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What is it with Boston lawyers lately? The Practice (one of the few TV shows I make a point of watching) sees Beantown shysters in moral anguish if one of them sneezes. Ally McBeal turns them into idiosyncratic goofballs. And now A Civil Action punishes them for finally doing what we always say we want lawyers to do: have a heart.
For a while, as I watched The Prince of Egypt, I thought there was a sly, subversive undertone at work. There’s a marvelous scene in the film in which Moses and two Egyptian priests engage in a kind of ‘my god can beat up your god’ battle, and Ra and friends do seem to hold their own against Yahweh. I thought: Wow, the filmmakers are daring to give the Egyptian gods the same credence they’re giving the Hebrew one — in effect saying that Ra is as likely to exist as Yahweh.
Why did Disney even bother with The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride? To cash in on the success — not just in theaters but also on video — of its predecessor, of course. Kids, though, especially the preschoolers who are probably the only ones who’ll enjoy this bland sequel, are perfectly content to watch the same movie over and over and over, to their parents’ distraction. Disney could have just rereleased The Lion King with a new label slapped on it, and kids wouldn’t care.
I’ve raved over Bill Paxton before, and I’m gonna do it again now. Paxton is one of American film’s finest and most underappreciated actors — a fact obscured by his own supremely subtle talent. A Simple Plan, an outstanding film and an instant classic, should finally bring him the recognition he deserves.
Cheery and light-hearted if a bit thin in the plot, The Borrowers will enchant kids and those who grew up with Norton’s books. Bored Borrower teen Arrietty Clock (Flora Newbigin), against her father Pod’s (Jim Broadbent) wishes, goes exploring in the Bean house one day and inadvertently breaks the First Rule of Borrowing: “A Borrower must never, ever be seen.”
Tom Stoppard, I’ll grant you, is infinitely more clever and more talented than your run-of-the-mill fan-fiction writer. But he’s doing exactly the same thing as those hordes of writers who have continued and expanded upon the adventures of the crew of the Enterprise, the owner of the TARDIS, those two FBI agents down in the basement, and the fictional denizens of a zillion other cultish TV shows.
‘What do women want?’ Freud wanted to know. Why doesn’t anyone ask, What do men want? Men can be just as bizarre and contradictory as women can be, as is superbly depicted in the funny and sexy Dangerous Beauty.
Written by Rick Berman and Michael Piller — the two major creative forces behind recent incarnations of the 60’s series — and directed by Jonathan Frakes (aka Cmdr. Riker), Insurrection, like all good Trek and all good science fiction, isn’t about warp drives or phasers or other cool technology but about people: How do we keep track of what’s really important in our fast-paced, modern world?
The first thing you notice in the USA Networks movie Moby Dick is that little Elliott from E.T. has grown up really nicely, and gee, he’s kinda cute. Henry Thomas does a nice accent as Ismael, the 19th-century Nantucket schoolteacher with a ‘burning desire’ for the sea. The next thing you notice are the bad omens.
Maybe in 50 years, Gus Van Sant’s Psycho will be the classic that needs protection from upstart filmmakers. Somehow, though, I doubt it. Not that Pyscho is a bad movie in and of itself — in fact, I think if Hitchcock’s film were not around for comparison, Van Sant’s film would be much more warmly received. But Van Sant’s insistence on not merely remaking but re-creating, on a shot-by-shot basis, Hitchcock’s film is ultimately its downfall.
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