and that's good enough.

*Operation Condor*, directed and co-written by Chan, contains about as little dialogue as is possible. In fact, it has about as much dialogue as might be found in a silent Keaton film, perhaps less. What little dialogue there is isn't too badly dubbed, however, with Chan actually dubbing his own lines in a welcome change. Jackie's accomplices in *Operation Condor* mostly squeal with girlish fright and fight to preserve their dignity and modesty, roughing up a few bad guys along the way as well, none of which requires them to say very much.

*Operation Condor* is not a new film, but is actually a 1991 film, newly released to American theaters. Chan has long been one of the most popular stars in the world, but, until recently, was an undiscovered gem in America. There are dozens of films in the Chan oeuvre which have never seen the light of a projector on this continent (although Chan fans in the know circulate videos); following the success of *Rumble In The Bronx*, his films are being re-released at a fast and furious pace, but not necessarily in chronological order. The drawback of looking backwards into Chan's film past is that with each successive film he makes, he gets inexplicably and impossibly better, raising the stakes by creating ever more spectacular, elegant and imaginative stunts. To see his older work is not always to see him at his best -- two films released last year, *First Strike* and *Supercop*, now available on video, are much better than *Operation Condor*. Regardless, the wonder of Jackie Chan's films is that they really do transcend narrative conventions and language barriers, and the shortcomings of *Operation Condor* don't really diminish the goofy fun of it.

21Jul1997

Contact (1997)

It was a good week for Carl Sagan, wherever he is. A space station on Mars, the first one built by Earthlings, was named after the late astronomer. And a surprisingly intelligent and affecting movie, based on Sagan's novel *Contact*, afforded a quiet and thoughtful respite from the sound and the fury of the summer movie season.


*Contact* is a beautifully quiet film -- at times it is almost meditatively silent -- although it is a film about sound and listening to voices, both the voice within, and the voices *out there*. A rumination on science and religion, it explores the limits and possibilities of both, landing at the point at which fact and faith intersect.


*Contact* opens with a view of the universe, not as a silent, dark vacuum, but a place buzzing with signals, littered with radio and TV broadcasts, the aural detritus of Earth civilization zooming through space and time as an unofficial ambassador to worlds beyond. It is an unsettling image of Earth as a planetary despoiler of the universe, a place where the noise of modern life obscures the messages we send and the ones we might, potentially, receive. (As horrible as Don Imus is today, imagine his words travelling thousands of lights years for eons to come, to wash ashore on some distant, unsuspecting planet -- there's an argument for public radio if ever there was one.)

Back on Earth, Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), radio astronomer, listens for signs of extraterrestrial life. For Ellie, orphaned and alone since childhood, it is a search for scientific truth, for proof that we are not, in fact, alone. Her work is controversial, viewed by many, including her self-aggrandizing, intellectual thief of a boss Drumlin (Tom Skerritt), as a waste of time and resources. He cuts her funding, and she is forced to go begging, until she finds a benefactor in a mysterious, wealthy recluse.

When Ellie finally hears her extraterrestrial beacon, it sets in motion a whirlwind of earthly controversy and bureaucracy, as governments and groupies, foes and fanatics all flock, satellite dishes in hand, to listen in on the mysterious celestial signal. The message from the heavens contains a blueprint for a transport vehicle, designed to take a single passenger to a destination unknown.

Complicating Ellie's life is her on-again off-again affair with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey), former seminarian turned popular author and skeptic. Joss is a deeply religious man who questions the values and virtues of science, who questions, foremost, unquestioning faith in science. As the spiritual advisor to the president (our president, Bill Clinton, that is), he is in a position to influence decisions about Ellie and her discovery .

McConaughey makes Joss both Christ-like and hunky, a prophet as sexiest man alive, but it is not his status as incidental love interest that makes Joss interesting. Rather it is his philosophical viewpoint -- he believes most of all in things that cannot be proved empirically, while Ellie believes only what she can see and hear and touch. The real conflict in *Contact*, the real mystery, does not involve little green men and signals from the stars, but the very nature of truth. The unstated implication that science is also a religion leads to fascinating philosophical complications for Ellie, whose the search for scientific truth requires more than one leap of faith.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis (*Forrest Gump*), *Contact* is quietly engrossing, with a lot more science in it than science fiction. Zemeckis isn't really much of a stylist, and he unnecessarily updates Sagan's novel by *Gump*ing in footage of Clinton (making his speech about the microbe-filled Mars rock), the Heaven's Gate cult suicides and such. Aside from those gimmicky touches, however, Zemeckis allows *Contact* its unconventional plot and characters, finding real intrigue and danger in worldly political machinations, and conflict in big abstractions like god, science, and humankind's place in the universe.

The screenplay by James V. Hart and Michael Goldenberg does a nice job of honing in on scientific theories and concepts, like special relativity and Occam's Razor -- it's the rare movie that would even make the attempt, but *Contact* is unusually intelligent, dealing with complex ideas in a way that is neither pedantic nor oversimplified. Even more rare these days is the movie character who thinks big thoughts -- Ellie and Joss do, and believably so, with dialogue that easily mixes the scientific, the spiritual and the commonplace to create conversations and complications that ring true.

Without much in the way of special effects, *Contact* looks and feels real, unhindered by distractions (with the exception of the Clinton inserts). Yet *Contact* has moments that are genuinely thrilling in much the same way that seeing pictures from Mars are thrilling and engrossing. Ellie's discovery of the message from space gave me goosebumps, in part because it was cinematically rendered so simply: a haunting, rhythmic noise accompanied by the visual image of the spiking lines of a soundwave graph. The thrills and chills of *Contact* don't come from death-defying stunts, but from the big stakes involved, from the sense of big questions being answered by characters that are real and developed.

*Contact* deftly juggles ideas that are as slippery as quicksilver, respecting mysteries, savoring the elusive. In a medium whose mantra is overstatement, *Contact* is nicely understated, letting visual images express unspoken ideas, and allowing silence to speak. There is little in the way of physical peril in *Contact*, and none of the monstrous aliens that are sci-fi staples, and that is perhaps the most unusual and enticing thing about this movie -- that it is the life of ideas, the thoughts and beliefs of characters, and not their corporeal beings, that are challenged and imperiled. The immaterial *is* the material of *Contact*.

14Jul1997