The Abyss
Always
Back to the Future Part II
Batman Spoiler
The Bear
The Big Picture
Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure
Black Rain
Blaze
Born on the Fourth of July
Casualties of War
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Dad
Dangerous Liaisons
The Dice Man Cometh
The Fabulous Baker Boys
Fat Man and Little Boy
Funny
Harlem Nights
Heavy Petting
The Last Temptation of Christ
License to Kill
Little Dorrit
The Little Thief
Made for Each Other
The Mighty Quinn
New Year's Day
The Package
Parenthood
Parents
Powwow Highway
Rabbit Ears Story Book Classics
Say Anything
sex, lies, and videotape
She-Devil
Shirley Valentine
Steel Magnolias
Valmont
War Party
The War of the Roses
When Harry Met Sally
Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Wired

The Abyss

     The Abyss does for drowning what Airport did for crashing in an airplane and Jaws did for getting eaten alive. So if you still get the jitters when you fly or go swimming in the ocean, the chances are that you will NEVER go into a submarine for the rest of your life after seeing The Abyss. From the opening second, it is an undersea adventure of such high level intensity that it puts every other summer film to shame. On a purely visceral level, it is ten times more nerve-wracking than Indiana Jones and James Bond, where the non-stop movement is rarely more than amusing. But The Abyss is genuinely terrifying. It will have you gasping for breath when you're not chewing your nails to the knuckle.
     A U.S. nuclear submarine crashes somewhere near the Cayman Trough, which is a hole in the floor of Atlantic Ocean that goes for more than four miles straight down. The only people who can get to the sub in time to search for survivors are a team of oil rig operators working at "Deepcore," a prototype movable facility sitting on the ocean floor. Ed Harris plays the foreman who is joined by his wife, played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, who designed the whole place. Together with a bad-ass team of Navy Seals, they explore the sub and, after a series of spectacular disasters, the Trough itself. What they find is at first petrifying, and finally, awe inspiring. It is magnificent filmmaking.
     The Abyss was written and directed by James Cameron, a Corman alumnus who starting out as art director and production designer for dozens of cheapo shlockos. He made his directorial debut with another undersea adventure, Piranha II - The Spawning, about which the less said the better. It doesn't even appear on his resume, and who can blame him when his second film was such a monster.
     The Terminator was a barrage of science fiction mayhem directed with non-stop momentum, presenting a relentlessly bleak but visually fascinating vision of tomorrow. Up until that time, it had been considered a drawback that Arnold Schwarzenegger's performances were robotic. But Cameron cast him impeccably as a killer cyborg from the future, and the film was an enormous hit, giving both their careers a boost.
     After writing the screenplay for Rambo: First Blood II, he then wrote and directed Aliens. It was an even bigger hit than its predecessor, earning seven academy award nominations and more than $180 million.
     All this paved the way towards The Abyss, a technological marvel full of brilliant set pieces. The world is still dangerous, things can still go wrong in the most unlikely ways, but Cameron's focus is more on character than it's ever been. It's the couple that counts, not the mysterious inexplicable force surrounding them.
     It would be easy to run off at the mouth about the mind-boggling special effects and the cosmic implications, but it's all the type of stuff you've seen before in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Which isn't a put down. I'm sure there are those who will complain that the film is TOO derivative, but in many ways The Abyss is an improvement over the films it is derived from. (I can't explain further without giving away the ending) One thing that makes it so special is the focus on the couple rather than the effects.
     In The Shining, Stanley Kubrick was the first to postulate that absolutely nothing is more frightening than a husband and wife trapped together. Cameron takes this concept one step further in The Abyss, giving us one of the most harrowing life-or-death scenes of all time.
     He takes an estranged husband and wife who secretly love each other but whose passion can only reveal itself through sarcasm - and puts them under pressure. A lot of pressure - like at the bottom of the ocean in a leaky two man submarine with only one set of diving gear. The leak can't be fixed, and they've only got a few minutes till the whole sub is full of water. One of them has got to die. They've probably both secretly wished for the other's demise, but not like this. The one who lives will have to watch the other drown. Close up.
     Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio are so good in this scene, their fear and devotion so raw and vital, that I can't think of any episode in any other picture that rivals it in emotional intensity. It's so ferociously performed that it overshadows the big special-effects finale. The alien force becomes just a sub-plot. (Come to think of it, the whole film is a sub plot)
     If The Abyss is essentially about a relationship between husband and wife, that may be its fatal flaw (apart from the mammoth budget). People who are into relationship films don't necessarily go see big science fiction films, and techno-nerds who go see big science fiction films don't necessarily care about relationships. But I suppose techno-nerds need love too, so whichever category you fall into, you shouldn't let that stop you from going. This is a great film whether you're a nerd or not.

Always

     Always is one of the most embarrassing movies I've ever seen. It could have been made by a man raised in a box with absolutely no contact with other human beings. There isn't a shred of genuine mortal emotion; it's all clearly based upon other movies rather than actual experience. It made me want to grab Steven Spielberg by the lapels, shake him, and scream "Get a life!" E.T. proved he had humanity and cosmic awareness. Always proves he has no individual awareness of how relationships really work. What could be more awful than a film made by a man who is clearly trying to bare his soul, only to reveal that there's nothing there but cliches from bad old movies.

Back to the Future Part II

     If a sequel takes place after the original, a prequel before the original, and a remake at the same time as the original, what does that make Back to the Future Part II, which is a complicated amalgamation of all three? Director Robert Zemeckis, along with his screenwriting partner Bob Gale, have taken the whole concept of time travel and pushed it to it's logical extremes, going forwards, backwards, and sideways through time, delivering knotty paradoxes that twist your brain into spaghetti.
     I would love to tell you what this movie is about, but it's like trying to describe two hours of hallucinogenic Tom and Jerry cartoons made by Timothy Leary and Albert Einstein. Here goes nothing. Something went wrong in the future, so Christopher Lloyd takes Michael J. Fox forward in time in order to fix things by pretending to be his son, but someone steals the time machine and goes way back into the past so that when Lloyd and Fox return to the present, it's a different present than the one they left, so they have to go back to the past to correct the future. Got it? Good for you. You probably went to college.
     Though there's a considerable amount of footage from the original film throughout Part II, it would be a very good idea to rent the tape of Part I before seeing this, otherwise your memory will be taxed considerably. In many films, the plot or characterizations are so enjoyable that you end up missing a lot of the side details. But in a Zemeckis film, the side details are so enjoyable that you end up missing a lot of the plot.
     Of course that's part of the plan. Listening to the audience leaving the theater, everyone was talking about how they needed to see it again to get it. It's the same response elicited by Zemeckis' last film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Zemeckis has consolidated his style, perfecting the art of making movies that go by so fast, with every frame dense with details that are close to impossible to grasp, that you don't even try to get it all. You sit in the theater, waiting for the roller coaster to end so that you can stagger home, wait six months or so for the video, and enjoy the film at your own pace. Fans of subtlety might want to steer clear, but fans of adrenaline should get in line right now. It's a wholehearted tribute to the almighty God of momentum.

Batman Spoiler

     The Joker killed Bruce Wayne's parents, right? At the end of the film, Batman says to Joker "You killed my parents" and the Joker says "I was young, I didn't know what I was doing" or something to that effect. Well like I said, the Joker killed BRUCE WAYNE'S parents. Unless the Joker knows Batman's secret identity, how does he know what the hell Batman is talking about? Think about it.

     I don't know about you, but Batman came to a grinding halt for me the instant any Prince music took over the soundtrack. It's not that I don't like the great purple one and his lascivious harmonies; taken separately from the movie, the Prince soundtrack album is highly entertaining. (and number one in the country) But within the context of the movie, the songs are completely disruptive. The film has a deep dark flow that is fed by a lush, Teutonic, and resoundingly symphonic score. It does not need interruptions by cutesy rude rock and roll.
     Which all leads to the fact that the REAL soundtrack to Batman is out, the one by Oingo Boingo's Danny Elfman and it is magnificent. Like the scores of Ry Cooder and Randy Newman, all of those by Elfman (Beetlejuice, Midnight Run) are a mandatory part of any soundtrack collection. Batman pounds and glistens, like calliope music for a roller coaster in hell. Play it loud.

The Bear

     Bears tend to get treated poorly in films. They're always the bad guy, huffing and puffing and out of control. But if the entire bear species were to hire a PR firm to change their image in the public's eye, they might have come up with something like this - an entire film shot from the point of view of a cub. The Bear is one of the most perfect films imaginable for parents to see with their children; it's scary and funny enough to entertain any size offspring, and it's subtle and unpredictable enough to captivate any size adult.
     The story is not only fun, it's genuinely comforting, full of compassion and forgiveness. After losing his mom in an accident, a beautiful and innocent bear cub finds himself left all alone in the vast and hostile world of the Canadian Rockies. Within this stunningly photogenic landscape, he has a series of adventures involving some hunters, a frog, lots of bees, and a big adult male bear who becomes his friend.
     If this all sounds like typical '50s Disney fodder, it's not. The Bear manages to avoid every cliche of the typical "nature" film, delivering an astonishing amount of believability. The antics of a cuddly little bear might sound too precious for words, but it's actually a daring proposition to do realistically. It requires a level of honesty and innocence that most filmmakers never bother to attempt.
     Director Jean-Jacques Annaud has a history of taking chances. He is the ultimate stickler for detail, with a staggering capacity for revealing deep emotional truths in the strangest of circumstances. His first film, Black and White in Color, earned him an Academy award for best foreign film. His second, Quest for Fire, took place 80,000 years ago. In it, Annaud managed to take pre-historic times quite seriously. He displayed a unique eye and an unflinching attitude towards natural processes. His cave people were shameless, brutal, and constantly engaging in some form of carnality.
     Next came The Name of the Rose starring Sean Connery, a murder mystery in a monastery and a fascinating study of art and philosophy in the middle ages. It was so intensely intellectual that it was almost too much work to watch.
     On his fourth outing as a director, Annaud has headed for the wilderness again. The Bear took four years to make, including one just to train the animals. Not that there aren't humans involved in the story. Among the cast of antelopes, butterflies, and pumas, there are a few human actors who get to speak a dozen or so lines of dialogue. One particular actor deserves some sort of award for surviving one of the ultimate good news/bad news situations. I can imagine the phone call he got from his agent. "The good news is you've got the part; the bad news is you've got to crouch on the edge of a cliff under a waterfall while being attacked by a two ton bear."
     This final showdown between bear and hunter is a remarkable scene. It should have been trite, but instead it's a catharsis - thanks to Annaud's unerring eye for honesty. He avoids fake Hollywood theatrics, delivering pure animal logic and unpredictability. Annaud's films are growing subtler, wiser, and more universal. With this one, he's achieved a miracle - a children's film that isn't the least bit condescending. See it whatever age you are.

The Big Picture

     The Big Picture seems to be one of those movies that will sail over the head of anyone who hasn't had the personal experience of trying to make a movie in Hollywood. But for those of us who have beaten our weary heads against the studio system, it is an impeccable and hysterical satire of modern show biz.
     Kevin Bacon plays a student filmmaker whose first short wins him an award that miraculously opens some very powerful doors. Like Diogenes searching for an honest man, Bacon takes an odyssey though Hollywoodland, searching for the sincerity of agents, the compassion of studio heads, and the integrity of TV performers. What a sap. He finds a succession of characters who are all ruthless satires of very real people. Martin Short and Jennifer Jason Leigh are particularly lunatic as the agent with the heart of formaldehyde and the performance artist who gives a bad name to both performance and art.
     This is the first feature directed by Christopher Guest, whose droll performances in This is Spinal Tap and Saturday Night Live proved he is a man of multiple absurdist tendencies. As a director, he shows an unerring eye for the bizarre idiosyncrasies that make all his characters come to life. The Big Picture is painfully honest and deeply funny. It spits venom while making you roll in the aisles.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure

 For a much more enjoyable vision of childhood, check out this week's video release of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. When it first opened, the critics trashed it and the audiences loved it, which only goes to show that most critics are stuffed shirts and most audiences know bodacious when they see it.
     Bill and Ted are two modern high school students who think that Napoleon is a short dead dude and Joan of Arc was Noah's wife. Naturally, they're failing history, which means if they don't get an A+ on their final oral report, they'll flunk out of school and Bill will get sent to a military school in Alaska. Luckily, George Carlin shows up as a time traveler in a phone booth, and Bill and Ted get to bop about the past, kidnapping historical figures to help them get through school.
     It's a silly conceit, and this is a very silly movie with a lot of heart. Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter manage to imbue Bill and Ted with genuine innocence, and they get away with murder. To some, the use of incongruities such as Ted calling one of Arthur's knights a dickwad, might seem painfully obvious, juvenile, and ridiculous. Well loosen up, dudes. Socrates said that the only true knowledge comes from knowing that you know nothing, which makes Bill and Ted the smartest teenagers on earth. Be excellent to each other.

Black Rain

     A stunning triumph of style over substance, sort of like Nietsche trying to write an episode of Police Story. Actually, Black Rain is a superb cop thriller that might have survived a more ordinary production. But in the hands of director Ridley Scott (Alien, Bladerunner), this is an explosive extravaganza - loud, violent, and totally overwhelming. I've never seen a film that tried so damned hard to be a masterpiece.
     Michael Douglas plays Nick, a New York cop who's being investigated for corruption. His life takes a turn for the worse when he loses a murderous prisoner he's delivering to Japan. The Japanese cops hate Nick because they were waiting a long time to get their hands on the prisoner, and the U.S. cops hate him because they assume he was paid off to let the killer go. Douglas has to stay in Japan to set things straight, to put the killer back in prison, and to prove to everyone that he's not crooked.
     It's a good story, an occidental Ugly American, full of fascinating, well rounded characters. Douglas gives an intense, antagonistic, pain ridden performance, one that's the diametric opposite of his last screen appearance in Wall Street. In some shots he seems so wasted, it looks like Ridley Scott directed him to stay up all night drinking the night before shooting. As his sidekick, Andy Garcia (The Untouchables) is incredibly likable, and Japanese superstar Ken Takakura is superb as Masahiro, Douglas' counterpart in the Japanese police.
     Ridley Scott is one of the most brilliant visual stylists working in film today, and Black Rain is a non-stop display of eye candy combined with one of the loudest soundtracks you'll ever experience. Shot after shot stun the brain with monumental art direction and pulsating music. The cinematic style is so overpowering it makes you forget that you're seeing a fairly standard cop thriller, one that's been given the most lavish production imaginable.
     In Scott's genuine masterpiece, Bladerunner, he turned future Los Angeles into a nightmare amalgamation of oriental and western styles. In Black Rain, he investigates modern Japan and discovers Bladerunner personified - with endless glowing neon signs gracing concentrated skyscrapers surrounded by teeming pedestrians, bicycle and motorcycle gangs, and a constant drizzle. It's a dreamlike wonderworld where anything can happen.
     Scott is obviously obsessed with Stanley Kubrick, and technically, Black Rain could very well be a Kubrick film. What Scott lacks is Kubrick's humor (try to think of one single laugh in any Ridley Scott film) and Kubrick's innate nihilism, which imbues all his films with philosophical substance. I don't pretend to understand everything that Kubrick has to say, but his films leave no doubt that he's trying to put across something other than story.
     But Black Rain doesn't even leave you with that. Thinking back on it, I retain the textures of Scott's style much more than any substance they may contain. I can remember the sparks flying off the sword being dragged on the ground by the motorcyclist much more than I remember what the cyclist actually does with the sword. The Japanese add "san" to people's names, so Nick is often referred to as Nick-san, which sounds suspiciously like Nixon. But it doesn't mean anything, it's just an accident of syntax rather than any sort of political statement. In a Kubrick film, it would have had significance. In Black Rain, it's just weird.
     I apologize for dwelling on the negative in a film that has so much going for it. On a visceral level, Black Rain is exciting, magnificent, grand guignol filmmaking, and totally entertaining top to bottom. See it on a big screen. Just don't try to think about it afterwards.

     If you don't already know the true story of the Governor of Louisiana Earle Long and his love affair with stripper Blaze Starr, you're in for a big treat. This is a fascinating tale, so full of passion and political intrigue, that it's got every element of a classical Greek tragedy. While watching it, I kept assuming that the filmmakers were taking dramatic license, making it more melodramatic. But I was wrong; it's all fact. No self-respecting fiction writer would have concocted such a fantastic tale.
     In the wrong hands, this could have been the simple story of a woman who ruins a man's life, or rather a man who allows his own gonads to ruin his life. But in the hands of writer/director Ron Shelton (Bull Durham), it's the much more satisfying story of love triumphing over politics. Paul Newman gives another spectacular performance as the gruff but brilliant politician with a breast fixation, and newcomer Lolita Davidovich delivers a delicate demonstration of a woman equally imbued with eroticism and dignity. Their relationship is one of the most satisfying you will ever see on the screen. They both know how to get totally naked, even with their clothes on.

Born on the Fourth of July

     Luis Bunuel once said "I would gladly give my life for a man who is looking for the truth, but I would gladly kill a man who thinks he has found the truth." I wouldn't go that far, but I do know that life offers no easy answers. So I find it hard to tolerate films that think they've found THE TRUTH. You know the ones, the Billy Jacks, the Rambos, all demented but sincerely motivated killers who pontificate philosophically while beating the snot out of somebody. I tend to like a hint of ambiguity in my diatribes. Anybody can say anything at all as long as they also say "but I might be wrong."
     Unfortunately, this is also a way of chickening out. Show both sides of an issue and no one can blame you for not being fair, but that's not the way propaganda wars are won. In Hollywood, showing genuine passion for only one side of an issue is a dangerous sport. Studios like their product to be mitigated by prevailing popular tides, so they usually play it safe and homogenize everything.
     Into this moral vacuity steps Oliver Stone, a Vietnam veteran and filmmaker whose indignation and anger seemed to have found fruition in his autobiographical film Platoon, a passionate indictment against the crimes America made him commit in the name of freedom. But it turns out his quest for the truth is unquenchable, and Platoon was just practice for another story he was born to tell. Born on the Fourth of July, the true story of Vietnam veteran and paraplegic Ron Kovic, is not only the best film of the year, it is the best film ever made about the '60s in America. There may never be THE great American novel, but Born on the Fourth of July is a strong contender for THE great American film. It is a portrait of love and nobility, of a dream gone sour, of the incomprehensible nightmare of life without a body.
     It took the nobility and honesty of wounded veterans like Kovic to give credibility to the fledgling anti-war movement, which had previously been perceived as nothing but communist hippies out to destroy the nation. Even hard line war mongers could not ignore the voices of men who believed in the war as strongly as they did, but who came back from the battlefields beaten and frustrated by a war that made no sense.
     Most anti-war films of the '80s, from Full Metal Jacket to Casualties of War, have explored the integral connection between sex and war, of the tendency of the military to suppress the male sexual urge so that it will become reborn as pure killer instinct. In the wonderful world of the Marines, a gun is a penis substitute, and killing a Vietcong is the perfect orgasm.
     Stone takes this concept one step further in his fearless attitude towards bodily functions. Kovic starts out living the lie that his manhood is dependant upon his ability to kill, so, with the help of his sexually repressed mother, he subjugates his sexual urges and joins the Marines. When he is sent home without the use of his lower body, he cannot control his bladder or his bowels, and his penis is now permanently connected to a catheter. His life becomes the ultimate frustration. His post-war quest is not only to reconcile the pain of dealing with the lives he took, but to regain his ability to make love.
     He achieves the former by confronting the parents of a man he killed in the war, and confessing to them that he shot their son. This scene is so brilliantly played by Tom Cruise that it is the single most devastating moment I've ever witnessed in a film.
     He achieves the latter by going to a whorehouse in Mexico, where he discovers that his penis is a much better gun substitute than his gun was ever a penis substitute. Without his gun, he's more a man than he ever was. Kovic changes from a soldier of fortune to a soldier of peace. He no longer buys the big lie; he knows it's possible to love your country without loving the government of your country.
     After witnessing the horrors of Tienanmen Square in 1989, it's important to remember that it can and did happen here in the '60s. The world has changed; lessons have been learned and absorbed into the collective conscience of mankind. The final message of Born on the Fourth of July is powerful and profound. Maybe we can stop killing each other in the mistaken belief that there is an enemy. Killing itself is the enemy.

Casualties of War

     I spent more than four years dodging the draft specifically so that I wouldn't have to go through what all of these goddam Vietnam war movies are putting me through. Films of WWII are full of nobility, valor, and righteous indignation; films of the Vietnam war are full of ignobility, shame, and insanity, all things I'm glad I missed. But it's as though the war were mandatory; I chickened out of the real thing, now I must suffer through every movie ever made about it.
     With a script by David Rabe, based upon a 1969 article in the New Yorker by Daniel Lang, Casualties of War is a vital expression of personal outrage, full of extraordinary performances and intense cinematic bravado. It tells the tale of a troop of soldiers led by Sean Penn, who kidnap a young girl, rape her, and kill her. Michael Fox is the one brave enough to disobey orders and refuse to participate.
     If you've always considered Fox likable but lightweight, this is the film to change your mind. He and Penn are both brilliant, but Fox has the tougher role. There are places where the film stops and he is called upon to deliver monologues that are clearly the AUTHOR'S MESSAGE. Fox not only makes these ruminations work, he makes them the high points of the picture.
     But it is director Brian DePalma who displays them most growth with Casualties of War. Till this film, Depalma has always been dispassionate towards his characters. Carrie, Sisters, The Phantom of the Paradise, Blowout, Dressed to Kill, and Scarface all take place in a moral vacuum, where good and bad are close to impossible to pinpoint. DePalma's spectacular technique always displays more love of cinema than love of people, and his films are littered with ambiguities. Innocents get slaughtered. Heros do good things for bad reasons. Villains are colorful, devious, and usually very smart. People are rarely what they seem, life is bursting with nasty surprises, and everybody's motivations are suspect. Even in his most straightforward film, The Untouchables, it's not quite clear whether Depalma approves of what Elliot Ness is doing.
     In Casualties of War, the good guy is Michael Fox, the bad guy is Sean Penn, and nothing could be clearer. Which is what makes this film such a breakthrough for Depalma. He has made films from his brain, from his guts, and certainly from his gonads, but it took years of practice for him to forget all his cynicism and make one from the heart. In Casualties, the great nihilist has turned moralist for the first time. All his cards are on the table, and the effect is staggering. He once again proves that cinema is the greatest propaganda device of all time. He's made a film that is as powerful as cinema can get - an emotionally wrenching experience that aches with passion and truth.
     This isn't a film you simply see, it is a film you see and then spend days recovering from. It's brutal and horrifying, but strangely not pessimistic. Like The Killing Fields, there is joy in the simple fact that the story got out, that it was worth surviving this particular hell in order to tell the world about it.
     I'm tempted to call it a savage blow to the gut, but I realize the target is lower. Casualties of War is a savage indictment of all things male - of the quest for domination, of the singular aggression that emanates from the groin of a trained assassin. It takes place in a self-contained male universe, in which men are deprived of women, then reminded that THIS is my weapon and THIS is my gun. All combativeness comes from the male desire to penetrate. War is a sexual act, a MALE thing to do. Casualties of War is penis apologia.

Crimes and Misdemeanors

     When a piano is perfectly tuned, strings that are NOT being played will vibrate slightly if they relate harmonically to the notes that ARE being played. These are called sympathetic vibrations, and a skilled pianist can make brilliant use of them.
     Good movies have them too, and when they're correctly tuned, when every nuance in each scene relates in some way to every nuance in every other scene, films can resonate with artistic purpose. You can't stop thinking about these films because hidden connections and subtle ambiguities keep popping into your head.
     Such is Woody Allen's 19th film, Crimes and Misdemeanors. It is a masterpiece, far subtler, infinitely wiser, and more cunningly calculated than I ever dreamed a movie could be. It's as though all his 18 other films were just practice to make this one.
     For 10 years now, everyone has asked the same question about each new Woody Allen film - is it one of his funny ones? The question so irked Allen that he even made fun of it in Stardust Memories, where aliens came down from the skies to tell him that they liked his earlier funny pictures.
     Most moviegoers seem to agree with the aliens, because there seemed to be something missing from each of Allen's non-comedic pictures (Interiors, September, Another Woman). In order to make movies that people would take seriously, Allen decided it was necessary to sublimate one of his finest traits, his sense of humor. This was a miscalculation because the results were obvious lies; Allen was clearly denying his audience an essential part of his personality. These films only seemed serious by virtue of his eliminating the jokes he would have normally put in them.
     So Allen has come up with a stunning conceit to amalgamate the yin and yang of his personality - the side that wholeheartedly feels the futility of our short life on this planet, and the side that has the ability to laugh at the problem. In a radical departure from traditional storytelling, he has constructed a couple of unrelated modern stories, one with humor, one without. Crimes and Misdemeanors has two different sets of characters and plots, with minimal points of contact, and it is up to the audience to find the common denominator. It is no easy task. This film is extremely demanding on your thought processes, and is the closest thing Woody has yet done to a mystery movie. The mystery is "what do these two intertwining stories have in common?"
     Judah Rosenthal (Martin Landau) and Cliff Stern (Woody Allen) meet, they even share a conversation at a party, but their stories only converge in subtext. They both share the same tragic flaw, they take events in their lives too seriously. Woody has the benefit of sarcasm to ease him through a troubled life, Martin Landau pushes himself into a moral vacuum where any ends justify any means, including taking someone's life.
     This film was probably inevitable for Allen. As he has perfected his craft, he has deepened his quest for answers to cosmic questions. What better way to approach the meaning of life than to make a movie about a murder, not a funny ha-ha murder like the one in Bananas where Howard Cossell steps in to interview the corpse, but a genuine, purposeful, and powerfully motivated killing.
     In his reckless abandoning of stereotypes, he's given us characters and plot lines that are entirely plausible. This a film of carefree style and heartfelt profundity, a film so convincingly concerned with the complexities of the human spirit that it is almost overwhelming. It asks far more questions than it gives answers, sucking you into a moral quagmire where right and wrong are nothing more than personal choices, where life is nothing like it is in the movies.
     Though this is unquestionably one of his best, it probably won't be many people's favorite. It's too difficult, and sometimes it feels less like a film than a master's thesis. It's definitely the opposite of light entertainment. As a matter of fact, the light parts of Crimes and Misdemeanors are the most irritating. Never before have Woody's cute little quips seemed so vicious and arrogant. Though he lets us laugh at Cliff, Allen seems to understand that people who make jokes all the time can be more pathetic than funny.
     Has Allen found the meaning of life? In Crimes and Misdemeanors, he answers the question with a stunning final image of a blind man dancing with a beautiful woman. I can't argue with that.

Dad
Say Anything

     I love to cry in movies; as a matter of fact, I've probably cried more in movies than I have in real life. The difference is that in real life I tend to cry at tragedy whereas in film I tend to cry at illumination, at tenderness, at reconciliation, at the opening of a previously impenetrable heart. Just let a beautiful actress kiss the Elephant Man and call him Romeo, or watch Diane Keaton fight her way across a crowded train station to hug Warren Beatty, and I'm a basket case. I couldn't care less when E.T. died, but when he pointed to Eliot's head and said "I'll be right here", my beard got soaked.
     What DOESN'T make me cry is manipulation, and films that use the standard DEATH OF SOMEBODY YOU LIKE routine are the lowest. Love Story and Terms of Endearment were films I could not abide. They each let me get to know a character, enjoy their company and care about their concerns, then they let them die for absolutely no reason other than to give the other characters an opportunity to beat their chests while suckers in the audience dive into their purses for Kleenex. The recent Beaches was the worst because it was completely arbitrary which best friend got to croak, as long as the other got to mourn and/or sing. These films may be effective, but they don't necessarily make you feel good afterwards, just pissed off that they made you cry so easily.
     Dad could easily fall into this category. It's the Arnold Schwarzenegger of tear jerkers; it doesn't just jerk your tears, it squeezes your tear ducts with all it's might till they're drained of all liquids. I was crying within five minutes, I barely stopped for the whole goddam two hours, and immediately afterwards I didn't know whether to hate it or love it.
     Since Dad shares the same emotional territory as many lesser films, it's easy to overlook how much smarter it is. Dad doesn't trick you by setting you up for a fall. It's clear from the get-go that gramps has one foot in the grave, so it's no cheap surprise when the film delves into the pain of his children dealing with his imminent death. Finally, Dad is not so much about dealing with death as the changing of the guard, the passing on of family responsibility from grandfather Jake (Jack Lemmon) to father John (Ted Danson) to son Billy (Ethan Hawke).
     As one would expect, Jake is a lovable but irascible old coot, John is a stoic but emotionless businessman who learns to care, and Billy is a reckless modern teen who discovers he has more in common with his grandfather than his father. I constantly wanted the film to delve deeper into John, but he's essentially a shallow man with too many emotional barriers to break through. Though he cares for his father, he is also scared of becoming him. Only when he realizes how important a presence he is in his father's old age does he start preparing for a new relationship with his son.
      In the book by William Wharton, you're almost glad when Jake dies because he's such a pain. But in the film you're almost glad when Jake dies because it means the film is over and you can go outside to a phone, call your parents (or kids) and tell them you love them. The final message is forgiveness above all else. Dad is worth the pain.

     Another film that manages to transcend a truckload of cliches is Say Anything..., which just came out this week on video. It stars John Cusack and Ione Skye as two teens struggling to work out a relationship despite the best wishes of their family and friends. I cannot imagine a more overworked plot as this, but in Say Anything... it's never been so well worked. The acting is superb, top to bottom, and you not only get involved, you believe every second. I understand why you ignored it in the theaters, but there's no excuse for not renting the tape and being more than pleasantly surprised. It's one of the best films of the year.

The Dice Man Cometh

     If you give the new tape by stand-up comic Andrew Dice Clay, The Dice Man Cometh, any more than 60% of your attention, it could easily get you in trouble. If you are male, DO NOT PLAY IT FOR YOUR GIRL FRIEND. The Dice Man confirms every woman's deepest fear about what men think of them. He is not sensitive. He is not caring. He is crude, vicious, and considers women as nothing more than potential victims of his flesh harpoon. If the Fonz were cast in the Sam Keniston Story, he might perform like this. Dice's little brain has gained total control of his big brain. He's so brutally honest about his hormones that every man who watches him has to laugh in recognition. We've all felt this way to varying degrees.
     But it is a mistake to admit it, believe me. If you find yourself watching this with a woman and she asks you if you have ever felt that way, lie. Or better yet, don't play it if there are any females around. The Dice Man Cometh should come with a label - WARNING: This tape can destroy relationships.

The Fabulous Baker Boys

     It's a true test of a film if it can totally transcend a subject matter that you find repulsive. For me, going to see The Fabulous Baker Boys, which is the story of two brothers who play piano and sing in bars, was a tooth-gritting challenge. Given a choice between a brick on the head and having to listen to lounge music, I would seriously consider the brick. Even Bill Murray's impeccable impersonation of a hideous lounge singer on Saturday Night Live was hard for me to bare. I knew it was satire, but it was so accurate that it was just as difficult to watch as the real thing.
     I shouldn't have worried; The Fabulous Baker Boys totally surpasses the irritating occupations of its main characters. It's like This is Spinal Tap at the wrong speed. From obnoxious hard rock to insipid love songs, they're both the story of bands on the road to nowhere.
     It was supposed to star Bill Murray, and thank God it didn't. What makes the film so remarkable is its powerful sincerity, which would have been ruined by Murray's self-conscious cynicism. Jeff and Beau Bridges bring such true life to these lethargic lizards of the lounge that they could just as well be butchers or chimney sweeps. And when they are joined by Michelle Pfeiffer, the film becomes a classic romance, first between the Bakers and their art, and finally between Jeff and Michelle. They do a scorching version of Makin' Whoopee, one single shot of Pfeiffer writhing on top of Jeff's piano, that will singe your eyebrows if you get too close to the screen.

Fat Man and Little Boy

     Fat Man and Little Boy was directed by Roland Joffe, who also directed The Killing Fields and The Mission, films that made up for a lack of humor with a supreme sense of righteous indignation. Joffe is a shameless humanist, whose first two films cried out in outrage against hypocrisy and man's inhumanity to man. His third film is full of strange miscalculations, and only cries out for further editing.
     The story of the Manhattan Project, that clandestine gathering of scientific and military minds that created the first atomic bomb, seems perfect for Joffe. What an intense moral dilemma to sink your cinematic teeth into. Which is what makes the flatness of Fat Man and Little Boy so disappointing. Surprisingly, the film presents both sides of the nuclear issue with equal distance. It's so damn fair to each point of view that it ends up with no moral stance or point of view at all. There's no real protagonist or antagonist. Everyone, including scumbags you want to hate, is treated equitably.
     The result is the most opulently shot and fantastically cast PBS special I've ever seen. (Actually, PBS showed a six hour version of the Manhattan Project several years ago that was MUCH better) Fat Man and Little Boy doesn't add anything to the overly familiar story - no feeling that these people should or shouldn't be doing what they're doing. The final message is as simple as a phrase that can be read on T-shirts in a thousand country western bars - SHIT HAPPENS.
     And slowly at that. Since nothing basically occurs other than a bunch of guys in suits sitting around talking, a contrived sense of artificial urgency is maintained by incredibly fast paced shots of jeeps pulling up to buildings. Soldiers followed by steadycams and intense music bustle out of vehicles and hurry through doors where they...sit around talking.
     Since the story itself is old hat, you end up paying attention to the details. Some are fun, like the fact that Mrs. Oppenheimer smokes cigarettes with the same affected mannerism as her husband. But others don't ring true at all, like the unexpected use of colloquialisms that didn't exist in 1942.
     There's a scene that's supposed to be comic in which two guys attempt to carry a refrigerator upstairs. But why are they doing this rather than just leaving it downstairs in the kitchen where it belongs? Beats me.
     At one point, the movie stops when a nurse plays the jukebox so she can dance with a patient. Later on, the patient dies horribly, so we finally understand that the otherwise pointless dance scene was there so that someone would be around to mourn the patient. But that doesn't explain what the hell a jukebox was doing in the infirmary of a military base run by a hard core general who just gave a speech about how no one was there to have fun.
     Actor Dwight Schultz has certainly improved since his A-TEAM days, and he makes a stern and ambiguous Oppenheimer, but he's no match at all for his spectacular co-star. Paul Newman, who makes some damn fine salad dressing, spaghetti sauce, and popcorn, turns out to be quite a top-notch actor too. He could be a star if he ever wanted to leave the food business. If this trend continues, I look forward to seeing Famous Amos as Hamlet, with Mrs. Smith as Ophelia, Orville Reddenbacher as Polonius, and Bartles & Jaymes as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...

Funny

     How many jokes does it take to make a movie? None if you're Ingmar Bergman but 120 if you're Bran Ferren. How funny is Funny? It's as funny as the one about the guy who made a movie that was all jokes, that's all, just a hundred people like bartenders and businessmen and Dick Cavett and Frank Zappa talking about three guys who went to heaven or what Jesus said to Peter on the cross. (I can see your house from here.) Get it?
     Could such a thing sustain the interest of an audience for a full 83 minutes? Are you kidding? If you actually like jokes, you're going to want to take notes because Funny has a vast quantity of hysterical zingers. And if you hate jokes, you'll find it a fascinating anthropological study of American humor. Why do some jokes work and others fall flat? Why are celebrities such lousy storytellers whereas most of the middle class jokesters exhibit enormous bourgeois de vivre. And what is it exactly that these people find so funny about such bizarre stories of pain and degradation?
     Funny is a strange and wonderful idea for a movie, one you'd expect to come from some young AFI brat, not a seasoned film technician like Bran Ferren. When you look through Mr. Ferren's resume, you can tell that he's an impeccable special effects craftsman - not just because of the obvious films he's worked on like Star Trek V or Altered States, but because of films like Daniel and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels - where I didn't even notice any special effects. Obviously he's the best in the biz at what he does, and now he can add producer and director to his impressive list of credentials.
     In Hollywood, there is no stronger Catch 22 than that concerning the job of film director, i.e. you cannot direct a movie unless you have already directed a movie. One way to get around this disturbing paradox is to gather so many awards for some other aspect of filmmaking that the reigning powers eventually give you a chance to do one on your own. But it's not likely. Another way is to make so much money at what you do that you can finance a small film out of your own pocket. Bran Ferren has done both; he has won three Academy awards for technical achievement, and he's made his own little movie.
     "I didn't want to have to raise money for a real movie, he explained on the phone, "just a small feature length project I could do between jobs, something that would be a little bit of a calling card. I had had enough of effects, so Funny seemed a nice way to do that, it was not obvious and it was manageable. It took over a year, and I shot about 2,000 jokes. Mainly I coerced friends into it. Richard Nixon turned me down." I guess Nixon learned his lesson after his appearance on Laugh-In.
     Where do jokes come from? "Guam," according to Bran. "Actually, I believe in the Big Joke Theory. It all started with one little joke that exploded millions of years ago..." Funny is a major exponent of this theory. It probably won't win any awards, unless they come up with one for Best Story About a Girl With No Arms or Legs, but it's worth a look.

THREE FREE JOKES FOR FUNNY II

Why did the film critic cross the road?
To try to gain perspective on the road in a vain attempt to achieve some form of objectivity.

How many film directors does it take to screw in a light bulb?
None. If he so much as touches a light bulb, he'll catch hell from the Teamsters.

A film critic walks into a bar with a penguin on his head. The bartender says "where did you get that?" and the penguin says "Hollywood, they're all over the place."

     One of the most unpleasant experiences I've ever had in a theater occurred fifteen years ago when I went to see Mandingo on Hollywood Blvd. The film had already started when my friend and I found our seats in the dark, and we thoroughly enjoyed the flick, which told the lurid tale of noble slaves and evil slave owners. The whole audience got off on it too, and they were driven to a slather as the Mandingos got their melodramatic vengeance against their white oppressors.
     Then the lights came up, and we discovered that we were the only two white faces in a broiling sea of hysterically pent up black moviegoers. They were just coming down from screaming "kill whitie" for two hours, and they did not look friendly. We felt genuine fear that we would not get out of the theater in one piece, so we crouched down in our seats to remain hidden while the theater emptied. Looking back on the incident now, I'm sure we were unreasonably paranoid. But the seething hatred we saw aimed at ourselves was real. It was our first personal taste of racial prejudice, and it felt particularly absurd since, during the picture, we were screaming "kill whitie" along with the rest of the audience.
     I felt a similar sense of displacement watching Eddie Murphy's new film Harlem Nights at the Chinese. The film had gotten lukewarm reviews from the press, who are mainly middle class white guys who saw the film at an advanced press screening full of other middle class white guys. Of course they didn't like it, and in film critic terms, that means the film isn't good. It's too violent, there's too much profanity, it's too derivative, and it's just not very funny - they all proclaimed in unity.
     But try telling that to the packed, predominantly black audience I saw it with. They laughed so hard and so continuously that half the film was drowned out in guffaws. I admit I wasn't laughing as hard as them, but it was impossible not to get swept up in the hysteria. The middle class white film critic in me recognized that the story of a successful nightclub in Harlem vs. the mafia vs. the cops is one that does not need to be told again, that the jokes were cheap and misogynist, and the technical filmmaking barely serviceable. But the rest of me recognized that these make absolutely no difference.
     Eddie Murphy is no Spike Lee egghead, trying to prove how smart he is by focussing his wit on the heart of racial prejudice. Lee's films are aimed at everybody; he desperately wants to gain acceptance from the intellectual white world as the spokesman for his people. But Eddie Murphy clearly does not give a damn what I or any other pundits think of Harlem Nights. He is self centered and totally secure in his view of himself and his capabilities. No entertainer on earth is more closely in touch with his audience. He knows precisely what they want, he gives it to them in spades (no pun intended), and film critics can beat their chests forever while he runs to the bank.
     This is his first time out as writer/director/star. Martin Scorsese needn't watch out. As a filmmaker, Eddie Murphy successfully uses the medium to make his audience laugh, and it feels futile to declare that the laughs are shallow and usually at the expense of someone with a physical deformity.
     His co-stars, Richard Pryor and Red Foxx, get their share of guffaws, but you can feel that spark in the crowd every time Murphy is on the screen. He personifies what they want to be - a man in total control of his world, a man beyond color and above the law, a man who can shoot one woman in the foot and another in the head - and it's funny, a man so secure with himself that nobody can touch him. You like him because it's so clear that he doesn't give a damn what you think. So what if Harlem Nights doesn't represent anyone's vision of brilliant filmmaking. Murphy's comic genius comes less from anger at others than from rampant self pride, and it rubs off on his viewers. You either get with the program or get banished to the world of the terminally unhip. And if you're white, the audience won't feel like beating you up afterwards.

Heavy Petting

     Remember your first kiss? Your first tongue? Your first sex education film? Heavy Petting, a new documentary by the makers of The Atomic Cafe, will bring it all back - the surreptitious smooches and the bad advice, the embarrassments and the innocent stumblings. Filmmakers Obie Benz and Pierce Rafferty have combined archival footage from hundreds of pedantic teenage anti-sex Board of Health propaganda films (As Boys Grow and Perversion for Profit) and intercut them with modern interviews about sex. Hear David Byrne define the difference between third base and home plate. Listen to Spalding Grey explain a new use for Davy Crocket hats. Relive those fabulous fifties with primitive scare tactics and poorly staged recreations of socially acceptable behavior. Sex was never this bad.

The Last Temptation of Christ

     Millions of people stayed away from the theater when Martin Scorsese's masterful production of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ opened last year, and those who went all expressed some form of disappointment; Willem Dafoe was too crazy as Jesus or Harvy Keitel was too Brooklyn for Judas. But due to a staggering array of variables, some movies are improved by theaters and some by home video. This one is unquestionably a masterpiece, so it's finally time to rent it and see for yourself what all the ruckus was about. You'll find a film so dense with metaphor and structural layering that it demands the quiet contemplation of a living room where you can rewind and examine sequences over and over.
     If the story of Jesus had been handed down throughout the ages by word-of-mouth instead of in scriptures, it might have come out like this. It is variations on the theme of martyrdom, and it gets deeper and more profound the closer you examine at it. The subject matter is so rich and the filmmaking so heartfelt that it is clearly one of the most thought provoking movies ever made, on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey or Koyaanisqatsi.
     In Scorsese's words, the film is about "developing a direct spiritual connection rather than giving in to man-made obstacles and doubts....You can talk directly. You don't need a middleman." In other words, the church is a bit of a spiritual obstructionist. No wonder they didn't like The Last Temptation of Christ. If anybody believes that this is the way it happened, then who needs the church? Yes, there's a scene where Jesus imagines himself making love to Mary Magdalene, but there's also a scene where Jesus reaches into his chest and actually removes his beating heart to show to his followers. Neither of these incidents appear in the New Testament, but they ring so true that they feel like they should have.
     In any case, home video offers the opportunity to reconsider the film separately from THE EVENT of the film. At almost three hours in length, it was surely an overpowering and tiring experience in a theater. But at home, you can put it down every hour, like a good book, and ponder what you've witnessed. Also, you don't have to brave your way through picketers to enter your living room.
     In The Satanic Verses, Salmon Rushdie suggested that Muhammed might not have been the son of God, thus earning himself a top spot on Iran's Most Wanted. But Temptation doesn't even go that far. The film never doubts that Jesus is the son of God, it simply suggests that he might have had more than one opportunity to guide his own destiny, to deny the divine within him, to just be a man, to reproduce and grow old. In a spiritual sense, the film is far from blasphemous. It's actually one of the most wholeheartedly Christian movies ever made, one full of doubt and determination. It gives more food for thought than any dozen other movies out right now. Unless you have absolutely made up your mind about everything in the universe, including man's relationship to God, you should see this movie. It is mandatory viewing for those who like to think.

License to Kill

     People go to summer movies if they don't want to think about anything. Batmen and Ghostbusters are perfect diversions if you just want your two hours wasted as quickly and as painlessly as possible. They're amusement park rides meant to be enjoyed with crowds; you don't want to see them on TV, you want to be there at the Chinese with a thousand maniacs hooting and hollering at everything from the THX Sound Logo to the final credits.
     The inevitable entry in the empty-headed summerfest is Timothy Dalton's return as 007 in the latest prototype from the Bond factory, License to Kill. If there is just one small part of you that dreams about a James Bond movie deviating from the established formula for one nanosecond, get your head out of the clouds, it's never going to happen. These dudes know exactly what they're up to, and they're not about to mess with a good thing. Which means that whatever attracted you to James Bond in the first place has been turned into a pattern as predictable as 24 hour cheeseburgers.
     Only one day later, most of License to Kill has evaporated from my brain - for good reason. The bad guys are, hold onto your hats, drug dealers. The good guy is suave, debonair, and particularly picky about how he likes his martinis prepared. I can remember individual moments of glee: a sleazoid TV preacher played by Wayne Newton, or a nifty wheelie pulled by a truck, but the remainder has mysteriously blended into memory with all the rest of the Bonds.
     You used to be able to tell them apart - there was the one on skis and the one underwater. But License to Kill is out to please, so it's got one of everything - fights in the air and on the land, on the water and in the water. It's like a Best of James Bond compilation, the perfect generic spy movie. So go to it if you simply must feed your Bond habit. I vote for a big screen instead of tape because on television it will look exactly like everything else.

Little Dorrit

     Has there ever been a greater champion of the oppressed, or a novelist with more heart, than Charles Dickens? And is there another writer with more works that have been condensed into two hour movies that burst to the seams with turgid melodrama? Dicken's novels are enormous, full of dozens of robust characters who plow their way through inumerable interwoven plot twists. The books are so long that Hollywood has rarely done them justice by editing them down.
     The Royal Shakespeare Company's extraordinary eight hour version of Nicholas Nickleby proved for the first time that Dickens is best taken straight. The theatrical momentum was staggering, and there wasn't one boring minute. Soon, television caught on to the fact that the mini-series was born for the likes of Dickens, and DICKENS NEW LAW OF FILMMAKING came into effect: i.e. The less you leave out from the book, the longer the movie, and the better the result. The recent four hour Great Expectations on the Disney channel was good, but it was a story I was bored with. Luckily, Little Dorrit is all new, an undiscovered Dickens, and watching it is like hearing a bootleg Beatle song that you somehow missed. It makes you glad to be alive.
     Little Dorrit is a passionate indictment of class structure, comparing the lives of two people trapped in their own worlds; one, a pauper forced to live in deptor's prison, the other rich but crippled and forced to live inside a mansion. Both see only their own limited view of reality. Naturally, the son of one becomes intrigued by the daughter of the other, and a vast panorama of social intrigue ensues. It was Dicken's most popular novel during his lifetime, but chances are you haven't read it, seen it, or even heard of it. When the six hour film came out last year nobody went, and I suspect most people stayed away because they simply wouldn't commit that amount of time to sitting in a movie theater. Of course the problem is solved with the Little Dorrit home video; four tapes which can now be injoyed at your own pace. They are impeccable, quintessential Dickens, and the most overlooked films of last year.
     I know it's long, but reading the whole 900 page novel would take weeks. Of course the six hours you invest in watching Little Dorrit could also be spent reading an entire book by Brett Ellis or Jay MacInierney. This is a good idea for those who would rather wallow in modern vacuousness than ancient compassion. Gimme the good old days.

The Little Thief

     The Little Thief should be much more depressing than it is. Based upon an idea by Francois Truffaut, and directed by his long time assistant Claude Miller, it tells the tale of Janine (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a pathetic young girl on the road to ruin in France in 1950. She starts out stealing from her fellow schoolmates, and gradually grows into a compulsive outlaw. She's a pouting, self-centered vagabond, with scarcely a single redeeming quality. Yet we feel for her, not just because of her rotten childhood, but because of lyrical filmmaking that's compassionate without being sentimental. It's a trick some American filmmakers should try.
     This is a subtle film, full of painfully realistic performances, and perfect female counterpart to Truffaut's The 400 Blows (which is available on home video, and a must see). In both films, adolescence is a trial by fire, where visits to the cinema provide an alternate fantasy life that can never be fulfilled by reality. They may seem bleak, but they're both honest testaments to survival against astonishing odds.

Made for Each Other

     Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna have made two movies about the odd fact that they love each other. In Made for Each Other (1971), Bologna played a macho but sensitive Italian playboy who goes to group therapy where he meets Taylor as a wacky, untalented, failure of a jewish performance artist. In their new film, It Had to Be You, Bologna plays a macho but sensitive Italian ad man who meets Taylor as a wacky, untalented, failure of a jewish actress during an audition for a commercial. Both films tell the story of a couple who have a hard time facing the fact that they are hopelessly attracted to each other, despite the fact that they can't stand each other.
     If you dug When Harry Met Sally or Shirley Valentine, you should fall for these guys too. In many ways, I actually found it preferable to When Harry Met Sally, which was honest and clever, but strained too hard to be oh so hip. There's nothing particularly hip about It Had to be You, it's middle aged and middle class, so all we're left with is the honesty of the performances and the cleverness of the dialogue. There are parts that don't work, that are too obvious or cloying, but on the whole it's a lovely piece of work, delivering the useful message that it's possible to love someone because of their flaws rather than in spite of them. It's also got some of my favorite lines of the year.
     "Why are you crying?"
     "Because you seem to like me."
     "Well cheer up. Not that much."

     The Mighty Quinn is another fantastic film that somehow managed to fall through the cracks during it's theatrical release, but which deserves considerable attention now that it's out on home video. It is an incredibly classy film, spiced with innumerable subtle surprises in plot, character, and filmmaking technique.
     Like Tequila Sunrise, it's the hot and sexy story of two childhood chums who end up on either side of the law. There's been a murder in Jamaica, and all the evidence points to Maubee (Robert Townsend), but the Police chief (Denzel Washington) smells a rat. The evidence is too clear, and the other authorities seem to pass judgement too easily. He sets out to clear his friend while simultaneously trying to find him. Townsend, who's skill as a filmmaker has been vastly overrated due to Hollywood Shuffle, proves that his skill as an actor has been vastly underrated. As the scoundrel Maubee, he gives such a lovable performance that you want him to get away with it, whether he did it or not. He's perfectly teamed with Washington, and their relationship forms an ideal cornerstone for this complicated tale of political intrigue.
     Based on the novel Finding Maubee by A.H.Z. Carr, the script by Hampton Fancher is reminiscent of his other brilliant adaption, Bladerunner. It's a classic and intricate mystery of race and murder in a steamy tropical setting, full of sweaty reggae rhythms, not to mention mercenaries, politicians, reggae singers, witch doctors, dope dealers, and sexually repressed housewives.
     If it all sounds like a dozen other movies, don't worry. Director Carl Schenkel, who made the elevator thriller Out of Order, is an extraordinary technician. Though some of his approach might come off as self conscious, his compositions, camera moves, and color schemes are consistently remarkable. It's as if Orson Welles had seen The Harder They Come right before making A Touch of Evil. Rent it today.

New Year's Day

     People generally find Henry Jaglom's films to be brilliantly self-analytical or annoyingly self-indulgent. Though his earlier films (Sitting Ducks, Can She Bake a Cherry Pie?) focussed on fictional characters, he's lately been suffering from Woody Allen Syndrome, putting himself in the center of his films, which now seem to focus entirely on what it's like to be Henry Jaglom. It's a dilettante's approach to filmmaking, which makes Jaglom either Gramma Moses or anybody's two year old.
     New Years Day isn't that different, but it's somehow much better. In it, Jaglom plays a man who moves into an apartment in New York on New Year's EVE, only to discover that the previous occupants thought they didn't have to be out until New Years DAY. He gets to spend 24 hours watching three very strange women attempt to get their shit together. Perhaps the advantage of this setup is that he's not the catalyst, he's just an aloof observer, which makes New Years Day less blatantly egotistical than his other films.
     Jaglom seems to love the things about women that drive most men crazy. New Years Day is so full of female idiosyncrasies that it could almost be sub-titled PMS-The Movie. It's exasperating, seductive, fascinating, and finally enlightening. If you're already a fan, you'll automatically be enthralled. If you're not a fan, it's time to give Jaglom one more shot.

The Package

     Far be it from me to give away any of the plot of this spectacular new political thriller. The film is as smart as The Manchurian Candidate and as full of conspiratorial savvy as Winter Kills. It concerns international matters that could effect everyone on the planet, and it's the story of a husband and wife who have to learn to trust all over again. Starring Gene Hackman and Joanna Cassidy (who were also great together in Under Fire), The Package barrels along at such a breakneck pace that you probably won't even notice how many questions are never answered. (I did, but that's my job.)
     What makes The Package such a breath of fresh air is that the bad guys are not the commies but the anti-commies. The film takes a startlingly anti-nationalistic stance, in which anyone fighting for their country, just because it's their country, is wrong. It's not liberal, conservative, left or right. The Package takes a world view, that anybody willing to kill just for patriotic duty to a regional flag is taking a stand against the planet earth. The message is DO GIVE UP THE FIGHT, and it's delivered with boundless suspense and characters you care about. See it in a theater because you will need to PAY ATTENTION.

Parenthood
Parents

     Parenthood is frightening, enlightening, hysterical and very serious - and I'm not just talking about the movie. Raising a child is a formidable proposition, and making a film that captures all aspects of it is nearly impossible. Surprisingly, Steve Martin's new film is a daring and  accurate portrayal of all the the pains and pleasures of being a mommy or daddy.
     I don't need to tell you what it's about because the title says it all. It's a movie with a HOOD in the name, and like a film called SISTERHOOD or BROTHERHOOD, it paints a broad portrait of a state of being. It's scattergun filmmaking, with at least one scene for every human born of mortal parents to identify with. Unfortunately, that might leave you with only one out of every five scenes to relate to; the rest will have to do with someone else's childhood.
     I could immediately sense the way the film was written. Screenwriters Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandell (Happy Days, Splash) obviously sat down with their long time collaborator Ron Howard and made a list of every possible father/mother/daughter/son relationship. Then they assigned each character trait and situation to a broad variety of individuals who all happen to be related. What they've created is a parenting pastiche, a string of anecdotes that add up to a vast portrait of the American family in all it's permutations. There's the over-achiever who has his three-year old child reading The Penal Colony by Franz Kafka, the son who is always borrowing money and who will never amount to anything, the mother whose sex life is ruined by her children, the normal couple dealing with a problem child, etc., etc.
     It's a television technique that doesn't always work in film, where one story with a beginning, middle, and end is usually the most effective. Since there are so many characters, as soon as I would start getting truly involved in a plot line (such as the one with Dianne Weist), it would cut to some other plot line I couldn't care less about (such as the one with Rick Moranis). I'm sure it will be the same for everyone, only with different specifics.
     Ron Howard has his feet planted squarely in the heart of the nuclear family. As a result, he's directed one of the most hopelessly middle class movies ever made. Maybe having kids IS middle class. Maybe all parents LIVE to see their kid catch a fly ball at a baseball game. A lot of these cliches bothered me, but they were all offset by other scenes that resonated with truth. I had a relatively abnormal childhood, and the details of my parenthood aren't particularly commonplace either, but the film still managed to give me scenes of surprisingly strong identification. Little details, like the incident where Jason Robards makes friends with his new illegitimate black grandson, make up for the obligatory little league and barfing exercises. There are occasional sidesplitting jokes, but many of them have little to do with the premise. There's a surprising amount of vulgarity, and you can sense that Howard is revelling in doing things he couldn't do on Happy Days.
     Luckily, all the performances are supurb, with Keanu Reeves and Dianne Weist delivering outstanding comic performances. As always, Steve Martin is effortlessly hysterical, but it's hard to think of this as a Steve Martin movie since his part is the least defined. He's MODERN MAN, and he does as good a job as possible for an actor playing a prototype.
     If they really wanted to be realistic, they should have included a scene where a film critic is trying to get his copy in on time but his two-year-old won't stop screaming "ME, ME, ME!" while he's trying to type. Parenthood can be exasperating, and Parenthood manages to capture a lot of that frustration with honesty, love, and humor. It doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts, but there are enough remarkable moments to make up for any lapses.

     This is a particularly rich week for home video releases. Those with twisted brains and a strong stomach might want to skip Parenthood and rent Parents, a sick little exercise in how NOT to raise a child. In it, Randy Quaid and Mary Beth Hurt play a pair of typical American cannibals whose child just won't finish his dinner. Neither will you.
     If you couldn't care less about being or having a child, you should check out Mississippi Burning, True Believer, or Heathers. They're all worth seeing. The less you know about them beforehand, the better, so I'll just stop right here and go find out what "ME, ME, ME" was all about.

     In a series of tapes on the Rabbit Ears Storybook Classics label, you can hear somebody famous read a children's story set to music by somebody else famous. There are a dozen of them, including Jack Nicholson reading Rudyard Kipling's How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin, set to music by Bobby McFerrin, and Meryl Streep reading Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester, set to music by the Chieftains. The visuals consist of very good art, but very limited animation, sort of like having someone flip through a picture book for you. Parents can give them 10% while their children give them 100%.
     Though these tapes are all impeccably tasteful, my initial response was that any parent who would sit their child in front of a TV set to watch them instead of actually reading to their child should be shot. But then I heard Robin Williams telling the story of Pecos Bill to music by Ry Cooder and I changed my mind. Nobody on earth could possibly tell this story any better than Mr. Williams. And nobody on earth plays guitar better than Ry Cooder. It is definitely worth owning. The others are okay too, if a bit too reverential, but they cost about the same as the books. Buy the books. Turn off the TV. Read to your child.

sex, lies, and videotape

     Every once in a while some young punk comes along and proves that a movies can be something else - not just a weary procession of prepackaged product but a spectacular mode of personal expression. Steven Soderbergh is the genius of the week who came up with sex, lies, and videotape, and his film is as good as you've heard. The plot is wild, the performances flawless, and the direction frighteningly accurate. Soderbergh is irreproachable in his love of his characters, all of whom are none too lovable. In this premiere display of his cinematic prowess, he shows not just talent but a degree of personal honesty rarely visible in film.
     Like Jim Jarmusch (Stranger than Paradise) before him, Soderbergh pays no attention to civilized rules of cinema. With a bit more than one million dollars, he has somehow expressed all his hidden anxieties, and it's surprising how much wisdom he displays while letting each character deal with the unique quality of their misery. Everyone has got so many hang-ups that the film basically has no protagonist. There's not a single character whose struggle we can endorse whole-heartedly.
     Are we really expected identify with the woman who can't have an orgasm, or her sleazy husband who has nothing but? Are we supposed to identify with the barmaid who is secretly undermining her sister's marriage, or the guy who is only impotent in front of other people? Though they're all fascinating, none of them are particularly appealing. We're left with nothing to empathize with but the single thread they share in common, that life is a whirlpool of compromises, full of pain and unique surprises. Misery itself is the protagonist, embarrassment the antagonist, and honesty saves the day. You can walk out of this film feeling a little bit better about yourself simply because if THESE wierd people's problems work out, your problems will be a snap.
     The film is so damned perceptive, I was actually pissed off that someone 27 years old made this movie. When I was that age, I knew diddly of what Soderberg seems to deeply understand about human nature and obsessive behavior. It's a film that should have been made by someone like Nicholas Roeg or Eric Rhoemer, some wise old foreign craftsman looking back on his personal life with some perspective. Either it's a fluke and Soderbergh is a madman, or we've got a lot of very interesting movies to look forward to from his overripe brain.
     When low budget personals like this become hits, everybody in Hollywood runs around for weeks like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to figure out how to do it themselves. It should be easy for anyone to copy Soderbergh's success. All you have to do is think of the single thing in your life that you are the most ashamed of, the most hung-up about, and make a movie about it that anyone can identify with. Good luck with it.

She-Devil

     I've always admired Merle Streep more than I've liked her. Whenever she blesses us with another stunning regional vocal impersonation, she always sounds to me like a master classical pianist doing scales on a Steinway Grand. "Look how fast I can do triplets in Bb!" she seems to be saying. I'm impressed. Now PLAY something.
     In She-Devil, Streep changes from Vladimir Horowitz to Victor Borge. She uses all of her classical skills to transform herself into a buffoon, and she gives one of most rollicking, wacked-out, and genuinely hysterical performances ever filmed. She's a female Peter Sellers, a master of comic timing and emotional irrationality. Christ, when will this woman stop deserving Oscars.
     She-Devil tells the tale of Roseanne Barr's revenge against her husband (Ed Begley Jr.) when he leaves her for Merle Streep. Considering Barr's looks and behavior vs. Ms. Streep's, it's a move any man would consider, though in this case he does pull it off in a rather cold-hearted manner. Then we're treated to 90 minutes of Barr ruining his life in a particularly clever and often very funny manner. Most of the film is a pleasure.
     What's annoying about She-Devil is the pathetic attempt it makes to justify itself by pretending to be remotely feminist. In the final shot, Roseanne Barr is walking down the sidewalk in one of those triumphant marches that so often finish films like this. But as the shot continues, we notice something strange; she's surrounded by women. On closer inspection, we see that there are absolutely no men anywhere on this crowded New York street. It's a world of women, and Barr is their leader. Obviously, her character is supposed to be ALL WOMEN and Begley's character is ALL MEN. Well, beat me over the head with a brick. The wonderful world of male bashing continues.

Shirley Valentine

         I can't review Shirley Valentine without using a word that doesn't exist; it was a big anticipointment. You know what it's like when a nice film is praised to the skies by the critics; you go with high hopes only to be let down by a film that's just nice. Shirley Valentine is very nice, but the word of mouth has gotten out of hand. Only if you can ignore the ads full of over-praise can you can avoid your own sense of anticipointment and have a mildly good time.
     Shirley Valentine is based upon a one-woman play starring Pauline Collins. In a stunning reversal of standard Hollywood casting procedures, the part in the film is not played by Shirley McLaine, or any other middle-aged female flavor of the month, but by Ms. Collins herself. It is her freshness that makes the film the intermittent delight that it is.
     On stage, she obviously talked directly to the audience, and in the movie she talks directly to the camera. And we're not talking occasional asides, we're talking an entire movie of a character speaking and looking at us, delivering an endless succession of complaints about her boring husband, her boring neighbors, and everything else about her boring middle class housewife life. It's a technique that can be profoundly annoying, and for the first half of Shirley Valentine, I wanted to wring her Cockney neck. But then she goes on vacation, meets a man, and the film turns rude, crude, and very funny - sort of Andy Capp Meets Zorba the Greek. The message that it's never too late to give up hope is delivered with sincerity and a delightfully wry sense of humor. The last half of Shirley Valentine is worth waking yourself up for.

Valmont
Steel Magnolias

     Director Milos Forman's Valmont is a major mistake. As a cinematic translation of Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, it is inferior in every way to last years Dangerous Liaisons, directed by Stephen Frears. Forman has smoothed out the rough edges of the characters. The intense deviousness, the conniving, and the vicious manipulation of affection have all been given the Masterpiece Theater treatment. Nobody is particularly wicked, nobody really gets what they deserve. Nobody who liked Dangerous Liaisons will leave the theater happy.
     Forman wants us to like his characters, to understand them, and he wants us to get swept up in the spectacle of the era. This $30 million production is full of magnificent costumes, ornate sets, and thousands of extras - all of which are completely unnecessary to the telling of the story.
     Dangerous Liaisons managed to tell the same tale on a low budget by focusing on the characters in close-up rather than the vast backdrop of the era. It was intense, full of over-the-top performances that were delightfully diabolic. In contrast, Valmont is low key, elegant, and languorous. Forman is a consummate craftsman, and if his film had come out first, it definitely would have been more effective. But having seen the intense version first, Valmont comes off as a pointless bore. This is particularly unfortunate because it will prove to some idiot Hollywood executives that it's a bad idea for two directors to make different versions of the same story. That's a concept that could be fun. It's just unfair to give one of them $6 million and the other $30 million.
     Valmont suffers from every standard Hollywood excess. The extra bucks in the budget don't serve the movie so much as the ego of the director, who, under the standard Hollywood unwritten law, must spend more on this picture than he did on his last. In this case, Forman's last picture was Amadeus, which made lots of money and won lots of awards. This goes to prove MY unwritten law of Hollywood - "A hit corrupts. An absolute hit corrupts absolutely."

     Another giant bore is Steel Magnolias, a film version of the play by Robert Harling that all took place in a beauty parlour. On stage, this collection of six white women sitting around gabbing about their pathetically mundane lives apparently had enough theatrical style to deliver some form of entertainment. But in opening it up for the screen, director Herbert Ross has attempted to make it more than a play; instead he's made less than a movie. There is no plot, and no action other than what is superficially imposed upon the project by changing locations so it doesn't look like a play.
     Instead of a single set, Steel Magnolias takes place all over town. It looks so much like a real movie that it only serves to expose the flimsiness of the foundation. Real movies have a story that moves from A to B. This movie has no focus or dramatic impetus, just a gaggle of major movie stars who go through their typical star turns, except for Darryl Hannah, who makes a surprisingly effective wallflower. Then someone dies and someone gives birth. I guess the message is that life goes on, but so does this movie. And on and on and on...

War Party
Powwow Highway

    Ever since the '60s, Hollywood has been suffering much guilt over its earlier treatment of the American Indian. When is the last time you saw an Indian in a movie where he wasn't the noble exploited savage, the soul of the land, or the embodiment of dignity. It's a process that's been going on so long that the makers of War Party decided to rely upon it entirely. They assume we're going to be on the side of the Indians just because we're so used to it.
     Young Sonny Crowkiller (Billy Wirth) looks rather GQ for a Blackfoot, but he's got a good indignant sneer, which is all that is required of him. While playing an Indian in a recreation of a 100 year old battle, he sees a friend actually shot by a drunk soldier. He clubs the killer with his tomahawk, then hightails it to desert, followed by four friends.
 Then, in the movie's most preposterous supposition, half the white men in town head for their rifles to get them an injun. It's as though deep seated racial tension between cowboys and Indians has been seething for years. Naturally, the noble Indians fight back, killing even more people, in a vain attempt to escape the white man's justice.
     First Blood was successful at this formula because the details of the escalation were painstakingly logical. But in War Party, nobody even bothers to explain why Crowkiller is running away in the first place. After all, his crime was committed in front of hundreds of witnesses, many with cameras. They surely saw that the man Crowkiller killed was wildly waving a loaded gun around, and had already shot someone. If Crowkiller just stayed put after the incident, he not only would have been exonerated, he would have been proclaimed a hero who actually may have saved lives.
     But no-o-o-o, he has to assume that the white man is out to get him. He has to run into the desert because he's a red James Dean, a poor misunderstood angst ridden teen, a Blackfoot without a cause. Sorry, but Indian or not, I think he's an idiot. So Souix me.

     Indians, and the audience, get much better treatment in Powwow Highway, which just came out on video tape. It's a simple, humorous, and lovely treatment of modern Indian life, full of rowdiness, charm, and conviction.
     Gilbert (Gary Farmer) is a big good natured teddy bear of an Indian who lives at the Northern Cheyenne reservation in Lame Deer Montana. One day, he up and trades himself some dope for a car, then goes out for a drive to Santa Fe with a friend to get his friend's sister out of prison. They make a few stops on the way, including a trip to a power spot in the Dakotas. Like Easy Rider, it's a spiritual odyssey through American, including the vast panorama of life on the road.
     It's a deceptively simple film, full of vast themes that are never belabored. First time director Jonathan Wacks (one of the producers of Repo Man) has taken a lesson from Peter Weir's aboriginal films, imbuing the plot with subtle mysticism. There are casual reminders of the beauty of the untouched land, of strip mining, of Vietnam, of wild horses and wild dreams, all seen through the innocent eyes of Gilbert. Actor Gary Farmer is truly charismatic, like a Cheyenne Belushi, with a warm and ingratiating smile - a smile that seems to understand the cosmos. He's Chance in Being There, a blissed out innocent leading a blessed life.
     Powwow Highway is entertaining and heartfelt, full of passion, forgiveness, and magic. It's cinematic soul food that shouldn't be missed.

The War of the Roses

     Imagine this. A man and a woman are in a fight when she throws a vase at him. He gets a splinter of glass in his eye and falls to the ground in pain. She cautiously approaches him to see if he's all right, but it turns out he's faking it. Just as she gets close enough, he suddenly straightens up and hits her over the head with a crowbar. Ha ha ha. Pretty funny, huh?
     Later on, they're beating each other in the attic when she tries to end the fight. She declares that she still loves him and she wants to make up, and he appears to give in. They fall to the floor and start to make love. He loosens her blouse, opens her bra, and takes her breast in his mouth. But just as she starts getting turned on, he suddenly bites into her nipple as hard as he can, causing her to scream out in agony. Ha ha ha. Sounds hysterical, doesn't it?
     Obviously, these two scenes are savagely misogynist and totally despicable. If they were in a film, feminists would be in an uproar and they would probably picket the production. No modern filmmaker would ever consider including them in a movie unless he wanted to repulse his audience and drive them out of the theater.
     But these scenes are in The War of the Roses with one small difference. It's the woman who beats the man over the head with a crowbar; it's the woman who bites the man in the penis after pretending to reconcile. She's the roadrunner and he's the coyote, and this new form of sexism is all supposed to be A-OK since the man is the recipient of the brutality. Welcome to the wonderful world of male bashing.
     Society abhors violence against women, but violence against men, no matter how unjustified, is supposed to be funny. It's not, but unfortunately there's no official male equivalent of the word misogyny. If there were, it would be misandrony, and The War of the Roses is a major proponent of this concept. It's not only not funny, it's misandronous, repulsive, and totally despicable.
     It didn't have to be this way. The story of the rise and fall of the couple known as the Roses is fascinating and provocative, and Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner give performances of extraordinary depth and painful perception. Unfortunately, this is not the fodder for comedy, and Danny DeVito has directed The War of the Roses like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. The problem is that Douglas and Turner are so real that they actually feel the agony they inflict on each other. Roadrunner cartoons aren't funny if the Coyote genuinely suffers. Not since The Color Purple has there been such a conspicuous mismatch of director to material. It's as though Mel Brooks directed Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff.
     DeVito also make the mistake of putting himself in the film. He narrates the whole tale in a series of totally superfluous scenes involving a lawyer trying to convince a client not to get a divorce. Remove these scenes from the film and the story doesn't change in the slightest, but the film gets fifteen minutes shorter.
     DeVito's direction could have worked with different actors. Replace Douglas and Turner with caricatures like Andrew Dice Clay and Roseanne Barr, male and female chauvinist pigs, and suddenly the brutality becomes truly cartoon-like, maybe even funny. Besides, who wouldn't like to see Barr beat the crap out of the Dice Man.
     Conversely, Douglas and Turner's performances could have worked with a different director. Paul Mazursky or Nicolas Roeg would have been able to temper the tragedy and comedy of the Roses with genuine insights into modern relationships, creating a serious film with a few laughs instead of a funny film with none. (Actually, the best possible directors for this material, John Cassavetes or Hal Ashby, are both dead)
     Instead, we're left with a film that's a complex series of miscalculations. For the first half hour, we chuckle along with a couple in love. But as their relationship turns sour, so does the film. You end up hating the movie as much as the Roses hate each other.

When Harry Met Sally
Dangerous Liaisons

     With countless one liners and some surprisingly astute commentary on modern sex games, When Harry Met Sally covers 12 years in the continuous adventures of two modern neurotics. Director Rob Reiner and screenwriter Nora Ephron have created a study of an eighties relationship that's fast and sassy and often hysterical - a west coast Woody Allen clonefilm with an Albert Brooks aftertaste.
     It begins with the assumption that a man and a woman cannot be friends because sex will always get in the way, then it goes ahead to disprove its own premise. But since it sends you out of the theater full of optimism, nobody minds.
 The characters of Harry and Sally have so many unattractive idiosyncrasies, it's up to Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan to somehow make you love them because of their faults rather than in spite of them. And you will never see two performers working so damned hard to be adorable. Crystal personifies modern man; he can do nothing but crack jokes as a way of filtering his pain through his intellect. When the jokes are funny, and most of them are, he's impeccably ingratiating. Meg Ryan is a non-stop cutiepie who should gladden the heart of anyone who feels deprived of Lucille Ball. She's equally sexy and irritating, two qualities that somehow perfectly compliment each other within the context of situation comedy. (and nowhere else!)
     When Harry Met Sally succeeds on all the mandatory commercial levels - the performances are cute and seductive, the dialogue clever and naughty, but commercial decisions are not always the right ones. The soundtrack is all thirties and forties jazz, a la Woody, and it is precisely the type of music that these characters would never listen to. Considering their ages, they'd be into the Grateful Dead, not Bing Crosby. The choice of songs is clearly there to please the audience, not to illuminate the characters, and the audience is indeed pleased. You can hear them ooing and aahing and snuggling up to each other every time a song starts.
     As a compilation of individual scenes, loaded with yocks and lightweight insights, When Harry Met Sally is a perfect date film. At the very least, it will comfortably get you talking about sex vs. friendships. But as a whole entity, it does not add up to a profound experience; it's fun but vaguely unsatisfying. Just like most relationships.

     For a different view of the war of the sexes, check out the home video tape of Dangerous Liaisons,  last year's Academy Award winning costume drama that totally transcends the genre. What looks like dreary Molier is actually a stunning display of verbal acrobatics and sexual intrigue.  It's a war of wits between two brilliantly manipulative and cunning adversaries, and it has as much bile as When Harry Met Sally has heart.
     As the wicked Marquis who was "born to dominate the male sex and avenge her own," Glenn Close gives a magnificent grand guignol performance, equal to Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford at their most impassioned. She's a cross between Marie Antoinette and the evil queen in Snow White. John Malkovich is no less sinister as Mr. Seducer, the gentried gigolo who sees all women as potential conquests. He gives Jack Nicholson a run for his money as the personification of deviousness.
     Director Stephen Frears proves himself a master of old-fashioned Hollywood filmmaking. Without exception, every performance is fascinating and saturated with nuance. The camerawork is elegant, the score is spectacular, and the script is loaded with underhanded dialogue and sly innuendo.
     If you stayed away from this in the theater because it looked like a boring costume drama, let me assure that Dangerous Liaison moves so fast, it whips your logic circuits into a frenzy. The plot is utterly unpredictable, reveling in the inevitable corruption of innocence. It confirms every man's private belief that all women are either scheming troublemakers out to control their lives, or innocent virgins who are secretly longing for it. It will also delight all women who surreptitiously maintain, deep in their hearts, that men see love as the ultimate weakness, and that women are seen only as objects to be used and disposed of.
     Taken as a double bill, When Harry Met Sally and Dangerous Liaisons are perfect pictures of opposite extremes - the ultimate liberal and conservative views of sexual politics. But they do share one conviction in common. All liaisons are dangerous.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

     I was at a party when Who Framed Roger Rabbit? first came out where I met a soused technician who had worked on the post-production of the film. I asked him about a rumor that had been circulating concerning Betty Boop's boobs, which were supposed to be bare for one single frame, just 1/24th of a second of screen time, and unnoticeable by any audience. His eyes brightened and a silly smile crept up his face as he leaned in closer to share a secret. "That's nothing" he whispered. I asked him what he meant, and he said "Wait till the video tape comes out and look at it frame by frame. There's a lot of stuff in there no one knows about." And he walked away.
     So I looked forward to the cassette of Roger Rabbit with great glee, though I had heard from a publicist that the offending frame of Betty's boobs was removed from the film before it was transferred to video. When it arrived, I popped the tape into my VCR, determined to look at every single frame. Sure. Have you ever looked at a whole movie frame by frame? Roger Rabbit is 106 minutes long. Multiply that by 24 frames a second, and you've got 152,640 frames to view. I got selective. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I figured if the film once included Betty Boop's boobs, maybe somewhere there was Dumbo's dick. So I scoured the Dumbo sequence only to discover that Dumbo is probably female.
     Undaunted, I zipped ahead to the Toontown sequence and found lots of little jokes nearly impossible to see at regular speed. When Eddie finally decides to enter Toontown, he opens a box to retrieve his cartoon gun and bullets. Look at it in slo-mo and you'll notice a plaque on the inside of the box that reads "Thanks for getting me out of the hoosegow - Yosemite Sam." As soon as Eddie enters Toontown, he almost runs into a cow pie (a pie with a picture of a cow on it). When he takes the elevator with Droopy Dog, be sure to look for the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote who are waiting for the elevator on different floors. When Eddie goes to the bathroom, there's graffiti on the wall that reads "For a good time call Allyson Wonderland." Later, there's a street sign saying CAUTION - FALLING ANVILS.
     I also discovered that it was hard to explain to my two-year-old what I was doing. "I'm looking for Dumbo's dick, son. Now go outside and play."

     I used to do drugs and I used to sell drugs. I was a naughty boy ten years ago, and you kids out there should not do what I did, but my scandalous past has given an interesting spin to my new life as a film critic. Hardly a week goes by that I do not see a movie or TV show in which the bad guy is a drug dealer, and I always get momentarily annoyed because I was a drug dealer and I was not a bad guy. I didn't sell to youngsters, I didn't carry a gun, I didn't sell heroin or crack, and I didn't kill anyone. I got people high, just like a good bartender, and I made as honest a living as any of your standard vice-presidents at Lorimar. But times have mutated, drugs are no longer hip, and somebody has made a movie about John Belushi, who was a friend and a customer. Wired represents the ultimate antithesis of what I understand to be true. It is a lie, and his name needs to be cleared.
     Actually, the film version of Bob Woodward's Wired is a complicated and rather brilliant conceit. John Belushi's body is wheeled into the morgue by an attendant who accidentally leaves a half eaten ham sandwich on Belushi's body bag. Naturally, the temptation is too strong, so John unzips the bag from the inside and reaches out for the sandwich. Finally, he crawls out of the bag and says "what happened? How did I get here?" His guardian angel comes down in the form of a Puerto Rican taxi driver and gives him a tour of his life. Meanwhile, John's widow hires Bob Woodward to do some quick detective work and try to discover the truth about her husband's death. The film is a race between Bob Woodward and John Belushi's ghost to discover why John died, building to a final showdown between the two of them.
     I like that idea, and there are moments in Wired that John would have appreciated. Woodward is accurately portrayed as the Sgt. Friday of journalism. His book is a vast compilation of "just the facts, ma'am" that manages to totally mistake lists of information for truth. In the movie, John gets the opportunity tell Woodward off for only writing about the bad things. Good for him. Unfortunately, the movie does the exact same thing; it focuses on the worst parts of John's life, not the best. There is no hint as to what drove the man and no explanation for his behavior. It's too abstract a portrait, and the things that are left out are the only ones I cared about.
     Belushi's history before Saturday Night Live is virtually ignored. There's a flashback to some old improv class he was in, but instead of including a scene where John cracks everybody up, there's a scene where he is the recipient of an unremittingly pretentious speech about the art of comedy. Guess what? Comedy is pain. Wow. I guess John did drugs to escape from comedy.
     When I watch Great Balls of Fire, I get to see a full color Hollywood version of something I've only seen in old black and white with bad sound. It's fun to see the update. But in Wired, I get to see two guys imitating Aykroyd and Belushi as characters that I can see any day by renting a $40 million movie called The Blues Brothers. Wired reaches the height of pointlessness when Michael Chiklis imitates John Belushi imitating Joe Cocker imitating a spastic. I simply can't imagine what use it serves.
     When it comes to easy answers, Wired stands up on it's back paws and proudly begs. Then it humps your leg. Why did Belushi die? Get ready. In the end, Woodward looks Belushi in the eye and says "John, you did it to yourself." Stop the presses.
     The prevailing message of Wired is simple, do drugs - die. This may be a popular thing to say at the moment, but it is a lie. Everybody who does drugs does not automatically die. Some people do drugs and then get on with their lives. If everybody who did cocaine died a horrible death like John Belushi, illegal drugs would be a very small industry. What is the growth potential of a consumer item that guarantees certain death? Obviously SOMEBODY is doing drugs and living, or the enormous drug trade would have no repeat customers.
     I wouldn't expect a film about James Dean to be an endless diatribe against Porsches, though speeding around in one is indeed what killed him. When I remember James Dean, I like to think of that black and white poster of him walking down a wet New York street, not his mangled body in a sports car. I don't want to see a film called Speeding about Dean's obsession with driving fast and his determination to own faster cars. I would feel cheated. I would want a film about Dean to focus on his life, not his death.
     But Wired is almost exclusively about John Belushi's death. Without the death, there's no movie. What they're inferring is subtly despicable - John Belushi's life was meaningless; not even worth exploring. His only use is as a momentary anti-drug poster child. They've reduced a complicated man into a wretched cliche in order to further the ludicrous anti-drug campaign of our ex-president's batty wife.
     Twenty years from now, somebody who has never heard of John Belushi is going to look at Wired and wonder why anybody bothered to make a movie about this pathetic human being. Actually, I wanted to hate the film much more than I did, but it kept sporadically reminding me of a man I loved. It brought back good memories, memories of my sofa at four in the morning, both of us whacked out of our minds, singing songs, listening to records. Even before he died, John could drift off into space and become a Buddha, a tribal God of comedy, and I worshipped him. He deserved better than this.