NEW RELEASES
HARRISON’S FLOWERS It took the film world several years before it felt ready to start producing Vietnam War features, and now a similar holding pattern seems to have ended in regard to the various international skirmishes that have been devastating the world for a good many years. Following on the heels of No Man’s Land and Black Hawk Down comes Harrison’s Flowers, a hard-hitting drama that doesn’t shy away from showing the atrocities committed under the tag of “ethnic cleansing.” Set in 1991, this stars Andie MacDowell as Sarah Lloyd, whose husband Harrison (David Strathairn), a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist, is presumed dead after he travels to Yugoslavia to cover the escalating civil war. Convinced he’s still alive, Sarah enters the fray herself, aided in her efforts by various other newshounds. By necessity, MacDowell’s character fades into the background as the group finds itself venturing deeper into enemy territory. While this may distance some viewers from the movie’s emotional center, it also demonstrates writer-director Elie Chouraqui’s commitment to keeping this as real as possible. This may not match the wallop of The Killing Fields (a similar film that was also sympathetic toward journalists under fire), but there’s still plenty here to jolt viewers out of their seats.
ICE AGE This year’s Oscar ceremony marks the first time an award is being given for Best Animated Feature; if next year’s contest adds a category for Best Performance By An Animated Character, then Ice Age‘s Scrat will doubtless get my vote. Incidental to the main story, this prehistoric squirrel spends his limited screen time in a futile attempt to bury the acorn he’s been lugging around — this dude’s such a character, you’re sorry every time he leaves the screen. Fortunately, the central plot is enjoyable enough to occupy our minds — it’s like Disney’s Dinosaur done slightly better, since it doesn’t get weighed down with the mountains of sentimentality that the Mouse House usually slathers on its family flicks. That’s not to say it doesn’t lean on the Disney template a bit heavily at times — for starters, there’s a cute kid that the protagonists must protect from all manner of peril — but between Ray Romano’s sensible woolly mammoth, Denis Leary’s duplicitous saber-toothed tiger and John Leguizamo’s imbecilic (but eager to please) sloth, the main characters are unique enough to help us begrudgingly pardon a pedestrian plotline.
1/2
SCOTLAND, PA One of Shakespeare’s greatest plays becomes the latest Bard staple to be updated to modern times, but this tweaked take on Macbeth proves to be no more accomplished than the recent screen versions of Othello (O) or Hamlet. Presented by writer-director Billy Morrissette as a rather toothless satire, Scotland, PA moves the action to the early 1970s and presents its tragic figure, Joe “Mac” McBeth (James LeGros), as a lowly fast-food employee pushed by his conniving wife (Maura Tierney) into murdering their boss (James Rebhorn) and stealing the business for themselves. LeGros’ interpretation of the classic role may well be the most ineffectual I’ve ever seen, and while a couple of Morrissette’s ideas pay off (the heroic Macduff is now sly detective Ernie McDuff, nicely played by Christopher Walken), most of them end up falling flat (reimagining the three witches as three hippies just doesn’t work). A special raspberry goes out to composer Anton Sanko, whose score alternates between blatantly plagiarizing Carter Burwell’s Fargo theme and Thomas Newman’s American Beauty music.
THE TIME MACHINE Although George Pal’s exciting 1960 screen version of H.G. Wells’ immortal tale still holds up nicely, it seemed only logical that someone would have been interested in crafting another Machine for a new generation. Alas, this latest adaptation is a mild disappointment, starting off well but getting bogged down in a third act that steadily seeps energy even as it’s playing out. Memento‘s Guy Pearce plays the turn-of-the-last-century inventor who creates a contraption that allows him to whiz through time; after making brief stops in the 21st century, he catapults 800,000 years into the future, whereupon he sides with the peaceful Eloi tribe against the vicious Morlocks. Under the guidance of scripter John Logan and director Simon Wells (H.G.’s great-grandson), this version takes some early liberties that surprisingly work, but rather than ever fully capturing our imaginations, the picture then begins curtailing its own creativity, culminating in a yawner of a showdown between Pearce’s scientist-cum-adventurer and the brainy Morlock leader (played by a campy Jeremy Irons, defeated by powder-white makeup and an outfit better suited for a Judas Priest concert).
1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
DRAGONFLY Say you’re a studio head, and you have this sensitive, soulful, supernatural love story that, if nurtured properly, could turn out to be a commercial bonanza on the order of Ghost or The Sixth Sense. Would you then turn around and hand the project to the guy responsible for such inconsequential, ham-fisted works as Patch Adams and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective? That’s the kamikaze approach taken here, as a potentially moving tale about a doctor (Kevin Costner) who believes his recently deceased wife may be trying to communicate with him is torpedoed by the oblivious efforts of director Tom Shadyac. That’s not to say the script by David Seltzer, Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson is flawless — for one thing, it’s not too difficult to figure out the twist ending that the picture has in store for us. But for a movie that’s supposed to be about airy, ethereal elements, Shadyac moves this along at a torpid pace and frequently undermines any notions of everlasting love by tossing in the sort of cheap scares more suitable to a horror yarn.
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS That ultimate genre of ill repute, the teen-oriented sex comedy, takes a sideways step with 40 Days and 40 Nights, a mildly tolerable romp that at least offers a sweet center to counterbalance its smarmy surroundings. Josh Hartnett, that stiffest of Next Big Things, delivers a surprisingly adept comic turn as Matt Sullivan, a web page designer who decides that the best way to forget about the icy girlfriend (Vinessa Shaw) who dumped him is to abstain from all sexual pleasures, including masturbation, under the Lenten timeline of 40 days (yeah, it makes no sense, but work with me here). At first, things go well for our celibate hero, but once he meets his perfect match (Shannyn Sossamon), he finds it exceedingly difficult to keep his vow. A few modest laughs and an imaginative sex scene can be found amid the usual condom/Viagra/erection gags, but the film goes limp (no pun intended) during the disappointing climax (ditto), not least because it involves a rape that never really gets addressed.
IRIS Alzheimer’s might have been a more accurate title for what is ostensibly a biopic about British writer Iris Murdoch, since the focus isn’t so much on the woman’s literary achievements as it is on the disease that mentally crippled her late in life. Certainly, there are numerous scenes set in her earlier years, when she was a young hedonist falling in love with her opposite — the shy, stammering literary critic John Bailey. Yet the heart of the story rests in the scenes set in their twilight years, as John contends with the maddening Alzheimer’s that pulls Iris away from him. Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville are quite good as the young Iris and John, but the picture belongs to the actors playing the characters in their later years: Jim Broadbent is enormously moving as the devoted husband, while Judi Dench’s interpretation of a person coping with this terrible disease is so authentic, it’s often painful to watch. Dench, Broadbent and Winslet all picked up Oscar nominations for their work in what’s ultimately an eloquent love story.
JOHN Q Emotionally effective but also dishonest and irresponsible, John Q is largely DOA. It’s tough not to side with a movie that sticks it to America’s health care crisis, but this heavy-handed button-pusher stacks matters so densely, it doesn’t give any rationale room to breathe. Denzel Washington plays struggling factory worker John Quincy Archibald, who learns that his insurance won’t cover a heart transplant operation for his dying son (Daniel E. Smith). With nowhere to turn, John elects to hold an emergency room hostage, threatening dire consequences if his son’s name isn’t placed on the donor recipient list. This one offers a virtual checklist of “social drama” cliches: the opportunistic police chief (Ray Liotta) wanting to make a good impression in an election year; a tanned TV reporter (Paul Johansson) hungry for ratings (“This is my white Bronco!” he exclaims in one of scripter James Kearns’ many dopey lines); and unfeeling hospital personnel (Anne Heche and James Woods). Furthermore, the notion that the US public would outwardly cheer a man holding innocent people hostage (no matter what the reason) is not only ludicrous but somewhat insulting as well.
QUEEN OF THE DAMNED It’s difficult to make a truly boring vampire picture, but the folks behind this draggy adaptation of Anne Rice’s bestseller have done just that. Neil Jordan, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and the rest of those responsible for the arresting screen version of Rice’s Interview With the Vampire are sorely missed this time around; instead, given the tedious exploits of the notorious bloodsucker Lestat (blandly played by Stuart Townsend) in this outing, the movie’s sole claim to fame would seem to be as the final film project of the late singing star Aaliyah. She’s cast as Akasha, the Mother of All Vampires, but it’s impossible to gauge her thespian abilities based on this performance: She only arrives during the final half-hour, buried under reams of makeup and jewelry and boasting an electronically altered voice that sounds like a cross between Bela Lugosi and Twiki the robot from that 70s Buck Rogers series. There’s probably a compelling film version to be made from this particular chapter in the vampire chronicles, but this moribund (and occasionally laughable) take ain’t it.
1/2
WE WERE SOLDIERS This adaptation of Joe Galloway and General Hal Moore’s book We Were Soldiers Once… and Young focuses on a key skirmish of the Vietnam War: the 1965 battle in the Ia Drang Valley, when 400 Americans found themselves surrounded by 2,000 enemy soldiers. Like Black Hawk Down, this also centers on the inspiring mettle demonstrated by US soldiers under fire, and it’s the superior film, since it does a far better job of placing a human face on the spectacle of war. Rather than diluting the power of the piece, the expository scenes and domestic interludes provide it with an intimacy and emotional scope that easily allow it to overcome some rough narrative patches, while a no-nonsense cast (led by Mel Gibson) offers the necessary conviction. The combat scenes are extremely intense, and while some of the dialogue may clank, the sentiments don’t: This is that rare Hollywood movie that isn’t afraid to present its leading characters as devout Christians honestly seeking to reconcile their predicament with a spiritual soothing, and it’s that even rarer movie that allows us to spend a little time with the enemy in an effort to show that the devastation of war hits on all fronts and in all facets.
1/2
This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2002.
