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Film Clips
JULY 6, 1998:
 GONE WITH THE WIND. While it may seem confusing at first
why a film that doesn't star John Travolta is in re-release, it
all makes perfect sense when you consider the long-movie madness
that's afflicted Hollywood in recent years. (Anybody wish they
had the three-and-a-half hours they wasted at Titanic back?)
So it was only a matter of time until the four-hour, 1939 Gone
with the Wind was recycled. It's a brand-new Technicolor print,
but you can thank Ted Turner for less-than-spectacular results.
Just in case you're very young or have been living with Nell your
whole life, this epic film follows the Civil War-era adventures
of feisty southern belle Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) and the
fall of her family's aristocratic empire. But, not to worry: Bourgeois
bliss is restored as Scarlett discovers the economic advantages
of a well-researched marriage. The man who tries hardest to tame
this unruly entrepreneur is the fabulously dressed Rhett Butler
(Clark Gable) and his arsenal of pomade--though he's more successful
at trimming his mustache and killing children. A note to parents:
The film's "G" rating is not reflective of its horrendously
stereotyped black characters; narrative support of drunken marital
rape (which sure puts a skip back into Miss Scarlett's step);
and Gable's creepy capped teeth. At the very least, we can take
comfort in the fact that Hollywood is ecologically minded. My
only hope is that a director's cut of Travolta's full-length exercise
video, Perfect, is similarly pulled out of the recycling
bin sometime soon. --Polly Higgins
HAV PLENTY. Christopher Scott Cherot wrote, directed, and
stars in this exceedingly inconsequential romantic comedy. Based
on a "true story," the film follows Lee Plenty (Cherot)
during a New Year's Eve weekend he spent in Washington, D.C.,
with a high-society female friend named Havilland (Hav Plenty--get
it?). We watch as Plenty, a struggling book writer, resists the
advances of Hav's friend and sister, all the while holding out
for Hav, who's too self-absorbed to realize she loves him back.
The picture has the dry staginess and spotty performances of a
low-budget first feature, with absolutely nothing resembling good
comic rhythm; but the characters slowly grow on you, and their
specific situation becomes amusing--if not actually romantic--for
its smartly detailed observation. Great movie-within-a-movie ending.
--Woodruff
HIGH ART. "High melodrama" would be a more apt
description of this ambitious but annoying soap opera by first-time
director Lisa Cholodenko. Radha Mitchell plays Syd, a twenty-something
Manhattanite stuck in a boring heterosexual relationship. When
her ceiling starts to leak she goes to meet the Bohemian upstairs
neighbor, Lucy Berliner (Ally Sheedy), a heroine-snorting lesbian.
Syd seems to have no choice but to fall for Lucy, given the boringness
of her job and the one-dimensionality of her boyfriend. It's a
walk on the wild side, but a predictable one. Cholodenko has a
good eye and the cinematography is appropriately lush, but rather
than being beautiful, it just makes it all seem pretentious. --Richter
JUNK MAIL. The postman subgenre is back yet again with
this Norwegian film about a voyeuristic mail carrier named Roy.
The protagonist's life is a simple one structured by a daily routine
of committing mail-related felonies, such as hoarding junk mail
and reading other people's letters, until he becomes obsessed
with a Frosted Flakes fetishist named Line. Line seems like a
quiet, perfectly objectifiable woman until Roy discovers, after
sneaking into her apartment to eat soggy leftovers of the aforementioned
sugared cereal, that her felony of choice is robbery. This is
okay by Peeping Roy, though, because he gets to prove he has the
strength of Tony the Tiger by saving her from a suicide attempt
and from her temperamental cohort Georg. The film's blues and
grays create an appropriately dull backdrop for its protagonist;
and the cramped spaces and off-balance minor characters contribute
to an understanding of his mental state. Though the story seems
aimless at times, it does provide one possible answer to what
your mail carrier is smiling about. --Polly Higgins
OUT OF SIGHT. In the hierarchy of adaptations based on
Elmore Leonard books, this one ranks up there with Get Shorty.
The direction (by Steven Soderbergh, of Sex, Lies and Videotape
fame) expresses the Leonard style perfectly, nudging humor out
of naturalistic dialogue and displaying a whimsically carefree
attitude about matters of life and death without letting all the
steam out of the story. George Clooney, as a bank robber, and
Jennifer Lopez, as his police pursuer, make an extremely good-looking
couple; and their two verbal tennis matches (one in a car's trunk,
the other in a hotel) are the film's sexual-spark-filled highlights.
The smoothly developing romantic mood begins in sunny Miami and
ends in snowy nighttime Detroit, so even if you see Out of
Sight during the middle of the day you might walk out expecting
a cool, dark sky. A standout supporting cast includes Albert Brooks,
Catherine Keener, Ving Rhames, Get Shorty alumnus Dennis
Farina and a couple of uncredited surprises. --Woodruff
THE X-FILES. Help! I can't get that whistling theme music
out of my head! That's just one of many reasons to avoid the movie
version of The X-Files. On TV, the X-Files successfully
exploited the conspiratorial secrets and creepy things lurking
in the dark shadows, but the bright light of big-movie translation
reveals them as rather cheap. Although the film delivers more
special effects and a broader geographic scope, all the promised
Big Answers turn out to be big nonsense, and the relationship
between agents Mulder and Scully remains teasingly chaste (not
to mention stiff). Plus, the plot takes too many asinine steps,
from Mulder's easy discovery of a bomb in a building tastelessly
similar to the one destroyed in Oklahoma, to his quick recovery
from a point-blank gunshot wound to the head. The truth may be
out there, but these aren't the sorts of truths about which The
X-Files is supposed to leave you wondering. --Woodruff
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