 |
Film Clips
NOVEMBER 3, 1997:
 DEVIL'S ADVOCATE. This pile of Faustian fluff doesn't win
any points for subtlety--but then again, what movie about Satanic
lawyers does? Al Pacino plays the seductive, know-it-all head
of a law firm that specializes in defending corporate evildoers;
Keanu Reeves plays the firm's latest acquisition, a hotshot lawyer
whose virtuous conscience is only exceeded by his vanity about
having a perfect trial record. It takes Reeves a full two-and-a-half
hours to figure out that Beelzebub's on his side of the Bar, though
his wife, played appealingly by Charlize Theron (she's the sole
bright spot in the cast), catches on right away. In some parallel
universe, this is a shrewd, scary movie, with disturbing images
of murder, materialism, and women whose faces turn demonic moments
after they expose their breasts. In this universe, The Devil's
Advocate is uproariously bad in much the same way as Showgirls:
It's mindlessly exploitative, filled with gaudy set design, and
bursting at the seams with overacting. How can you hate it? The
funniest thing about the movie is that it's about Pacino's attempt
to seize control of Reeves' soul, yet it's obvious from the dude's
performance that he doesn't have one. --Woodruff
FAIRY TALE: A TRUE STORY. So which is it: a fairy tale,
or a true story? If only director Charles Sturridge and screenwriter
Ernie Contreras could make up their minds! As it stands, their
movie is a meandering pile of nothing: neither magical enough
to sustain children, nor thematic enough for adults. The facts
of the 1918 spiritualist sensation--which occurred after cousins
Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright photographed "fairies"
outside their Cottingley Glen, England, home--are served up right
alongside brief special-effects sequences that show actual fairies
mindlessly frolicking. Peter O'Toole plays Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
who'd become unhinged after the death of his son and desperately
championed the cause of fairy belief. Harvey Keitel, of all people,
plays Harry Houdini, an outspoken skeptic of such things. There's
a conflict there, but the wussy filmmakers don't pursue it--they
just want everybody to be happy so long as their delusions don't
directly hurt anyone (never mind the value of truth for its own
sake). The only way this movie could have worked is if the filmmakers
had scrapped their "true story" pretensions and agreed
to lie outright. That's what the little girls did, after all:
In 1981 one of the women admitted the fairies were cardboard cut-outs
they'd propped up with hat pins. --Woodruff
GATTACA. Imagine, if you will, a future society so obsessed
with flawlessness that Uma Thurman fails to measure up to the
standards of perfection. Also, there are two brothers: The genetically
perfect one grows up to be a cop, but the genetically imperfect
one becomes a criminal--so they must fight! And then there's this
one scene where a drop of snot dangles at the tip of Uma's nose,
never falling, as she turns her head a bit to the left, a bit
to the right. It's arguably the best snot scene ever filmed. While
much of the film is preachy, pretentious and slow, the snot scene
is easily worth the $7 admission price. See, she has the snot
coming out of her nose--because she's not perfect! Oddly,
genetic anomaly Danny DeVito produced this film. --DiGiovanna
PLAYING GOD. David Duchovny plays a drug-addicted doctor
in this laughably bad thriller about medicine, crime, and the
shocking redness of human blood. Duchovny is Dr. Eugene
Sands, a surgeon who's had his license revoked for slicing a patient's
artery while zoned out on an Elvis-style cocktail of speed and
barbiturates. He's not only a drug addict, he's a junkie for practicing
medicine, and when a bad guy offers to make him a surgeon again,
he jumps at the chance to feed his evil habit. The result? More
white clothing covered in spurting blood. There's something very
odd about the directorial style of this movie--it's definitively
'80s, with a 1970s drive-in edge. The clothes are out of style,
the furnishings are out of style, and the music is weird. Far
more interesting than the movie itself is the question of what,
exactly, the director thought he was doing here. Being hip? Retro?
Low budget? Straight to video? God only knows. --Richter
YEAR OF THE HORSE. Jim Jarmusch consolidates his reputation
as the Kurt Cobain of filmmaking with Year of the Horse,
a gritty documentary about the original grunge band, Crazy Horse.
The opening credits declare "proudly filmed in Super-8, 16mm,
and hi-8," three low-budget formats that Jarmusch enhances
with expensive post-production so they look as much like 35 mm
film stock as possible. The film documents Neil Young and his
bandmates over about 20 years, interspersing then-and-now interviews
with footage from a recent tour. Okay, I like Crazy Horse,
but only an absurdly devoted fan could be entranced by concert
footage of three middle-aged guys standing in a half-circle clutching
guitars and bobbing from the knees as though they were cranes
engaged in a mating dance. Jarmusch is apparently such a fan.
The concert footage takes up most of the film, and it's even more
stale for being filmed in hi-8, a consumer-grade video format.
This fandom extends to the respectful, fawning interviews with
the band members. It's too bad Jarmusch didn't learn more from
all the great documentaries that have been already made about
bands. One of the strengths of D.A. Pennebaker's terrific Don't
Look Back is that it portrayed Bob Dylan as an enormously
talented artist who could also be a real asshole. But Neil Young
could take his grandmother to Year of the Horse. --Richter
|
|
