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Season's reelings >> The Mirror's holiday guide to moviegoing by MATTHEW HAYS Yes, Christmas is supposed to be a good release date for blockbuster movies. But this is ridiculous! There are 10 movies being released on Christmas day, and numerous others being released the week before the 25th; 40 in all over the holiday season. In an effort to help desperate film buffs figure out which multiplex to check in to, here's the Mirror's overview of what's hot and what's not:
Jackie Brown is Tarantino's first feature-length directorial effort since Pulp Fiction, and the anticipation is huge. The director doesn't disappoint. Seventies blaxploitation icon Pam Grier plays Brown, a frustrated flight attendant who's taken to smuggling a gun dealer's money across the border from Mexico as a way to make a few extra bucks. When she's caught by federal agents, they strike a deal with her: help them catch her gun-running benefactor (Samuel L. Jackson), and she'll get off. Grier soon hatches a scheme in which the smooth-talking slime Jackson will get caught and she'll land the bulk of the loot. Tarantino could so easily have felt the need to out-do the carnage he's become so famous for in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. But the director seems to have sensed that doing so would have simply marked him as predictable and uninspired. Instead, he lets the considerable suspense unfold beautifully in Jackie Brown, keeping violence to a minimum and letting its ominous threat speak for itself (someone even gets shot offscreen.) And his jackpot cast pays off: Grier, so wild in films like Coffy and Foxy Brown and so underused over the past 15 years, delivers a fine performance in the lead; Jackson is both hilarious and nauseating as the main sleaze; Bridget Fonda plays insouciance to a perfect note; Robert Forster is superb as a melancholic bail bondsman infatuated with Grier; Michael Keaton is aptly whitebread as the federal agent; and De Niro is, well, De Niro.
Damon plays a brilliant young man who works as a custodian at Harvard. Math professors routinely put their toughest, previously unsolvable equations on chalkboards outside their classrooms, and Damon solves them during his afterhours shifts. When a prof finds out who the genius is, he attempts to rehabilitate the working-class social misfit Damon through therapy. Enter therapist Robin Williams, whose appearance has become a staple of this genre, and the two are off to cry a bit, laugh a bit, and find themselves in between. One would hope all of this would be tempered by director Gus Van Sant who, with films like My Own Private Idaho and To Die For under his belt, always struck me as a rather bitter and cynical thing (read: sensible). While Van Sant doesn't resort to any ludicrous musical crescendos to tell us when to fire up our tear ducts (à la Spielberg), the essence of the script itself remains too contrived and sentimental to transcend, even for a director of this stature and talent. There are some nice moments for the actors (it was written by them, after all), but watching a decent acting exercise does not a winning movie make.
The absolute dog (no pun intended) of the season, however, is undoubtedly An American Werewolf in Paris. A sequel in name only to the cult 1981 movie An American Werewolf in London, this film is so deliriously horrible in its dialogue, execution, special effects and acting that there is simply nothing, but nothing to merit it. The screenwriters have geared the whole mess to horny teenaged lower-IQ males (come to think of it, it looks like it was made by them, too). But the most disturbing thing about An American Werewolf in Paris is its director, Anthony Waller. In 1995, Waller directed and wrote Mute Witness which, while an imperfect film, indicated a cool hand behind the camera and a good knowledge of suspense and horror film history. Mute Witness was a promising debut and I was eager to see what Waller would turn up next. It is almost inconceivable to me that Waller could have been behind something this abysmal (he shares a screenwriting credit as well as that of director). Julie Delpy, as well, is really slumming it in this crap. Jackie Brown, Good Will Hunting, Deconstructing Harry, The Postman and An American Werewolf in Paris open on Christmas Day.Tomorrow Never Dies is now playing. See film listings for showtimes
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Undoubtedly the standout in this movie madness is Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown. Since his 1994 entry Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has become the darling of the American indie film scene; his name has become an adjective and verb as well as a noun (directors have been 'Tarantinoed.' Oh, that scene is so Tarantino.) His depiction of excessive violence, pop-culture reference-laden dialogue and offbeat casting (John Travolta owes his resurrected career to Tarantino) have become a major point of emulation for umpteen directors.
Good Will Hunting looks far too suspiciously like a blatant bid for Oscars. Apparently, young rising stars Matt Damon (The Rainmaker) and Ben Affleck (Chasing Amy) had developed this script together over the years, and as their connections in the biz improved they shopped the script around, managing to land a producer. Good Will Hunting has all the hallmarks of an Oscar contender: it's a warm, fuzzy, sentimental reaffirmation of everything that nondiscriminating moviegoers like to think is important in life. Pass the motion sickness bag, please.
Woody Allen pumps out movies at a phenomenal rate. Numerous directors--as varied as Sydney Pollack to John Waters--have expressed admiration and envy for Woody's brilliant and prolific career. I confess I'm a huge fan; whenever in a down or bad mood I often rent one of my favourite of his films and rewatch them. What's so striking about Deconstructing Harry is Woody's vacillating mindset; in movies like Hannah and Her Sisters, Annie Hall, Mighty Aphrodite, Everyone Says I Love You and Manhattan Murder Mystery, he's a hopeless romantic. Deconstructing Harry may ruffle some Woody buff feathers; it hearkens back to Stardust Memories in terms of its despondent, bleak view of the universe. A strikingly foul-mouthed Woody basically plays himself again, this time a bitter, thrice-divorced author with writer's block. He has written extensively about his personal life in his novels, and some of the most hilarious scenes in the film have his former spouses, friends and relatives confronting him about his barely-veiled fictional take on reality. The cast is an impressive ensemble (no one, save maybe Mia Farrow, says no to Woody Allen), but Harry soon starts to fall apart under the critical mass of a few too many ideas and too sprawling a cast. Still, Deconstructing Harry, or 32 Short Films About Woody Allen, is worth seeing, if only for Woody's ability to write rapid-fire one-liners, in full display here. Kirstie Alley and Judy Davis play hysterical amazingly well in Deconstructing Harry; they appear to be Woody's reflections on Mia. But it must be added that Woody saves some of the harshest criticism for himself--his self-deprecation is taken to new heights (or lows) with his latest.
Kevin Costner's first directorial effort since his Oscar-winning Dances With Wolves (1990) is a long-winded, preposterous take on a post-apocalyptic America. Post-nuclear war films kind of went out of vogue after the Cold War ended. Remember The Day After, Testament, Planet of the Apes and Mad Max? The Postman seems like an odd choice for this reason, but also because the similarly futuristic Waterworld, a film he starred in, got roundly mediocre reviews and didn't make its fortunes back at the box office. Again, Costner plays a heroic loner here, who fights the forces of evil in a world where the pre-existing order of the United States of America has collapsed. The jingoism and patriotism in this film is repulsive; folks are constantly droning on about America and all of its alleged virtues (amid careful product placements, a fitting motif for the film). An obligatory rock star cameo (à la Tina Turner in Beyond Thunderdome) comes in the form of Tom Petty, who really should stick to singing (no, really, we insist). The length of Costner's film is also a drawback; Dances with Wolves worked at close to three hours, but The Postman should have been under two. Oh, and the irony of our most recent postal strike won't be lost on viewers north of the 49th parallel. Crowds at the packed premiere were snickering whenever postal workers were referred to as virtuous, hardworking and all-important (but there was no mention of a union). The nagging question is: why, after Waterworld, would Costner opt for another cheap Mad Max knockoff?
Pierce Brosnan returns for his second round as James Bond in Tomorrow Never Dies. The film has promise when Sheryl Crow belts out the latest James Bond musical number over an outlandish cyber-variation of the generic babes-in-silhouette Bond opening credit sequence. It's all downhill from there. Though Brosnan has some cool gadgets, Jonathan Pryce's bad guy feels like a shadow of Christopher Lee's man with the golden gun, Richard Kiel's Jaws or Telly Savalas's Blofeld. Feeling the pinch of Jackie Chan-mania, the folks who pull the strings with Bond decided to include Hong Kong action star Michelle Yeoh for high-kicking effect. Unfortunately, Yeoh is largely wasted, doing only standard martial arts moves, none of the more creative stuff we've seen her explore in her previous movies. Apparently, secret agents only fight in this boring fashion when on her majesty's secret service.