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Film Clips
 AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN PARIS. This goofy, exuberant cross
between a horror movie and a comedy is an unexpectedly refreshing
way to waste 99 minutes. Director Anthony Waller packs a whole
lot of snarling beasts, romance, rotting corpses and dare-devil
stunts into this energetic homage to John Landis' 1981 An American
Werewolf in London. Tom Everett Scott plays an American tourist
who just wants to make fun of foreigners, but ends up being pulled
into some beastly doings; Julie Delpy plays a young Parisian werewolf
trying to control her bitch of a monthly "lycanthropic cycle."
Of course, the two fall in love. One scene shows a detective carefully
fingerprinting someone's hand; the camera pulls back and we see
it's attached to a severed arm. That's the kind of movie this
is. --Richter
JACKIE BROWN. Quentin Tarantino adapted his screenplay
from the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch, with unexpectedly
lackluster results. Jackie Brown has the flat, literal
look of a made-for-TV movie, and about as much style and charm.
Tarantino does show his great knack for working with actors
and making interesting casting decisions. Pam Grier--best known
from her roles in '70s blaxploitation flicks Foxy Brown and
Coffy--does a great job playing Jackie, a down-on-her-luck
flight attendant who's a hell of a lot smarter than everyone else
thinks. Bridget Fonda is funny as a stoned surfer chick who likes
to hang out with criminals, and Robert Forster is wonderfully
deadpan as the bail bondsman Max Cherry. But despite some good
performances, Tarantino seems restrained, and concerned with keeping
things slow, smooth, and real easy to understand. There's plenty
of exposition, as well as intertitles to tell us where we are,
just in case you go for popcorn during one of the long explanations.
It's as though Tarantino doesn't trust himself to tell this story.
Even the settings--mostly apartments, shopping malls and offices--seem
tired and bland. --Richter
SCREAM 2. What? You say you didn't scream loudly enough
during Scream one? I can't hear you. Wes Craven brings
us more gory hijinks, including stabbing, slashing, blowing to
pieces, crucifying, splattering and of course, taunting. More
tired and blatantly formulaic than the first Scream, Scream
2 trundles out the same old slasher movie chops and tries
to make them shiny. But Craven has set himself an impossible task:
Could there be any way to make a sorority girl in a tight sweater
being chased by a psychokiller "new"? Neve Campbell
plays Sidney Prescott, the girl all the boys love to stalk. Now
she's a college girl; the film version of her last traumatic weekend
has just reached the big screen, and there's a copycat killer
hoping to mark her on his scorecard of innocent victims. Courteney
Cox and David Arquette provide additional bodies to butcher. --Richter
TOMORROW NEVER DIES. Prior to this year, only one James
Bond novel had been made into a film more than once: Thunderball.
Oddly, for the latest Bond flick, the producers decided to remake
Thunderball. That move sums up the lack of imagination
in this film, which is mildly brightened by a fine performance
by Judy Dench, who's inexplicably slumming here after her role
as Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown. Also of note is hot Hong
Kong action star Michelle Yeoh, who plays a Chinese secret agent
who allies herself with Bond to capture the Rupert Murdoch-like
supervillain. Pierce Brosnan gives a characterless performance
as Bond, unenthusiastically killing his way through the international
cast of bad guys. The story is, of course, mostly nonsensical,
with Bond gaining and losing the superhuman ability to defeat
any number of heavily armed foes, as the plot demands. Thus, he
is repeatedly captured by two or three thugs, then escapes by
fighting his way past entire armies. For my part, I kept hoping
he'd get his snotty British ass blown off so that Michelle Yeoh
could take over and kick some Occidental butt, because, unlike
Bond, she didn't feel the need to make an insipid pun every time
she offed someone. --DiGiovanna
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