May 9, 2000 | A good editor is a Jack of all disciplines: part musician, part magician, part physician, part mathematician, this man or woman must also have a sheer love of the craft, for his or her contribution to a film is destined to be only subliminally appreciated by the masses. How do all of these admirable and diverse traits combine to produce a cohesive motion picture?
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“The Yankee Doodle Mouse,” “Solid Serenade,” “Tee for Two,” “Mouse in Manhattan,” “The Zoot Cat,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse,” “The Cat Concerto,” “The Little Orphan,” “Salt Water Tabby,” “Kitty Foiled,” “Johann Mouse,” “Jerry’s Diary,” “Jerry and the Lion,” “Mice Follies”
by Bill Chambers As I waded through Tom and Jerry’s Greatest Chases, a perfectly enjoyable DVD compilation of postwar “Tom and Jerry” cartoons, I began to wonder why the eternally backbiting cat and mouse have not endeared and endured over decades to the extent that almost any combination of bickering Looney Toons has.
**½/**** Image D+ Sound B-
starring Rodney Dangerfield, Sally Kellerman, Burt Young, Keith Gordon
screenplay by Steven Kampmann & Will Porter and Peter Torokvei & Harold Ramis
directed by Alan Metter
by Bill Chambers Rodney Dangerfield, alas, still gets no respect. Recently the comic was denied membership to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, allegedly on the basis of his profane turn as an abusive father in Natural Born Killers. (Gee, I thought demonstrating range and talent would be two guarantees of an actor’s admittance into the Oscar-voting body.) The poor showings for his last two screen outings, Ladybugs and Meet Wally Sparks, have perhaps permanently sealed Dangerfield’s fate as a Vegas stand-up.
*/**** Image A+ Sound A-
starring Chris O'Donnell, Renee Zellweger, Hal Holbrook, James Cromwell
screenplay by Steve Cohen
directed by Gary Sinyor
by Bill Chambers It begins with a misleading visual straight out of City Slickers: a herd of mustangs, all racing towards "a patch"–signifying single men trying to get laid. But no stud, we learn through voiceover, can evade marriage forever, and following the introduction of young entrepreneur Jimmie (Chris O'Donnell) and his happy, similarly-unwed circle of (male) friends, a quick montage intercuts scenes of holy matrimony seizing every last one of them–save Jimmie–with the wrangling of stallions.
*½/**** Image A Sound A-
starring Matthew Perry, Neve Campbell, Dylan McDermott, Oliver Platt
screenplay by Rodney Vaccaro and Aline Brosh McKenna
directed by Damon Santostefano
by Bill Chambers Unsurprisingly, Three to Tango was written some eight years before it finally went into production–the film has a dated preoccupation with homosexuality as Golden Farcical Opportunity. (I suspect that Rodney Vaccaro and Aline Brosh McKenna’s script, purportedly based on events that led to Vaccaro’s marrying his boss’s girlfriend, was fast-tracked only after The Birdcage became a box-office smash.) Imagine the insipid proposition of a politically corrected “Three’s Company”; why does hetero Oscar not speak up when his sexual orientation is first challenged? Because, silly: being gay is hilarious!
**/**** Image C+ Sound B
1952: starring Demi Moore, Catherine Keener, CCH Pounder, Jason London
teleplay by Nancy Savoca
directed by Nancy Savoca
1974: starring Sissy Spacek, Xander Berkeley, Hedy Buress, Janna Michaels
teleplay by Susan Nanus and Nancy Savoca
directed by Nancy Savoca
1996: starring Cher, Anne Heche, Jada Pinkett, Eileen Brennan
teleplay by I. Marlene King and Nancy Savoca
directed by Cher
by Bill Chambers Is one expected to insert the If These Walls Could Talk disc into a DVD player, or lace it through the gears of an old-fashioned Bell+Howell projector? The three-act HBO anthology, which revolves around the abortion debate, was shot on stock that appears to be of Seventies vintage even in sequences meant to take place in the Fifties and the Nineties, contributing to its classroom-instructional vibe as much as the message-oriented scripting.
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“New Blood,” “Cruel Sea,” “Time of the Titans,” “Giant of the Skies,” “Spirits of the Ice Forest,” “Death of a Dynasty”
by Bill Chambers Walking With Dinosaurs is such a fantastic idea for a television show that two thoughts kept returning as I waded through it:
**/**** Image A Sound A Extras D+
starring Tommy Lee Jones, Ashley Judd, Bruce Greenwood, Annabeth Gish
screenplay by David Weisberg & Douglas S. Cook
directed by Bruce Beresford
by Bill Chambers Imprisoned for the murder of her husband, whose apparently dismembered body was never recovered from the deep blue sea, Libby Parsons (Ashley Judd, who’s very good) calls her little boy from a phone bank and hears him say this: “Daddy!” It’s Double Jeopardy‘s most convincing moment, relying as it does on the ignorance of a child–so persuasive, in fact, that you may wonder at film’s end if it had been imported from another screenplay altogether.
**/**** Image B Sound A- Extras D
starring Melissa Joan Hart, Adrien Grenier, Stephen Collins, Ali Larter
screenplay by Rob Thomas, based on the novel How I Created My Perfect Prom Date by Todd Strasser
directed by John Schultz
by Bill Chambers I've seen so many bloody teen movies over the past two years that Drive Me Crazy felt like the beginning of a new semester. All my old friends were there–the jock, the rebel, the slut–and I once again looked forward to attending a prom, here called a "Centennial." Now and again, however, the film manages to tread, if not break, new ground as it recycles that old saw about an adversarial boy and girl who fall for their own love charade as they attempt to make former sweethearts jealous. Would you believe that every single one of its characters is (gasp!) insecure?
REVENGE OF THE NERDS (1984)
***½/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Robert Carradine, Anthony Edwards, Ted McGinley, Bernie Casey
screenplay by Steve Zacharias & Jeff Buhai
directed by Jeff Kanew
REVENGE OF THE NERDS II: NERDS IN PARADISE (1987)
½*/**** Image A- Sound B+
starring Robert Carradine, Curtis Armstrong, Bradley Whitford, Courtney Thorne-Smith
screenplay by Dan Guntzelman & Steve Marshall
directed by Joe Roth
by Bill Chambers One's great, the other ain't, and that's the truth, Ruth. Revenge of the Nerds, too often lumped in with the T&A comedies that flanked its theatrical release (Up the Creek, Porky's Revenge, et al.), is a cinematic gem of exemplary construction–one of the best, most empathetic teen movies with which John Hughes was not affiliated. Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise, alas, sequelizes the trashy rep of its predecessor rather than the reality.
**½/****
starring Garry Shandling, Annette Bening, John Goodman, Ben Kingsley
screenplay by Garry Shandling & Michael Leeson and Ed Solomon and Peter Tolan
directed by Mike Nichols
by Bill Chambers To paint a picture of how juvenile Mike Nichols's What Planet Are You From? can get, its running gag is a humming penis. The film stoops, often, to a level of humour rarely found outside the schoolyard–or an episode of "Married With Children". Yet there's infectious sunshine in Garry Shandling's first big-screen starring vehicle that makes it difficult to begrudge its bad taste. Whatever issues I may take with What Planet Are You From? certainly have nothing to do with being offended by it.
**/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Johnny Depp, Charlize Theron, Joe Morton, Clea DuVall
written and directed by Rand Ravich
by Bill Chambers Given that it borrows liberally from Rosemary’s Baby and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), it’s not surprising The Astronaut’s Wife feels so uninspired, yet it’s a tiny bit surprising that nothing of either their grim appeal or their gift for turning lurid genre concepts (devil cults and pod people, respectively) into something profound really stuck to the surface of this film. Underimagined and overdesigned, writer-director Rand Ravich’s feature debut seems the product of not enough writing and too much directing.
*/****
starring Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox Arquette, David Arquette, Parker Posey
screenplay by Ehren Kruger
directed by Wes Craven
by Bill Chambers Miramax "disinvited" online media from press screenings of Scream 3. They ostensibly feared that folks like me would write spoiler-filled reviews and post them prior to the film's February 4th release date–unsound reasoning. You see, 'net critics established enough to be on any sort of VIP list are professionals–Miramax surely knows the difference between an upstanding member of The On-Line Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the type of fanboy who submits spy reports to Ain't It Cool News. No, the 'mini major' was afraid we'd let a bigger cat out of the bag than whodunit: that Scream 3 is a dismal conclusion to the beloved (by this writer, at least) franchise.
**/**** Image B+ Sound B+
starring Claire Danes, Bill Pullman, Kate Beckinsale, Lou Diamond Phillips
screenplay by David Arata
directed by Jonathan Kaplan
by Bill Chambers It’s somebody’s idea of a cruel joke: hire two of the most beautiful actresses in the known universe and slather them in grime and grit and stink for the better part of 100 minutes. While the characters don’t seem to mind (“I’ve had worse haircuts,” remarks Claire Danes’s Alice Marano of being sentenced to 33 years in a foreign prison–though her bob-crop is quite fetching), the intended audience for Brokedown Palace–teenagers unfamiliar with Midnight Express–had a rather adverse reaction to the thought of watching a couple of starlets wallow in a world of piss and roaches and Bill Pullman lawyers and Lou Diamond Phillips embassy officials, if the pitiful box-office is any indication. So why did they bother sanitizing it for younger viewers?
***/**** Image A Sound B+
starring Michael Richards, Jeff Daniels, Charlize Theron, Jessica Steen
screenplay by Sara Bernstein & Gregory Bernstein
directed by Jonathan Lynn
by Jarrod Chambers Trial and Error starts off with some pretty stock situations. Charlie Tuttle (Jeff Daniels) is a lawyer, a Yale man who has just made partner at the firm and is engaged to the boss's daughter. He is absurdly uptight, his fiancée (Alexandra Wentworth) is a ridiculously controlling snob, his boss is a hard-nosed hard-case. In other words, everyone (to begin with) is a cartoon. Charlie's best friend since grade school, Richard Rietti (Michael Richards, a.k.a Kramer from "Seinfeld"), is a free-living actor with a wardrobe that relies heavily on flowered prints. Richard is Charlie's best man, despite pressure from his fiancée and her father to choose someone more, ahem, respectable.
by Bill Chambers
**/**** Image A+ Sound A- Extras B+
starring John Travolta, Madeleine Stowe, James Cromwell, James Woods
screenplay by Christopher Bertolini and William Goldman, based on the novel by Nelson DeMille
directed by Simon West
by Bill Chambers The General’s Daughter is prettified trash, a sulphur-coloured pulp movie of dubious ambitions. Undeniably effective in fits and starts, this adaptation of Nelson DeMille’s popular novel dies when it succumbs to the lurid urges of a too-visceral director. The nude body of Captain Elisabeth Campbell (Leslie Stefanson) has been discovered strangled to death on an army base in Georgia. Elisabeth’s father, vice-presidential hopeful General Joseph Campbell (!) (James Cromwell), summons beefy army cop Paul Brennan (John Travolta), an acquaintance of the deceased, to close the case before the FBI moves in–and before the media gets wind of the situation. Working with ex-girlfriend Sarah “Sun” Sunhill (Madeleine Stowe), Paul quickly uncovers the secrets of the late captain’s double-life as a dominatrix.
***½/****
starring Ralph Fiennes, Liv Tyler, Toby Stephens, Lena Headey
screenplay by Peter Ettedgui and Michael Ignatieff, based on the poem "Yevgeny Onegin" by Alexander Pushkin
directed by Martha Fiennes
by Bill Chambers "When will the devil take me?" he asks rhetorically in a lulling voiceover. The spoiled title character of Onegin (pronounced Oh-negg-in) is waiting on death to relieve him after a lifetime of rapacious, caddish behaviour has left him soul-sick. Martha Fiennes's debut feature is–quite literally–filmed poetry (it's based on the epic Russian poem by Alexander Pushkin), a profound study of regret, of how we confuse shame with guilt.
**/****
starring Meryl Streep, Angela Bassett, Aidan Quinn, Jane Leeves
screenplay by Pamela Gray
directed by Wes Craven
by Bill Chambers I should start this review by telling you how much I hate the generic title Music of the Heart. Wes Craven's bid for prestige was more evocatively (and appropriately) called 50 Violins in development, and the switch only proves how far distributor Miramax has strayed from its edgier roots. Almost as infuriating is the positioning of an 'N Sync/Gloria Estafan duet as Music of the Heart's theme song: a nigh unlistenable ballad opens and closes a film about music appreciation.
**/**** Image B+ Sound A-
starring Audrey Hepburn, George Peppard, Patricia Neal, Mickey Rooney
screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novella by Truman Capote
directed by Blake Edwards
by Bill Chambers Would Paul Varjak (George Peppard) be in love with Holly Golightly if she didn’t look like Audrey Hepburn? That’s the question I kept asking myself as I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s, the story of a batty woman who overcomes her personality enough to make her downstairs neighbour, a published author, fall for her. She’s a socialite too busy for housework; he’d be destitute if he didn’t have a sugar mama (Patricia Neal). Both are humoured by the champagne crowd, but ultimately, Paul can’t even afford a mid-priced gift for Holly when they go shopping together at Tiffany’s.