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Film Clips
APRIL 13, 1998:
 GINGERBREAD MAN. Director Robert Altman evokes a dark,
gothic vision of the South in this adaptation of a John Grisham
story. Kenneth Branaugh plays a lawyer who gets himself involved
with a spooky waitress with a deranged stalker father. He tries
to save her, but, predictably, she's not the helpless waif he
thinks she is. The atmosphere in this movie is wonderful; a hurricane
named Geraldo threatens the cast from beginning to end, and the
countryside is perpetually choking on ash-colored Spanish moss.
But the plot is limp and inconsistent, and isn't it time that
we all faced the fact that lawyers make lousy heroes? --Richter
LOST IN SPACE. A family of scientists is sent into space
with insufficient dialogue to fight alien spiders and plot-holes.
The first half-hour is comically stupid, but boredom sets in after
all the cute lines from the original television series have been
used up. Nonetheless, this film deserves a special award for least
cohesive cast: Putting Matt Leblanc, Mimi Rogers, William Hurt
and Gary Oldman together is like casting Moe Howard, Katherine
Hepburn, Laurence Olivier and the Great Glildersleeve in a remake
of Dracula Vs The Wolfman. Be sure to keep track of the
ratio of real dialogue to expository lines: For every "Watch
out for the killer robot!" there's five "If my father
wasn't a war hero I would have been able to lend emotional support
to my son Billy Jr. when he was growing up as a boy genius in
the ecologically challenged world we are forced to live in...."
--DiGiovanna
MERCURY RISING. Looking for something completely unchallenging?
Mercury Rising awaits. Not only do Bruce Willis and Alec
Baldwin play clones of their past roles (as hero and villain,
respectively), but the film lifts key elements from such familiar
territory as Rain Man, Three Days of the Condor, Witness
and War Games. The resulting story has Willis running around
trying to prevent the assassination of a hapless Rain Kid who
has inadvertently cracked a billion-dollar government code. This
nonsense barely holds together, yet the film does supply some
small pleasures. The supporting cast of assassins and encryption
geeks has amusing moments, Willis shows delightful restraint and
Baldwin is thoroughly watchable as blue-eyed evil in a suit. The
two leads' few scenes together (during which Willis manages to
interrupt one of Baldwin's typically arrogant speeches with a
swift kick to the chest) satisfy nicely. Maybe I'm just a sucker
for movies with John Barry soundtracks, but Mercury Rising
could have been a lot worse. --Woodruff
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