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Film Clips
MARCH 2, 1998:
 AFTERGLOW. Somewhere there must be a great script for Afterglow,
because short stretches of brilliant dialogue show up in this
otherwise intensely mediocre and cowardly film. The plot concerns
a middle-aged marred man (Nick Nolte, whose new hair piece is
apparently from outer space) having an affair with a young married
woman (Lara Flynn Boyle, who looks so good she figures she doesn't
have to do anything besides pout and flounce). Meanwhile, unbeknownst
to them, their spouses carry on a parallel affair, in a story
that is apparently inspired by some odd hybrid of Days of our
Lives and Three's Company. Gee, I wonder if the two
couples will run into each other at the bar they both frequent,
and I wonder if Nolte and wife Julie Christie will ever find their
long-lost daughter, and I wonder if there isn't some chance that
an adult drama can be produced without using the most familiar
of story elements and the safest of endings? --DiGiovanna
THE BORROWERS. Set in an anachronistic city that's part
'90s and part '40s, part Dickensian London and part Spielbergian
America, The Borrowers is far more inventive and detailed
than you'd expect from a movie that could be titled Honey,
I Shrunk the Stereotypical Red-Haired Limeys. The dumb plot,
which involves John Goodman as an obnoxiously evil real-estate
lawyer who wants to destroy the home where the Borrowers hide
out, can be overlooked when it leads to this many clever little-people-in-a-big-world
scenes. Whether the Borrowers are in the refrigerator (with product
placement galore, of course), sneaking among toy soldiers or hopping
from bottle to bottle in a dairy factory, the special effects
remain impeccable and there's always a palpable sense of danger.
I actually worried the Borrowers might be squished at any moment.
Kids really seemed to enjoy themselves, too--especially the girl
who held up her teddy bear throughout so it could see the movie.
When interviewed, the teddy bear said, "That was terrific!
I very much liked it!" in a cutesy voice that became muffled
as it was put away in a small, pink backpack. --Woodruff
KUNDUN. The most annoying thing about the Tibet vogue that
has swept Hollywood is that the actors and trendies who have hopped
on this bandwagon are under the impression that Lhasa was some
kind of delightful Shangri-La prior to the coming of the Chinese.
In fact, it was run by a brutally oppressive and corrupt theocratic
regime. Somehow, director Scorcese had the courage to at least
hint at the atrocious state of affairs in Tibet under monastic
rule. Further, his cast is made up exclusively of Tibetan, Chinese
and Indian actors, despite what I'm sure was an overwhelming urge
to call up Keanu Reeves to play the role of the Dalai Lama. The
Himalayan landscapes (mimed by Moroccan mountains) are hard to
shoot poorly, and Scorcese makes good use of Tibetan sand painting
as a transitional device. Oddly, in spite of his dedication to
authenticity in every other area, he largely eschews the rich
musical tradition of Tibet in favor of a limp soundtrack by experimentalist-turned-new-age-shlockmeister
Philip Glass. All of Glass' noodling drones turn the atmosphere
to overly reverential mush, and the film often takes on the emotionally
manipulative mode of a television movie of the week. Nonetheless,
it's beautiful to look at and takes enough risks to make the viewer
wish that other films would be this daring, and that this one
had been a little more so. --DiGiovanna
PALMETTO. Oklahoma authorities recently made themselves
look stupid when they outlawed Volker Schlöndorff's 1979
film The Tin Drum for what they construed as child pornography.
They would have looked smarter if they'd instead outlawed this
Schlöndorff film for mediocrity. It's a neo-noir about a
Florida schlub (Woody Harrelson, in full density mode) who gets
caught up in a poorly planned fake-kidnapping scheme. Despite
a humid, tropical setting and some steamy scenes, the film has
the dramatic resonance of a TV special--when it's hot, it's not
that hot and when it's cool, it's not that cool. Worse yet, the
casting's all mixed up: Gina Gershon plays the nice, dependable
girlfriend while Elisabeth Shue plays the crazed, pointy-bra-wearing
femme fatale. You keep waiting for the devilish-looking Gershon
to do something nasty, and hoping the white-bread Shue will stop
embarrassing herself by trying to mimic Gershon. Playing against
type is one thing; playing against type ineffectually or without
an (intentionally) humorous payoff is another. --Woodruff
SPHERE. What if your deepest fears came to life? Would
they all involve snakes and tentacled sea creatures? Glazed donuts,
perhaps? If you're prone to hazy Freudian interpretations, Sphere
has a kind of goofy camp appeal, but as a thriller it's only average.
A group of scientists descend to the bottom of the ocean, where
they greet an alien entity that looks just like giant, gold marble.
But it shows them the depths of themselves, you see. And then
all their deepest fears, desires etc., come to life, and all of
these things conveniently involve sea creatures. It's probably
for the best: Why waste a good underwater set? Dustin Hoffman
plays a cuddly psychologist; Sharon Stone plays an independent
but sensitive marine biologist; Samuel L. Jackson plays a brilliant,
weird mathematician. Remember: even if Sphere were based
on Michael Crichton's very best novel, it would still be based
on a Michael Crichton novel. --Richter
THE SWEET HEREAFTER. Kurt Vonnegut once described the literature
of a race of beings who were not bounded by time. Their books
were essentially read all at once, and contained a series of unordered
sentences that, when taken as a whole, produced a still image
of ideas, emotions, and histories. Atom Egoyan has directed films
that work in much the same way, weaving their stories back and
forth across time until the mystery of the characters' actions
and reactions becomes clear in the light of devastating, defining
or punctative events. In Sweet Hereafter, Anthony Hopkins
stars as a lawyer out to use a small-town tragedy for personal
gain, and his overly mannered performance is the film's weakest
link. Otherwise, all the actors, many from Egoyan's usual troupe,
play their parts with a stiff naturalism that perfectly complements
the horrific central event that practically disanimates an entire
community. Two stories of the worst possibilities in father-daughter
relations further accentuate the bland unpleasantness of quotidian
existence, and as each thread of the tale is slowly unwound, a
final image of pointless hope and senseless loss is formed. Definitely
one of the bleakest, most despairing, and best films of last year.
--DiGiovanna
WASHINGTON SQUARE. In biographies written before 1990,
Jennifer Jason Leigh claims to have been born in 1958. Recently,
she's changed that to 1962. In either case, she definitely looks
a bit odd playing a 20-year-old opposite the youthful Ben Chaplin.
Even stranger is the fact that she's been cast as the ugly girl;
after all, she was voted one of America's 10 most beautiful women
by Harper's Bazaar. Still, this film captures the stiffness,
self-importance, and general boredom of Henry James' prose. --DiGiovanna
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