Fearless

If you ever want to experience an airline crash, then the final reel of Fearless is a must see. Unfortunately, the time it takes to get there may seem like a long wait between flights.

Jeff Bridges plays a San Francisco architect whose business trip to Houston is rudely interrupted by a nose dive into a corn field.

He's one of the few survivors of the crash and, despite his long-standing fear of flying, emerges from the wreckage as a calm and confident hero. In fact, regardless of a mysterious wound in his side, he's gotten it into his head that he's invulnerable and that something special about his presence is what saved his fellow survivors. You almost expect him to start turning water into wine.

Another survivor, Rosie Perez, copes with the ordeal in a different manner. Her baby son was killed in the landing and she's heading toward a catatonic state. The only person who can help her recover is Bridges.

Fortunately, he's able to squeeze her into the schedule of his new-found occupation as life-affirming savior.

Fearless has potential, but it goes off-track midway through and collides with its own style. The movie is torn between allegory and psychology, and ends up going neither direction.

It's as if Fearless lacks the strength of its own convictions.

Gift

An ambiguous mix of reality and fiction underlies Gift, the drug-laced eulogy to the punk generation by Perry Farrell and Casey Niccoli.

Farrell, formerly of the band Jane's Addiction, is now with Porno for Pyros; co-director Niccoli is his ex-girlfriend. In Gift, they play a husband-and-wife team whose lives take a walk on the wild side, a destructive ride through rock-and-roll, bad managers and enough Percodan and Darvon to start a pharmacy.

Gift is hard-edged, darkly humorous and unsparing in its view of the downward slide of the L.A. punk scene. It offers a high energy kick, along with some good concert and recording-session footage.

Fatal Instinct

Another parody, another dollar. That seems to be the rationale behind Fatal Instinct, since it attempts to spoof half a dozen thrillers and to copy the incredibly stupid joke formula of The Naked Gun flicks. It fails on most counts — which is hard to understand, considering how little it's trying to do in the first place.

Armand Assante plays a lawyer/police officer. He arrests suspects at night and defends them in the morning. Sherilyn Fenn is literally his straight-shooting secretary. She loves Assante, but is haunted by memories of an abusive husband, who's stalking her. Kate Nelligan plays Assante's wife, a lust-driven schemer who's just discovered that her husband's insurance policy contains a triple indemnity clause. Sean Young is an ice-pick-wielding femme fatale with a taste for bizarre sex, blackmail and plot loopholes.

The gags are obvious, and the punchlines mostly refer to key parts of Assante's anatomy. Fatal Instinct is more than just a bad comedy: it's such a dreary, unimaginative farce that it can't even get a Three Stooges gag right.

The movie's only unique wrinkle is Assante's odd performance, which creates a character reminiscent of an underplayed version of William F. Buckley. The real Buckley is actually funnier to watch, however — especially when he rolls his eyeballs.

The best thing to be said about Fatal Instinct is that there probably won't be a sequel.

The Remains of the Day

It's a little difficult to describe The Remains of the Day without making it sound veddy British, veddy proper and veddy boring. Granted, it's quiet and reserved. It's also engrossing and surprisingly poignant.

The Remains of the Day works as a subtle critique of emotional repression and the neo-fascist direction taken by upper-class English society prior to World War II. It also clicks as a "non-love story," as it dissects the peculiar mind of a perfect servant. And yes, stars Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson are probably going to be nominated again for Oscars.

Hopkins plays a joyless Jeeves, a head butler who has completely submerged himself into the act of serving. He has an exact eye for detail, and is totally devoted to his master. But he acts like a detached automaton, and his voice registers with the impersonal politeness of a recorded phone message. Even when informed of his father's death, Hopkins keeps working through a dinner party with barely a wrinkle in his demeanor.

His life takes a turn for the romantic, however, when the new housekeeper (Thompson) arrives. He finds himself increasingly attracted to her, but simply incapable of dealing with his feelings. Her youth and livelier manner appeal to him, but he's too repressed to admit to the slightest glimmer of feeling.

Meanwhile, his master (James Fox) is busy selling-out the country. It's 1936, and Fox is desperately trying to make peace between England and Germany. It becomes increasingly obvious to everyone except Hopkins that his master — who's mistaken Hitler for a reasonable man and is advocating appeasement — is a dangerous idiot who's being played for a sap by the Third Reich.

Hopkins, on the other hand, stays busy chasing dust bunnies in the hallway while history unfolds around him.

One of the remarkable feats accomplished by The Remains of the Day is its ability to be emotionally moving while presenting a character who's so thoroughly out of touch with his own feelings.

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance

In the summer of 1990, war almost erupted in a small town in Canada — over a golf course. The Mohawk Nation squared off against the Canadian police and army in a land dispute that traced back to the 17th century, when the French first tried to seize the area surrounding the island of Montreal.

The documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance presents a no-holds-barred account of the tense stalemate between the two sides that dragged on for months and nearly resulted in a full-scale battle. The movie is directed by Alanis Obomsawin, a Native American filmmaker who belongs to the Abenaki Nation. She and her crew stayed with the Mohawks through the entire confrontation, even after 1,000 Canadian troops surrounded their camp with guns and barbed-wire fences.

The basic issues of the confrontation seemed, at first, straightforward. The Mohawk village of Kanehsatake owned land that bordered the Canadian town of Oka. The folks of Oka wanted to expand a golf course, and that meant building on tribal land. The mayor of Oka, Jean Ouellette, decided to handle the affair in the old-fashioned way — he simply proceeded to take the land, without talking to the Mohawks. Not surprisingly, the Nation got mad.

In retaliation, the Mohawks erected a barricade across the dirt road that led to the golf course. Increasingly violent confrontations took place between members of the Nation and police, resulting in the death of an officer and the seizure of the Mercier Bridge by Mohawk warriors.

When the Quebec Human Rights Commission attempted to intervene, Canada's government knew it had a major problem on its hands. Technically, the Mohawk Nation is accepted by the Canadian government as a separate political entity from Canada. However, the administration of the conservative prime minister at the time,Brian Mulroney, didn't want to admit it. So,for all practical purposes, Canada and the Mohawk Nation entered a state of war.

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance successfully captures the pain, panic and confusion that dominated the events of 1990. Obomsawin is clearly concerned with the Mohawks' view of the confrontations, but she presents a clear and balanced understanding of both sides' perspectives. She also conveys the degree to which each side was miscommunicating with the other. (After a while, the townspeople of Kanehsatake and Oka wouldn't even speak to each other.)

The Air Up There

Wasn't it Will Rogers who once said that the reason you don't see too many great basketball movies is because there ain't any? Okay, he didn't really say that, but he might have after seeing The Air Up There.

It's not such a bad movie — it just isn't much of anything. The Air Up There tries to be an uplifting comedy, but mostly ends up being dull and pointless. The whole movie is so lacking in focus that even the line that explains the title goes by with barely a notice.

Kevin Bacon plays an assistant basketball coach at St. Joseph University. He has a bum knee, a bad attitude and a big mouth. He's supposed to go to Boise to recruit a new player, but follows a hunch and winds up in Kenya, instead. He's seen pictures of a tribal chief's son who's 6' 8", and knows how to slam dunk. All Bacon has to do is teach him how to play the rest of the game.

Well, Bacon does have a few other problems. He has to win the tribe's trust,
reconcile the chief with one of his sons and coach the whole village through a winner-takes-all basketball game against the greedy copper company that's threatening to steal the tribe's land. (If you can't guess how the movie ends, you're just going to have to splurge for a ticket. Though if you can't figure out who wins the game, you probably can't figure out how to drive to the theater.)

Wouldn't it be easier to just buy the player a new car and give him straight As?

Shadowlands

You don't have to know who C. S. Lewis was to enjoy Shadowlands, but it helps if you do. Many people know him best for his children's novel The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, For others, Lewis is notable for his writings on God, ethics and religion, in such works as The Allegory of Love and The Screwtape Letters. (However, since Lewis never addressed the topic of professional hockey, he may be unknown to some of our staff.)

Lewis was a glaring example of the English intellectual who wrote passionately about lofty ideals, but who led such a cloistered life that he had little direct experience with much of anything. Even when he wrote about sex (as he did in That Hideous Strength), it was so abstract that no one was sure what the heck he was talking about.

That's where Shadowlands comes in. The movie deals with Lewis's brief marriage to an American woman whom he barely knew, but who was a fan of his books. She was fleeing a lousy ex-husband, she wanted to remain in England and she needed to be married to do so. The marriage was more than one of mere convenience, however. There was real affection between the two, which provided Lewis with a rare encounter with his own feelings - which he desperately needed.

In the lead roles, Anthony Hopkins continues his reign as the British master of repressed gentility, while Debra Winger proves, once again, that she's a solid performer. Richard Attenborough directed Shadowlands, and was able to do it without a cast of thousands or an entire continent to film on. The result is a fine, though occasionally predictable, character study.

In fact, I can honestly say that Shadowlands is the best film I've seen so far this year.

(Ed. Note: This review was published on Jan. 5. That is way I could say the final line.)

Ghost in the Machine

Ghost in the Machine is a horror movie set in Cleveland. Already I'm scared. The movie's monster lurks in computers. Now I'm terrified. Even worse, he's capable of running up your phone bill with calls to 900 numbers. AAAAHHHHH!!!!!

Despite all this mayhem, Ghost in the Machine starts out as a bucolic tale about an electronic repair guy who just happens to moonlight as a mad dog serial killer. They call him the Address Book Killer, because he steals address books, then murders everyone who's listed in them.

One day, Nancy Allen comes into his shop and accidentally leaves her address book. The killer is instantly smitten by her (you can tell by the way he keeps sniffing at her addresses). But while speeding to her house to slaughter Allen and her teenage son, he smashes up all over the freeway.

Now, this is the tricky part. He's rushed to the hospital and placed inside a Cat Scan. Lightning strikes the main power lines and there's a massive power surge. The killer dies just as his brain wave patterns are being processed by the computer during the surge. The killer's now "inside" the computer and is interfaced to the Datanet system. (I hope you were taking notes on this. A quiz may appear later in this review.)

Allen's life suddenly becomes a living nightmare. She discovers that her phone bill has been jacked up, her bank account has been shut down and her friends are being bumped off. Her life as a single mother of a teenage son (read: it's already nightmarish)has just taken a turn for the worse. (And she's still in Cleveland.)

That's when she meets Chris Mulkey, a chain-smoking computer hacker on the side of goodness. Unfortunately, he's not on the side of fashion or personal hygiene, but Allen is in no position to be picky about the company she keeps.

Ghost in the Machine's main claim to fame is that it was directed by Rachel Talalay, the director who scored some minor critical notice for Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (on Elm Street, that is). She has a strong visual style, but no apparent grasp of narrative logic. Her sense of pacing is nothing to write home about, either.

But these weaknesses won't bother the movie's audience. During the screening of Ghost in the Machine, I sat behind three teenagers who kept playfully slugging each other in the head through the whole flick. There really is too much violence in the cinema.

Black Beauty

It's that time of summer when the the days get shorter, the nights get cooler and the list of sticky-sweet children's movies grows longer. Last year at this time, every other new film was about a kid playing baseball. This summer's theme is the return of the critter flick, as animal sagas unspool across the multiplex screen. First, it was Lassie doing her super-smart, collie-to-the-rescue thing. Coming soon is a girl-and-her-seal caper. Luckily, the current production of Black Beauty is the obvious class item of this pack. See it, then stop while you're ahead.

Based more closely than previous versions on the 1877 children's novel by Anna Sewell, Black Beauty is often more melancholy than sweet, offering a distinctly grim view of 19th-century England. Narrated by the horse itself, the film follows Black Beauty's rise and fall through the British class system as he's sold to a succession of masters. Most of his journey is a harsh, downward spiral that's made bearable primarily by the horse's sense of ironic detachment and knowledge of human foibles. Though the narration technique has resulted in a bunch of stupid Mr. Ed jokes by some critics, this Black Beauty is actually a reworking of Robert Bresson's Au Hazard Balthazar. Granted, it's a little odd to compare a kiddie movie to a French masterpiece, but Black Beauty is that well done.

This film marks the directorial debut of Caroline Thompson, who's previously worked as the screenwriter on Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and the most recent version of The Secret Garden. In some ways, she's not her own best director, but her sense of story craft and sympathy for outsiders still makes her one of the finest scriptwriters in Hollywood.

Barcelona

It's the last decade of the Cold War, and the two American yuppies in the movie Barcelona spend their time carrying on a rivalry that seems to have begun when they were kids. They're cousins and they're from Midwestern, old-money stock. They're also dim bulbs who haven't the slightest idea what's going on around them, in this cross between Reality Bites and The Ugly American.

Ted Boynton (Taylor Nichols) plays a Barcelona-based sales representative for a Chicago company. His cousin Fred (Chris Eigeman) is a U.S. Navy officer who's been sent to Spain as an advance man for an impending visit by the Sixth Fleet. Ted is very introverted and shy, especially around women, and has maintained only limited contact with the culture and people around him. Fred, on the other hand, is a jingoistic Yank who fancies himself a romantic hero and behaves as if he hasn't a clue as to what country he's in.

Which pretty much sums up Barcelona, a movie by yups, for yups and about yups. You almost have to wear a school tie just to be admitted to the movie, and having endured a stint at Yale is a must for enjoying it. Otherwise, it's a little hard to relate to these two well-bred bozos, who behave as if they cold utter the immortal line, "Tennis, anyone?" at any moment.

Of course, this character-as-caricature irony is part of the joke in Barcelona. Ted and Fred are neither the brightest nor the best. They're Reagan-era clones of Kennedy-era idealism, warts and all, a mixed bag of old-fashioned patriotism, youthful naivete and untested convictions. And, despite their presumably important jobs, they spend most of the movie arguing endlessly about Spanish women.

Ted is obsessed with Monteserrat (Tushka Bergen), a translator with the World Trade Fair in Barcelona. It seems, however, as if he can't quite reconcile their love affair with her continued relationship with her boyfriend, Ramon (Pep Munne). In turn, Ramon is a radical anti-American journalist, who's writing articles fingering Fred as a CIA agent. Fred, meanwhile, is chasing after Marta (Mira Sorvino), who appears to be always willing and waiting.

At times, Barcelona is sly and genuinely satiric. But director Whit Stillman (who also did Metropolitan) is so thoroughly a by-product of the upper-crust culture he's trying to rib that the jokes lack any deflating quality. The result is a little like being stuck at a debutante ball, where you can't escape any of the inane chatter.

32 Short Films About Glenn Gould

Classical musician Glenn Gould was generally considered to be a gifted performer and one of the most brilliant interpreters of Bach. He was also an intensely neurotic man who devoted a good portion of his relatively brief life (he died at the age of 50) to distancing himself from as much direct human contact as possible. Gould retired from live concert performances when he was 32, claiming that audio recording was a more democratic means of reaching a wide audience. But in truth, he was simply happier dealing with machines than with people. Not surprisingly, extreme isolation was a recurring theme both in Gould's music and his life.

That's why the opening shot of 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould is a vista of an icy Canadian field. Gould (Colm Feore) moves through the distance looking like a hobo (his sense of fashion was often appalling) and lost in a state of complete self-absorption. This scene also sets the tone for a movie that avoids the traditional pitfalls of bio-pics by opting for indirect impressions of both the man and his music. The effect is a film that's both fascinating and slow, intellectually incisive and emotionally detached. Much like its own subject, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould has an impassioned feel for its material, but no direct way to express it.

The 32 sections of the movie range from conventional interviews with people who knew Gould to recreations of odd moments in his life. Some scenes are as brief as "45 Seconds and a Chair" (which is an exact description of the vignette). Others frame strange moments of revelation about Gould, such as his habit of hanging out at truck stops in order to hear the conversations of average people.

Gould loved humankind — it was people he couldn't deal with.

Derek Jarman's Blue

Okay. The film's actually 76 minutes of nothing but a blue screen. It's a deep, dark, rich shade of blue — but it's the only visual image you're going to see. The movie, the "action," takes place on the soundtrack. That's where Jarman, the dying wunderkind of modern English cinema, unleashes an audacious barrage of narrative and music detailing his losing battle against the AIDS virus. It's a freewheeling mix of controlled anger, mocking humor, surreal visions and genuine melancholy, as Jarman confronts his impending death. Blue not only works, it works brilliantly. So don't be scared by either its experimental structure or subject matter. Blue is a piece of visual music that soars.

Blue Chips

William Friedkin continues his downward plunge as a filmmaker with another ill-conceived and poorly made movie. Nick Nolte plays a tightly strung college basketball coach who's shocked to discover that great players are bought, not recruited. Ed O'Neill is the sports reporter who starts riding him about the scandal. (That's right, Bobby Knight gets nailed by Al Bundy. And this flick isn't even a comedy.) J.T. Walsh plays the satanic director of the alumni association with a constant emphasis on overstatement. Only Shaquille O'Neal acts as if he knows what he's doing, both on and off the court. Even the basketball scenes (and there are only a few) are so badly shot that they're impossible to follow. Let's face it, this movie is so bad that it makes OSU's current season look good.

8 Seconds

Luke Perry of Beverly Hills 90210 mega-fame gives up his Beverly Hills zip code for the rodeo ring in this slow-moving bio-pic about world champion bull rider Lane Frost, As played in the film, Frost is a dull sweetheart of a guy who suffers only momentarily from a swelled head when he becomes famous, In between numerous sunsets (and this movie is loaded with them), he tries to win the love of his aloof father James Rebhorn) and regain the respect of his wife (Northern Exposures Cynthia Geary). But this saga about an all-American boy has no spark — even the bull riding scenes are unimpressive. Only Stephen Baldwin gets a few good scenes as Frost's abrasive redneck pal. Otherwise, the mechanical bull in Urban Cowboy delivered more exciting rodeo action.

Six Degrees of Separation

There's an old Simon and Garfunkel song that lyrically lampoons the aching emptiness of mainstream intellectual conversation. At its best, Six Degrees of Separation, deftly directed by Fred Schepisi, does much the same. But in its dissection of verbal pretentiousness and upper-class vanity, the movie often runs the risk of becoming infected by the very snottiness it's kicking.

Six Degrees of Separation is adapted from the critically acclaimed play by John Guare (who also wrote the screenplay) which, in turn, was based on an actual incident that took place a few years ago in New York. The basic storyline sticks close to the real case about a gay con artist who successfully film-flammed a who's who list of the Upper East Side elite into believing that he was Sidney Poitiers' son. The discovery that Poitier doesn't have a son punctured a few balloons on the social circuit that year.

But gullibility is the least of the characters' problems in Six Degrees of Separation. Their delusions about themselves are what makes them such perfect targets for the sting. That, combined with some old-fashioned liberal guilt and a desire to believe that their own children might actually like them (the con artist claims to be a college chum of their kids and worms his way into the parents' affections with cozy tales about their children's respect for them). Unfortunately, the adults are politically naive and the families are all basically dysfunctional.

Will Smith (of NBC's The Fresh Prince of Bel Air) does a surprisingly decent turn as the con man with a knack for tall tales. His pathological narcissism and fondness for rough trade are the only obvious kinks in his carefully manufactured personality. At first glance, he's the ideal son. (After we meet some of the real kids, Smith still looks good.)

It's Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing, however, who carry the weight of this film. Sutherland plays an art dealer who peddles his second-hand knowledge of great artists with the superficial sincerity of a man who's substituted learning for living.

The concluding irony is old hat, but parts of the ride we take to get there are
genuinely funny. Most of the characters in Six Degrees of Separation are the biggest windbags you'd ever hope (or hope not) to meet, but their never-ending babble is often both hysterically funny and emotionally touching.

Just in case you're wondering, the movie's title refers to the theory that everyone on earth knows someone who knows someone, until the whole thing comes full circle. The theory suggests that only six contacts exist between you and everyone else.

How about that - life is just a cosmic chain letter.

A Good Man in Africa

A movie that satirically mixes British diplomatic idiocy and Third World corruption should have the fizzy kick of a gin and tonic. Unfortunately, A Good Man in Africa,
the latest film by Australian director Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy), serves up flat, warm cola as it meanders pointlessly to its obvious conclusion. The movie's attempts at dry, cynical wit have all the bite of a toothless old dog, while its jabs at post-colonial African politics consist mostly of stereotypical English attitudes toward any country that has too many consonants in its name.

Colin Friels plays a mid-level English diplomat, a secretary to the West African nation of Kinjanja. He's a burned-out government employee who devotes most of his time to sex and drinking, activities he interrupts only with occasional bursts of sarcastic monologue about everyone he knows. His embassy is the kind that, normally, would be most noted for the staff's soiled white suits. In this case, however, it receives a bit more respect due to the fact the Kinjanja possesses rich oil reserves along its shoreline.

Friels is sent to work on Professor Adekunle (Louis Gossett Jr.), the man most likely to emerge as president in the country's upcoming election. Likewise, Adekunle goes to work on Friels, for the seemingly noble scholar has a bad case of dictatorial ambition. He wants to own the country — literally. The only thing standing in his way is the movie title's "good man" — Sean Connery, who plays a Scottish version of Mother Theresa with a nine-par handicap.

Beresford, who forayed into Africa previously with the equally empty-headed film Mr. Johnson, seems to think that his Academy Award for Driving Miss Daisy made him an expert on race relations. Unfortunately, he doesn't know enough to quit when he's not ahead.

Timecop

Not many actors look impressive while leg-splitting over a sink in boxer shorts. That's one accolade Jean-Claude Van Damme wins hands down, er, feet up as the case may be. Most amazing, the seams of his shorts don't tear. I think I understand what is meant by the phrase "star power." It's all in the BVDs.

Come to the think of it, it's a major plot point in Timecop that Van Damme survives an assassination attempt in 1994 because he was wearing a Kelvar vest for an undershirt. I thought this movie was about time travel, but I'm beginning to detect another theme.

Van Damme's wife (Mia Sara) was not wearing any underwear when she was killed. This puts the guy with the million-dollar kickboxing legs into a royal snit 'til the year 2004. It's a good thing he joined the Time Enforcement Commission (TEC). He might get a chance to go back and change the past. Besides, Sara has second-billing on the credits, demanding that she have more than a five-minute appearance.

It seems that TEC was secretly formed in the 1990s when a crackpot scientist from the Star Wars program discovered time travel. When the government realizes the danger of people going back to loot old movies for ideas, they quickly create a police force to cruise the space/time continuum for felons and really good doughnuts. (The cream puffs really were much better in the' 50s.)

Ron Silver is put at the head of the Senate committee in charge of the TEC. Since Silver manages to combine the warmth of Bob Dole with the strict ethical standards of Richard Nixon, it's a safe bet that he's the villain of the movie. Strangely, his main ambition is to steal from the past in order to buy the presidency in 2004. The plot has a dopey, desperate feel to it. Or else Silver is a Democrat, in which case he is simply being pragmatic.

He and Van Damme whisk back to 1994, and old JC gets a second chance to save his wife. He also gets a chance to beat the stuffings out of lots of bad guys, though Van Damme should have started with the screenwriters. Timecop doesn't make a whole lot of sense, past or future. It also fails to achieve the oddball emotional touch that it reaches for during the last stretch. Instead, the movie ends up all kicks and no heart.

But I still want to know where the guy buys his shorts.

Guarding Tess

Being the First Lady isn't easy. But according to Guarding Tess, being a former First Lady is even worse. After all, with all of those snoopy, gun-waving Secret Service agents around, how is she supposed to get any shopping done? And what about the lousy treatment she gets from the president? He owes his career to her late husband, but the big lug still can't show up to the dedication of the presidential library.

Worse still, this former First Lady is stuck in central Ohio, Cripes! Jackie O. got New York and the jet set scene. Even Nancy Reagan got Rodeo Drive. What does this lady get? Sawmill Road?

Actually, that's about the sum of Guarding Tess. The movie has a few funny moments, a couple of cheap attempts at heart-string tugging and a very ill-conceived thriller plot line near its end. It's not exactly a Grumpy Old First Ladies, but Walter Matthau might have been an improvement in the title role.

Not that Shirley MacLaine is bad. To the contrary - she's too good for the part. She even manages to breath some life into this borderline caricature of an elderly widow who has nothing better to do with her time than tyrannize the Secret Service men who protect her, She's supposed to be a wounded soul full of strong, unbending ideals, but as the role is written, the character comes across as a petty egotist who needs relatively powerless people whom she can safely shove around.

Not that Nicolas Cage isn't shovable. As the head Secret Service agent assigned to this detail, he gives a flat performance as an uptight yup who's mostly concerned about his career stagnating in a dead-end job in mid-Ohio, Eventually, he comes to an understanding of MacLaine's eccentric behavior — but I still think that she should have just slugged him. If nothing else, it would have juiced up the movie.

It's no surprise that Guarding Tess plays like the set-up for a sit-com. Director Hugh Wilson is a far better producer of TV fare than he is a filmmaker. Perhaps he needs to realize that there isn't anything wrong with doing TV; Wilson is wasting his talents on the big screen.

And yes, Guarding Tess is the movie that, in theory, takes place in and around Columbus, but which was actually filmed in and around Baltimore, But that's not so surprising; many parts of Baltimore bear a striking resemblance to Parsons Avenue. It's a natural as a stand-in.

Crush

There's a lot of steaminess in Crush, but most of it's coming from the bubbling mud pits surrounding Rotorua, the geothermal resort in New Zealand that's the setting for the film. Despite the movie's storyline, the sexual tensions in Crush are surprisingly marginal. The film wants to be a hip, mordant film noir thriller, but it ends up playing more like a kinky version of an existentialist drivers ed. flick. Sort of a Blood on the Highway, Ingmar Bergman style.

The really big crush takes place at the beginning of the movie. Lane (Marcia Gay Harden)and Christina (Donogh Rees) are driving across New Zealand's exotic landscape to Rotorua. Christina is a literary critic who's heading there to interview a novelist whose career is in eclipse. Lane and Christina may, or may not, be lovers — Crush leaves that question hanging. Either way, Christina is clearly the better driver.

Unfortunately, she discovers that fact only after letting Lane behind the wheel. Lane is an American: she's brash and wild, she drives way too fast and she can't steer to save her rear. She promptly looses control on a curve and totals both the car and Christina.

Lane survives the wreck with barely a scratch. Christina is nearly crushed by the car. Presumably, she's even more crushed when she discovers that Lane has decided to walk the rest of the way to town, casually abandoning her to the New Zealand health care system.

For reasons that are never clear, Lane becomes determined to move in on the novelist. She first meets up with his daughter, the boyish-looking Angela (Caitlin Bossley). Lane takes the kid on a wild night through bad bars and cheap motel rooms. She seduces Angela, which is how she's introduced to dad.

Colin (William Zappa) is, at first, crushed to find them in bed together. Then he gets a crush on Lane. (Why not? Everyone else seems to have a crush on her.) This time, at least, there's no question about whether the pair is having sex. They do. Lots of it.

But now, Angela feels a little crushed by the situation. And poor flattened Christina isn't out of the picture. There's bound to be crushing events yet to come.

Crush is the first feature film by Alison Maclean, a New Zealander by way of Canada. The flick has the rough-and-tumble style of a good B-movie, but it's too overt and predictable for its own good. In fact, it has all the subtlety of a sledge hammer's crushing blow.

Sirens

Sirens may be the first art film ever to attract the beer-swilling residents of sport bars without it having to be "date" night. The reason is simple: you get to see Elle MacPherson naked. A shrewd theater owner would already be lining up a kiosk in the lobby stocked with the swimwear edition of Sports Illustrated.

That is the obvious selling point for Sirens, and it's a film full of seemingly obvious points. The movie flaunts a kitsch-ridden veneer that resembles a Gustav Klimt poster posed for by Fabio. Part of the fun of Sirens is contained in its calculated mix of flagrant tackiness and half-baked profundity. Sirens is part serious, but it is also part satire. It is also a very sexy, funny movie.

It's the early 1930s and the Archbishop of Sydney has a problem. An Australian painter infamous for his ability to shock has submitted to an international exhibition an etching of a voluptuous Venus nailed to the cross. Hugh Grant (of Maurice and Impromptu) is the English-bred cleric who is sent to persuade the artist to withdraw the work. Grant is young, well mannered, and he claims to know something about art. He also can't go to the toilet without his copy of The Decline of the West.

Along for the journey is his wife, Tara Fitzgerald (Hear My Song). She's a pale English rose and behaves like a runaway from a James Ivory production. They are both very civilized and ever so slightly modern (hubby even smokes Turkish cigarettes). However, the Australian town they arrive in is populated mostly by filthy, belligerent drunks who casually greet strangers with a hearty "fuck off." The James Ivory-type movie comes to an abrupt end.

Instead, they encounter Sam Neill, a painter whose displays of wanton sexuality are overtly rooted in his latent sense of voyeurism. He's also something of a scatter-brained intellectual who divides his time between rantings about the evil of Christianity and mumblings about his own past life. He has a unique outlook on life. He also has a unique living arrangement, sharing his house and family with his three models (now you see where MacPherson comes in).

Neill lives in a kind of Eden, as long as you don't mind the assorted snakes, spiders, lizards and large insects that infest virtually every scene. It's a warped, sensual paradise that briefly offers a strange illusion of sexual innocence.

Sirens offers some solid humor and an elusive charm. Even the movie's predictable structure — plus the clipping of the Indian shipwreck scene that concluded the Australian version — gradually melts into its own distinctive brand of wit.

Hard Target

It's almost impossible to take Jean-Claude Van Damme seriously. After all, he combines the bland screen persona of Chuck Norris with the thickly accented blankness of Christopher Lambert. And in Hard Target, he sports Steven Seagal's hairdo. But he also possesses the vaulting ambitions of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Jean-Claude is anxious to Van Damme his way to the top of the action heap. Hard Target is just crazy enough to place him closer to that goal.

Violence — and lots of it — is the point of Hard Target. Until a few last-minute cuts were made, the movie was threatened with an NC-17 rating. Even with the snips, Hard Target scores well on the Joe Bob Briggs' meter. It uses enough hi-tech firepower to be a visual trade show for the National Rifle Association.

The truly weird thing about this pyrotechnic debacle, however, is that it's supposed to be making a social statement about the plight of the homeless. (I can't wait to see Jean-Claude tackle health-care reform.)

Hard Target is set in New Orleans. Perennial movie villain Lance Henriksen is operating a unique service for chubby millionaires who want the thrill of hunting human prey. Homeless vets are recruited as targets in exchange for $10,000 — if they survive the chase. Since the rules of the hunt are totally stacked against them, Henriksen doesn't have to worry about overhead.

All goes well until our villian runs afoul of the Gene Kelly of high-flying kicks. The bad guy has about 6,000 thugs working for him. Van Damme has his uncle, who's played by Wilford Brimley. Guess who mops up the place?

Despite its extreme stupidity, Hard Target is Van Damme's best film. The whole movie crackles with the energy of an MTV production gone mad. It's the American debut of Hong Kong action director John Woo, who choreographs violence as if he were Busby Berkeley on steroids. Woo has garnered a sizable cult following in the States, even though American access to his chop suey epics such as A Better Tomorrow II is limited.

Hard Target almost works, in spite of its sheer ludicrousness. Granted, it's unremittingly bloody, suggestively homophobic and politically insincere. But by Van Damme's standards, it's almost Gone With the Wind.

Besides, it's a comedy — isn't it?

Maverick

There's nothing I like better than a good Western. Someday, I even hope to see one.

Maverick, the latest movie to come down the genre's pike, isn't a good Western. It's not all together bad — it has a few daffy moments, for instance, but the gap between each joke is wider and drier than the Mojave Desert. It doesn't help that Maverick's storyline is lousy and was pretty much lifted from The Sting II (yes, The Sting II — they couldn't even steal well). These points, as well as Mel Gibson's school boy sense of humor, leave the movie running nearly on empty.

Loosely based on the old TV series, Maverick begins with a nice parody of the hangman bit from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. But the minute that Gibson fades into the flashback that takes up most of the film, the story becomes hopelessly locked into a tired exercise of predictable con artist stunts and pointless inside jokes. When Danny Glover pops up to make his unbilled cameo appearance in a Lethal Weapon gag, you suddenly realize that Maverick is closer in spirit to a mediocre Road movie, minus Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

The gist of the story is that the title character, Bret Maverick, is on his way to
St. Louis for a high stakes, winner-takes-all poker championship. To raise the money for the entry fee, he plans to collect debts from old friends. But his pals keep stiffing him, so he starts working his way through some fast card hands on the trail. That's how he meets Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster), a lady-like thief who's also headed for St. Louis. They're quickly joined by Zane Cooper(James Garner), a stern lawman who spends his time telling everybody else what they ought to do.

Garner still has an easy charm about him, and Foster provides some good come-back material, but Gibson.is down right annoying. He delivers a smirking portrayal based upon excessive eyeball rolling and bad fits of the giggles. You half expect him to start twitching his ears like Dumbo. Anything for a laugh, mate.

When we do finally get to the poker game, Maverick loads up a river boat with TV stars. But does anybody really remember Doug McClure, Henry Darrow and Robert Fuller these days? And even if they do, shouldn't they just keep it to themselves? There's also a sprinkling of cameos by such country and western singers as Waylon Jennings and Clint Black, but they're largely wasted in throw away bits that would barely pass muster in a Kenny Rogers' Gambler opus.

And let's face it, when a movie can't out do Kenny Rogers, then it's in pretty bad shape. Maverick earns one star for Garner, one for Foster and a half star for the landscape.

Forbidden Love

"The whole world was full of stupid myths about women."

That comment is made by one of the interviewees in the documentary Forbidden Love. Stupid, pulp-mentality myth about lesbians — and women in general — is what the film successfully exposes in its recreation of cheap novels and sexual realities from the 1950s.

Produced for the National Film Board of Canada, Forbidden Love is a fascinating study of the pop culture and poignant realities of that eta. It begins with the lurid gay novels that filled paperback racks during die waning years of the Eisenhower age. Interspersed between the close-ups of melodramatic book covers are interviews with women who survived the mentally -— and sometimes physically — violent repression of the period. And guess what? Those women are still queer, and quite happy about, thank you very much.

The 1950s was a seriously screwy decade. The fact that these women, or any lesbians, survived it intact is a great tribute to their sheer fortitude.

Much Ado About Nothing

Shakespeare's back and Branagh's got him. Again.

And Kenneth Branagh s production of Much Ado About Nothing is a good, solid piece of work. Too often, people behave as if Shakespeare requires a Ph.D. to be understood. Actually, Old Willy frequently pitched his plays to the rubes in the back bleachers. In his direction of the film, Branagh is reaching for the same mass audience.

The Anglo-American cast of Much Ado is part of that pitch. While Branagh cast many of his chums from the Royal Shakespeare Company in the film, he also sprinkled it with an odd assortment of Yanks. In turn, the Brits have toned down their accents, and the dialogue sounds like a mellow, mid-Atlantic symphony.

The performances are as well-executed as the film itself. As Benedick and Beatrice, Shakespeare's flirtatiously quarrelsome lovers, Branagh and Emma Thompson play off each other with the witty agility of a seasoned couple (which, of course, they are). But it's Thompson who carries the real spark of the film, successfully providing her heroine with fierce intelligence and suppressed passion.

Keanu Reeves' performance, however, is a notable exception to those of his colleagues. As the conniving Don John, Reeves conveys a spooky blank look — as if he is constantly searching for the cue cards.

Much Ado About Nothing is a well made film, but Branagh can't quite overcome the long-standing suspicion that it's minor Shakespeare. The play itself often reads like a mere diversion — a quick comedic study tossed off in a rush. A bit of sex, a little slapstick and a fast resolution.

Despite Branagh's reputation as the wunderkind of British cinema, he is actually a visually weak filmmaker. And, he is often incapable of exploring the material for anything more than the obvious.

Several years ago, when he directed Henry V, he coasted along on the play's grand, epic structure. When he tries to deal with the scaled-down subtleties of Much Ado, his ambitions shrink as well.

Both the strengths and weaknesses of Branagh's film making lie in his derivative approach. Henry V worked, in part, because Branagh found a good model in Orson Welles' Falstaff. In fact, Henry was essentially a sequel to Welles' more complex and audacious masterpiece. With Much Ado About Nothing, Branagh borrows from the populist school of Franco Zeffirelli.

Specifically, Branagh copies Zeffirelli's production of The Taming of the Shrew. But where Zeffirelli effectively pushed the material to extremes, which resulted in a sharp mix of Italian earthiness and farce, Branagh doesn't push far enough in any direction. The closest Much Ado comes to challenging the material is Michael Keaton's truly bizarre performance as Dogberry — but it stems from the actor's sense of high energy.

Still, Shakespeare is Shakespeare, and Much Ado About Nothing has a good feel for the bard's more biting barbs about men, women and the contrariness of love.

Manhattan Murder Mystery

Let's face it — Woody Allen should never have abandoned comedy. Oh sure, Crimes and Misdemeanors was a distinguished statement film, and Husbands and Wives inadvertently acquired a confessional touch. But Woody is no Bergman(either Ingmar or Ingrid). Which is fine. After all, Bergman is no fun.

Comedy is Allen's true art. One of the great pleasures of his latest work, Manhattan Murder Mystery, is that it's funny. Off-beat, to be sure — but funny.

In Manhattan Murder Mystery, Allen and Diane Keaton play a middle-aged couple whose long marriage is swamped by mid-life crisis. He's a book editor whose newest author is an alluring female adventurer(Anjelica Huston). Keaton s temptation comes in the form of an old friend (Alan Alda), who's suffering through a divorce.

Fortunately, a mysterious death in the apartment next door intervenes in their unraveling marriage. Murder soon becomes the adhesive that rebonds their relationship.

The movie almost works as a neurotic variation on The Thin Man films. Somewhat reminiscent of Nora Charles, Keaton enters the chase with an increasingly manic sense of excitement. For most of Manhattan Murder Mystery, Woody is the skittish straight man to Keaton's hyper sleuth. This is Keaton's finest performance in years (though it's a bit like Annie Hall possessed by Jessica Fletcher).

The quirky chemistry that previously clicked between her and Allen is still there. Though her role was originally written for Mia Farrow (who was too busy filing charges against Allen to do the film), Keaton resonates in the part.

The only weak link in the movie is Allen himself. His performance seems distracted, as if he was spending most of his time conferring with attorneys (which he was). But he also seems uncomfortable returning to his early, nebbish persona.

He does, however, get some of the best lines in the movie. When Keaton warns him that they could be living next door to a murderer, he shrugs, "Well, New York is a
melting pot."

Manhattan Murder Mystery is Alley's most enjoyable film in years. But it does make one wonder what it will take to drag him out of the confines of New York's upper West Side. It's nice-looking, but isn't there a city that goes with it?

Kalifornia

Maybe we can blame David Lynch. After all, Blue Velvet helped to popularize the artsy-smarty psycho flick.

But I liked Blue Velvet. In fact, it's funnier every time I see it. And it offers the definitive statement on beer brands and class structure.

I didn't like Kalifornia, and its self-consciously hip misspelling with a "K" is only one of the reasons why. (It also doesn't know a thing about American beer-drinking habits. At least Lynch did his research.)

Here's the set-up: David Duchovny and Michelle Forbes are an ultra-cool couple. They wear a lot of black. He's a grad student and would-be journalist who's obsessed with serial killers. She's a photographer whose work resembles Robert Mapplethorpe's. Together, they decide to drive cross-country to visit famous murder sites for a photo-book they're compiling.

But they're low on money, so they advertise for a rider to join them on the magical mayhem tour. Brad Pitt and Juliette Lewis play the couple that hops aboard. Immediately, we realize that Duchovny never bothered to do a simple reference check.

But their poor fashion sense isn't the only problem. Pitt just happens to be your typical, workaday serial killer. You know, the kind who whacks the landlord before moving. The rest of the film writes itself. The journey becomes a hellish descent as Kalifornia gets downright mean and nasty. And only Lewis picks up any fashion tips.

Kalifornia is even worse than its cheap plot, which was cloned from The Hitcher (the Rutger Hauer film with the infamous french fries scene). The movie is another volley in the new yuppie horror genre of anti-working class films. It's as if the displaced labor force has become an exotic, dangerous threat to the children of the managerial class.

In Kalifornia's violent collision between Tobacco Road and the Village Voice, no cliches are spared. What's more, in the movie's journey from the industrial wasteland to an abandoned nuclear test site, it flaunts a political pose that it doesn't believe in.

The whole gory mess is a misguided missile in contemporary class warfare.

The Darkening Mirror

Surrounding Los Angeles are hills both bleak and black. They are the barren sentinels of an arid landscape and if it were not for the winding highways carved through this desert, the whole scene could be mistaken for the far side of the moon.

For a passenger gawking out of an airplane window, these mountains offer a proper welcome to a region cursed by its own geology. Their dull colors and hulking shapes form a vivid reminder of the natural forces that have created Southern California.

These hills are real. The palm trees are not. Though they line the runways of the Los Angeles International Airport like a merry contingent of hula dancers, they do not belong to the harsh land that forged the mountains. Like so many others in LA, these palm trees are simply visitors.

Which is one of the reasons why most writers have found it impossible to describe Los Angeles as anything other than a dream. It is more a concept than a city, like a restaurant chock full of ambiance but lacking in tables. Even the geography suggests illusion since there is no real center to anything and everybody seemingly lives 35 minutes away from everybody else.

All of which is appropriate. After all, this is the city that formed around the film industry as an ironic hybrid of cultural center and company town. Dreams are to Los Angeles what smokestacks once were to Pittsburgh: the primal symbol of the business that fuels the engines and greases the wheels.

But the business of Los Angeles is fantasy, and despite the elusive nature of such a commodity, it has become the primarily item of export for the entire nation. American movies and TV shows have rolled across the globe like a conquering army of invincible shadows. Videotapes of Rambo and Rocky are popular in Kathmandu and in the streets of Beijing, vendors hawk posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger right next to the obligatory portraits of Mao Zedong.

It's a small world after all, and the planet's name is Hollywood.

Or as the German filmmaker Wim Wenders once explained, the Americans have colonized the subconscious.

The great dream factory has engulfed the world as if it were a modern substitute for the old Hegelian bugaboo so quaintly called the Universal Spirit. Though these mass produced images are spat out like sausages from a meat packing plant, they have become the basis for an international phenomenon that simultaneously strokes the viewers' imagination and denies any real or rational engagement. Instead, it simply invites us to sit back and enjoy the show.

Hollywood insists that it is in the business of producing art and entertainment. Unfortunately, post-modernism (which is the dominate term of this post-everything age) has relegated art to the ash heap of history, much like leisure suits and the Soviet Empire. This theoretical maneuver was done, in part, to accommodate the overwhelming influence of mass media and advertising. If you can't beat them, redefine everything in order to join them.

As for entertainment, who cares? The word itself is slippery and bear baiting was once considered quite amusing. Besides, the term is usually invoked as an easy excuse for the ideological function of mass media. Basically put, to control what people see is the first step toward controlling what they think. The entertainment value is simply part of the ideological package (good or bad).

But the "looking-glass" model of mass media is not invalid, either. In many ways, the media is a reflection of its society. Film and television both function as a mirror, and mirrors offer an image which we mentally amplify. That reflection of our face which we see in the looking-glass appears full size, but it is actually no larger than our fist. Likewise, our perception of media images are routinely filtered through a distorting haze of assumptions, convictions, prejudices, and desires. We carry the extensive weight of this baggage with us every time we enter a theatre, which may explain why theatre seats have such a short life span before they break.

Despite the convoluted nature of this process, film and tele­vision have become the predominate means by which we view our world. The media is our mirror, not because it actually reflects reality but because we mistake it for reality. For some, it is a mistake made out of naivete. For most, it is an error caused by the sheer and overwhelming persistence of the material. There is no way to escape the influence of television and virtually the entire world knows the name Schwarzenegger.

Brute pervasiveness has provided mass media with the illusionary quality of communal bonding. Hip theorists of the TV generation argue that a working knowledge of The Brady Bunch is a solid substitute for a national culture. Of course, no one can live on white bread alone. So a thick slice of Cosby is offered on the side.

The commercial demands of mass media precludes any real engagement with reality. The media is simply a forum for the consumer marketplace and the ideal audience is composed of people with the greatest amount of disposable income. In other words, adolescent males. The hard-ball politics of demographics has forced most of Hollywood into a wild chase after testosterone. That is why the term "chick movie" is bandied about as an insult, one that strongly suggests that estrogen has no economic value except in relationship to the boyfriend's wallet.

Ironically, the enormous economic factors that makes mass media so powerful are the very same forces that reduces it to a marginal level. The world reflected in this mirror is false and the gap between the viewer and the viewed widens every day.

There is a mathematician at UCLA whose house is systematically being rearranged by the ever increasing seismic activity in Los Angeles. Thanks to his scientific curiosity, he has developed a peculiar fascination with charting the slow but resolute pro­gression of his main staircase as it follows a westward journey away from the rest of the house. After each quake, he excitedly calls his brother in Ohio to rely the newest measurements.

Much the same is the function of a film critic as we lurk before the darkening mirror, in a fearful wait for the next, low rumble.

My Father the Hero

This review comes with a warning: My Father the Hero is the first comedy I've seen since Car 54, Where Are You? - an experience that's undoubtedly clouded my judgment. My Father the Hero is really just a mediocre, recycled, French farce, but after Car 54, anything looks like a comic masterpiece. Even a Jerry Lewis movie.

A very chunky Gerard Depardieu plays a father who's facing more than just a weight problem. He's been divorced from his American wife {Lauren Hutton, who appears in an inexplicable cameo) and living in Paris for the past five years, which means he's racked up quite an absentee dad record with his 14-year-old daughter(Katherine Heigl), who's been stuck in New York with mommy, pining for her father's attention. Depardieu realizes he has some major lost time to make up for and tries to rectify the situation by taking her on a vacation to Nassau.

The trip is far from a relaxing turn on the beach, however. Heigl discovers that dad is seriously thinking about marrying his Parisian girlfriend (Emma Thompson, in another inexplicable cameo) and becomes mad at him. A lot of other people are, too, because in an attempt to appear more mature, Heigl has convinced everybody that she's really Depardieu's underage mistress, not his daughter. Naturally, it takes him most of the movie to figure out what's going on. (By the way, what is the French term for "dim bulb"?)

My Father the Hero is a minor (no pun intended), contrived comedy that plays like a lost episode of The Love Boat. In fact, Van Johnson should probably be playing the lead in this sucker — Depardieu is largely wasted in a role that primarily consists of his accent and waistline.

But, after Car 54, I can't complain too much about this movie. Snore through it, maybe, but not complain.

Ayoka Chenzira Sidesteps the Hollywood Shuffle

"I get very suspicious about what I see in films," says Ayoka Chenzira. "You don't see movies that look at the grass-root issues of this country. Films that deal with the dreams and aspirations of blacks simply don't get made in Hollywood."

Chenzira should know. She's an independent black filmmaker whose new feature, Alma's Rainbow, is beginning to open doors in Hollywood. February 17, Chenzira hosts a screening of the film at the Drexel Theatre in Bexley as a fundraiser for the National Black Programming Consortium.

She's already scored impressive critical accolades with such short movies as Hairpiece and Zajota and the Boogie Spirit, and has earned the curious distinction of being a prominent "emerging" director — for nearly a decade. With Alma's Rainbow, Chenzira may finally get out of the gate. In fact, she's currently developing a new feature for Paramount Pictures. But she's not uncritical of the process.

"Hollywood chooses its people very carefully. There are people like Julie Dash
(director of Daughters of the Dust) and Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep and To Sleep With Anger) who are never offered a deal in the Hollywood industry."

Chenzira doesn't say this in anger. These are just the facts, the kind of facts that she knows all too well. She's able to reel off such facts with lightning-fast precision and a straightforward gaze that cuts through you with the cool efficiency of a laser. For some people, she can be as intimidating as a ruler-wielding nun, which may explain why she plays one in Alma's Rainbow. But she's also very funny.

The spine of Alma's Rainbow is about a mother-daughter relationship," she explains. "At first, it appears to be a coming-of-age film about the daughter, but it's really the mother who discovers that she's being anal retentive."

Chenzira's laughter is quick and tinged with a tacit acknowledgment of the personal concerns underlying Alma's Rainbow. She has a 13-year-old daughter (who also appears in the film) and admits that "children generally don't see mothers as people." In part, her movie is an attempt to bridge the inevitable gap that evolves between parent and child.

But the director is also concerned with how people — especially black people — view themselves through media. Film and TV function as a sort of mirror to society, and the media-drenched reflections that people absorb have, in turn, some influence upon their perceptions of themselves. And the reflections that people are seeing in many commercial movies disturbs Chenzira.

"The current trend of what Hollywood calls 'black film making' isn't really about African American culture. The primary interest in Hollywood are movies about urban black pathology — images of young black men playing gangsters. Screenplays that aren't about this aren't getting produced. That's one of the reasons why you don't have many films being released about black women."

Chenzira is concerned about the effect such limited images have upon society, black or white.

"There's a value system in America that's out of whack with reality. These films are emotionally exploitative by concentrating on the violent edges and not on the healing process. And there's a lot of healing that needs to be done in the community."

This healing is part of what Alma's Rainbow is about. It's also what Chenzira hopes to do in Hollywood. But it's very unlikely that she'll give up her independent base in Brooklyn for nothing more than pipe dreams in LaLa Land. This is one filmmaker who's too smart to get lost in the Hollywood shuffle.

I'll Do Anything

Ever have one of those spooky experiences at the movies where you become convinced that an evil projectionist has spliced two totally different films together? James L. Brooks' new movie, I'll Do Anything, gives you that weird sensation. And no wonder — it started off last year as a musical, but was re cut into a straight comedy after a disastrous test screening. What remains is an erratic, slightly incoherent mix. Parts of I'll Do Anything drag with the dead weight of its confused editing. But when it works, it's brilliant.

Nick Nolte plays an aging actor whose career hasn't been quite successful enough to qualify him for the status of washed-up-has-been. He's still humping his chops through the audition mill in hopes of landing any part he can. All he gets, however, is the dubious honor of driving a megalomaniac producer (Albert Brooks) around town. Presumably, there's the faint possibility that if he drives well enough, he might get the lead in a remake of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town.

What Nolte also lands is custody of his obnoxious six-year-old daughter (Whittni Wright). He hasn't seen the girl in years, but is now stuck with her because his ex-wife (Tracey Ullman) is going up the river due to her romantic involvement with a businessman whose deals were less than legal. Thanks to his wife's departure, he's trying to raise a kid who drives him nuts, especially after she gains a major part in a TV series.

The script for I'll Do Anything rambles, as if director Brooks couldn't decide whether he was making a retread of Terms of Endearment or a film industry version of Broadcast News.

But the Hollywood insider sections of the movie are great. Albert Brooks' yapping, vulgar producer is a hysterically accurate parody of Joel Silver, the manic maestro of such mindless action films as the Lethal Weapon series. Paired with Brooks is Julie Kavner, as his compulsively truthful lover and audience opinion researcher. Her innate honesty is a handicap in both jobs, which results in Kavner (who also does the voice for cartoon character Marge Simpson) getting to deliver some of the funniest lines of any movie in the past several years.

Mix in odd cameos by Rosie O'Donnell, Woody Harrelson and Ian McKellen, and parts of I'll Do Anything begin to resemble an updated version of Day of the Locust. Unfortunately, the other half of the movie could have been retitled Bachelor Stage Mother. The two plots never mesh, and the result plays like a head-on collision between a Mercedes and a Yugo.

But there's so much good material in I'll Do Anything that it's hard to dislike. Half of it's some of the best stuff that James L. Brooks has ever directed — it's the follow-through that backfires.

Spike Lee's Magical History Tour

Spike Lee is no stranger to controversy. In fact, he willingly pursues it.

His films have repeatedly jabbed into some of the most explosive issues of race relations in America. He also has a fondness for violating political taboos.

Lee loves to simply argue. His career his been clocked by a multitude of professional feuds. But most of all, he likes to engage the audience in debate — real, hard-driven debates about real issues.

No wonder he's so annoying: he wants to make people think.

Lee speaks at Mershon Auditorium May 20 to kick-off "A Weekend of African American Heritage," sponsored by OSU's Student Events committee. As usual with Lee's presentations, ample time for questions and answers with the audience will insure a lively, spontaneous evening.

Lee's first feature film, She's Gotta Have It, was the surprise hit of 1986. The film's ability to draw both white and black viewers paved the way for the current boom of productions by African-American filmmakers.

Lee's shrewd ability to raise production money from Hollywood while retaining
independent control over his films has served as a model for many other black filmmakers. His habit of presenting himself as the self-ordained spokesperson for African-American filmmakers, however, has often encountered resistance from many of his colleagues.

Lee is more of a Hollywood hustler than he might publicly care to admit. He has a drive for merchandising that rivals that of George Lucas and Walt Disney. While his film Malcolm X was attempting to deal with one of the most important political figures in modern America, he was trying to slap an X logo on every piece of fabric he could hawk from coast to coast.

For Lee, the dividing line between politics and advertising has the bouncy flexibility of a pair of Air Jordan's.

There is no denying, however, that he is one of the more gifted and distinctive
figures currently working in the cinema. That is simply a fact. At his best, in such films as Do The Right Thing and Jungle Fever, Lee can deliver an in-your-face argument balanced with a sense of irony and depth that is rarely given due credit. Even in a weak work such as Mo' Better Blues, his command of visual lyricism almost redeems the film's snail-like pace.

But most of all, Lee is a much-needed agitator. Right or wrong, for better or for worse, he stirs debate. In many ways, he is no radical, a fact that he slammed into head first while filming Malcolm X. Some of the most severe criticism of the film has come from African-American intellectuals. Yet Lee is the person who has forced many issues into a broad public forum.

That alone is an achievement.

Fresh

"We read everyday about kids caught in the cross fire," says Samuel L. Jackson. "There are kids out there, 12 or 13 years old, making life and death decisions that they shouldn't have to make."

Jackson, an actor whose career has run the gamut from Jurassic Park to the upcoming Pulp Fiction, has acquired a hard-edged screen persona through his vivid portrayal of angry black men. In the new film Fresh, he tackles the difficult combination of repressed bitterness and equally repressed affection.

"To me, the great thing about Fresh is that this kid seeks out his father," explains Jackson. "But (the father's) not a very demonstrative guy, and he doesn't know how to reach out to his son. Instead, he passively reinforces the kid's own anger by teaching him speed chess."

Fresh is a determinedly off-beat movie that plays like a cross between Menace II Society and Searching for Bobby Fischer. The title is the street name of the movie's lead character, a 12-year-old kid (Sean Nelson) whose quiet, almost soulful exterior masks an interior of sensitivity, intelligence and rage. Fresh is trapped within the mean streets of Brooklyn, but he desires an imaginary world of sunlight and family togetherness. The reluctant employee of several drug lords, Fresh becomes convinced that his only means of escape from the streets is via a series of Machiavellian power plays that pit various gang members against each other.

"Through the speed chess games," says Jackson, "the father inadvertently teaches the kid aggression and strategy, but he doesn't pass on any positive ways to use them."

On the surface, Fresh may appear to be just another fast-buck turn on urban pathology and the modern gangster genre. But it goes much deeper than that. Its visuals are haunting, almost dreamlike, and it's more concerned with emotions than gunfire.

It was this depth of feeling and story that attracted Jackson and fellow actor Giancarlo Esposito to Fresh. "I'm offered drug dealer parts all the time," Esposito points out. "Normally, I don't want to do those kinds of roles. That's why I only appear in one or two films a year."

Esposito has had major roles in such films as Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, as well as the lead in the critically acclaimed (though short lived) TV series Bakersfield PD. He looks like a matinee idol — a crucial element of his performance in Fresh, in which he plays a drug lord who's both vile and perversely understandable.

"Today, movies are all about the evil part," continues Esposito. "Hollywood has created an, atmosphere where people are titillated by violence. It gives them a sense of power, but it doesn't give them any regard for human life. They don't know what death is."

The reality of death is presented in Fresh in a single, shocking gesture in a school yard shoot-out scene. The young girl who Fresh is attracted to is accidentally shot in the neck, and her last seconds of life are visually clocked by the spastic, but gradually slowing, kicks of her feet. The image's focus is small, but its impact is overwhelming, and it clearly places the movie's emphasis on the consequence of violence rather than the thrill of action.

Fresh is a radical departure from the typical 'hood movies that centers on a nightmarish rite of passage during which innocence is betrayed and lost. Ironically, this poetic black thriller is the debut feature film of a young white filmmaker whose previous credit was the screenplay for the Clint Eastwood bomb The Rookie.

"It's not about being either black or white," argues Boaz Yakin, a twenty-something drop-out from both film school and Hollywood. "It's about being an artist. Artists should be able to express themselves anyway that they want, about any subject they want. When you get down to it, people are very similar."

A few years ago, Yakin was on the fast track escalator in LaLa Land, but quickly discovered that he only wanted off. "I was working on a lot of stupid Hollywood action films. I lost my feeling for the work and began hating myself."

Yakin fled to Paris and started writing novels. But his time in the shoot-'em-up mills of the dream factory had left him with a nagging question: "Who is the most powerless type of hero possible?" A question that, in turn, kept bringing him back to an offbeat story idea about a child.

"Then a friend of mine, Lawrence Bender, called me," recalls Yakin. "He has just finished producing Pulp Fiction, and he told me that he could get the money to make any movie I wanted to do."

Yakin doesn't make any pretense of being street-wise or especially knowledgeable about African American life. He did extensive research and was very dependent on the movie's cast for advice. "I'm not trying to pretend that this movie is real," he admits. "It's a reflection of various things, of my feelings about these things."

Indeed, it's at the emotional level where Fresh most definitely succeeds.