Year: 1998

I’m not sure how much I should go into the controversy surrounding The Siege. I’ve seen the movie, obviously — I didn’t think anything about it was offensive. That many people do take offense seems to mean that 1) they haven’t actually seen the movie before they started crying racism, which I find easy to believe, or 2) that my lack of familiarity with the Arab/Islamic cultures prevents me from seeing the derogatory bits, which I also find easy to believe. Probably, the brouhaha over The Siege is a combination of ignorance on both sides of the fence.

Bruce Willis has appeared in so many awful movies, playing so many uninteresting characters, that it’s easy to forget how fabulous an actor he can be in the right roles. (He won an Emmy in 1987 for TV’s screwball-comedy Moonlighting, fer pete’s sake, and deservedly so.) Amongst the Hudson Hawks and the Armageddons, there are films like Pulp Fiction and Twelve Monkeys that make you wonder how so talented an actor can get any creative satisfaction from something like The Fifth Element. Two recent Willis flicks show just how schizophrenic he is in his choice of roles.

Tina Turner got it right. Love just makes you a mess, and it definitely interferes with your authority. Especially if you’re a powerful and independent woman. Probably only if you’re a woman — male presidents, CEOs, and monarchs juggle wives and mistresses with no problems (even all the twirling of Ken Starr’s mustache hasn’t undone Bill Clinton).

Don Knotts as Satan? Sly and sinister, his TV repairman is the serpent offering the town of Pleasantville the apple — here in the form of David and Jennifer, who introduce the town to books, art, sex, even the hedonistic pleasure of standing out in a rainstorm. (If there’s any doubt that Pleasantville is a fantasy, just watch for the scene with all the young people lined up outside the library, eager to read anything they can get their hands on.) And the townsfolk literally start blossoming, going full Technicolor as their horizons expand.

Kevin Williamson really has his pulse on the angst of the modern teen. Why, he’s a veritable heir to John Hughes. His I Know What You Did Last Summer is a touching parable about growing up and growing apart from our high school friends after graduation, about how the many things that brought us close in school — the proms and the classes together and the pep rallies and the midnight dumping of bodies in the ocean — just aren’t enough to create enduring relationships.

No, it’s not a hex reviewers cast over Hollywood executives to punish them for the awful movies they spew forth onto unsuspecting audiences. It’s a doom critics bring upon themselves: When one sees too many movies, eventually only the extraordinary films can thrill anymore.

Jackie and Max are the film’s central characters, and Tarantino (who wrote the screenplay as well as directed) handles them in a surprisingly tender and melancholy way. Both Jackie, 44 years old, and Max, 56, are facing their twilight years never having accomplished much of anything, and that regret — along with an undercurrent of incipient romance — brings them together in a kind of sad, sweet bond.

Barn of the Blood Llama — written (with Kirk Hunter) and directed by the Austin-based West — is the probably the most awful movie I’ve ever seen. I mean that in the best way possible. Shot on more film stocks than Oliver Stone ever dreamed of and “dubbed in English,” Barn is chock full of everything a Texas-size hunk of exploitation needs: bestiality! cheap trampy girls in a convertible! rock-star hitchhikers! fast food! bad acting! llama funerals! brain transplantation! haggis!