 Older Films (1990s)
A tense thriller only by Clint Eastwood's drowsy standards, this movie assembles a great cast but gives them all under-developed bit parts. There are a few smart lines and memorable moments, and it's all pleasant enough, but sustain some tension please. –Scott Hardie • April 16 2011, 8:52am EST
This is an otherwise terrific film poisoned at the core by two terrible mistakes, one of them necessary and one of them not. The necessary mistake is bringing Ripley back to life and making another "Alien" movie at all. The third film may have been made in a scramble, but it had an ending worthy of the series and the character that Sigourney Weaver had given so much effort to defining. But, "Resurrection" seems aware of the price it must pay to have the conceit of a surviving Ripley, and it goes to extraordinary lengths to make the dual comeback (Ripley and the series) not just tolerable, not just plausible, but actually desireable. This Ripley has a sense of humor that the other lacked, and in fact the film as a whole is much more eager to entertain than it's predecessors; it's easily the most "fun" film in the series to watch. Sometimes it gets cartoony in its ambition, such as in Dan Hedaya's cross-eyed astonishment at his own impending death, but the film is such a marvel of visual invention and aggressive characterization that it's all but impossible not to be pleased on some level by the results. It's easy to look at Jean-Pierre Jeunet's films and see one of the most visually interesting directors working today; with his usual collaborators Marc Caro and Darius Khondji, he has come up with some of the most exciting camera angles and color palettes I have seen on film. If he can take a film series that is simultaneously sacred and tired, and instill it with this much individuality and freshness, I'd watch him make just about anything. The unnecessary mistake is the turn the film takes in its third act, after an intriguing opening act and a brilliant middle section. The idea of a human-alien hybrid baby has surely been around since the word "sequel" first occurred to Alan Ladd Jr. (you can even see a drawing of one in the original design concepts for "Alien³"), but it's such a bad idea, so offensive to the art and the audience, that it should never have been attempted; imagine the battalion from "Saving Private Ryan" coming across Hitler in ladies underwear, singing German children's rhymes, and you have some idea how badly this character damages the film. And it doesn't help that the creature itself is so hideous! The aliens have always been hideous, but in a cool and thrilling way; this thing is just so utterly repulsive that when it's on the screen, you can't bear to look at it. I swear, when that thing got face-to-face with Ripley and sniffed her, I'd have turned the movie off if it uttered "ma-ma!" in a baby's voice, which is the direction the sequence seemed to be going. I suppose that if we are to reap the benefit of Jeunet taking his chances with some wild visuals, we must witness the disasters when he misfires. The creature's death scene, which should be satisfying because it involves the death of the creature, somehow tops the ugliness up to that point; Winona Ryder's look of disgust as the creature's organs splatter onto the floor and are sucked back up into its abdomen says it all. As I am nearly finished with the series, I'd like to point to The Onion A.V. Club's review of the boxed set. It briefly makes an interesting analysis: Since the films each contain the same basic elements, can each one not be seen as a "variation on a theme" illustrating each director's unique strengths and weaknesses? That case is weakest for David Fincher and strongest for James Cameron ("Aliens" is perhaps the archetypical Cameron film), but I like the idea all the same. –Scott Hardie
What a mess this movie is. In some ways that's a benefit, as it disguises the rough edges as some kind of artful obscurity and gives the overall film a kind of haunting incoherence, but more often the film comes across as a big sloppy mess in need of several rewrites. Studio interference was the problem according to David FIncher, who quit the project as soon as principal photography was complete, and that claim makes sense; you can't build sets for a monastic planet and then arbitrarily change it to a prison planet without some incongruity. The film is barely effective as horror, giving us a monster who dutifully attacks on cue (such as the moment when it violates its own vague rules of conduct by attacking the warden in front of the entire prison populace) and who is created by computer animation that obviously isn't ready for prime time. It functions best as a experimental new direction for the "Alien" series, giving it religion and complex characterization in the same dosage that the previous film gave it big guns and explosions. There are noble failures and ignoble successes in Hollywood, and this ranks among the former. Action and horror fans will be disappointed, but fans of independent cinema may appreciate its murkiness of story and grittiness of attitude; this film may have walked down the wrong path, but it's determined to make the most out of its choice, and plays out with conviction. –Scott Hardie
Woody Allen never topped this film and never will. It's not just a hilarious comedy in a sea of mediocre relationship movies; it captures the unique regret of a broken-up couple who knows they can never love like that again — so personal, so strong. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:40am EST
Winner of the Foreign Language Oscar in 1996, this comedy tells of fifty years in a rural Dutch village, and the kind of warmth and good humor that takes that many years to build. –Scott Hardie • August 22 2010, 5:53pm EST
premise: Trey Parker and Matt Stone star in a David Zucker comedy about two friends who invent a new sport that becomes a silly, runaway success. This film's poor reputation kept me away for ten years, until my enjoyment of South Park compelled me to see every last thing Parker and Stone have done, even this film in which they starred but made no other credited contributions. They're funny in it, and so are the many odd supporting players, but it's a David Zucker film through and through. He likes his comedies non-stop and varied: Don't like this joke? How about this one? How about this one? There's one part that really turned me off, a desperate and unfunny hospital scene in which the heroes clumsily put defenseless patients through painful hijinks, but the rest of the movie is surprisingly enjoyable, raunch and all. I watched the whole thing with a silly grin on my face, enjoying Parker's quick wit and Stone's affable silliness. Perhaps low expectations, and the respect they've now earned with so many solid episodes of South Park, are the keys to enjoying this underappreciated comedy. –Scott Hardie • January 8 2009, 9:18pm EST
Odd, that I have little to say about a film that consists entirely of conversation. This is considered by some to be the apex of Richard Linklater's work and I won't argue; certainly he uses his talent for dialogue to maximum effect. It's riveting: You're grabbed within the first scene and you don't even realize the time passing, eavesdropping on this extended first date as the camera simply follows the actors and lets them talk like intelligent normal people. I doubt the availability of such middle-of-the-night entertainments in a city like Vienna, but suspension of disbelief is not something this film requires in spades. It is true to its reputation as one of the most romantic films of modern times and well worth a rental for any couple. What is it about this loquacious film that leaves me unable to find words to describe it? See it and be left speechless for yourself. –Scott Hardie
They're so vexing, Matt Preston invented a term for them: "Fred Flintstone moments," those times when everything would be fine if one character would let the other get a word in edgewise, instead of repeatedly interrupting their explanation and then storming out / hanging up before they can finish. There are seven such moments in "Better Than Chocolate," a movie that would be a lot better if its characters stopped behaving like clueless sitcom cartoons and simply listened to each other for a minute. The film is a frustrating conglomeration of lesbian issues, after the filmmakers polled Canadian lesbians as to what they'd most like to see in a film about themselves: Just as it finally settles into romance, it takes an awkward veer into politics, and vice versa. Finally it culminates in the kind of ridiculous ending where supporting characters rush onto the scene one-by-one just in time to resolve each of the dangling loose ends. I give it credit for being a highly enjoyable film; I had a grin on my face the whole time. But it's still lousy, and a clear demonstration of why the plots of films should not be determined by poll results. –Scott Hardie
I have wanted to see this well-received indie thriller since before I even knew who the Wachowski brothers were, but I'm kind of glad I didn't see it until I was already familiar with the Matrix trilogy, because the similarities are obvious. Partly that's in the superficial details (Bill Pope's wild camera angles, Don Davis's overbearing musical score), but it's also in the spirit of the film: Like "Revolutions" and the original "Matrix," it starts out going in one direction with a particular fascination, then switches gears and becomes something else entirely, and asks the audience to sustain heavy tension for a prolonged period. If the film has a weakness, it's the length: Five fewer minutes of double-crossing and eye-shifting would have improved the whole, since the film takes place in two apartments among a tiny cast and after a while it feels like it's going in circles. Mostly I'm struck by the dialogue and how sharp it is; I am still amazed that the same Wachowskis who wrote the sparkling dialogue in this film and the original "Matrix" also authored the boring, monologue-heavy "Reloaded" and "Revolutions." They have real talent for crafting suspense and creative cinematography, and they know how to make the most of their actors (the three leads here are phenomenal), so if they can go back to writing fresh scripts again, they should have a long career in this business. I recommend this to anyone curious about the directors' other work, or fans of clever erotic thrillers in general. It is as good as its reputation. –Scott Hardie
I appreciate the dreamlike black & white photography that made the towns seem artificial. I like Neil Young's raw, jangling musical score. I laughed at Johnny Depp's perplexity and the allusions to William Blake's poetry. The first act and especially the second act of the film are funny, daring, and eye-opening, but the film's slowness gets the better of it in the final act. Look, I know what the film is trying to suggest about the hero giving up his bodily form and achieving a higher plane and all that, but the march through the Native American village plays like the film is trying to demonstrate what eternity feels like. It wastes what little momentum the film had been building as it drifts off to a limp conclusion. Were there not other, more entertaining ways to get the point across? –Scott Hardie
Jean-Pierre Jeunet's cannibalistic horror film has some of his hallmarks, including innovative art design and quirky character development, but unfortunately lacks his narrative drive with a weak protagonist. It's odd, and passably entertaining. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:31am EST
Not as fresh as El Mariachi or as weird as Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the weakest chapter in the series rarely rises above mediocrity. It succeeds largely on the superhuman charisma of Antonio Banderas, who was born to play this role. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:34am EST
The movie is as strong as I recall the novel being, except without the "dust bunnies" and other inessential nonsense. The three lead actresses are great, especially Kathy Bates in a complex role. Maine looks foreboding in the steel-gray photography. –Scott Hardie • February 4 2012, 5:48pm EST • 1 reply
Dracula the novel certainly wasn't for everybody, and the same is true for Francis Ford Coppola's film, but not for the same reasons. It's a rock opera without the rock or the opera, a Baz Luhrmann film without the cartooniness. The modern pop sensibility suits the Gothic Euronovel well, if that's your sort of thing, like exquisite baclava served with a root beer float. And it features a gorgeous score by Wojciech Kilar. –Scott Hardie • August 9 2006, 11:20pm EST
Robert Rodriguez's first feature is a jaw-dropping achievement in ultra-low-budget filmmaking, a $7000 crime movie better than most thrillers Hollywood puts out every year. It's clever and well-choreographed as an action movie, and great entertainment. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:33am EST
I missed this film as a teenager and its premise has intrigued me ever since. Like a lot of pompous atheists, I'm confident in the ability of science to (eventually) explain everything unknown to man, and here's a film about med students who attempt to discover what happens after death. It's such a wonderful premise that the film could have presented almost any vision of the afterlife and been forgiven, but that isn't necessary; the film chose a psychological angle that was light on the jump scenes and heavy on the pathos. The film has a slow build-up as each character gradually comes face to face with their past sins, and even the shallow chauvinist inspires sympathy when he comes to regret his crimes. Given the director and year of release, I expected something cornier and more difficult to swallow; I was pleasantly surprised to discover an intelligent film, with heart, unafraid to deal with a profound subject. It has aged well. –Scott Hardie
Something about this movie seemed ahead of its time: It had the same ironic detachment that characterized humor of the late nineties. None of the characters seem to matter, because they're all clichéd archetypes, and the movie holds them at an arm's length. Chili Palmer doesn't emerge as a real character, but as a stiff and almost robotic embodiment of "cool," as defined by Hollywood. But he does have a sense of humor, and if the crime world of the movie as seen through his eyes is detached and safe, it is also a place of clowns and degenerates and weirdos, an assortment of great supporting characters made vivid by some brave actors and the snappy Elmore Leonard banter. That same author provided the film with a wonderful assortment of fake-outs and reverse betrayals that keep the movie running strong, like its own self-renewing power source. I just wish the film hadn't been so self-consciously hip: A comedy doesn't need to care about its characters, but it does need to take them seriously if it wants them to generate humor, and this film seems to pose triumphantly beside itself for being so cool. I, for one, was turned off. –Scott Hardie
More proof that comedians can handle drama with ease: Wacky laff-factory director Jerry Zucker turned out one of the most moving (and traditional) romances of the nineties without even trying. What set out to be a thriller told from a ghost's perspective turned into a sexy love story on the lightning-in-a-bottle chemistry of Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and in light of their decline ever since, they're something to see at the peak of their charisma. Some of the gags invoke groans and still more could have been done with the core concept of a ghost's dilemma, but this is a great story that still holds power years later, and one of the best farewell scenes of its kind. –Scott Hardie • June 24 2007, 12:34am EST
This has a well-deserved reputation as a top-notch anime classic, but it did not interest me when I saw it upon its initial release. I'm willing to chalk that up to my immaturity: When I went wading in the film's cyberphilosophy a decade ago, the water seemed too cold, but now it's just right. Perhaps the film merely benefits from the popularization of Gibson and Stephenson's ideas via "The Matrix" and other works. Who knows? It's still an entertaining film from start to finish, with enough breakthrough animation techniques to wow any cinemaphile on a purely visual level. I wish it didn't rush through its dialogue so quickly (the boat scene delivers the essence of the film's philosophy at a breakneck pace), and the gratuity of the nudity is annoying, but I'm glad to have come around on this gem of the genre. –Scott Hardie
Scorsese's mob epic is a deservingly appreciated landmark of the crime genre. It's seductively charming in early moments, then increasingly frantic and paranoid as the world closes in on its hero. If you see no other Scorsese film, make this the one. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:31am EST
In the ongoing process of renting debut films by contemporary directors whose later work I admire (Wide Awake and Following are coming up next), I have found nothing but gems so far, including Welcome to the Dollhouse and Bound. Here's another homerun, hit by Paul Thomas Anderson in 1996. It has the focus on character and dialogue of his later work, but doesn't push the stylistic envelope, keeping things as cool and collected as the protagonist. It's a thriller for people who don't like thrillers but do like a solid character study. And it even includes forward-references to PTA's later films, such as the names of Sydney's old friends from Atlantic City. Fans will find more to love than the average viewer, but it's still an enjoyable flick for anyone who thinks Vegas and noir work well together. If the pattern keeps going this well, I might even rent Alien³. –Scott Hardie
Most haunted-house movies are unusually effective on me, but after a while the formula can wear awfully thin. Aidan Quinn and a pre-fame Kate Beckinsale try hard to carry this so-so thriller, but they can't help with its predictable plot or tame scares. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:35am EST
Normally it turns me off when a comedy tries to contort itself into a moving drama, but here's an example of that action saving a movie from itself. This overachieving gay indie thinks it's funniest when it's most flamboyant, with the effect of neatly-trimmed nails on chalkboard. What saves it from an early ejection from the DVD player is the strong chemistry of its leads, who make us care about their love story despite being heterosexual actors already well known from tv. (Oh, how I wish it was promoted as starring the guy from "Wings"! and the guy from "The Pretender!" and the guy from "Star Trek: The Next Generation"! instead of their real names.) I can't recommend it, but I don't regret seeing it. –Scott Hardie
In her effort to teach Westerners (the film's spoken language reveals its audience) that there's a great deal more to the famous book than a mere catalog of sexual positions, that it is in fact a deep spiritual consideration of the profound nature of romantic love, Mira Nair has created an erotic film with all the high sexual charge of a Joseph Campbell interview. It's a tedious, mannered tale about supposedly sexually-liberated people, but good acting, beautiful costumes, and iconic symbolism are only worth so much when the film lacks entertainment value. By the time the perfunctory ending arrives, you'll likely have lost any interest you ever had in studying the ancient text. –Scott Hardie
I enjoyed this unshowy drama from start to finish, even if it did seem to run long. Here are six actors who have perfected their roles onstage, and are able to communicate years of friendship together; they communicate as much in body language as dialogue. John Glover won a Tony for his dual role and I can see why; the two brothers are such totally different characters that it becomes striking how much alike they look. I laughed the most at Jason Alexander's self-conscious queen, who endures his disease with gallows humor, but the material is known not for its laughs but for its gentle compassion and its honest depiction of eight gay friends dealing with the spectre of AIDS in thoughtful ways. For those who would identify it's a must-see; for the rest of us, it's merely a pleasant rental. –Scott Hardie
If the experiment is not a total success, at least we admire its ambition. On the centennial of the film camera's invention, forty famous directors used it to create new films. They had to work under the same conditions as its inventors: One continuous shot of 52 seconds, a maximum of three takes, no synchronous sound, and no artificial lighting. Most of the directors used their film to honor cinema as a concept, and the documentary about the project eggs them on by asking them "Why do you film?" and "Is cinema mortal?" (Too many directors don't have answers to those questions and only shrug, which makes you wonder if the pretentious answers given by the artistes are only made up.) Some of these metacinematic shorts wound up being interesting, such as Claude Lelouch's demonstration that film technology changes but subject matter doesn't, or Kiju Yoshida's jab at the aforementioned artistes by showing the limitations of what nonfiction film is capable of recording. Theo Angelopoulos's striking segment shows Ulysses waking up in a strange land and making his most bizarre encounter (us), while Merchant/Ivory show us a McDonald's attracting customers on what would otherwise be a European street unchanged since the 19th century. David Lynch's segment is the most ambitious, celebrating Hollywood's power to create fully-realized fiction (his is the only segment to deal with Hollywood at all), while Yimou Zhang playfully contrasts royal Chinese tradition with silly Americana, with help from Kurt Cobain. Other films sadly come across as a waste of time. Too many of them show us people staring at the camera for an extended period, or doing nothing of consequence like waving at a train or nursing a baby. Others get metacinematic by showing a camera filming us, which would be more interesting if nearly a fourth of the directors on the project hadn't thought of the exact same thing. The worst projects are the ones that reveal no planning, as the directors simply filmed the first thing that came to mind, though Spike Lee does get a laugh out of what must have amounted to two minutes of brainstorming. For some the 52 seconds are not enough, but for a disappointingly high number of the director, 52 seconds wind up being too many, as they don't approach the project with sufficient interest to film something worthwhile. Could you believe that segments drag on, finished at the 30-second or 40-second mark, because the rules of the challenge demand a 52-second take? People staring motionlessly at the camera is no more interesting the eighth time than the first. There's interesting material here if you're willing to sit patiently through the boring stuff to get to it. What should have been an illumination of the progress of cinema instead becomes an illumination of how some directors are too lazy or busy to devote themselves to a one-day project, but are all too happy to act like important cineastes when interviewed. Though most of the directors on the list are predominantly European and have no name recognition for American viewers, look up each one's filmography and you'll see that almost all have created films that we recognize (at least that was the case for me). In the end, the results of this experiment were not nearly as interesting as they should have been, but it produced enough worthwhile material to get you thinking all the same. –Scott Hardie
When I see a mediocre movie and I'm upset about it afterwards, that's usually a reflection of wasted potential. None of these actors are bad (John Travolta actually works fairly hard), but they simply cannot find the rhythm to make this material work. The movie alternates between scenes of glaringly obvious intentions (watch out for that truck little doggie!) and bizarre lulls in which we, and indeed the film itself, cannot guess what effect it wants to achieve. It also makes for such a comprehensive study of film clichés that screenwriting students could use it as a reference guide. I could go on and on with gripes (why does it take them three days to drive from Iowa to Chicago? what does Andie MacDowell see in William Hurt? why do the DVD cast credits list birth-and-death dates for the actors when all of them were still living at the time? why can't Randy Newman let twenty seconds of screen time pass without introducing more blaring country music on the soundtrack?), but the movie has its charms. There are several big laughs, more than one of them at the expense of tabloid newspapers, and its weird charm works largely to the efforts of John Travolta. I rented it to see Robert Pastorelli one last time and was disappointed that he didn't get to deliver any jokes (who in the hell casts Robert Pastorelli as the straight man to William Hurt?), but I did not regret seeing it. It's a pleasant waste of time. –Scott Hardie
Trey Parker and Matt Stone are entertaining even when they make a bad movie. Like so many episodes of South Park, this one sets out to parodize witless porn movies and laughless D-grade comedies, and becomes one itself. It has a few laughs. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:38am EST
It was ok. –Scott Hardie
This slack-paced J-horror flick has more in common with the original novel than the free-spirited Playstation game that took its concepts and ran with them. The long setup may be par for the course with Masayuki Ochiai, whose ambitious 2005 film Infection spent its first hour establishing paranoia and dread among its main characters before the supernatural emerged in the second half. Here the ghouls and goblins wait until the final 30 minutes, but that might be more a consequence of the film's obviously limited budget than on Ochiai's apparent determination to establish his characters' pathos and neuroses before pitting them against evil. It's noble of him that his heart is in the dramatic scenes (since it obviously isn't in the clichéd, paint-by-numbers horror scenes), but he lets them go on too long and too aimlessly, and for a long time the film seems to be going nowhere. Eventually it does, since even the "resolution" neglects to close a giant plot hole that, I suppose, might have been meant for a sequel. I'm a fan of the Playstation game and of Ochiai's other work, and I found this film torpid and unsatisfying, so I can only imagine how it will play for someone who isn't. –Scott Hardie
I somehow went this long without seeing one of the landmark movies of my high school class, and though its politics seem quaint today, it successfully captured the early-nineties mentality in a time capsule worth revisiting in decades to come. What I liked most about the film was that its villains weren’t the pompous, greedy, cigar-chomping, moustache-twirling robber-barons that Hollywood typically makes of characters like them; they were realistic men guilty only of making a bad but understandable decision in a moment of fear, a fear born of ignorance. Of course, Tom Hanks’s passionate monologue as he translates the opera was the standout moment that won him the Oscar (and its even more impressive that Hanks nailed it on the first take), but I’m equally fond of the scene’s silent epilogue, as Denzel Washington goes home to his sleeping wife and stares into the darkness as if he’s thinking of Michael Furey’s grave. It’s a transcendent moment in a solid production that should be remembered for its quality and humanity even as its cultural significance gradually wanes. –Scott Hardie
Much like its characters, three bank robbers desperate to get out of Manhattan after a heist, this comedy has moments where it begins to take off, only to settle back down into a maddeningly slow pace. Bill Murray is funny, but not funny enough for this. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:36am EST
What could I possibly say about this masterpiece that hasn't been said already? Spielberg's technical expertise was never in doubt, but this film proved what "The Color Purple" and "Empire of the Sun" failed to prove, that he's a filmmaker of considerable artistic talent as well. I know the criticisms of this film, that it doesn't get inside Schindler's head until his final scene and that it reaches for the easy emotional punch at the end, but I understand Spielberg's choices and agree with them. What makes the film so good is not its class or even its emotional impact, but its faith in the value of this one true story to affirm all people of all religions, and the way it turns itself over completely to that faith, setting aside other concerns and simply telling the tale for what it was. This film has earned its place in history. –Scott Hardie
There are three things I never want to see again in a horror movie: - A heroine running headlong into a slasher waiting just off the edge of the camera's view, in a direction the heroine was looking the whole time, but the heroine not noticing the slasher until the slasher comes into frame. - The slasher magically teleporting around the scene of a kill, so that he can emerge from behind any object or piece of furniture at any time, even if the heroine saw him standing in one place and never stopped looking at that place before he popped out beside her. - The slasher clairvoyantly knowing the exact spot where his intended victim will later stand, so that he can hide near it in a bathroom stall, projection booth, tv news van, theater control booth, or closet, and spring out when the moment is just right. I don't mind "Scream 2" bringing up bad horror-movie clichés when it's making fun of them, like with the old the-villain-is-not-really-dead gag at the end. But it commits a heinous number of these clichés with serious intent, and for a film whose premise is knowing the flaws of other horror movies, that's inexcusable. But what really disappoints me about the "Scream" series and its whole self-awareness is that the victims are still just victims. We're introduced to (bear with me) kind, interesting, funny human beings, only to see them stabbed dead for a quick shock. It's unpleasant business. In typical slasher films, the heroes are witless morons who don't see it coming; in the "Scream" films, the characters have the cosmic misfortune to know they're doomed to die for nothing, and there's jack they can do about it. I get sick watching the death scenes, and not in the way the filmmakers intended. I still appreciated Jamie Kennedy's sarcastic and Kevin Williamson's clever take on sequels, and the prologue is brilliant. But where the original "Scream" was 70% witty deconstruction of cliché and 30% actual cliché, this sequel seems to have the proportion reversed. It has all the self-awareness of sequels but still doesn't realize it's failing to capture what made the original work so well. –Scott Hardie
More than three hours passed as I watched "Short Cuts," and not once did I notice. It has the fascination of real life, as we watch ordinary people pass from points A to B to C to D to E in their lives, never seeing the larger picture to which they all belong, and never being boring. They could have kept going for another three hours and been just as interesting. As with most of his films, Robert Altman here prefers to make lots of little points rather than one big one. Any single one of these stories, stretched to feature length by itself, would have been interesting but too mundane to say anything of consequence; put together and overlapping one another, they multiply until themes emerge. We see Fred Ward and Annie Ross react indifferently to deaths that horrify his wife Anne Archer and her daughter Lori Singer, who imagine being cared about just as little. We feel the simmering anger under Matthew Modine and Chris Penn when they obsess over the imagined infidelities of their wives Julianne Moore and Jennifer Jason Leigh, not because they were cheated on but because they believe their wives to have gotten greater gratification out of the other experiences. Lili Taylor and Bruce Davison reject pleas for forgiveness from their fathers Tom Waits and Jack Lemmon for abandoning them as children. Peter Gallagher and Robert Downey Jr. invade and destroy other people's homes to fill their own internal voids. Over and over, we see fathers abandoning children, wives cheating on husbands, good people causing death, men blaming women for sexuality imposed upon them, people lashing out at strangers and then regretting it, and everybody drinking without ever getting drunk. By repeating these incidents, Altman gets to have both the authenticity of daily life and the thematic richness of good fiction, and numerous other directors have repeated the archetype to suit their own films. This is one of the best "mosaic" films I have seen. And through it all is the central idea of Altman's career, that life happens by chance: All of the good fortune and bad fortune that befalls these characters is the result of pure happenstance no matter how much or little they plan their lives. If you see the film, seek out the Criterion Collection edition. Not only does it come with all of the original short stories collected into one paperback book, but the bonus disc includes a feature-length behind-the-scenes documentary ("Luck, Trust, and Ketchup") that is as endlessly engrossing as the film it elucidates, with unique perspectives from each member of the large cast. Just don't believe anything Altman says in it: His storytelling tool is misdirection, making you think he's concerned about something else so that his real point seems to come across by itself; in every interview in this bonus feature, he seems to up to his usual tricks. Fortunately, his fine film speaks for itself. –Scott Hardie
I have always wondered what a science fiction film would be like if it were planted firmly in reality, with a hero who is self-centered and has a 9-to-5 job and doesn't enjoy risking her life to unravel a supernatural mystery. Now I have the answer: When the film is good and the actress is great, it works. This film belongs to Julia Ormond, who chisels her compassionless character out of pure ice and makes us sympathize with her because of her integrity. The film isn't always convincing around her, especially when it depends on every ancient cliché in screenwriting school – Gabriel Byrne can't tell what pay phone she's calling from until he hears a foghorn? I wonder if she'll get in trouble at the harbor and he'll arrive just in time to rescue her! – but Ormond and the rest of the cast use sheer willpower to forge through the material, and they are the true rewards here. Even if it wasn't about a cold-hearted Copenhagen geologist investigating the murder of a deaf Inuit boy who had a connection to an extraterrestrial meteor that crashed in Greenland in 1852 and might cause or solve any number of global crises, I'd still say this is one of the most unique and highly memorable films you could possibly treat yourself by renting. Give it a try. –Scott Hardie
I've wanted to see this since enjoying Sherman Alexie's book, and it didn't disappoint. It's a gentle, practically PG-rated road-trip movie with a different perspective and literate dialogue. Gary Farmer is great playing the complicated father figure. –Scott Hardie • March 11 2012, 7:52pm EST • 1 reply
Perhaps the most widely misunderstood studio movie of the nineties, this mega-budgeted sci-fi film was betrayed by its marketing, which promised a gung-ho action extravaganza for the kind of viewer who likes all them pretty 'splosions. The film is far more than competent with its action content, delivering highly adrenalized combat sequences that juggle the interests of multiple characters at once without ever becoming incoherent, but there's a wealth of extra meaning that went unmined by audiences. Critics picked up on the movie's signals but misinterpreted them, calling the soldiers fascists and film dehumanizing. What almost no one seemed to suspect was that a genre movie this expensive could have a deliberate satirical slant to it: Of course the soldiers are fascists and the film is dehumanizing; director Paul Verhoeven and writer Ed Neumeier are trying to argue that those are terrible things and that nationalism eventually devalues individual life to the point where it is wasted on a grand scale. Verhoeven and Neumeier painted a forest, but critics saw only trees, and audiences saw only paint. When I first saw this film a few weeks ago, I was already aware of the filmmakers' real intentions via an article I had read about misunderstood movies, and I enjoyed them as much as I thrilled at the surface-level science fiction entertainment: The disturbingly detailed "arachnid" villains, the expansive view of a star armada falling into formation above a planet, the ballet of destruction caused by the well-trained soldiers and their weapons. But it's the film's real meaning that stayed with me. An ultra-conservative friend who liked this movie once argued that our country should adopt its system of compulsory military service as a prerequisite for citizenship, since only those willing to serve the state deserve to receive its benefits. Now I see how wrong-headed that notion is, that it punishes those opposed to militarism (reducing the peaceful and the conscientious to second-class citizens) and prevents its adherents from considering any notion of justice (the soldiers shout down any suggestion that humanity might have inspired the bug attacks). The problem with nationalism is that it empowers patriots at a steep cost to their humanity, their ethics, their values. It prefers war over peace, and it refuses to grant its enemies even the slightest consideration. Verhoeven and Neumeier have expressed disgust that their film has inspired jingoism rather than diminishing it; a cynic would chuckle at the inevitable failure of their message in the face of American bellicism if the cynic were not in total agreement with the fascist characters of the film. What do I make of the other reason the film failed to gain respect, the alleged sluttiness of its female lead? On their commentary track, Verhoeven and Neumeier claim to have been blindsided by the audience hatred of Denise Richards's character. Some preview audiences turned in blank sheets except for the words "kill the bitch!" in big letters. What is her crime? Falling for another man while dating the hero? They're teenagers, which would make the relationship unstable if it were committed to begin with, but the couple doesn't even achieve physical intimacy until just before they go their separate ways in military service, so I can't imagine what fidelity she owes him. Does the fact that he joined the army to gain her approval, which she never remotely pressured him to do, somehow obligate her to worship him? How is it that he sleeps with another female soldier in his unit but does not get a hint of scorn from the audience? The filmmakers said they were trying to be "good feminists" by letting the female lead pursue her own romantic agenda, and were baffled by backlashes from audiences all over the world that seethed with anger at this woman who dared to smile at another man besides the hero. In the future, when women get to fight and kill and even shower beside their male counterparts as equals, apparently they still owe them unwavering romantic allegiance. What an unfortunate perception to befall such a well-conceived, forward-thinking film. It deserves to be reconsidered in full; hopefully the high volume of material on the special edition DVD can help to turn the tide of audience favor back towards it. –Scott Hardie
You never know when a movie's going to get to you. I rented this one on a whim, having enjoyed other films by Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron (who hasn't?), but I was not prepared for the mental experience of watching it. This film comes stuffed full of good ideas, both technical and technological. I refer you to the major critics if you want an academic dissection of how Bigelow uses virtual reality to break the fourth wall of cinema and comment on the thriller genre. But the visceral impact of her rape-murder sequence is stomach-turning, producing its effect by making us watch the emotional response of a person watching it, getting the same mileage out of mere suggestion that "Irréversible" went to great lengths to demonstrate graphically on screen. For me the biggest thrills were the filmmaking tricks, as Bigelow's POV camera snakes its way through the city, from one hotel ledge to another, from a rooftop to the street below. It took three years to plan these sequences, and they make the film even without other glorious images like the millennial street celebration. It's a minor letdown that the second half of the film isn't as good as the first, settling into off-the-shelf thriller conventions and abusing the economy of characters, but I was taken by surprise at just how emotionally invested I was during the final moments, pleading for the movie to end on the right note. Some viewers found the dialogue cheesy and the film's timeline preposterous (is it not obvious this is an alternate Earth, people?), enough viewers that I can't recommend this film to everyone. But if you're willing to tolerate implausibility as the price of thought-provoking science-fiction, or if you merely enjoy the high-wire acts that most Bigelow and Cameron films are, this is a film to experience. –Scott Hardie
My memories of seeing this in high school were vague, so I had to rent it again as an adult and form a more dependable opinion, and besides, it allows me to prolong the tradition of renting debut features of directors whose later work I admire. Reviews at the time questioned the wisdom of Luhrmann's fish-eye lens and bizarre camera angles, but it's funny how a decade and two completely apeshit-crazy follow-ups can make a film seem down-to-earth. It's little surprise that what is best in the film is the captivating dance performances, because the movie can hardly be bothered to tell much of a story around them. The movie began life years earlier as an improvised stage play, and grew through so many different incarnations that the movie is overstuffed with competiting plotlines; in a rush to cover everything before the audience gets restless for another dance number, many subplots fall by the wayside. The one that I found most interesting, the inevitable but promising love story between the leads, was shamelessly glossed over as the hero went from admitting his love for his partner to ditching her without a word, but apparently since the romance began with only a few meaningful glances, it was only appropriate to resolve it that way as well. Like the two leads getting lost in a sea of supporting characters in the final shot, the film loses its way en route to the finish, but it certainly contains some remarkable dancing along the way. It's worth a rental even for those turned off by Luhrmann's excesses in his later films. –Scott Hardie
There are some fun parts in this thriller about amateur criminals who kidnap a mob boss, but it takes its twisty plot too seriously. Christopher Walken is no longer scary at this stage of his career, but it's good to see young actors trying to top him. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:34am EST
As filmmakers, the Coen brothers score more hits than misses, and I think that's partly because they don't start films based on lousy ideas. For this one, they dreamed up what it would be like for their endearingly dopey slacker friend to be caught in the middle of a Raymond Chandler mystery. That isn't to say that the film made itself from there, since the script is very clever and the actors dig into their characters (especially Jeff Bridges), but there's an unmistakeable core of goofiness at play that has made the film a justifiable cult classic. –Scott Hardie • August 13 2006, 6:07pm EST • 3 replies
Ken Burns's exhaustive 11-hour summation of the what, how, and why of the war is as riveting now as it was upon its release, providing context for today's angry partisanship. It is revelatory, heartbreaking, and encouraging in equal and great measure. –Scott Hardie • March 26 2011, 9:44pm EST
The only thing preventing this film from being enjoyed is the palpable audience bias against it that persists almost a decade later. Just because it's artsy Miramax Oscar-bait doesn't mean it's bad. Once seen, it's an easy film to like and even easier to appreciate, rich with location details and complex characters. It also frays the emotional nerves in the best way, as affecting as any Best Picture winner since "Schindler's List" and able to imprint its romantic imagery onto your memory for years to come. If you've been avoiding it since it first came out, lay down your bias and discover its treasures. –Scott Hardie
[major spoilers ahead] Like its teenaged protagonists who desperately want to grow up, the filmmakers here are like kids who start cooking in the kitchen when their parents are out, and they aren't quite ready to handle the delicate alchemy. Some things taste surprisingly good when made with an authentic touch, but there are spills and splatters along the way, and watch out for that stove fire near the end! The film's naive earnestness finally gets the better of it, erupting in an unintentionally hilarious conclusion spoofed quite deliciously a few years later in "Pumpkin" (and I rarely level the "unintentionally hilarious" accusation, so believe it). Still, even a pretentious, cliché-riddled film like this can sneak past our defenses and touch us if it is willing to go places we only imagined, and I'm certainly not the only person to daydream of having an adventure like the protagonists here. That fantasy is given weight by the commanding lead performances, especially by Angela Bettis, who uses the same nearly infinite bag of performance tricks she demonstrated in "May" last year. This young woman is a twentysomething Joan Allen, so delicate and so precise with every tiny movement of her face, and she proves more than up to the task of giving her walking stereotype some fascinating, perceptible depth of personality. Director Don Most (who graciously allows a big, welcome "Happy Days" reference in through the kitchen door) shows promise, shifting the amateur-hour plot dynamics to the back burner and bringing the sympathetic inner selves of these giddy young adults bubbling to the surface. Whenever he directs again, I'll try a bite to see if he's improved. –Scott Hardie
Of course it ruled. This is one of the most beloved 90s films, a prison epic as revered for its accurate sense of decades gone by as for its triumphant, engaging story. Frank Darabont and Stephen King have made other good movies, but nothing like this. –Scott Hardie • April 7 2009, 1:32am EST
The first time I saw this movie, in theaters with Jason Fedorow and Denise Sawicki, I was a former fan of the series who had grown too tired of trying to keep up with its labrynthine mythology after missing only a few episodes. I still enjoyed the film because it has some amazing sights and plenty of Mulder's deadpan humor, but I'm not surprised to have liked it even more today, after watching the first five seasons in their entirety on DVD. This was plainly made for fans first: The hefty slabs of exposition may sound to a casual observer like ridiculous bullshit made up just to give the movie a semblance of a story, but longtime viewers would recognize it as major steps forward in the ongoing ridiculous bullshit of the series. The film is ultimately unsatisfying because A) Scully once again plays the damsel in distress to Mulder the hero, and B) there is no significant closure at the end. Jesus, Chris Carter wasn't kidding when he told Fox in 2001 that the series could go on in perpetuity, even if its entire cast quit. (Luckily Fox didn't agree.) I look forward to reaching the final episode and seeing at last whether the series is capable of its own demise. As for the movie, I recommend it, but I recommend it even more strongly if you start here and work your way to it. It's a great ride. –Scott Hardie
It ruled. –Scott Hardie
After enjoying Happiness and Storytelling so much, I knew I couldn't last long without seeing Todd Solondz's most famous film. It is certainly his most painful, as young Dawn Weiner (three-dimensional though she is) stands as a universal symbol for all of us who were once geeky adolescents, while the main characters in his other films stand only for themselves. What Dawn experiences here is a knuckle-chenching nightmare of childhood torments, and if you experienced painful ones yourself, this film may go beyond catharsis and actually reopen old wounds. Strong as the film is, I found it the least satisfying of Solondz's three films (I have not seen his disowned "Fear, Anxiety & Depression") because it doesn't build to any result: the scenes accumulate instead of adding up. I also didn't laugh much, but that's my problem. If you're in the mood for an 87-minute Pathetic Geek Story, this is the rental for you. –Scott Hardie
By his third major release, M. Night Shyamalan was already starting to seem like a hack whose only real talent was in disguising his pedestrian material with a high-gloss professionalism. This film, made in 1997 but seen by me now for the first time, drives the point home. He's got plenty of skill as a director, but his weakness is his screenwriting, which reminds me of the kind of amateurish material I wrote in junior high school: Meticulously plotted and affecting a grown-up air, secretly paranoid that no one will realize how ordinary it is, and indulgently self-impressed. I look forward to the day, should it ever come, when Shyamalan directs from someone else's (good) script. Then I think he'll really be on to something. That's not to say that the film lacks charms, just that it packs in too many artificial ones. Robert Loggia is convincing as the grandfather beloved enough to put the plot in motion, and even if young Joseph Cross is given impossibly complex monologues for a fifth-grader, he at least gets credit for refusing to overplay any of them. (It struck me that he probably auditioned for "The Sixth Sense," and would have been good in it.) There's some genuinely funny material here, and occasionally touching as well. The film has the overbearing foreshadowing typical of its genre, but when it comes to the payoff, it's surprisingly restrained and casual about it. There's not even the worst element of children's films, the obligatory victory scene of throngs of children cheering at the tops of their lungs for the hero! (On the other hand, it does have that desperately overeager musical score that feels compelled to put an underline, circle, and exclamation point on every emotional cue, the seocnd-worst element of children's films.) On the whole, this is a near miss, a film that just isn't genuine enough to be taken seriously. But it's not bad if you're in the need for a warm comedy about Catholic school - and who isn't? - and those viewers who still believe in Shyamalan will find things to like. –Scott Hardie |
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