The Frighteners

Ghost busting may be a dying business, but somebody has to do it. Or at least that would appear to be the grimly sardonic attitude of the con artist hero in Peter Jackson's The Frighteners. Frank Bannister (Michael J. Fox) really is able to see the ghosts and demonic shades populating the "other side." But he mostly uses his unique abilities as a quick means to turn a few miserable dollars.

From the get go, The Frighteners has enough cynicism to easily qualify as a Nineties movie. The film's basic tone is a wired mix of black humor and jaded sensibilities. Even Fox has finally managed to successfully bury his usual boyish looks beneath a five o'clock stubble and a slack jawed face. Through most of The Frighteners, Fox's self-employed psychic investigator has the battered appearance of a drunk who has gone through too many morning afters.

But Bannister's real problem is that he may have to find a new town in which he can work his scam. Though Bannister is able to see and communicate with ghosts, the real work is done by his partners (Chi McBride and Jim Fyfe). They actually are ghosts, which means that they have a good ability at scaring up business. All Bannister has to do is go to the site of their prearranged haunting. Once he whips out a photographic spot meter and a dilapidated machine that looks like a cross between a radio and a toaster, he is able to convince the customer that the poltergeists have been removed.

However, the perfect racket is headed for some problems when an exceeding nasty spirit begins slaughtering a sizable chunk of the local population. Even worse, the powerful fiend is somehow linked to Bannister who keeps seeing numbers flashing on the forehead of the next victim. As each person's number comes due, Bannister becomes the prime suspect on the constabulary's otherwise limited list.

All of which means that The Frighteners has some good potential as a satiric horror tale. But the movie's strongest emphasis is on grimness. From beginning to end, the film is imbued in a fatalistic twilight that is almost as grey as the cloudy skyline that perpetually hovers over the town. Even the jokes are as dank and dark as the local cemetery where Bannister routinely shops for potential clients. The Frighteners is less a comedy and more of a horror film with a calculated attitude problem.

The one stock comic figure in The Frighteners is Milton Dammers(Jeffrey Combs), an FBI agent who specializes in cases concerning the paranormal. With his Hitler haircut and twitching body, Dammers is the guy who was obviously too crazy for even the X-Files Department. But as played by Combs, the character is too firmly rooted in sadistic pathology as Dammers' personal sense of derangement kicks into high gear the moment he first appears.

Likewise, the romantic charm of Lucy Lynskey (Trini Alvarado) plays more like an expedient plot point rather than a passionate spark. She is a psychologist who becomes convinced that Bannister is truly gifted, especially after her boorish husband succeeds in changing her marital status to widow. Alvarado creates a sympathetic heroine, but she also projects a perkiness that seems strangely inappropriate to the rest of the proceedings. Besides, her character seems more daft than smitten as she continual defends Bannister despite his own peculiar skill at appearing overwhelmingly guilty.

Only McBride and Fyfe as the deceased business partners have any luck with doing comedy. Occasionally aided by the Judge (John Astin in a barely recognizable appearance), they are reluctant ghouls who whine after every sting about the petty nature of their second rate after life.

What The Frighteners mostly suggest is that director Peter Jackson is still straddling a borderline between shock theatre and the art house. The movie often displays Jackson's singularly striking visual skills. It also suggests an interesting talent that is uncomfortable with sly humor. Jackson lacks a light touch, which is what The Frighteners most desperately needed.

The movie's extensive special effects are often fantastic and there are a few genuine chills. But mostly, The Frighteners is a moody morality play that never quite articulates a clear point beyond its own grittiness. Unless that is the point, in which case The Frighteners is a major statement piece.

Menace II Society

You almost have to like Menace II Society. What other film presents a bunch of gun-tot­ing homeboys sitting around watching It's a Wonderful Life?. And, it's a reasonably interesting piece of street film making.

But its ironies are a little too ham-fisted, and it occasionally smacks of a social worker delivering a lecture.

The double homicide that opens Menace II Society possesses an authentic sense of casual shock. Likewise, the film offers an insider's view of drive-by shootings and drug dealing. The Hughes brothers have hit home with their unrelenting chronology of gang life and urban pathology. Most vivid is the film's presentation of violence that is passed on as a grim legacy from generation to generation.

But the movie contains a primary prob­lem — its odd distance from its own subject matter, almost as if it's a re-enactment from a "reality-based" TV show.

Which isn't surprising, given that the filmmakers, twin brothers Allen and Albert Hughes, previously directed episodes of the Fox network's America's Most Wanted. They've also made a series of rap videos. Menace II Society is influenced by both of these formats.

Caine (Tyrin Turner), a de facto gang leader, is the movie's central, tragic figure. Actor Larenz Tate's O-Dog, however, embodies the film's most chilling quality. When he takes offense at a Korean grocer's comment, O-Dog coolly kills both the man and his wife. Then he steals the videotape from the store's surveillance camera — not because he's trying to cover up the crime, but because he just likes showing the video of the murder to his friends.

Menace II Society strives for a hard edge, even as it attempts to be a hip hop version of Bunuel's classic film Los Olivdados.

It also wants to be a message picture, and presents critically important moral lessons: Violence breeds violence. Crime doesn't pay. Blacks killing blacks is just another form of racial genocide.

But, too often, their presentation bears a dry, lackluster quality that's over-ridden by the charged energy of gang activities. The movie lectures about the destructive nature of violence, but only comes to life when the homeboys start popping each other. Menace II Society will be an eye-opener for many viewers, but its morality is almost lost amidst the kinetic kicks of its storyline.

Twister

The family that chases tornadoes together, stays together.

That unique insight is the central point to Twister. Fortunately, Twister doesn't need much of a point. The movie succeeds nicely as an action-filled exercise in the surprisingly danger-filled pursuit of weather forecasting.

Twister also manages to breathe new life into the disaster genre as it takes a moribund formula and treat it as if every contrived moment was fresh and new. The movie has a fun time with the usual list of suspects and manages to take a relaxed liberal position in a genre typically noted for its more overtly fundamentalist attitudes (well, what are disaster movies except modernized biblical tales).

As it might be written in the Gospel According to Irwin Allen, it is a dark and extraordinarily stormy night in Oklahoma. A massive set of cold and warm fronts are about to collide across the American Midwest, an event which normally sends every hick in the stick scurrying for the nearest storm shelter.

But Jo Harding (Helen Hunt) isn't just a hick. She is a scientist and tornadoes are both her passion and her nemesis. She has especially been obsessed by them ever since her childhood. The sight of her father (and the barn door) vanishing into the maw of a nasty cyclone still haunts her. For her, storm-chasing (which is the nickname for her profession) is a form of therapy.

Likewise, her husband Bill (Bill Paxton) is also remarkably obsessive about funnel clouds. He feels that he has some sort of a psychic bonding with the storms and can often sense their impending arrival. All he has to do is pick up a handful of dirt, look briefly skyward, and suddenly he knows more than the National Weather Service.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have as much bonding with Helen as he does with an Arctic air mass. Which is why he shows up at the storm front with divorce papers in one hand and a girlfriend (Jami Gertz) in the other. Though he and Helen have been separated for some months, she still thought that they might patch things up during brief lulls on the radar map.

Jo and her fellow storm-chasers are a tad miffed with Bill. Not so much about the girl-friend, but more so because he has taken a job as a television weather forecaster and insists that he isn't going to run after tornadoes anymore.

Since the rest of the team of storm-chasers are all young research assistants (cutely played by Alan Ruck and Philip Hoffman), the result is more like a disjointed family rather than a pack of meteorologists. Mom and the kids obviously know that they are just going have to weather out old dad's mid-life crisis. Besides, the girl-friend is a marital therapist who has been helping Bill to
develop his sense of personal responsibility.

Besides, the storm-chasers know that Bill can't resist a chance to try out his own invention. The central focus to their pursuit is a devise called "Dorothy," a canister loaded with sensors that can track the interior forces of a tornado. Since his chief professional rival (Cary Elwes) is also on the chase with a similar gizmo (a tarted up rip off of the home spun original), Bill is strongly tempted.

The only problem is that "Dorothy" has to be planted right in the path of an oncoming cyclone in order to work. Does this mean that the rest of the movie is spent with everybody driving like lunatics toward assorted twirling behemoths? You bet. After all, Twister is directed by the same man who did Speed.

As a director, Jan De Bont doesn't make movies so much as he constructs thrill rides. But he also happens to be very good at building cinematic roller coasters and Twister delivers much of the same wild, punchy fun as did Speed.

Though Twister has already been widely criticized for its weak storyline and characters, the movie is actually better scripted and performed than it has been given credit. Both Hunt and Paxton give solid, understated performances that keep their characters warm and convincing even while the stunt work does otherwise.

Besides, neither Hunt nor Paxton are the main stars in this film. That honour belongs to the stunningly vivid monsters of the vortex produced in the software labs of Industrial Light and Magic. As the tornadoes start flinging cows and oil tankers across the screen, the film jerks to life at its own rude level.

Which is enough to place Twister ahead of many other current Hollywood films. Throw in a few more flying cows and the movie could almost be a masterpiece.

Screamers

There must be something about the science-fiction stories of Philip K. Dick that inspires filmmakers to unusual levels of stunning incoherency. Both Blade Runner and Total Recall, the two previous adaptations from the Dick canon, had plot lines that shifted faster than grains of sand in a windstorm. Likewise, so did the characters.

At his best, Dick could give his readers the tail spinning conviction that everything real was illusionary and that nobody could ever be certain of anything, not even their own existence. For Dick, there was no easy division between human consciousness and a good job of deceptive programming. "I think, therefore I am" was a philosophic assumption that Dick could never accept.

Which is part of the problem encountered by Commander Becker (Peter Weller) in Screamers. Like Blade Runner, the movie ultimately tries to wrestle with the question of what is human. Unlike Blade Runner, Screamers gets pinned to the mat more often than not.

On the planet Sirius 6B, a brutal war is dragging into its tenth year. The world has become a ravaged battleground between the Earth Alliance and the New Economic Block (N.E.B.). The surface has been thoroughly nuked and the combatants now primarily stay hidden in underground fortresses.

But the protracted stalemate is suddenly shaken by an offer of peace from the N.E.B. Just as abruptly, peace is shattered by the crash landing of an Alliance troop transporter. Evidence from the ship convinces Becker that the war has simply been relocated to a new planet. In a face-saving move, both sides have decided to abandon the troops on Sirius 6B while routinely feeding Becker and his men with phony messages on a virtual reality system.

Feeling just a tad bitter, Becker sets out to make his own peace with the equally hapless N.E.B. forces. The only problem is that no one knows how many, if any, of the enemy troops are even still alive. Making matters worse is the increasingly unpredictable behavior of the screamers.

The original model of the screamers were insect-like killer robots armed with a wide variety of blades. The Alliance unleashed them as an ultimate weapon against the N.E.B. But the screamers have their own elaborate system of automated programming design and manufacturing and are rumored to be pursuing their own evolutionary leaps. They have even created androids who prey upon their potential victims by appealing to the human sense of empathy.

About now, Rutger Hauer should make an appearance. Unfortunately, he doesn't. Likewise, Weller is no Harrison Ford. He's not even a Charlton Heston, though Weller makes a game try at projecting some of old Chuckie's sense of jaded machismo.

Much of the acting in Screamers has a flat, stilted quality that undercuts the central paradox of the movie. Only Jennifer Rubin, as a female N.E.B. officer, delivers any convincing pathos. Of course, this immediately makes her a prime suspect on the human/nonhuman detection scale.

But the real problem with Screamers is the script. None of the characters are ever fleshed out or clearly defined in any distinctive way. Their humanity is only hinted at through bouts of chain-smoking (special cigarettes that prevents radiation poisoning) and a taste for Mozart (Don Giovanni is Becker's pet fave).

The androids do not fare any better. Unlike the alluring "skin jobs" of Blade Runner, the replicants in Screamers are almost as marginal as their human targets. One of the deadlier models come in the form of an orphan boy clutching a death-dealing teddy bear. The first appearance of this killer waif is mildly shocking. When an entire army of dangerous Oliver Twist types goes gunning for Becker, the film takes a plunge into bad camp.

The multiple twists and turns of the plot also never quite matches up. Contradictions abound, and not just because they are suppose to in a Dick-derived movie. The pre-production history of Screamers is almost as long as the war on Sirius 6B, with Dan O'Bannon first drafting a version under the title of Claw at Disney Studios back in the early 1980s. Screamers plays as if a few too many versions had been stitched together during various rewrites.

Though the film maintains a reasonably suspenseful tempo, Screamers never manages to engage at either the intellectual or emotional level. In turn, the film is too preoccupied with being cerebral to ever fully unload to the action audience.

Ironically, the hi-tech shredding machines shown dicing a man at the movie's beginning are actually the most interesting element in Screamers. Unlike the filmmakers, at least these nasty little drones know what they are doing.

Bad Moon

Werewolves have never really fared well on the big screen. Oh sure, they have had their moments (The Howling and An American Werewolf in London). But they also have provoked some mighty awful duds (Wolf and any of The Howling sequels). Unlike vampires, werewolves lack some special pull with the audience that might produce a heightened sense of engagement.

Which is a major problem with Bad Moon, a horror film that mistakes ponderous pacing for serious film making. Though some fans might be pleased by the movie's refusal to lampoon even some of the goofier traditions of the genre, the final effect is a film that is weak in both its bark and bite.

Janet (Mariel Hemingway) is an attorney and a single-mother who has moved to the Pacific Northwest in order to escape urban rot. Her ten-year-old son Brett (Mason Gamble) is a sweet if slightly vapid lad who seems totally devoted to his pet German Shepherd. His dog Thor (Primo), takes care of both of them as best he can.

But Janet's younger brother Ted (Michael Pare) suddenly decides to move in, trailer and all. Ted is a photojournalist whose last assignment was in the wilds of Nepal and he is a little shy on explaining why his girlfriend didn't come back with him. He is also a little reluctant in saying much about his newly acquired interest in ancient books on werewolves and his uncanny ability to understand the thought processes of domestic canines.

Nonetheless, the family thinks that Uncle Ted is great. Only Thor has enough sense to keep a wolf out of their deluxe hen house, especially after a few campers turn up half-devoured.

Like most werewolf movies, Bad Moon offers a slight variation on the dysfunctional family theme a la Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (which was sort of a werewolf tale in blood-soaked sheep clothing). But Janet's family is too well adjusted (in a dip-headed sort of way) to be of any interest. Even Uncle Ted is so blandly nice that you half expect him to get in touch with his inner wolf child. The whole movie only snaps to life on the rare occasion when someone gets their head bit off.

Which means that the writer-director of Bad Moon, Eric Red, didn't spend enough time studying the Stephen King movies that he keeps trying to rip-off in his film. Though he repeatedly "quotes" from such works as The Shining, Cujo, and Silver Bullet, he doesn't have any sense of the material. King's masterly of the contemporary American Gothic genre is rooted in his firm sense of the tensions lurking just beneath the surface of average life. Even at his worse, King can evoke a family structure riddled with enough suppressed fears and frustrations to fill a clinic.

The characters in Bad Moon could barely sustain a mediocre situation comedy. Even when Uncle Ted starts eyeing sis and Brett as his next meal, the effect is barely noticeable on the taboo-violation meter.

Besides, the real test of any werewolf movie is the transformation scene and Bad Moon even falters by that standard. Saved for late in the movie, it plays as a poor mix of old-school optical effects and good make-up design. Compared to the ground breaking work done in The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, the effect is hokey at best. But it is better than the cheap-Jack (pun intended) work done in Wolf.

But if you really want to see a great werewolf movie, why not rent a copy of Wolfen. It isn't exactly about werewolves, but Wolfen delivers enough wolves for any canine fan and it is the singular masterpiece of its own bizarre, self-made genre.

The only thing singular about Bad Moon is the strange way it turns a short running time into a long haul.

The Crow: City of Angels

Los Angeles is now officially the host of the apocalypse. Sure, New York once had the edge on impending social collapse and the Third World is still a prime contender as the starting gate for the Four Horsemen. But L.A. now has the End of Time thing signed, sealed and delivered.

Just check out such movies as Strange Days and Escape From L.A.. In each, LaLaLand has become a wasted Sodom barely fit for wild dogs and movie producers. Even a dead man might have second thoughts about traversing such a demented landscape.

Then again, Los Angeles may only be fit for the dead. At least that is the underlining attitude in The Crow: City of Angeles. Less a sequel than an elaborate reworking of the original Crow, City of Angeles manages to take the dark tone of the first film and push it further.

Too far, perhaps. The movie plays like a vindictive dirge at a black mass hosted by the manic depressive set. In its weird mix of punk nihilism and spiritual redemption, The Crow: City of Angeles achieves a sense of visual stylization that far exceeds its limited narrative grasp. But that alone already places it well ahead of its current competition in the Gotterdammerung category.

Despite the lingering controversy over the bizarre accidental death of Brandon Lee during filming of the first Crow, the second movie has managed to find a reasonable way to both reference and connect with the original. The young Sarah is now an adult (Mia Kirshner) and has moved to Los Angeles in a failed attempt to escape from the post-industrial rot of Detroit. Plying her trade as a tattoo artist, Sarah discreetly wears a pair of crow's wings on her back and is haunted by nightmares involving a man and his son being gunned down by a nightmarish band of aging rockers.

But the murders are no dream. Ashe (Vincent Perez) and his son are inadvertent witnesses to a gang slaying ordered by Judah(Richard Brooks) and his henchmen have strict policies about not leaving any clients for the Federal Witness Protection Program. Since Judah is some sort of unexplained mix of new age gangster and fallen angel, he fear no mortal agent. Only a force from beyond life can harm him, which Ashe is more than happy to do once he returns from the dead.

At which point, The Crow: City of Angeles becomes a strangely brooding combination of crypto-fascist fantasy and fin-de-siecle romanticism. Judah and his gang thrives upon calculated doses of extreme violence and sexual decadence (with enough S&M references to qualify as soft-core pornography), while Ashe and Sarah are two innocents with enough purity in their hearts to stock a convent. No wonder Curve (Iggy Pop), Judah's right hand man, finds them both baffling. Neither of these characters seem to have any place in a Los Angeles as hellish as the urban acid trip configured in the movie.

But while the plot of The Crow: City of Angeles settles into a dry recitation of Ashe's murderous hunt, the visuals (and music soundtrack) takes off in their own highly charged direction. The movie successfully takes the pop surrealism of the music video format and convert it into a sustained exercise that largely holds the viewers' attention. The film ironically approximates a drive-in movie made by Fellini while on a heroin rush. Framed within the context of the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration, the movie turns each killing into a quasi-religious ritual.

The Crow: City of Angeles will not be to many people's taste. But then, neither was the original. Likewise, the movie's last stretch turns dopey as it scrambles for an ending. Even within its own mystical universe, the film's final reel defies rational explanation.

But the real achievement of The Crow: City of Angeles is its odd ability to sustain a long, lingering chord of dark otherworldly angst. It plays like a rough night on the far side of the moon, which means that it successfully captures at least one aspect of contemporary Los Angeles. It remains a city of dreams, both good and
bad.

Mars Attacks!

Hundreds of tacky looking space ships attack the earth. Thousands of rampaging, bug‑eyed Martians ruthlessly zap humanity in a mindless extermination campaign. The U.S. Congress, a herd of cows, and Tom Jones' band are all fried to a crisp. Gee. It's a shame about those cows.

This just about sums up Mars Attacks!, the latest tribute by director Tim Burton to his childhood fondness for bad movies. Unfortunately, Mars Attacks! also invokes the current (and extremely advance) state of Burton's own sense of arrested adolescence. The film plays like a simple‑minded gag thought up by an obnoxious five‑year‑old. Even during its funnier moments, Mars Attacks! barely rises to the level of a cheap giggle cooked up in the back row of a school room.

Of course, a lack of subtly is not surprising since the focus of the movie's extended homage are the zanier B science‑fiction films of the 1950s. Though the plot is loosely lifted from Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, the trashy feel of Mars Attacks! is closer to the cruder sensibilities of such non‑classics as Invasion of the Saucer Men (a movie so poorly budgeted that a pre‑Batman Frank Gorshin was the major star). But Mars Attacks! lacks the rude zestiness of a good drive‑in movie. Heck. Mars Attacks! even lacks the genuine, raw badness of an Ed Wood movie.

Though some advance word had suggested that Mars Attacks! would play as a kind of Dr. Strangelove antidote to Independence Day's jingoistic seriousness, the comparison is thin. In many respects, Independence Day is actually a funnier film. It was also a more affectionate homage to the genre. Mars Attacks! has a weird, distracted feel to it and often suggests that Burton never really liked these lousy movies in the first place. Maybe he only watched them because he liked seeing people blow up.

Which is basically the sole focus of the movie. For reasons that are never explained, the entire population of the Red Planet charges toward earth. A blathering dolt of a US President (Jack Nicholson) stumbles around, hoping to make peaceful contact with the Martians. Then they start blasting everyone who comes within firing range. An utter dope of a scientific advisor (Pierce Brosnan) successfully argues that the Martians deadly behavior is simply a cultural misunderstanding. Then they wipe out Congress and beat the stuffing out of the scientific advisor.

Meanwhile, a crooked and extremely drunk real estate developer in Las Vegas (Nicholson again) has some vague scheme of getting the Martians to check‑in at his new casino. The developer's wife (Annette Bening) has abandoned booze in favor of New Age mysticism and Sixties style retro fashions. At the same time, the always horny presidential press secretary (Martin Short) finds himself incredibly attracted to a Martian female. The rest of the movie's long list of well‑known performers stand around with little to do until they get blasted.

OK. So once again Burton demonstrates that he doesn't give a hoot about narrative. Besides, what do you expect from a film that is based on a set of bubble gum cards briefly distributed in 1963(and pulled from circulation because of their excessive violence). Besides, both Burton and his screenwriter (Jonathan Gems) freely admit that they didn't realize that the cards even had a story. They thought that the text on the back of the cards were just advertisements (which suggests that neither of these guys can read).

Burton's best films (i.e. Batman and Beetlejuice) have usually gotten around the narrative problem by creating surprisingly strong characters and monstrously effective villains. But the human characters in Mars Attacks! are all weakly written and severely underdeveloped. Brosnan has a few daffy moments as a kind of inverted Hugh Marlowe as his smug scientist deftly misinterprets every known fact about the invaders. Likewise, Jim Brown imparts a few precious moments of dignity in his role as a ex‑boxing champion turned Vegas lounge greeter. On the other hand, Nicholson manages the unique feat of giving two of his worst performances ever in the same film.

Ironically, only the Martians have any limited appeal. Maybe its their goofy, wide‑eyed looks. Or perhaps it is the sight of their enormous, silly brains. More likely, they become sympathetic by default. After all, the Martians have no pretense of being anything other than a pack of ill‑bred fraternity boys running wild on an especially nasty set of pranks. As they make yapping noises while stitching human heads onto the bodies of Chihuahuas, the little green mirth makers are almost capable of stealing your heart. While they are at it, they will also help themselves to your kidneys, spleen, and liver.

Thanks to the superb CGI work provided by Industrial Lights & Magic, the Martians are also the most brilliantly satiric reference made in Mars Attacks! to the B movies of yesteryear. Designed to move in a slightly jerky manner like old fashion stop‑motion animated models, these pesky marauders glide about with spooky mechanical precision as they smirk their way through every slaughter.

Too bad they don't have a better film to star in. But good film making is seemingly something that Tim Burton is now determined not to do. Instead, he has become an aging prankster looking to indulge himself in minor gags that might vaguely amuse the pre‑teen set("heh heh, that was cool"). Likewise, he seems insistent on making movies that are completely lacking in any real sense of fun.

Which is one of the reasons why Mars Attacks! is a long and charmless bore.

Scream

Like it or not, the slasher genre is back with a Scream. Wes Craven's new entry has already proven successful enough in the States to insure a slew of copycat productions as the teeny-kill horror movie once again becomes a hot Hollywood prospect. But the odd (and distinctive) aspect about Scream is neither its gore nor high body count. Instead, the movie invokes such a thick, irony-laced approach to the deconstruction of the entire genre that a casual viewer might rightly be afraid that there will be a pop quiz after the screening. The whole thing could have been retitled Freddy Krueger Meets the Tenure Committee.

Scream begins with a basic outline of most modern horror films. A home-alone teenager (Drew Barrymore) finds herself taunted by a series of increasingly threatening phone calls from an apparent psycho. The caller forces her into playing game of horror movie trivia in which the winner is allowed to live. Unfortunately, she stumbles on a tricky Friday the 13th reference and discovers that this is one test graded by something more severe than the curve.

A massive manhunt ensues, though the only clue to the killer is his peculiar use of a mask based upon the Edvard Munch painting The Scream (arty chaps, these wackos). Increasingly, a trail of evidence (and corpses) leads the police to Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), a high schooler whose mother had been butchered in a grisly case a year earlier. Is Sidney a potential victim, or a ticking emotional time bomb? Since the local cops are all blunder heads, it is up to a TV news reporter (Courteney Cox) to discover the truth. Besides, the reporter already has a book deal lined up on the side, so she is highly motivated.

But the basic plot quickly gives way to a torrent of self-referential commentary. Though the psycho in Scream sees himself as the world's leading expert on slasher movies, he is obviously working in a very competitive environment. The whole town has seen virtually every teeny-kill pic ever made and the local citizens routinely nitpick as if they were preparing for a seminar at the British Film Institute.

Scream is an overt continuation of the theoretical musings that previously dominated Wes Craven's New Nightmare. But while New Nightmare floundered in its neo-Godardian posture (the movie was essentially a variation of Godard's Contempt), Scream manages to keep enough action on the screen to hold the average attention span. It also manages some genuinely funny moments, especially through its surprisingly effective undercutting of the killer's physical prowess. At its best, Scream plays like a modern version of Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (though not quite as totally sassy).

Of course, the fact that terms like "deconstruction" and "neo-Godardian" can be applied to a slasher film is an odd tribute to director Craven's eccentric position in the horror genre. Craven has always been a little too smart and tasteful for his own movies. After all, his production of Last House on the Left was based upon Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring. So it is not surprising that Craven is now seemingly hell bent upon redoing the entire French New Wave.

Such weird ambitions is what makes Craven's Scream a decent bit of intellectual fun. But if he gets anymore self-referential, then we may have to ship this boy off to France.

The Island of Dr. Moreau

About every two or three decades, somebody in Hollywood decides to do a film version of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. It is a peculiar phenomena, much like reports of spontaneous combustion. Nobody can explain why it happens. Instead, movie viewers just find themselves staring dumbly at the devastating results.

How bad can it be? Based upon the most recent outbreak of this pest, the results can be more deadly than the Ebola virus. The new production of The Island of Dr. Moreau manages to combine all of the hackneyed, pseudo-philosophic posturing of the previous versions and then slide into a totally incoherent babble within the first thirty minutes of its run. Then the situation really gets ugly, because the movie still has an hour of screen time to fill and the script has already run out of ideas.

Not that everything in The Island of Dr. Moreau is ghastly. The opening credits are nicely done (a la James Bond) and the makeup work by Stan Winston is extremely well executed. Besides, the movie does provoke a few cheap giggles, especially when one realizes just how many talented people are throwing their careers away in this production.

Take for example David Thewlis, an extremely good actor who desperately needs a better agent. He plays Douglas, a United Nations diplomat who finds himself stranded in the Java Sea after a plane crash. He is suppose to have an idealistic sense of hopefulness for the future of mankind, but he stumbles through most of the film in a numb state of easy despair. Obviously, Thewlis has just read the screenplay.

Then there is Val Kilmer, a gifted but erratic actor with an attitude problem. As Montgomery, he inexplicably rescues Douglas from a watery grave. Also inexplicably, he takes Douglas with him to the mysterious island where he works for an infamous and reclusive scientist involved in some highly questionably research. Even more inexplicable is the fact that Kilmer then hangs around for the rest of the movie. Maybe Kilmer couldn't resist waiting until he got to demonstrate that he can do a better impersonation of Brando than even Brando can do. Or perhaps he was strangely drawn to his character's final line about going to doggy heaven.

Finally, there is the big guy himself. Weighing in at 400 plus pounds is Marlon Brando, an ex-actor turned ex-movie star turned resident crackpot of the silver screen. His Dr. Moreau is part noble idealist and part mad scientist who wants to reshape the human race by genetically altering other animals into semi-human monstrosities under his control. But mostly Brando waddles through the film in a variety of goofy get-ups while behaving as if he were auditioning for a drag version of the Gertrude Stein story. By the time he sticks an ice bucket on his head and calls it his caloric inverter, you know that he is mad (the actor, not the character).

This is as good as it gets on The Island of Dr. Moreau. Which means that the average viewer will spend most of the movie pondering such major questions as: If Moreau is such a pacifist, then why are there so many 9mm handguns and AK-47s available on the island? Did Charles Laughton (who played Moreau in the 1933 version) have more guts? After all, he stuck it out for the whole movie while Brando bails out mid-way through this sucker. Was Kilmer widely reported hostilities during the movie's production caused by his realization that he just signed up for first-mate duty on the Titanic.

Maybe the movie should have added a few rock music numbers, some intentional gags, and cast Tim Curry in the lead. Then it could be retitled The Rocky Horror Picture Show II and eventually score a never ending run on the midnight movie circuit. Film history is chock full of so many missed opportunities.

So why not miss out on this one? You might just feel better for it.

Chain Reaction

Massive paranoia has long been a favorite American past time. Even the great American novel Moby Dick is thoroughly infused with enough cosmic fear and loathing to send some readers scurrying for the closet. But if the summer movies are any indication, then the great Yankee quest for the elusive white whale has taken on an obsessive, internalized dimension. In Mission: Impossible, The Rock, and Eraser, the enemies are all home grown as the country seemingly shifts its focus away from perceived foreign menace. Now the guns are being trained on the jerks who live next door.

Chain Reaction is the latest reminder that we have met the enemy and he is us. Of course, for those who are old enough to remember the Vietnam years, this observation is hardly unique. But even a graying hippie would have to be a little startled by the degree to which this motto has now become an institutionalized norm.

Not that Chain Reaction isn't potentially loaded with some interesting references to a few of the dirty secrets of modern American history. The movie plays as a revisionist overview of the Manhattan Project, stripped of the short sighted jingoism of the World War Two era. The central gizmo in Chain Reaction is a process that can remove all the hydrogen from simple water and turn it into pure energy. But the idealistic scientists working on the project have no concept as to the nasty devils from the military/industrial complex who employs them.

At the eve of their successful completion of the project, the Chicago-based laboratory explodes in an neo-atomic fireball (the other hot thing this summer, e.g. Independence Day). One of the few survivors is Eddie Kasalivich (Keanu Reeves), a machinist who also just happens to be a physics school drop-out. Well, actually, he was asked to leave school after he blew up a building (for reasons never explained in the movie). Not surprisingly, Kasalivich is quickly promoted to the top of the FBI's most wanted list.

Equally suspected is Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz), a physicist who wasn't at the lab due to a major hang-over. The FBI becomes convinced that she was the brain behind Kasalivich's brawn's. This means that Lily and Eddie now have more in common with each other than most couples as they proceed to go on the lam together.

They are both young, attractive, and very sincere in their convictions. They also share an unfortunate faith in their project director, Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman). This is not that significant tipping of a plot point. After all, most academic administers don't travel to expensive Chicago restaurants in limos and maintain lavish estates in Georgetown. Ah oh! Do you think he might work for something known in intelligence lingo as The Company?

Of course, the plot of Chain Reaction quickly begins to resemble The Fugitive (on the run, but with a date this time). The resemblance is enhanced by the fact that director Andrew Davis created both films. But the deja vu quality of Chain Reaction is not the movie's real problem. Its real problem is ham-fisted message-making coupled with too many silly action scenes.

Technically, Chain Reaction could have been an incredible action movie with a sly political context. But the action is unloaded in a hyper-fast manner that eventually grows tiresome and absurd. Likewise, the social message is finally delivered in a quick set of broad statements that sounds like a lecture from a school child. At times, Chain Reaction is extremely engaging. But all too often, the movie plays like the world's longest coming attraction trailer. It's all highlights, minus any scenes that might make the viewer give a hoot about the characters (in this regard, it makes The Rock look like a character study).

Which is too bad, since the movie contains some fine work by both Freeman and Brian Cox as his Company connection. Likewise, Reeves has interesting possibilities as a hi-tech primitive who exists by quirky instincts, has a nearly supernatural command of computers, and is supremely capable of clubbing an assassin with the forearm of a real Neanderthal. Reeves might yet prove to be the definitive action hero of the Nineties.

But he better check the script next time. Chain Reaction never explodes beyond the special effects (which are very well done). Even Speed II might be an improvement.

The Phantom

It takes real gall to run through the jungle in a purple suit. But the Phantom has demonstrated such brave audacity for nearly four hundred years. Or at least that is what the local natives would have every one believe.

So convincing are their tales that these natives have successfully struck fear into the heart of evil doers across seven continents. Good story tellers, these chaps. Too bad they were not hired to make this movie about the lavender avenger. They would have done a better job.

Not that the movie The Phantom is totally awful. Actually, it is an extremely faithful adaptation of the old comic strip. But that is also its problem. The movie provides nothing more than a basic run through of the comic's original story while never finding any dramatically engaging focus for the big screen. What you see is what you get. Nothing more and nothing less.

On the plus side, the movie has a relatively charming performance by Billy Zane as the 21st Phantom (for the Phantom impaired, this is a superhero job that is faithfully passed on from father to son for many generations). He is a young and decent guy who has just recently stepped into the family's business after his father (Patrick McGoohan) met an untimely demise while on a minor case. Since the family's business largely consists of beating the stuffing's out of assorted poachers, grave looters, and general malcontents, Zane's Phantom is lucky to have an athletic physique along with his youthful good looks.

What he doesn't have is much in the way of feminine company. Presumably, it gets lonely in the jungle and even a ghost who walks must have a yen to run on the wild side. But the mad schemes of a power mad tycoon (Treat Williams) inadvertently gives the Phantom an unique opportunity to meet women.

One is his old college sweetheart Diana Palmer (Kristy Swanson), the spirited daughter of an important New York newspaper publisher. The other is Sala (Catherine Zeta-Jones), the leader of a band of leather-clad female pirates. Since Diana is helping her father to fight Williams' Xander Drax ( and Sala is employed by Drax to kidnap Diana), the Phantom eventually has to choose between these women and their respective ambitions.

Likewise, he is going have to ditch the funky suit for awhile since Drax is based in New York and the Phantom has to stop him from acquiring a set of three ancient skulls. When assembled, the three skulls are capable of unleashing more power than the world has ever seen. Besides, the man who killed the 20th Phantom now works for Drax and dad, who keeps slipping his son advise from the great beyond, would like to settle an old score.

As stated, Zane is charming but a little too low key for the lead. Williams makes for a surprisingly weak, and often silly, villain. MacGoohan delivers a weird Barry Fitzgerald impersonation as he hams it up with a variety of "Suffering saints alive" lines. Swanson is okay but a little drab, while Zeta-Jones is extremely striking as a macho-femme with a soft spot for men in tights.

But what The Phantom really needs (and most lacks) is a strong story. At the very least, the movie could have used a few original ideas.

John Carpenter's Escape From L.A.

There are two major warning signs of a director in steep decline. The first is when they remake their own movies. The second is when they remake them badly. John Carpenter's Escape From L.A. is vivid proof of both points. The fact that Carpenter stuck his name into the title even invokes the third warning sign. No wonder this movie has become the current favorite target for the critical equivalent of a drive-by shooting.

Unfortunately, the bad press is amply earned. In its efforts to redo and surpass the original, Escape From L.A. merely succeeds in making Escape From New York look like a masterpiece. Despite the critical beating that it received upon its release in 1981, Escape From New York has managed to achieve a well deserved cult reputation. But the lean and mean B-movie attitude that made the original so exciting has given way in its sequel to a pricey sense of flabbiness.

In Escape From L.A., everything is bigger and flashier than it was before. Everything is also slower and dumber. Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is especially inclined to fits of denseness. Once again, the surly futuristic commando-turned-criminal is snatched by the U.S. Police Force and is about to be deported to the Island of Los Angeles (big quake, you know). Likewise, the President (Cliff Robertson) is once again in trouble (it's an occupational hazard). Seems that his bad seed daughter (A.J. Langer) has fled to L.A. to be with her Maoist homeboy lover (George Corraface). Even worse, she has taken with her a black box containing the satellite command codes to one of daddy's favorite secret weapons.

As usual, Plissken is indifferent to the national crisis which in the States should make him a prime presidential candidate). So the head of the U.S. Police Force (Stacy Keach) injects him with a deadly, time-delayed virus as a personal inducement. You would think that old Snake might groan under the weight of so much deja vu in one movie.

As was also the case in the original, Plissken has to deal with a treacherous ally (Steve Buscemi), an ex-partner (Pam Grier in an offbeat tribute to The Crying Game), and a helpful fan (Peter Fonda in a role that should have gone to Dennis Hopper). Completely wasted in minor parts are both Michelle Forbes and Bruce Campbell, though Campbell's freaky turn as the Surgeon General of Beverly Hills provokes a few chilly laughs.

But embarassed giggles will be the audience's main response to Escape From L.A. In between bouts of surprisingly mediocre special effects and lackluster stunt scenes, the movie limps from one dull gag to another. Post-apocalyptic Los Angeles festers with heavily armed gang members and fast talking con artists, which means that LaLaLand is still the same despite the geologic shift. But the movie never goes beyond the obvious and the result plays like a boorishly pushy afternoon in Burbank.

Equally uninspired is the political focus of the film, and Escape From L.A. is intended by Carpenter to be his political statement piece. The President is a right-wing religious zealot who lucked into office when he prophesied the coming of the great quake. His daughter has mistaken puppy love for a liberal cause. In turn, her boyfriend is a Shining Path guerrilla leader planning a Third World invasion against the United States. Plissken is a gun-toting civil libertarian who wants his red meat and cigarette right now, no matter what anybody else thinks.

Maybe this could have been good satire (as was the case in Carpenter's under appreciated production of They Live). But Carpenter would have needed a good screenwriter to pull it off. Since the script to Escape From L.A. was co-authored by the director, the producer, and the star, it's a safe bet that the story was hastily concocted during a power brunch with assorted agents.

Which also means that everybody was too busy making deals instead of a movie. Escape From L.A. appears to have been a quick afterthought jotted down on a few cocktail napkins during a heated discussion about percentage points.

Eraser

For some people, summer is that special season for long sunny afternoons with iced drinks and natty straw hats. For others, it is the traditional time of the year for watching big Arnie blow things up on a budget busting scale. Since Schwarzenegger is the star of Eraser, you can guess which group this movie is designed for.

Not that there isn't an odd pleasure to be had from wallowing in another Schwarzenegger ode to mass destruction. The guy is good at what he does on the screen. But has anyone figured out what exactly it is that he does?

As U.S. Marshal John Kruger, Schwarzenegger spends his time single handedly slaying every imaginable threat to Western civilization. While most U.S. marshals merely clog the line at a Dunkin' Donut Shop, Kruger swats down jet airplanes for recreation and feeds thugs to alligators for entertainment.

Which is why he is called the Eraser. Technically, Kruger's job is to protect people on the Federal Witness Protection Program by erasing all traces of their past identity. Mostly, he erases the folks who are out to kill them. The man is a firm believer that the best defense is a brutal offense.

But even Kruger has problems with his new assignment. Her name is Lee Cullen (Vanessa Williams), an honest secretary who has discovered that her company is preparing to illegally sale a secret weapon into the hands of some foreign arms dealers. Since the weapon in question is a hand-held version of a hyper-velocity rail gun with an X-ray scope, Cullen's realizes that the bad guys are about to gain the hi-tech edge in a special effects fantasy movie.

Kruger only has his bulging muscles, crafty wits, and indescribable accent with which to save her. Since his own organization turns out to be thoroughly peppered with traitors, he also has to do all of the fighting on his own while his fellow U.S. marshals are chasing after him. Even worse, he has to confront stunt scenes so outrageous that even the computer-generated graphics in the movie nearly swoons from the excitement.

But it is Arnie who should be swooning. The rail gun rapidly becomes the main star of the movie. The weapon is not exactly a wild fantasy since large-scale prototypes already are stationed on some U.S. warships while eyewitness accounts from the U.S. invasion of Panama would strongly suggest that a smaller version was tested in a few combat zones (only the boys in Area 51 know for sure). Real or unreal, the rail gun is the liveliest element in Eraser.

Schwarzenegger himself has retreated to his old screen persona. On the plus side is the fact that he doesn't have to deliver any Junior-sounding bits of stupid dialogue ("Mein nipples, they are so sensitive"). Instead, he has returned to the implacable machine of destruction mode. As Kruger, he seemingly has no emotions. He can't be stopped. He feels no pain. He can't be killed. He's the Terminator with a badge.

Which begs an obvious question: if the guy is so limited, then why do so many of us dash out to see his films? The simple truth is that Schwarzenegger is still the best at unloading brainless, violent fun. The man is like a roller coaster ride without brakes. You know that the results are going to be loud and bloody, but the sheer mindless decadence of the spectacle makes for compulsive viewing.

Besides, how often do you see a Republican right-winger star in an action movie that tackles the IranContra scandal and presents an Oliver North clone as the main villain? About as often as you see the same man marry into the Kennedy family. Schwarzenegger knows how to cover his bases on both ends and still have time to run a movie into deficit spending.

Mission: Impossible

When is a spy thriller less than thrilling? When the story is so convoluted that even the screenwriters couldn't figure it out.

Which is the first major strike against Mission: Impossible. The script is as tangled and confusing as current Eastern European politics. The movie also has a climax that is almost as silly as the American presidential campaign.

So maybe Mission: Impossible really is a post-modernist statement about post-Cold War politics. However, it is more likely the result of too many writers pounding out way too many rewrites. Rumor has it that several scriptwriters are still locked away in a London hotel room, working on new scenes in hope of explaining this movie.

In which case, Mission: Impossible may be a coolly ironic statement about the dubious process that currently passes for film making in Hollywood. But the glass-is-half-full theory doesn't hold much water when the whole container is obviously cracked and leaking. Nobody in Hollywood is so ironically cool as to spend major big dollars on self-effacement. Especially Tom Cruise. After all, he even pumped up his muscles for this particular mission.

Instead, he is presenting himself as the last all American boy in the espionage racket. With his bad haircut and goofy smile, Cruise rolls through Mission: Impossible looking as if he just got off a bus from Iowa.

As Ethan Hunt, Cruise is more of a Jimmy Bond rather than a James. Perhaps that is appropriate since the movie Mission: Impossible plays like a young readers version of John Le Carre. Though loosely based on the old television series, Mission: Impossible has substituted an odd mix of naivete and cynicism in place of the wooden professionalism of the original.

Jim Phelps (Jon Voight) and the Impossible Mission Force is still plying their unique brand of conman ship upon the enemies of the free world. But the movie quickly acknowledges that the enemies are seemingly fewer and the world alot more constricted rather than free. Even the assignment that sends the IMF to the Czech Republic initially appears to be an elaborate approach to a simple trap for a suspected traitor. But when most of the team is murdered, Hunt discovers that the CIA views him as the only traitor.

Since Hunt is a master of disguise and carries enough phony passports to equip the United Nations, he easily evades a massive manhunt. He is also a masterful computer hacker and apparently has continuous free access to the Internet. In fact, Hunt has so many skills that it never make sense why he has to recruit two disgraced IMF agents (Jean Reno and Ving Rhames) for their hot computer and electronic savvy.

Likewise, he seems a little confused about what to do with Claire(Emmanuelle Beart), Phelps' widow and the only other surviving member of the team. She is young, exotic, and extremely alluring. She also has absolutely no function anywhere in the plot. But then, lots of things serve no purpose in the movie's scrambled storyline. Mission: Impossible unloads enough plot twists for a dozen other movies. Unfortunately, few of them make any sense.

Which means that the film is a long wait for the two or three major moments that director Brian De Palma has lifted from other films. The break-in at a CIA computer vault is a masterfully combined "quoting" of both Topkapi and 2001: A Space Odyssey. The climatic helicopter-and-train chase through the chunnel plays like a Wild West version of 007. These scenes provide Mission: Impossible with some brief flashes of excitement. But they also help to reinforce the movie's half-baked sensibility. The whole film has been stitched together from mismatched pieces of cloth and the seams stick out everywhere.

Mission: Impossible has one solidly good performance, courtesy of Vanessa Redgrave in a minor role. It also has the old Lalo Schifrin theme as its main link to the TV show. But the movie virtually drowns in its own dour spirit as Cruise and his team slowly discovers that the only enemy they have is the one they see every time they look in the mirror. With the demise of the Soviet Union, the American intelligence community seemingly has no one to pick on but themselves. Or as the movie's villain belatedly insists, "The Cold War was over and I was bored."

Some viewers may find themselves sharing in this chap's sentiment.

The Relic

Museum work is much more dangerous than many people realize. Just check out The Relic if you don't believe me. These institutions are simply crawling with pushy patrons, money grubbing donors, mean-spirited board members, and ego bloated politicos. They could almost make the man-eating beastie in the museum's basement look cute.

But you don't have to be an ex-museum employee in order to enjoy The Relic. However, you do have to have a taste for the sort of old style critter genre that The Relic gamely tries to update. Reinventing this formula has been producer Gale Ann Hurd's forte, especially in such previous movies as Aliens and Tremors. The Relic offers a reasonably zesty replay of these past triumphs, but the film never quite overcomes its own sense of deja vu.

Chicago's Natural History Museum has just received a strange shipment from Brazil. The boxes are suppose to contain an incredible find from the darkest heart of the Amazon. But the only thing to arrive in the windy city is a collection of large leaves covered with some mysterious orange spots. The possibility of an exotic fungi causes the institution to order the samples destroyed. Fortunately, Dr. Margo Green (Penelope Ann Miller) is the kind of scientist who never obey orders. She is also the kind of person who never saw this sort of movie. Otherwise, she would have burned those babies.

Several graphic murders later, Dr. Green begins to suspect that something is amidst. Equally concerned is Lt. D'Agosta (Tom Sizemore), a police detective who can't help but notice that the killer has an odd appetite for the victim's brains. In Chicago, most murderers merely settle for a pizza after each killing.

But the sudden increase in the museum's fatality rate is not enough to convince its director (Linda Hunt) to cancel a fancy evening soiree. All the finest (that is, snottiest) people will be there, so a fine night of dining is guaranteed. Too bad none of the guests realize their current place in the food chain.

As directed by Peter (2010 and Timecop) Hyams, The Relic has a cool photographic eye to accentuate its fast pace. Though the second half bogs down into a protracted "who will survive" melee, the movie retains enough excitement to keep most viewers half glued to their seats (more or less). Besides, there is an odd thrill at the sight of Penelope Ann Miller's transformation from slinky model into campy action hero with a mere toss of her high heels. Granted, Sigourney Weaver could have her for breakfast,
but then Weaver's Ripley would have made mincemeat out of this new Stan Winston creation in two seconds.

Which is another way of saying that The Relic is an amusing but pale reminder of some better films. It has its chilling moments (though mostly during the first half) and can, upon occasion, scare the stripes off your socks. But the movie never quite succeeds in either matching or surpassing the other films that it is so endlessly based on.

On the other hand, museum's really are this dangerous. That is why those of us who have worked in them are such a macho breed.