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Film Clips
JANUARY 20, 1998:
 THE BOXER. This slow-moving drama about provincial life
in besieged Northern Ireland is somewhat of a knock-down, drag-out
affair. Daniel Day-Lewis stars as Danny, a former IRA member who
returns to his home in West Belfast after 14 years in prison.
Though the opening sequences introduce us to the IRA members'
fierce loyalties, clandestine meetings and passionate toasts to
"the prisoners" and "the prisoner's wives,"
Danny-boy strangely receives only frosty looks and stern warnings
from his former friends and leaders. When he sets about reopening
the boxing gym where he trained as a youth--a facility open to
all faiths--suspicions and rivalries reach a fever pitch. More
dangerous than his apolitical silence in the ring, however, is
the unspoken threat that he's back for Maggie (Emily Watson),
his childhood love who's now under the district's watchful, paternalistic
eye as the wife of a prisoner. Though by far the best movie of
recent memory to tackle the tragic violence and hatred wrought
by IRA activity, The Boxer is strangely boring, relying
more on contrived images and meaningful looks than emotive and
revealing storytelling. Though The Boxer has all the
right moves, it lacks the punch writer-director Jim Sheridan delivered
with In The Name of the Father and My Left Foot.
--Wadsworth
FIRESTORM. The manipulatively dramatic music, derivative
and heavy-handed shooting, and overblown but obviously meaningless
action sequences of the first 20 minutes of this film made me
feel like a 12-year-old being held down by bullies as I was repeatedly
punched in the stomach while they shouted "faggot" at
me. As the blazing inferno of motion slowed to allow for the requisite
expository dialogue sequence (which lasted another 20 minutes),
my emotional anguish mellowed into the steady and inhibiting ache
one has upon realizing that it's been exactly one year since a
loved one passed away. When this mixture of sorrow and humiliation
had thoroughly numbed me to thoughts of movement, my companion,
heroically, whispered to me, "Just how much more of this
crap do you have to sit through to write a review?" "No
more," I cried. "No more." --DiGiovanna
GOOD WILL HUNTING. Gus Van Sant directs this movie about
a self-educated mathematical genius, Will Hunting (Matt Damon),
a janitor who mops floors at MIT. Secretly, he's smarter than
all the students and most of the professors, too. When the educated
world discovers Will, he's torn between his beer-drinking, fiercely
loyal buddies and the unfamiliar world of academics. Oh yeah,
there's a sexy Harvard girl (Minnie Driver) in his life, too.
Robin Williams plays the psychologist who tries to help Will figure
out what to do with his amazing gift. There's a lot of good acting;
and the screenplay, by Will Damon and Ben Affleck, can be pretty
funny at points, though it tends to drift into sentimentality.
Van Sant has a real talent for creating arresting visual images;
he does it a little here, when he gets a chance, but a film about
the inner life and psychological changes of a young boy doesn't
really let him flex his muscles. Perhaps he should see
a psychologist and get in touch with his gift. --Richter
TITANIC. To anybody who sees this movie expecting subtlety
and impeccable historical detail: What planet are you from? This
is James Cameron we're talking about--the guy whose last
movie ended with a kiss in front of a mushroom cloud. Titanic
is hardly trying to steal fire from Merchant/Ivory films. What's
surprising, though, is how well the movie's simple romance carries
the spectacular disaster effects, and how well the poor-boy/rich-girl
aspect emphasizes the class stratification on the ship. (I'd take
the hot little triangle of Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and
Billy Zane over a boring group of Poseidon Adventure-style
sufferers any day.) Cameron has always been a workmanlike director,
and despite multitudes of hackneyed situations and hokey lines,
his by-the-numbers romantic scenario gets the job done--so well,
in fact, that the little story and big one somehow manage to merge
and transcend themselves. At least for this reviewer, by film's
end Titanic became unexpectedly moving, visually arresting
and haunting. --Woodruff
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