Liquid refreshment (11/23/98)
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Irma Vep. [Olivier Assayas, 1996.]
A French director on the brink of a nervous breakdown forms the notion of a remake of Louis Feuillade’s 1915 serial
Les Vampires; on the basis of a morose viewing of the Hong Kong action fantasy
The Heroic Trio he recruits Maggie Cheung to play the lead. The production veers rapidly off the rails, but not before everyone falls for Maggie; indeed she does look great in a Catwoman suit. — Movies about moviemaking are nothing new, but this may be the first in which one of the movies you see within the movie is a movie about making a movie; not to mention that the metatextual intention of Mr. Assayas in authoring this film seems to have been to come up with an excuse to meet Maggie himself so that he could marry her; thus [I suspect] the piquant choice of Truffaut’s erstwhile alter ego Jean-Pierre Léaud to play the lead. — If we try to carry this much farther we’ll have to start writing our screenplays in Lisp.
Pleasantville. [Gary Ross, 1998.]
A beautifully crafted allegory of [among other things] the triumph of rock and roll over Stalinism. I wish George Orwell could have seen this; I hope the judge hearing the Microsoft trial has. Don’t miss it.
Orgazmo. [Trey Parker, 1997.]
Trey Parker stars as a Mormon missionary in Los Angeles who knocks on the wrong door and is propelled by comic accident into a career as the masked marvel of the pornographic cinema. The premise provides obvious opportunity for some amusing comicbook dialogue, and there are many risible kung fu sequences, but the funniest thing about this flick may be the NC-17 rating, which seems to have been awarded by someone who flipped through the screenplay without ever actually seeing the movie. — Really, a Mormon could watch this: why should anyone who voted for Orrin Hatch complain at the sight of Ron Jeremy’s ass?
Bride Of Chucky. [Ronny Yu, 1998.]
Honestly, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Que Viva Mexico. [Sergei Eisenstein, 1932.]
Sergei Eisenstein’s lost essay in mythic documentary of 1931, restored as best possible from his notes and finally-recovered raw footage by his onetime collaborator, Grigory Alexandrov. At best a kind of first draft and not the transcendent work of genius one might have hoped for had Eisenstein lived to cut this himself, but filled with startling images and striking compositions nonetheless.
The Spanish Prisoner. [David Mamet, 1997.]
David Mamet’s critically acclaimed paranoid fantasy about a corporate serf who invents an unspecified Process on company time and discovers that everyone is plotting to steal it from him. The dialogue is too cute; the conspiracy, too complete; the twists of the plot, too arbitrary; the outcome, too predictable; the hand of the author, therefore, too obvious. — All this works better played for laughs [cf.
Wild Things]. — A great cast, however, including Ben Gazzara and Steve Martin.
Soldier. [Paul W.S. Anderson, 1998.]
Kurt Russell plays a soldier programmed from birth to function as a military robot; when his usefulness expires and he’s abandoned among the settlers on the Dumpster Planet, he acquires emotional depth. Or sort of: Russell bears throughout the expression of a man who has just undergone rectal surgery. — A few nice, albeit derivative, firefights, and elegant effects and production design, as one might expect from the director of
Event Horizon. But basically this sucks.
Provocateur. [Jim Donovan, 1998.]
Jane March stars as a North Korean spy whose schemes against the forces of righteousness never quite materialize. At least I think not. After the shower scene, I hit rewind.
Dancer, Texas: Population 81. [Tim McCanlies, 1998.]
Four kids graduate from high school and kill a weekend trying to decide whether they really have the nerve to leave for the Big City. — Is Texas really a better place to live than Los Angeles? Is Harold Robbins really a better writer than Tom Clancy? Is Arby’s more nourishing than Taco Bell? Is Paula Jones better-looking than Monica? — Damn, I wish I knew these things.
Deceiver. [Jonas Pate and Josh Pate, 1997.]
A couple of detectives crossexamine Tim Roth, an absintheswilling epilectic millionaire who may or may not have murdered the prostitute Renee Zellwegger; presently he turns the tables and interrogates them. Not terribly interesting, though one of the detectives somehow has contrived to marry Rosanna Arquette.
Clay Pigeons. [David Dobkin, 1998.]
Please: don’t shoot. Unless there’s some chance of hitting Janeane Garofalo.
Glory Daze. [Rich Wilkes, 1996.]
Ben Affleck leads a cast of slackers in a gripping drama about that magic moment right after they’ve all graduated from college and right before they all go to work at the convenience store and discover they’ve never learned to make change.
Public Enemies. [Mark L. Lester, 1996.]
Theresa Russell plays Ma Barker. Accept no substitutes.
The Real Blonde. [Tom DiCillo, 1997.]
Tom DiCillo, whose first feature [
Living In Oblivion, starring Steve Buscemi] was an amusingly self-reflexive study of the making of an independent film, here traces the fortunes of a small circle of actors and models in New York trying to rise above the grim necessities of catering swank dinner parties, flexing in Madonna videos, and working in soaps. — Marlo Thomas plays a fashion photographer with a firm grasp of the necessity for chunky abs; Daryl Hannah [between trophy boyfriends] appears as a soap star; Elizabeth Berkley tries to find life after
Showgirls. Rest assured there are no Real Blondes.
Six O’Clock News. [Ross McElwee, 1996.]
Ross McElwee, author of
Sherman’s March [undoubtedly the greatest home movie ever made] returns again with a documentary study of the victims of disaster. There’s an inherent irony in this project, since though Ross is occupied herein with his own struggle to humanize the [otherwise abstract and objectified] people he sees on television by seeking them out and getting to know them directly, we see all of this on film; probably the humorous interlude in which he shoots the television crew that comes over to his apartment to interview him makes oblique reference to his recognition of this paradox, though with Ross one can never be sure. — At any rate another brilliant autobiographical essay from the master of the genre; if you can find this, check it out.
This World, Then The Fireworks. [Michael Oblowitz, 1997.]
Billy Zane and Gina Gershon as incestuous twin hustlers in Los Angeles in the Fifties; maybe they do look alike. An elegantly distressed James Cain kind of feel to it; though based, apparently, on a novel by Jim Thompson. I hope there are more of them.
The House Of Yes. [Mark Waters, 1997.]
Indie goddess Parker Posey as a dotty babe in a gothic mansion who likes to dress up like Jackie Kennedy and play assassination with her brother. Incest must be in the air. Adapted directly from a stage play and not, therefore, terribly cinematic; but nearly weird enough to get away with it.
Palookaville. [Alan Taylor, 1995.]
A cute little comedy about three buddies in Jersey City with absolutely no talent for armed robbery. And not at all like Tarantino.
Gattaca. [Andrew Niccol, 1997.]
Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman meet cute in a future dystopia run by bigbrothering genetic engineers. This was generally well-reviewed, apparently because no one remembers Aldous Huxley. — Exercise for the reader: try to make up a better proper name than “Gattaca” from the letters of the genetic code. — Exercise for the writer: try to make up a story about genetic engineering that doesn’t suck.
The Big Clock. [John Farrow, 1948.]
Ray Milland as a hunted man in the classic noir thriller. Charles Laughton as a deranged Forties media baron; Elsa Lanchester as a ditsy artist with altogether too many children.
Zero For Conduct. [
Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège. Jean Vigo, 1933.]
The boys at a boarding school stage a revolt. The first of the genre, progenitor of such later classics as
If and
The 400 Blows; weird but apparently true, this was banned in Europe for years after its release — Vigo made only a few movies before his untimely death; the most famous, undoubtedly, was
L’Atalante [1934], a frequent mention on critical topten lists.
The Postman. [Kevin Costner, 1997.]
Interminable, abominable, incomprehensible. Who greenlighted this piece of shit? and why isn’t he working in a convenience store?
Death in Venice. [Luchino Visconti, 1971.]
A leaden adaptation of Thomas Mann, every bit as lame as I always heard it was. Alas, I had to find out for myself.
The Chosen One: Legend of the Raven. [Lawrence Lanoff, 1998.]
Tutored by a Native American sage, Carmen Electra and Shauna Sand are possessed by the spirits of the Earth and waters to get naked and combat evil.
Palmetto. [Volker Schlöndorff, 1998.]
Another neonoir thriller set in Florida; it must be the heat. Woody Harrelson as the sucker; Elizabeth Shue and Chloë Sevigney as the co-conspiring femmes fatale; Gina Gershon as the girl he should have trusted. — I still give the prize to
Wild Things.
Welcome to Sarajevo. [Michael Winterbottom, 1997.]
Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei play Western journalists trying to cover the war in Bosnia. Stark and depressing picture of the New World Order. Not to sound like a Sixties activist, but how in the name of God could we have allowed this to happen?
The Missouri Game.
Tired characters. Predictable situations. Uninspired plot. So why didn’t the good guys win?
Later.
____________Antz (10/28/98)
