Starring Chris O'Donnel and Drew Barrymore
Directed by Antonia Bird
Previously teamed in the dismal Batman Forever, two of moviedoms bright young things are here given starring roles in the latest rites of passage vehicle from Touchstone. Sadly, this isn't much of a better film for either star to shine in than that criminal waste of celluloid.
Looking through his telescope at the stars, O'Donnel pans down and catches Barrymore jet-skiing across the nearby-Seattle lake which divides their residences. He moves from peeping tom to clinching the real thing, and is swept up in her wild exuberance and disposition towards, well, mad behaviour. But, alas! He is a bad influence (no!) and her parents do the decent thing and ground her, driving her to a suicide attempt and stint in the local mental asylum. She then waits to be rescued by her love so they can set off on a good old fashioned road movie.
Goodness, I hope I haven't made this sound too interesting, 'cos it isn't - a ten minute set-up stretched to an hour full of cliches and low grade re-hashes of Singles and others. Things do improve on the road, despite more cliches again, when Barrymore begins to behave even more strangely, and we get caught up in O'Donnel's dilema of how to resolve the tricky situation of being in love with a full-blown psycho, but Paula Milne's script has this with page numbers that are just too high. Ex-EastEnders, Morse and the superb Preist director Bird just about accredits herself in her first US picture and draws two okay performances, but they aren't enough to elevate the B-grade material.
With a soundtrack of inevitable grunge, it is hard not to see this as yesterdays thing, and wish that the interesting idea of wild-child going off the rails in love with the straight-man had been given a better chance of succeding. This comes over not so much as mad, but rather tired love.
A Man Of No Importance * (Short Review)
Starring: Albert Finney & Brenda Fricker
Directed by: Suri Krishnamma
This BBC movie is identically themed to its own rival An Awfully Big Adventure - the life & times of post war provincial Am-Drammers - and it's just as boring. Switched from Liverpool to Northern Ireland, it employs themes numbered 1,2,4, and 6 from the Beeb's Home-Grown Plot manual. Pointless.
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Glenn Close & Michael J Fox
Directed by: Tim Burton
DVD Review ****
In comparison to the inevitable Independence Day, Mars Attacks! has similarly fantastic trailer. But whereas ID4 showed a pyromaniac's wet dream, Mars Attacks! has cheesy flying saucers, big brained Martians and some cracking one liners. The expectation is for an hilarious two hour romp - an all singing / all dancing pastiche of '50's B movies, from the typeface of the title onwards.
It ain't.
After a truly bizzare prologue involving a cattle stampede, the Hubble Space Telescope picks up the impending Martian fleet. The USA President (Nicholson) sees the whole thing as a terrific photo oportunity, but the welcome party goes horribly wrong. The world braces itself for massive scale nastiness.
If only that were the whole plot. But in addition we have what seem like dozens of subplots and strands involving donut sellers, Casino owners (Nicholson again) and their spouses, TV fashion presenters and who knows what else. The first half hour is like wading through treacle as it introduces this stuff with a singular lack of humour, atmosphere or interest. Even then, things don't improve much for another forty five minutes as the vairous attempts at peace are tried and discarded.
Then finally we get some fun. The Martians really are revealed to be maelevolent little critters with a very sick sense of humour. This produces a few hysterical gags - look out for the Taj Mahal - and the pace finally picks up.
Tim Burton seems to be unsure whether this is a satire, an adventure, political commentary or comedy, whereas it should have been obvious - COMEDY. Brit Jonathan Gem's screenplay is similarly afflicted, being slightly witty rather than funny, having weak or plain wrong charcterisation, and the sum total is a sprawling mess. The huge cast are largely wasted, although kudos to Lisa Marie, Burton's gal, as a Martian woman who moves so strangely she actually looks computer generated.
Clever this, since that's what the Martians are, and are the only reason to see the film. Industrial Light and Magic produce some startling images, but you can't help wondering if it would have been more Ed Wood fun if the spaceships hung from wires and the Martians were bad stop motion.
This is such a wasted oportunity it's almost criminal - what an unbelievable irony that Independence Day was actually funnier! A visionary like Burton will always be unpredicable, but Mars Attacks! shows the reason why visionaries still need producers. Now that Warners are $60m poorer, it may be time to reign him in.
Martha - Meet Frank, Daniel & Laurence ****
Starring Marcia Potter, Rufus Sewell, Tom Hollander & Joseph Fiennes
Directed by Nick Hamm
Finally it's happening. From a time when any half decent commercial UK film was grabbed by the movie-going public with both hands, the country and his wife are now releasing punter-friendly fare by the popcorn-bucket load. And this, featuring a cast of not-far-off unknowns - is better example than most, even if it is far from flawless.
The three males of the title are lifelong friends, explains Laurence to his neighbour psychiatrist (Ray Winstone - excellent). Within 3 days, their friendship has been blown apart as each has (swallow your incredulity) accidentally bumped into Martha, a gorgeous lost soul on her way out of Minneapolis to the first place with a $99 plane ticket. She captivates the spoiled Daniel, a record executive, on her plane flight, and in London drunkenly enraptures self-pitying out-of-work actor Frank. So where does Laurence fit into all of this?
That's the magic of Peter Morgan's screenplay, as the twisty-turny story unfolds from the different friends' perspectives. The film's biggest problem however, is getting to that point - after 30 minutes it is clear that both Frank and Daniel are so obnoxious, it's horrendous to think of having to spend another hour in the company of them. Fortunately as Laurence takes centre stage, things improve, although even here his character is not exactly magnetic. The film relies heavily on Marcia Potter to weave her not inconsiderable charm on the audience.
Occasionally the direction is a bit distractingly tricksy, but this is a minor point. By the end, the film works, and the end result pretty similar to Sliding Doors in the degree of success it attains. Not many actual belly laughs, but happily engaging enough.
Marvin's Room ** (Short Review)
Starring: Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, Leonardo Di Caprio & Robert De Niro
Competant but derivative Mums-on-a-wet-Tuesday-afternoon type drama tells of warring saint and sinner sisters after the saint (Keaton) discovers she has Lukemia.
Di Caprio is good and restrained as Streep's mentally disturbed son, and there are nice moments, but it all degenerates into syrupy goo. What's De Niro doing producing this?
Starring: Liam Neeson, Aidan Quinn, Alan Rickman & Stephen Rea
Directed by: Neil Jordan
Ka boom. Filming a balanced story of a founder member of the IRA was always going to be a political minefield, but that doesn't always make for dramatic cinema. So Jordan & co have decided on plenty of guns and explosions to convince Joe and Joanna public that it isn't all talking heads, rhetoric and Guinness.
Not that it's hard to fit brutal murder and carnage into the story. Angry at the Brits for forcing his hand and giving him no alternative to violence (hmm...), Collins (Neeson) has to devote his attentions to both securing a deal of independence for the burgeoning Republic on the one hand, and snogging His Best Mates Girl (Roberts, with decent accent shock). But in true pioneering Irish spirit, as events unfold, their enemy switches from England to each other.
It is not initially an easy film to like, asking us to side emotionally with a ruthless and murderous (if tortured) terrorist. However, as the Empire seeks talks (why?) and the IRA begins to split apart, Collins starts to go all Statesman on us, trying to metaphorically bury his weapons in the local peat.
Neeson is superb, as is the entire cast, but there remains a problem.
It's a lamentable fact that the history depicted here is, at best, only shakily known to most of the audience, including yours truly. The politics are pretty complex and with half an hour to go before final curtain, all logic seems to be abandoned. The word "confusing" will not appear on the bus shelter adverts, but would be as good a one word summary as any.
Michael Collins is a serious minded film, which attempts to do justice to a pivitol period in Ireland's history. But, like fellow countrymen meeting the man himself, this telling of the tale may leave an audience even more confused afterwards than before.
Starring: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent D'Onofrio & Linda Fiorentino
Directed by: Barry Sonnenfeld
Wheras Tim Burton's Mars Attacks! promised so much and delivered so little, this really is a wall to wall fun filled romp from beginning to not-much-later end. It's hip, funny and always suitably outrageous.
So once again, history is not as we know it, and the world is policed by the Men In Black, an officially non-existant bunch who wear only Armani. Their job is to watch over the 1,500 aliens who reside on Planet Earth, and make sure they're not up to mischief. But mischief is indeed very much "up" on the arrival of a bug hellbent on intergalactic destruction, and it's up to messers Jones and new boy Smith to save not only the planet, but also two entire galaxies. One of which is our very own.
Director Sonnenfeld has exactly the right eye for this - all wild sets (love the lobby) and freakish creatures - but happily he directs the humans as tidily as the effects. Indeed, the Smith and Jones partnership is an inspired piece of work. As Will Smith notes to a long in the tooth Tommy Lee, "You know what the difference between you and me is? I make this look good", Kudos too for Ed Soloman's fantastic script - there are many lines and scenes that really are very, very funny indeed.
It's beautifully short, and cries out for sequel upon sequel. Now I like the sound of this - Sonnenfeld trumped the dull Addams Family with it's splendid follow up. More to the point, it's a big universe they've created here with ace characters, and you come out feeling they've only just scratched the surface. And without giving anthing away, the ending suggests sequels to come may be a lot of fun..
Starring: Mira Sorvino, Jeremy Northam and Charles S Dutton
Directed by: Guillermo Del Torro
And oh, what an apt title. Right from the opening credits - a shameless steal of the stylishly influential Seven - it's clear that originality is not going to be high on the agenda. Mind you, Scream aside, the horror genre is not exactly renowned for its ability to reinvent itself, so no problem there.
Things start well enough, as in five minutes flat Manhatton's children are in danger of being wiped out by a deadly disease carried by cockroaches, then saved by the genetic manipulation efforts of bug bonkers Sorvino. Hurrah, but she ominously warns her husband that despite, being heroes of the hour, "we don't know what we may have started". Duh, duh, duh...
As soon as we see the caption "Three years later", it is safe to assume that her suspicions are about to be proved correct. For the next forty five minutes or so, we have endless torches down subway tunnels, sewers and abandoned churches to the point of inducing real tedium, but then things let rip as we finally get to meet the critters we've all been waiting to see.
The good news is that the effects are excellent, and the whole thing is played so straight that soon enough the laughs come thick and fast. There are a few nice setpieces, and occasional tension from director Del Torro, who tries hard to distract you from realising that by now you're watching an vastly inferior retread of Aliens with a smattering of Jurassic Park science. But the characters are pretty dull (Sorvino is strangely muted and practically sleepwalks through the mid-section), with only fat sweaty copper Dutton having any real fun, and the laughable plot not even worth analysing as the gory events unfold.
Despite the obvious minuses, the effects and relatively brief running time make this just above average by the standards of the genre. If your idea of a good time is huge great bugs chomping annoying brat kids to death in the New York subway system, you'll probably have a whale of a time with this. But someone please make us another 50's style horror flick with all the humour and characterisation of Tremors. It really is much more fun...
Miricle Mile ** (Short Review)
Starring: Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham
Directed by: Steve De Jarnatt
Pre ER Edwards picks up a ringing payphone on a whim - only to hear a desperate wrong-number-phoning missile silo worker tell him World War 3 is only 50 minutes away.
Splendid premise is gradually hacked to pieces as the protagonists, and plot, go haywire. Iffy stretches of dialogue, music by 70's electo-twiddlers Tangerine Dream and a directionless ending don't help.
Starring: Tom Cruise, Emmanuealle Beart, John Voight and Jean Reno
Directed by: Brian De Palma
And we're off. The first of summer 1995's big three sets the standard for Twister and Independence Day to match - a fine romp.
A brief prologue, and we're straight into that fab music, shots of Tower Bridge with the caption "London" superimposed just to keep things clear, and characters who wouldn't give simple double-crossing the time of day. It's all got something to do with a top secret (of course) file containing the real identities of covert intelligence operators.
There's a lot of fearsomely complicated sitting round saying "you dare triple-whammy double back cross on me, and I'll sit on your face", reducing the action to a mere handful of set-pieces. Fortunately these are all top drawer, especially one scene conducted in complete silence - no self respecting audience member would dare to even cough. De Palma uses all his favourite tension-building-son-of-Hitchcock tricks, and he does them well. The cast are all fine, with Emmanuelle Beart, Jean Reno and the European locations (including much in dear old Blighty) giving the whole thing an unusually un-American feel.
Once again, however, the preposterous ending is entirely spoilt by the trailer (and even TV ads). Well, perhaps not entirely - Cruise may be fine, but is overshadowed in this final FX laden showdown by Dave Schneider, of The Day Today and Friday Night Armistace, as the comedy train worker. Oops, now I've spoilt the only remaining shock at the end. Sorry.
Starring: Richard Dreyfus and Gleane Headly
Directed by: Stephen Herek
It's the craze that's sweeping the nation - try to sum up Mr Holland's Opus in less than a hundred words without using any of the words Dead, Poets or Society!
It's the 60's, and Mr Holland (Dreyfus) is a brilliant but poor composer, forced by financial constraints to accept a four year teaching post (which would liberate him to become a full time auteur). His initial straight laced approach reaps exactly zero reuslts, but his passion for music forces teaching creativity in him in order to inspire musical creativity in them. This he does, causing no small ruckus with the vice president, in a manner strangely reminiscent of Dead Poet's Society (buzzzzzz)...
The first half hour is very hard work, with cliches falling over each other for primary attention. Not that the rest is cliche free by any means, but it does at least examine a number of them very well and believably. A little more restraint in the film's own musical score would have helped abate the sickly feeling welling up in the throat from time to time, but Dreyfus really is good portraying the hero throughout the thirty years of the story.
Director Herek and the screenwriters walk a very fine line with genuine emotion and issues on one side and cloying sentiment on the other - it's a pity that it has trouble getting the right side of it in the first place and falls over horribly at the end. But on balance, a willingless to let cynicism be tamed results in the virtues outweighing the vices. Oh, and you know that Dead Poet's wasn't really about poetry? Well three guesses what Mr Holland's Opus turns out to be...
Starring: Michael Keaton & Andie Mac Dowell
Directed by: Harold Ramis
Jeepers creepers, life is just so busy for Michael Keaton that he needs to be in several places at once. There's the construction business, his family, fixing up his own house and maybe, just maybe, having five minutes to himself for a round of golf. What he needs is a miricle.
The miricle arrives courtesy of a Santa Clausian local geneticist who is able to clone Mr Keaton - somehow. One Doug does the work, while the other looks after the family and has all the fun. But - hey! - looking after the family is more than a full time job in itself as saintly wife Mac Dowell knows all to well, so it's back to the clone factory for number three, simply employed to do the chores...
Most of the comic possiblities are obvious, but are none the less funny for all that, as the various Dougs try not to clone one another's responsibilities - particularly in having sex with Mac Dowell. This is an actors dream, as each clone exhibits one side of Doug's personality - somehow. No 2 is macho workaholic, No 3 touchy-feely and so on. Keaton is really good at this - it's normally pretty clear which Doug we're dealing with straight away.
Director Ramis, responsible for the flawless and fantastic Groundhog Day, can't quite clone his own earlier success, however. The first hour is fine, with good work from co-authors Walter Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (the celebrated Parenthood and City Slickers scribes), but then things start to drag a bit. Groudhog Day had not a redundant second of screen time, whereas there is much fat here to be trimmed. Full marks however, for the visual effects. After the novelty of wondering just how they did all this wears off, the quality is so good you just accept it.
Four Keatons? Depending on whether or not you like him, this could be heaven or hell. But hey, I thought it was nice.
Starring Christian Slater, Kevin Bacon and Gary Oldman
Directed by Marc Rocco
As defence for Henry Young (Bacon), James S (Slater) has his work cut out. "A monkey couldn't make it worse than it is" he is told - for Young, in front of over two hundred witnesses, murdered a fellow inmate at Alcatraz prison. Unprovoked.
What should have been one of the quickest cases and sentances in history has passed into legend, thanks to the work of the new lawyer off the block. Young was caught over three years prior to the incident making an escape attempt, and had spent the entire intervening time in pitch-dark solitary confinement, somewhat longer than the statutary maximum nineteen days. A petty thief, he went in sane, then went insane - catatonic, incoherant and partially disabled, following brutality at he hands of the warden (Oldman). Slater promptly put the head honcho, his boss and the entire place known as Alcatraz on trial for the murder, relegating Bacon to the tool that finished the job.
It's a fine tale, "inspired" by true events, and all three leads are superb - if Oldman does uncannily resemble the similarly sadistic warden of Shawshank prison. Kevin Bacon again demostrates his versatility convincingly, and Slater fulfils some of that early promise seen in Heathers and Pump Up The Volume. But wheras director Rocco certainly does fine work with the cast, he allows some self-indulgence with the ludicrously manic camerawork and editing, and too much time passes for what is essentially quite a simple tale.
If there is one main critisism, it is the need to sell us this as a 100% victorious tale. Certainly there is much here to celebrate as justice is worked out, but tragedy is inextricably linked with it. A more honest conclusion would have given us both perspectives, rather than just jingoism.
All reviews / articles copyright Guy Rowland (1998).