From My Collection: Shakespeare in Love Movie Review

I just recently rewatched Shakespeare in Love and it was a s good, if not better than I remember it. John Madden’s film of the fictional and comic fantasy of how the greatest romantic tragedy in literary history came to be was my favorite film of 1998. I saw it Christmas Day, part of a moviegoing tradition I diligently maintained from 1997 through 2005, and then again a few weeks after. I bought the DVD in 1999 and have watched it a few times over the years and now I have the Blu-Ray (yes, I’m a dinosaur) so I can enjoy it in HD whenever I please. I was one of few people to accurately predict its victory in the Best Picture Oscar contest. In the Oscar pool I used to manage, only three people out of about thirty made that pick over Saving Private Ryan.

Pleasantville Movie Review

I reviewed Pleasantville in 1998 for The Connecticut College Voice, but upon revisiting the film recently, decided that a new review was in order.

It’s so nice to return to a sixteen year old movie that you thought at that time was very good and find that it remains just as interesting and just as powerful now as it was then. I put Pleasantville in my top ten for 1998 and am happy to discover that it will remain there. I think the salience of the messaging of Pleasantville has only increased with time. Sure, the TV landscape has changed considerably since then. The Prime Time schedule hardly dominates anymore. Every basic cable station and even streaming providers have gotten into original content production. But TV’s roots still stretch back to the 1950s and a schedule full of wholesome plots directing family values toward the American public.

From My Collection: Rounders Movie Review

I reviewed this film sixteen years ago in the Connecticut College Voice. It is far too embarrassing to republish the original so in revisiting the film, here is my new and updated reviews.

For a brief time in the 90s and early 2000s, director John Dahl was establishing himself (in my estimation, at least) as a maker of dark and fascinating tales of low moral character or the underbelly of places we thought we knew. In 1998 he brought us, via a screenplay by David Levien and Brian Koppelman, to the underground and illegal poker scene of New York City in Rounders. He showed us a seedy version of New York that stands outside the realm of most Hollywood movies. And it’s populated with a cast of characters, most of whom you wouldn’t be too quick to invite into your home.

From My Collection: A Simple Plan Movie Review

My history with A Simple Plan is very special. In 1998 I had seen lots of excellent movies that I really admired, but had yet to find a perfect 10. On New Year’s Eve I saw three movies. One of them was Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan, a movie I didn’t have any significant expectations for outside of being interested in Billy Bob Thornton and the premise of the film: three ordinary men find a bag full of money. What should they do with it? It was probably about halfway to two thirds of the way through when I had a realization that the film was on its way to my standard of perfection if only it could avoid any third act missteps. And then it made it. It arrived to the end and Scott B. Smith, who adapted the screenplay from his own novel, had made all the right choices and I stood in awe of this minor little film that was simply astounding.

Primary Colors Movie Review

As an obvious companion piece to Wag the Dog, which I revisited recently, I decided to take another look at Primary Colors, the 1998 film based on a novel that was an embellished and somewhat fictionalized version of Bill Clinton’s first primary campaign for the presidency. Wag the Dog was a year earlier, but both strike at the heart of late 90s political climate, albeit in very different ways. The first film has, in man way, improved with age, while Primary Colors has become a bit more dated. Wag the Dog remains more relevant today than does Primary Colors. That’s not the fault of director Mike Nichols or Elaine May, who adapted the screenplay (and scored an Oscar nomination, I should point out), but it is a fact that can’t be avoided in any updated conversation about the movie.

From My Collection: Rushmore Movie Review

Wes Anderson’s filmmaking style has evolved over the years to such extremes of whimsical fantasy that to revisit his second feature, 1998’s Rushmore, feels tame and almost like a regular movie experience. He was just beginning to hone his skills at symmetrical and perfectly fastidiously set-dressed diorama-like compositions. Compare it to the brand new Grand Budapest Hotel or even The Royal Tenenbaums, his follow-up to Rushmore, where you’ll see clearly compartmentalized sets that resemble a doll’s house, and the earlier film reveals an artist who was learning what kind of worlds he wanted to create on film.

From My Collection: Out of Sight Movie Review

Out of Sight is quite simply one of the slickest and sexiest films of at least the last two decades. One scene in particular, involving a female Federal Marshal and the bank robber she’s chasing taking a “time out” from their respective responsibilities to fan the flames of passion between them is stylishly edited and beautifully realized. I loved this movie when I first saw it. I loved every minute of it as it played out on the big screen. I loved the smoldering Clooney and the incredibly sexy Lopez; loved the threatening Don Cheadle and the comic relief Steve Zahn; loved the fact that the Clooney and Lopez characters turn some common genre stereotypes on their heads; but mostly I loved the film’s sense of cool stemming from its jazz, funk, soul soundtrack, its sharp dialogue, and Tarantino-esque flair.

Important Anniversaries Marked in 2013

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My Collection: He Got Game Movie Review

Spike Lee’s He Got Game is a movie about America made by a man who loves basketball and the opportunity represented by this country. Stories of race relations have often driven Lee to make provocative films. Even when he’s not sharp, we see he has something interesting to say.

Lee is usually at his best when he keeps his focus on small communities in Brooklyn. He Got Game is set mostly in Coney Island, but the story has connections to the broader American community. The two main characters are diametrically opposed black men. Denzel Washington is Jake Shuttlesworth, a man with undying love for his children, but also a pent up rage that led to the death of his wife, for which he is now serving time in state prison. Ray Allen is his son, Jesus (pronounced like Jesus of the Bible), who is the number one high school basketball prospect in the country.

The Last Days of Disco Movie Review

For his third feature film The Last Days of Disco, Whit Stillman graduated to better financing and a bigger budget, but maintained his unique writing style and characterization depicting the “Urban haute bourgeoisie” of his first film Metropolitan. Again the characters are well-educated Ivy Leaguers and New England liberal arts college graduates who spend a lot of time talking. Stillman’s Barcelona brought these characters to another country, but this time he brought them back to New York City, where the well-to-do of that first film paraded around in tuxedos and ball gowns discussing philosophy, literature and social mores. The setting has changed slightly with the characters frequenting the dying disco scene of the early 80s, but the conversations are similar.

City of Angels Movie Review

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 17 April 1998.

Republished here with minor editorial adjustments that do not affect content.

Try and imagine a remake of Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. Except you take away the poetic language, the depiction of Berlin as a city divided, and the discussion of the meaning of giving up immortality as a celestial being in order to experience love and you have City of Angels. It is a watered down remake of the 1987 film. It mainly extracts the love story aspect of the original, but still manages to hold onto a bit of the rest. This version of the story can barely stand on its own, and as a remake doesn’t even come close to measuring up.

One major difference between the two is in the dialogue. It lacks the subtlety and imagination of the original. For example, the angel Seth (Nicolas Cage) tells his friend and fellow angel Cassiel (Andre Braugher), “I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth one touch of her hand than eternity without it – one.” In Wings of Desire the angel says, “I learned amazement last night.” The latter is much simpler, allowing the viewer to imagine for himself what the amazement was rather than spelling it out. In all honesty, to compare the two films is almost pointless. Wings of Desire exists as a wholly original and visionary piece of work while City of Angels is pop culture for the masses.

Pleasantville Movie Review: Splashing the World with Color

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 30 October 1998.

Republished here with some minor editorial adjustments that do not affect content.

Gary Ross’s directorial debut, Pleasantville is a masterpiece of enormous relevance.  Like Big and Dave (both written by Ross), Pleasantville presents a fantasy world from which we have a lot to learn.

Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon play David and Jennifer, twins who each cope with their broken home in different ways. She is an adolescent rebel while he escapes to the fantastical world of “Pleasantville,” a 50’s sitcom in the style of “Father Knows Best,” as his parents argue over the phone. One night, a creepy TV repairman (Don Knotts) shows up at the door and offers them a special remote with a little more “oomph.” With the push of a button, David and Jennifer are pulled into the black and white world of “Pleasantville” where they fill in for Bud and Mary Sue, the children of Betty (Joan Allen) and George Parker (William H. Macy).

The Object of My Affection Movie Review

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 24 April 1998.

Republished here with some editorial adjustments that don't affect content.

One’s first thoughts on a movie about a girl who falls in love with a gay man might be, “Another bland romantic comedy,” or “A trite revision of Chasing Amy.” Coming from a person who hasn’t seen a decent new movie in about a month, The Object of My Affection was a pleasant surprise.

The movie centers on Nina (Jennifer Aniston), a social worker in Brooklyn, and George (Paul Rudd), a 1st grade school teacher. They meet at a cocktail party being held by Nina’s stepsister. George and Nina immediately form a bond laughing at the rest of the guests who engage in name dropping as if it were a competition. In a somewhat unbelievably fast pace, Nina invites George to be her new roommate and they very quickly discover they are nearly soul mates for each other. All gets complicated when Nina finds out she is pregnant by her boyfriend Vince (John Pankow). She asks George to be the live-in dad as opposed to Vince. This is when the true grit of the movie comes out: the exploration into relationships. Can it survive without sex? Is a wonderful friendship enough to make it last?

The Wedding Singer Movie Review

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 20 February 1998.

Republished here with minor editorial adjustments that do not affect content.

A Rubik’s Cube, a Freddy Krueger mask, a red Michael Jackson leather jacket and plenty of classic tunes are some of the icons that inhabit the romantic comedy The Wedding Singer starring Adam Sandler. This movie is one of the first in what will probably be a series of 80’s nostalgia flicks. Last year’s Grosse Pointe Blank may have paved the way but we will probably be seeing more films set in the 80’s rather than those which remember the 80’s the way GPB did.

The Big Hit Movie Review

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 1 May 1998.

Republished here with minor editorial adjustments that do no affect content.

At first I wonder how one knows that The Big Hit is an action comedy functioning almost as a satire. It was not billed that way in advertisements and certainly the people associated with the film have never delved into comedy. Director Kirk Wong is best known for a Jackie Chan vehicle, Crime Story, which is considered one of Chan’s only serious films. Executive producer John Woo takes his action very seriously with such films as last year’s Face/Off and the internationally acclaimed The Killer. The actors, Mark Wahlberg, Lou Diamond Phillips and Bokeem Woodbine are generally billed as ‘serious’ actors. Maybe the only evidence is the fact that the film is so campy, so cheesy and so lame that it could only be a satire. Contrary to that argument, the same cannot be said for Waterworld.

Gus Van Sant's Psycho Movie Review: If It Ain't Broken, Don't Fix It

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 11 December 1998.

Republished here unaltered.

As things generally go, you may want to avoid those rare films which aren’t screened for critics. They are usually extraordinarily bad and the filmmakers would rather have a chance at opening weekend box office and not kill those chances with bad reviews on opening day. But the case for Gus Van Sant’s Psycho, a shot-for-shot re-creation of the original is not the same. Hitchcock did not screen his 1960 masterpiece for critics and Van Sant does the same as a way to take one more step toward his carbon copy.

I watched the original twice in the week preceding my viewing of the new version so that I could get a feel for the movement of the camera and take a handle on the dialogue. So little is changed in Van Sant’s that what is changed is hardly worth mentioning; even the license plate on Marion’s car is the same.

Lethal Weapon 4 Movie Review

First published on Uwire in Summer 1998.

Republished here with minor editorial adjustments, but nothing that affects content.

Just when you thought sequels couldn’t go any further, they did. The fourth installment in the Lethal Weapon series opens with a bang of an action sequence in which detectives Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) gun down a man wearing an armored suit and carrying a flame-thrower.

The rest of the film follows with many more spectacular action sequences including a freeway car chase which outdoes nearly any car chase I’ve seen. Many of the sequences and the beautifully choreographed fight scenes are made possible by Jet Li, an Asian martial arts star making his American film debut. Li provides Riggs with the most difficult enemy of the series.

Buffalo '66 Movie Review

First published on Uwire in Summer 1998.

Republished here unaltered.

Young indie filmmaker Vincent Gallo may join the ranks of Billy Bob Thornton, Woody Allen and Robert Duvall for writing, directing and starring in one of the finest pleasures of the year. (Gallo upped the ante by writing the score for his film.)

Gallo’s film, Buffalo ‘66, begins with Billy (Gallo) being released from prison. After a very amusing struggle to find a place to urinate, he walks into a dance studio where he meets Layla (Christina Ricci). She overhears Billy on the phone to his mother, telling her he is standing in the lobby of an expensive hotel, just one of many lies he tells his parents in order to protect them from the truth. Needing someone to pose as his wife (another lie he told his mother) he kidnaps Layla and asks her to act like she really likes him at his parents’ house.

Kissing a Fool Movie Review

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 6 March 1998.

Republished here with minor editorial adjustments that do not affect content.

The main problems with Doug Ellin’s romantic comedy Kissing a Fool are that it is incredibly predictable and not funny. The film opens with a wedding between a woman, Sam, played by Israeli actress Mili Avital and a man whom we can not see. Bonnie Hunt is Sam’s boss as well as the hostess of the wedding. She sits down with a couple of schlumpy wedding guests and begins to tell the predictable story of how the bride and groom got together.

David Schwimmer plays Max Abbitt, a popular Chicago sportscaster and notorious womanizer. He and Jay (Jason Lee) are childhood best friends. Jay has been in mourning and without sex for a year due to his ex-girlfriend, Natasha, having broken his heart. Sam is his book editor and he introduces her to Max.  The two hit it off immediately and are engaged within two weeks. Max gets nervous about the prospect of being with only one woman for the rest of his life and enlists Jay to ‘test’ Sam. He wants Jay to seduce her to find out if she would be loyal. When Sam’s boss pushes up their deadline, the two have to spend a lot more time together and Jay’s affection for Sam begins to surface.

Palmetto Movie Review:

First published in The Connecticut College Voice on 27 February 1998.

Republished here with minor editorial adjustments that do not affect content.

Take two Academy Award nominated actors (Woody Harrelson, Elisabeth Shue) and Volker Schlöndorff, the critically acclaimed director of The Tin Drum and a comedic film noir script and you get the workings of what might be the first really good movie of 1998. Right? Wrong! What we end up with instead is a contrived, poorly scripted, badly conceived attempt at film noir. Not that it is a result of the people involved, but given the talent coming together on this project, Palmetto should have been much better.