Arlington Road (1999)

July 10, 1999Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Crime, Drama, Mystery, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Jeff Bridges, Tim Robbins, Joan Cusack, Hope Davis
screenplay by Ehren Kruger
directed by Mark Pellington

by Bill Chambers Wrote Josh Young, in issue #493 of ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: "With studios now viewing the mid-level, Oscar-nominated directors as a luxury they can no longer afford, established auteurs…are facing increasingly stiff competition from slick young music-video turks who'll work for a mere pittance." From its galling opening sequence, I wondered what Arlington Road would look like had it been sired by someone more established in movies than the director of Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" clip. Director Mark Pellington is so mindful of 'the image' that writer Ehren Kruger's plotting eventually drops off the tightrope of credibility. Could a veteran filmmaker, comparable in status to the late Alan J. Pakula, swindle us more successfully with the same screenplay?

Wild Wild West (1999)

July 2, 1999Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Western, Will Smith

*/****
starring Will Smith, Kevin Kline, Kenneth Branagh, Salma Hayek
screenplay by Brent Maddock, S.S. Wilson, Peter S. Seaman, and Jeffrey Price
directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

by Bill Chambers If you don't think Kevin Kline in drag is funny, wait 'til you see Will Smith in drag–it's even less funny. By the time Jim West (Smith) had disguised himself as a belly dancer to retrieve his captured comrade Artemus Gordon (Kline) from the clutches of evil Dr. Loveless (Kenneth Branagh), I was unequivocally bored with Wild Wild West, the new summer action-comedy from Men in Black director Barry Sonnenfeld. Is the Old West really a breeding ground for slapstick, anyway? If your answer is yes, you're probably thinking of Blazing Saddles, but Blazing Saddles was a parody of the western genre that also satirized the social climate of 1974, not a nineteenth-century romp in and of itself.

Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999)

May 18, 1999Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Star Wars, Theatrical

This one's pretty rough, folks; mea culpa. Reprinted for posterity and completism, since Walter reviewed the other two. Some minor edits made for clarity.-BC

**/****
starring Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Potrtman, Jake Lloyd
written and directed by George Lucas

by Bill Chambers Forgoing my typical formula in an effort to write something that stands out from the pack. I can't promise not to spoil anything, but I will do my best to avoid giving too much away.

The Matrix (1999)

April 3, 1999Posted in1990s, Action, Australia, Authors: Vincent Suarez, Martial Arts, Sci-Fi, Theatrical

***/****
starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving
written and directed by Lana and Lilly Wachowski (née The Wachowski Brothers)

by Vincent Suarez There's an early moment in The Matrix when Keanu Reeves's character retrieves contraband from a hollowed-out copy of one of the canonical texts of Postmodernism, Simulacra and Simulation, in which Jean Baudrillard suggests that modern reality is little more than a series of items and experiences replicating all that has come before; that ours is a reality comprising resemblances. It's details like these which elevate The Matrix above the vast majority of recent science-fiction films. Yet, like the strain of contemporary philosophy informing it, The Matrix is full of inconsistencies and contradictions, holes you could drive a truck through… But it's a scenic drive.

Analyze This (1999)

March 8, 1999Posted in1990s, Australia, Authors: Bill Chambers, Comedy, Crime, Gangster, Robert De Niro, Theatrical

**½/****
starring Robert DeNiro, Billy Crystal, Lisa Kudrow, Chazz Palminteri
screenplay by Peter Tolan and Harold Ramis and Ken Lonergan
directed by Harold Ramis

by Bill Chambers Robert De Niro is not a comedian. He used this to his advantage in what is arguably his best performance, as The King of Comedy's Rupert Pupkin. In that 1982 media-age satire from Martin Scorsese, a film that becomes more prophetic with each passing year, Pupkin is a struggling comedian obsessed with talk-show host Jerry Langford (a self-parodying Jerry Lewis) and the thought of appearing on his program. Pupkin's routines, however, are painfully unfunny; moreover, he is blithely unaware of their mediocrity. That his jokes don't sound like they were written to bomb (they're like warmed-over Henny Youngman one-liners) is because of De Niro's desperate delivery–the actor has awful comic timing in his bones.

Mighty Joe Young (1998)

December 25, 1998Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Disney, Family, Theatrical, Thriller

*½/****
starring Charlize Theron, Bill Paxton, David Paymer, Rade Serbedzija
screenplay by Lawrence M. Konner & Mark Rosenthal, based on the 1949 screenplay by Ruth Rose
directed by Ron Underwood

Story_newhdrby Bill Chambers The most absurd remake of 1998? It's a toss-up between Gus Van Sant's Psycho and Mighty Joe Young, the new Disney picture based on the old RKO one. I knew I was in trouble when a polished, computer-generated version of that famous radio-tower logo appeared before the opening credits; like Psycho, this is less a remake than a simulation of one. There was no great demand for another giant ape movie–make that ape movie, period. (Witness the quick deaths of Buddy, Born To Be Wild, and Congo.) And while this latest entry in an inexplicably prolific genre is an inoffensive time-waster, it's also an assembly-line product through and through, lacking the charm and idiosyncratic plotting of vintage jungle pulp.

Apt Pupil (1998)

October 25, 1998Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Canada, Crime, Drama, France, Stephen King, Theatrical, Thriller

***/****
starring Brad Renfro, Ian McKellen, Elias Koteas, David Schwimmer
screenplay by Brandon Boyce, based on the novella by Stephen King
directed by Bryan Singer

by Bill Chambers "No man is an island," goes the famous John Donne poem, effectively summarizing Apt Pupil's central themes. Though hardly a great film, Bryan Singer's ambitious adaptation of Stephen King's same-named novella* is nonetheless challenging, a bleak picture destined to be misunderstood by the masses. But perhaps the most shocking aspect of this inclement psychological thriller is that a major studio got behind it.

Without Limits (1998)

September 11, 1998Posted in1990s, Authors: Bill Chambers, Biopic, Drama, Sports, Theatrical, Tom Cruise

**/****
starring Billy Crudup, Donald Sutherland, Monica Potter, Jeremy Sisto
screenplay by Robert Towne and Kenny Moore
directed by Robert Towne

by Bill Chambers Does Robert Towne deserve his reputation as a Hollywood Great? (I'm not playing Devil's Advocate here.) After all, Roman Polanski is responsible for Chinatown's brilliant ending (Towne, its screenwriter, bowed out when Polanski opted to alter his comparatively bittersweet finale); Warren Beatty extensively reshaped his screenplay for Shampoo; Towne caved to studio pressure and destroyed the climax of his sophomore feature as writer-director, Tequila Sunrise; and it took him several years to pen the misfire Love Affair.

Armageddon (1998)

July 2, 1998Posted in1990s, Action, Adventure, Authors: Bill Chambers, Directors: Michael Bay, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller

½*/****
starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck
written by Jonathan Hensleigh and J.J. Abrams
directed by Michael Bay

by Bill Chambers It rocks–actually, lots of rocks fly at us or away from us, in slow or fast motion, at several points in Armageddon. They seem like dangerous rocks because they kind of twirl through the air instead of just propelling forward, and when they make landfall–once in a while, when we need a break from the outer-space sequences–they cause damage enough to destroy the Chrysler building. (Nary a mention of these apocalyptic events is made after they occur.) Rocks might also be the most interesting element of Armageddon, a steroid abuser's answer to Deep Impact.

Godzilla (1998)

May 22, 1998Posted in1990s, Action, Authors: Bill Chambers, Japan, Sci-Fi, Theatrical, Thriller, ZERO STARS

Reposted in the interest of posterity and synergy, despite not being very well-written.-Ed.

ZERO STARS/****
starring Matthew Broderick, Jean Reno, Hank Azaria, Maria Pitillo, Godzilla
screenplay by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich
directed by Roland Emmerich

by Bill Chambers The partnership of Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin yielded a giant box office hit last time out with their alien invasion picture Independence Day, a film critically dissed in large part because it was populated with stereotypes: we knew who the smart guy was because he wore glasses and a pocket-protector; who the gay guy was because Harvey Fierstein's dialogue was set to flaming; who the hero was because he promised to "whoop E.T.'s ass." This time out, Devlin and Emmerich have solved that problem by making no attempts whatsoever to define their stable of characters. Not only is New York City a shambles when Godzilla is through, so is Godzilla, a disaster picture in every sense of the word. This may be the most uncompelling summer movie contender in the history of the sport.