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...and bringing them back home. |
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Heading out to the rental store to get some stale M & M's from those cheap plastic faux-charity dispensers and maybe get a movie while you're there? Wondering if you should spend twenty dollars at the cinema (and that's just for a soda)? Read on. Note: I rate these movies not in comparison to each other, but within the film's genre (i.e. Sci-Fi, Disaster, Drama, etc) |
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Holy Man (Comedy - PG) Gataca (Science Fiction - PG) As Good As It Gets (Comedy/Drama - PG-13...I think) The X-Files (Suspense/Sci-Fi - R) The Truman Show (Drama - PG) Madeline (Children - PG) Volcano (Action/Disaster - PG13) Howard Stern's Private Parts (Comedy/Drama - R) Relic (Horror - R) Alien Resurrection (Horror - R) |
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Rated PG. 1998. My Rating: B-
I have to hand it to Eddie Murphy. He keeps on trying. God bless him. Holy Man is not an overly original movie, but it has its good parts. It's definitely a rental, though. The best thing about this movie is Eddie Murphy, himself. Head shaved bald, he plays a mysterious guru who appears to a Home Shopping channel producer, played extremely irritatingly by Jeff Goldblum, who reprises his role, though unwittingly, as the mumbling & complaining Dr. Malcomn from Jurassic park. No, he doesn’t play Malcomn, but it sure seems like it. Don't get me wrong, I think Mr. Goldblum is great. The Big Chill, The Fly, and JP (not Lost World… that one's not even worth a review) were only enhanced by Goldblum's quirky eccentricity. Not Holy Man. It's ruined by it. Goldblum plays a desperate, untalented producer who caters to every vendor's whim to sell their crap on his channel. The president of the channel (played by that veteran actor who always plays the president of company X) hires a woman director to supervise him (the love interest, and no I don't remember who she is.. she was good though). Goldblum's character gets two weeks to turn the station around, or he's out. Enter Murphy. Is he just a wandering monk or an angel? You never know, but he likes to talk to people, teach them the philosophy of life. Goldblum gets him to start his own program on the channel, where they tie in just about every product they can find while the hapless monk rattles on about life and how to live it. He becomes so big that the station's ratings soar through the roof. Will Goldblum's character learn his lesson and stop being so materialistic and stop taking advantage of the monk's wisdom? Will he and his new boss fall in love? I'll give you one guess. With all it's predictability, however, the scenes with Murphy railing on about life are really very good. He's such an underutilized talent, this man. His performance made the $7.50 admission price (7.50! Can you believe that?) almost (but not quite) bearable. The problem (and I blame the editor and director for this): instead of letting Murphy steal the scene, they keep cutting to Goldblum as he mutters and rants about what the monk is saying. It's irritating and distracting. I wish they hadn't done it. It make me dislike Goldblum, and I don't want to do that. The other gem in this movie is the scads of cameos by television classic actors & actresses promoting the most bizarre items. These scenes will make you wet your pants. OK. I'm done with this one. |
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Rated PG. 1998. My Rating: A+
An intellectual science fiction film with hardly any special effects? No monsters/aliens/men in black/slime? Yes. Yes and yes. Now, before I continue, I have to allow one caveat: I saw this with Scott Fitts at about 2:00 in the morning, after having watched a near-continuous stream of science fiction since noon the prior day (SF25 at the Coolidge Corner, a 24-hour Sci-Fi marathon). My perceptions of reality were a little skewed. I was straight, mind you, just sleep deprived. Honest. In "Gataca," genetic engineering is a way of life. True, this theme of an Orwellian society of genetically perfect people and the moral implications of such has been done to death in the science fiction world, but in written fiction, not movies. It's just not exciting enough for the average trekkie (or 'trekker' whatever they call themselves these days) to warrant the expense. Someone out there took a chance and made this movie. Made it cheaper than the average movies, but made it and well. "Gataca" is a high-gloss, smooth film with some gorgeous sets, don't let my budget talk make you think otherwise. But aside from a payroll of mostly unknowns like the star Ethan Hawke (the female lead is Uma Thurman, and Ernest Borgnine has a part of all people, so there were a couple of names), there was no other real source of expense. Special effects consisted of showing rockets lift off, through a window, way far away. 1950's effects. Gataca is the name of a private firm responsible for space flights. Rockets lift off pretty much every twenty minutes. They have only one requirement for employment: you need to be genetically perfect. You see, the newest thing when planning a baby is not to just have a baby, but plan its eye color, intelligence, skills (great at math?, physically strong? Poet?), everything. Why punish the child? Plan accordingly. Give them every advantage medically possible. A young couple, played by that girl from Chicago Hope who married the hockey player, and the guy from that movie I can't remember where he played a father or something, decide they want to have a child, but want it naturally. Why plan so many things, let God and Nature decide. The boy is born, a fine boy, but his genetic profile taken after birth gives him a nervously high 20% chance of heart problems by thirty (pretty good today, bad in Gataca time). He'll have problems getting insurance, why push him in school, his IQ will likely be so much lower than the other children. You get the picture. Hawke grows up an outcast, not directly, but an outcast anyway. All he wants is to fly the rockets. But he's genetically imperfect, can't work for Gataca. Enter a former pilot who is crippled in an accident. He can't fly anymore. Thing is: no one knows of his injury. He went underground. Why? If he can't fly, how's he going to earn a living? He sells his identity to Hawke. Suddenly the outcast has a job at Gataca, with fake finger tips full of the other guy's blood to fool the constant genetic testing at work. Can he keep up the charade? A handful of subplots throughout. Murder. Sibling rivalry, some major surprises come and go before you even realize what is truly happening in one of the subplots. It's an intricately woven tale which, though not fast paced, is beautiful in its sets, dialogue, and obviously unrestrained writing. This is as original a science fiction movie as you'll see in a long time. The creators succeed in doing what is only done in a few movies: gets you truly inside the head of the character, like a good novel, get you to feel what he feels, get all nervous as he takes risks. He's a real person. You never really know where Uma's character's coming from. Is she good or bad? Who knows? They imply the answer in the end, just imply, but it's enough. This is a slow sipping whiskey of a film. Don't expect x-wings or laser beams, just great science fiction. |
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Rated PG-13. 1998. My Rating: A+
I know, it won 2 Academy awards for the 1997 movie season, but it's really a '98 movie. They just released it before 1/1/98 for the Oscar nod. Did Jack Nicholson (do I have to name his past movies?) and Helen Hunt ("Twister," "Mad About You") deserve the Best Actor/Actress awards which they carried home? Absolutely, without a doubt, yes. This is one of the best movies I've seen in a long, long time. Now, mind you, it's a methodical, character-driven movie, so be in the right mood. It's not a side-splitting, laugh-a-minute comedy, nor is it a tear-jerking hankie-blowing drama. What it is, is the perfect blend of the two. Nicholson plays a recluse author suffering from both obsessive-compulsive behavior and an extremely mean disposition. In the opening scene he throws the neighbor's dog down the trash chute because it peed in the apartment building's hallway. He suddenly finds solace in the company of the only waitress in New York who puts up with his nastiness, played with sweet perfection by Helen Hunt. "Sweet" is the best word to describe this movie. What is sweet is the way Nicholson's character changes, if only slightly, when in the company of Hunt's waitress (I haven't got the box in front of me so excuse the lack of character names). Sweet is the third character's storyline of Nicholson's gay artist neighbor, played with smooth pinnace by Greg Kinnear ("Playing God"). Kinnear's artist ends up in the hospital so his gay lover / agent forces Nicholson to care for the same dog that took a trip down the trash chute. Without giving too much in the movie away, "As Good As It Gets" lets us follow, in a pace that never bounces us around too fast nor leaves us waiting for the next level of plot or the answers to our questions, the slow interplay between the characters. Nicholson and Hunt, Nicholson and Kinnear, Nicholson and Kinnear's dog, Hunt and Kinnear, Hunt and her mother played by that lady who is suddenly appearing as everyone's mother but whose name eludes me, etc. Storylines that just seem completely unrelated come together in a believable and warm-hearted chain of events. If Nicholson was not in this movie, the big studios would probably never have made it. It takes chances (not big ones, but chances nonetheless) with character interplay. The plot and dialogue are refreshingly original and clever. Hollywood is slowly waking up to originality, after a too-long hiatus of sequels and cookie-cutter comedies. Rent this movie, sit back with popcorn and decaffeinated coffee, and watch performances that truly deserve to be called Oscar-Winning. |
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Rated R. 1998. My Rating: B+
First, off, I need to make an apology to my brothers Paul and Michael, whom I blew off the first time I saw this movie. I at least made it up to Paul by going to see it again with him, and I have so say seeing this movie twice is probably a good idea. I actually understood the plot better. Paul & I also came to the realization afterwards: Chris Carter is making this whole story line up as he goes along. That being said: it was a very good movie, entertaining, scary, an overall thrill-a-minute. Even if you don't follow the X-files television show with its ongoing conspiracy theory. Granted, having that knowledge helps, at least knowing who Mulder & Scully are and what the X-Files are all about. The parts with said main characters (played with constant finesse by David Ducovney (sp?) and Gillian Anderson are really tremendous. They're strong presence on the television screen only intensifies at the theaters. The reason for the B rather than A rating is the tendency of the movie to get melodramatic, a lot. Mind you, this occurs only in the scenes with the Big Bad Government Guys (BBGG). The three with the most dialogue are the Cigarette Smoking Man (known as CSM, who needs to learn how to smoke), the head of the British wing, and a new character, the seeming head of the whole shadow organization. Unfortunately he talks through only one nostril so it's hard to understand him. The movie is missing a number of conspiracy characters, such as the Russian agent who was infected with the black virus at the end of the season, and Krytchek the now-one-armed adversary of Mulder. This is probably to keep the story line as contained as possible. The basic premise: a bunch of kids stumble across an old, old spaceship under Texas, which contains a strain of the black virus. It takes over the body and mutates into a pretty nasty alien. The BBGG's, who've been working with the aliens develop their virus thinking it'll just take over people's minds, now learn they've been duped, that the real virus is going to be used to replace humans with these nasty creatures. There are a few problems with this plot line, especially when you've seen the ending twice and have had time to think about it. The ending is pretty big scale and impressive, even though it DOES look a lot of the ending of Donegan's Farm (click the hypertext to read the story I and my siblings wrote a couple of years ago). The overall atmosphere is splendid to experience. The phrase 'film noir' came to mind when watching it. Let's hope we see more Ducovney and Andersen films iun the future. They could be the next Bogie and Bacall. |
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Rated PG. 1998. My Rating A
What a great movie. It really is. I had heard some reviewer say before the release that The Truman Show will do for Jim Carrey what The World According to Garp did for Robin Williams. I have to agree. It did so on two counts. First, it establishes Carrey as a serious actor, and secondly it makes a lot of people scratch their heads and say "huh?" What I mean by that is, like TWAtG, a lot of people go in thinking it's a comedy, which is isn't. Not that there aren't some amusing scenes, but they're for comic relief. Overall it is a serious drama with a completely bizarre and original twist. In the opening scene Truman is a married businessman heading off to work from his Nick At Night-style neighborhood, when a stage light falls from the sky in front of him. This and other clues (they touch on the fact that these mishaps have happened now & then), slowly lead him to realize all is not as it seems. In fact, as we find out early on, his life is a 24-hour television show, and has been since inception. I won't go through the whole plot because you probably already know it from the commercials (if not I'd be glad to tell you, just ask). My wife felt that it would have been a lot more confusing had we NOT known the basic plot going in. I have to agree on that count. The acting by Carrey and the entire supporting cast (of mostly newcomers) is tremendous. He's a powerful figure on the screen. The most gut-wrenching scenes, though, are when the evil director (the guy who looks like a young John Glenn... can't remember his name) is explaining in melodramatic (a little too much so at times) calmness how they manipulated him through his childhood to contain Truman within his artificial world. The soundtrack is also A+ (I'm talking about the incidental music, not any Pop 1950's hit that might have been played). |
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Rated PG. 1998. My Rating: B+
I'm not sure why this movie was given a PG rating. Compared to some Disney G movies, this is a cakewalk. Madeline is a children's' book series by Ludwig Van Somebodyorother, about a young girl named Madeline who lives in a boarding school with eleven other girls and a nun named Miss Clavel. There were six books written in total. They are all highly original, simple and sweet tales of a young girl's misadventures. The other appeal of the book is the sometimes-forced rhymes the author uses to tell the story. The movie? Well, if you ask my son and oldest daughter (ages 6 and 3 receptively) they absolutely loved it. Especially Amanda. I liked it, too. The production was top-notch, as well as the casting. I honestly don't think they could have gotten better actors for the parts. The plot cleverly took the best snippets from all the books and made one, slightly disjointed screenplay. Perhaps the disjointed-ness was deliberate, since even in the Madeline books you're never quite sure what the basic plot is until the end. One major thing that bothered me. OK two: 1) The movie obsessed over death. First we learn that Madeline is an orphan (unlike the rest of her classmates who are just neglected rich kids). Lord Cuckoo-Face's wife (the two were the financial patrons of the place) dies after talking to Madeline hours earlier, then the issue of Madeline's lost parents just kept coming up. 2) The underlying plot is that of a bunch of kidnappers plan to kidnap Pepito, the Spanish Ambassador's son and Madeline's arch rival. She gets nabbed by these rather scary gentlemen (two wearing Harlequin clown costumes) when trying to save Pepito. This element of the story (obviously chosen over the book's Pepito plot, in which he tries feeding a cat to a bunch of wild dogs and nearly gets himself killed) is a little too frightening for children in my opinion. And it's executed a little too realistically. Why did they need to have this? Madeline is always a simple, uncomplicated story, and someone had to go and add bad guys and dramatic escapes? Unneeded with such a lovely motion picture. Overall, though, my little one just raves about it. |
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Rated PG-13. 1997. My Rating: A-
If you liked the old disaster movies of the 70's, then you'll LOVE this movie. If you didn't like those movies, you'll probably still like Volcano because it's a great movie. You couldn't have gotten a better pair of leading characters, for one thing. I've liked Tommy Lee Jones in just about everything I've seen him in (of course, it seems like he plays the same sort of character). He plays a somber workaholic single father who loves his daughter and the city of Los Angeles in equal measures. He works for some agency that oversees emergencies in the city, such as traffic accidents, earthquakes, etc. When a handful of city workers gets scalded below McArthur Park, in comes a spunky geologist played extremely well by Ann Hesch (sp?). I've heard about her so much in the news as Ellen DeGeneres' girlfriend that I hadn't realized the woman could actually act. Anyhow, Ann theorizes that there's lava down there, Tommy guffaws, and Ann is proven correct. At which point the pair takes over to save the city. Listen, if you saw the trailers, which were shown every six minutes when this movie came to the theaters, then you know the whole story. There were a couple of minor subplots, but overall there wasn't much time for anything but the volcano. Good supporting acting all around (but not enough of Northern Exposure's John Corbitt: only about 36 seconds). Special effects, of course, were spectacular. A good popcorn-eating rental. . |
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Rated R. 1997. How about: A-
To tell you the truth, I never thought I'd ever get to see this movie because Janet hated the guy, just like most folks (including me a few years earlier) who only have a peripheral knowledge of radio jock Howard Stern. Once she tuned in while driving to a class, she got hooked in much the same way as I did four years ago. A line from the movie sums this guys up: the average fan listens for 65 minutes a day (reason: to see what he says next); the people who hate the man listen on average 120 minutes a day (reason: to see what he says next). The guy can be immature and rude, at other times a total asshole (lay of Rosy O'Donnell for God's sake), but overall I have to say he's one of the funniest and most interesting personalities in the entertainment world. Private Parts is the autobiographical story of Howard Stern's life from adolescence to his first radio job to the turning point when he decided to 'be himself, 100%' to 'modern' day (around 1987). Intertwined through this very fascinating and at times hilarious story, is the life of Howard and his wife, from their meeting at college to the inevitable eruption over his radio show antics to her ill-fated first pregnancy. Everyone surrounding him plays themselves, except his wife and 'Pig Vomit' (his first program director at NBC and the highlight of the movie). Directed by Ivan Ritman (sp?), this is a smooth, clever movie with plenty of laughs as well as serious moments. Important: this is a VERY adult movie. There is serious nudity at least once every fifteen minutes and the dialogue is loaded with sexual references and the word 'fuck' in all of its variations every sixth sentence. Get by all that and you'll like the movie. And maybe even get to like Howard Stern. |
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, Rated R. 1997 (I think). I give this one a B
Monster stalks the Chicago Art Museum. We rented this on vacation. I expected it to be predictable, and to a point it was, but overall I was carried along without knowing what would happen next (which is rare). A lot of contrived pieces to the plot ("The show must go on" "But people are dying" "I don't care", etc), but overall pretty original. The beginning may seem confusing, but at the end it gets explained. The monster is really good even if it did look a lot like the thing in Star Wars 3, I mean 6. What would have made this movie a lot better is a richer cast. I liked the main character, what's-her-name, who is the scientist working to discover what plagues the place, and the plant-food commercial guy who plays her wheel chair bound mentor (of sorts). The guy who plays the romantic cop lead is OK, I guess, though the character is irritatingly stale. I actually liked the dozens of extras (food for the beast) more than most of the main characters. Overall, though, an above-average, original monster movie. top of page... |
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, Rated R. 1997. B...that's right. B.
Now, this movie didn't do very well at the box office probably because everyone thought it would be as bad as the third. But if I rated the first two Alien movies A+ each (which I would), and the third as a C-, then a B+ is a pretty good rating. The movie opens 200 years after the third movie ends (in which Ripley dies with baby queen alien hanging out of her). The army clones her, thus giving them the ability to extract the embryonic alien and breed more. The plot gets interesting around this theme, but the makers of AR use too many of the old tricks done in the last three movies. If you take away this repetitious stuff, and the somewhat cliché-ish dialogue of the Ripley character, there is enough original and genuinely eerie scenes to carry the movie through. All it needs is two things: less Wynona Ryder (the most 2-dimensional character in the movie, and there were a lot of them), and James Cameron or Ridley Scott directing again. Of course, after watching this movie, you get the impression neither item on my wish list is going to happen. |
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