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.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

"People are always surprised ' to learn," says actor Terrence Stamp, "that I never wore diapers as a child."

Odd variations in toilet training were not the subject of the press confer­ence held last July in Los Angeles, but Stamp has spent most of the past decade sorting through the psychoanalytic rever­berations in his life. Such details were connected to both his career and his de­cision to play an aging transsexual in the Australian comedy The Adventures of Prisclla, Queen of the Desert.

"I was one of those eldest sons who always had to be perfect," Stamp contin­ues. His drive for perfection has always been evident in his acting, even though Stamp has spent a long stretch of his ca­reer coasting through easy-money parts as the fancy English villain in expensive American films. Though he gained criti­cal respect in the early '60s in such movies as Billy Budd and The Collector, Stamp has mostly made his living with such parts as the evil General Zed in Su­perman II and the world's meanest Mr. Potato-Head in Alien Nation.

Such typecasting was, admits Stamp, part of the reason why he was interested in playing Bernadette, a very prim gen­der-bender who joins two young drag queens on a campy excursion through the sand-blasted Outback.

"I've often boasted that if I'm fright­ened by a role, then I'll take it. That's how I grow. But when this role came up, the fear threshold became so rarefied. There were times when I was absolutely petrified and had to counter years and years of conditioning."

Stamp, a 54-year-old straight man, has a handsome and youthful appeal that even his snowy white, widow-peaked hairline cannot alter. But as a woman, Stamp's sharp facial features form a crow's nest of repressions. The shrewish quality of his performance was accentu­ated by the discomfort of his costumes: a parade of house dresses, sequined tights, pantyhose that tucked in his genitalia and water-filled condoms that propped up his bra. "I looked like the worst kind of draggy old tomcat. I finally started yelling, 'Come on! Make me look even more stupid!.'"

Added to this was the rigor of a 39-day shooting schedule, most of which took place on a seemingly endless sweep of road that cuts across the sweltering wasteland. The filming, like the movie, was an absurd journey through arid ter­rain best known for its enormous flies. The sight of three actors in drag, tooling around in a pink-colored bus named Priscilla, must have been a dubious spec­tacle for the miners in the region.

"Not really. The locals were actually pretty laid back," insists Stephen Elliot, the director of Priscilla. "What they're into is much weirder. Really weird. It's mean out there in towns like Coober Pedy. You get on someone's wrong side and they blow you up."

Priscilla is Elliot's second feature and its success on the film festival circuit has given him a rep as the hot, new talent from Down Under. At 30, he looks ex­cessively boyish, with a gap-toothed smile and an Aussie accent that practical­ly screams for a translator.

"I didn't want to make a gay film," ar­gues Elliot when pressed about the audi­ence he intended for Priscilla. "As far as I'm concerned, the film is not a gay movie. I wanted to make a musical, and drag was a great vehicle for it." Ironically, that contradiction has been both help and hindrance for Priscilla. The overt gayness of both its story and humor doesn't always click with a straight audi­ence, and some homosexual groups have been upset with the movie's refusal to tackle political issues. Priscilla has a com­promised quality: as it avoids the thornier parts of its own concerns, settling instead for a gaudy display of feather boas.

"I honestly wanted to do a film where you start by laughing at these charac­ters," explains Elliot. "They are freaks, and people come into the cinema to see the freak show feeling unthreatened. Then, very slowly, it changes, 'til you're laughing with them. You end up having complete sympathy with them.

"That's my way of making films."

Art Night at the Drive-In

Art house movies and drive-in theaters don't often mix. The whole idea would strike Joe Bob Briggs as being a communist conspiracy. But on May 7, the Kingman Drive-In in Delaware (it's located 9 1/2 miles north of 1-270 on SR 23) will host "Drive-In Surreal," an evening of experimental flicks and fresh country air.

"What could be better than watching surrealist films in the privacy of your own car under the stars?" asks Tim Lanza, the screening's organizer. Lanza is the U.S. distributor for the Rohauer film collection, a specialty movie company that's been located in Columbus for the past eight years. Developed from the estate of the late Raymond Rohauer — an art house theater owner and former business partner of Buster Keaton — the collection is an impressive list of titles from the avant-garde and the silent cinema.

The Rohauer Collection has a great line-up of films, but they're not often shown publicly due to the tastes of modern young viewers. "These films are part of a different era," Lanza notes sadly. "Just like drive-ins."

At the ripe old age of 30, Lanza teeters between Baby Boomer status and Generation X. His life-long passion for movies led him to earn a bachelor degree from the now defunct Department of Film and Photography at the Ohio State University, and to serve an extensive internship as a research assistant with the now defunct film program at the Columbus Museum of Art. With "Drive-In Surreal," Lanza is looking forward to being involved in something that doesn't have the word "defunct" attached to it.

But, he warns about the event, "I don't want people to come expecting a lecture. This is going to be more of a carnival."

The evening kicks off at 8:45 p.m. with Un Chien Andalou by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. Made in 1928 with money borrowed from Bunuel's mother, it's the definitive surrealist movie, veering between moments of supreme shock and long passages of total craziness. The movie is littered with insects, severed hands, dead donkeys and several priests. Naturally, it's a cinematic classic.

Equally daring is Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet, the 1930 underground masterpiece by the director of the old French version of Beauty and the Beast. It's a barrage of dream images and vivid nightmares that were partly based on Cocteau's brief addiction to opium.

Two of the rarest films on the program are Dementia and Salome. Dementia is an oddball horror film from 1953 that used only music and sound effects to express the mental states of a female psychopathic killer, who may — or may not — be dreaming. Salome was an infamous production in, its day — 1923 — produced by the Russian avant-garde dancer Nazimova. The movie plays like a three-way collision among Oscar Wilde, Richard Strauss and Aubrey Beardsley.

Rounding out the night are two comedy shorts by Buster Keaton: The Goat and One Week, which are among his funniest films. Keaton was the only Hollywood filmmaker who was held in high regard by the surrealists. "Drive-In Surreal" promises a wildly unusual night — one that's unlikely to happen twice.

Christine Vachon: Mogul on a Shoestring

"There's a part of me that would love to make an epic," admitted Christine Vachon. She was tak­ing phone calls during a break in the New York editing room where her newest pro­duction, Postcards From America, was under­going its final cut.

"There's something to be said about making a film that appeals to lots of peo­ple," she continued. "But there's also some­thing to be said about making a movie that really moves a few people. Actually, I would like to be able to do both."

Christine Vachon is the Manhattan-based producer of such extremely con­troversial (and high­ly acclaimed) movies as Todd Haynes' Poison and Tom Kalin's Swoon. She has been hailed as one of the leading figures behind the so-called "New Queer Cinema" and as one of the major players in the new American independent film movement. Vachon was even profiled last month in The New Yorker, and Hollywood studio executives are closely monitoring the impending release, this summer, of her lesbian romance movie Go Fish. At the age of 32, Vachon is the latest, hottest trendsetter in sight.

All of which boils down to, on one level, the fact that "I don't have much of a per­sonal life," she moaned, explaining that she just spent most of the week working on budget figures. "And I'm not sure how much good I would be in Hollywood."

But she's one of the best independent pro­ducers around. Her films are risky, audacious and — like them or not — hard to forget. They're unconventional, daring and often disturbing, — but they're also visual feasts.

"When I take a film on," said Vachon, "I not only have to be able to sell it, but I also have to be able to live with it."

Producing movies isn't simply a line of work for Vachon. It's her life. She works primarily with friends and close associates and views each movie as a collaboration of equals. She's an admirer of the films of Jean Renoir and uses a "democratic" production system similar to the co-op movie-making methods used by the old French master.

"Each time, I try to form a collaboration that will last forever," she laughs. These work relationships may not last forever, but so far they've held together well.

On April 8 and 9, Vachon presents a two-part artist-in-residency program at the Wexner Center for the Arts. The Friday evening presentation is an advanced screen­ing of Postcards From America — a wild, nightmarish journey through a mythical America that's loosely based on the life of the artist David Wojnarowicz. On Saturday afternoon, Vachon offers a workshop on the ins and outs of independent film producing.

"I would like to demystify the process for other people," said Vachon about the workshop.

That means she intends to get down to the brass tacks (and taxes) of how you do it. Take a notebook when you go. Vachon knows what she's talking about.

Confessions of a Cult Movie Star

Dressed like a lab technician, actor Michael J. Anderson is bent over a dead body. He slowly recites a long, fragmented string of sentences that plays like a parody of stream-of-consciousness writing. The camera does a De Palma-style track around him as he stares at some ill-defined point past the key light. There's a tight zoom onto Anderson's face - a move that finally allows the actor playing the stiff a chance to breathe.

It was "B" movie time in February on the set where Columbus' Film Group II was shooting its direct-to-video cult item First You Live and Then You Die. Anderson plied his trade in this locally produced movie, which is currently going through the Los Angeles video distribution mill for international release. Anderson not only stars in the movie, he has also been active in promoting it.

"I'm impressed with the filmmaking in Columbus," said Anderson during a conversation that took place in February. "And I've enjoyed working with Mark Burson and Dyrk Ashton," the producer/director team behind the film.

That isn't too shabby a compliment considering that Anderson is accustomed to working with infamous TV and film director David Lynch. Anderson's three-foot-eight-inch height and other-worldly looks landed him the unusual part of "The Little Man From Another Place" in Lynch's Twin Peaks TV series. His first appearance on the tube, as a disco-dancing, backward-talking denizen of some unearthly realm, was the perfect capper to an episode that was the most bizarre 60 minutes of television since Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. It was intense, absurd, vivid and surreal: a bundle of contradictions exploding in the viewer's face.

Anderson's life is full of such unlikely contradictions. His gait, for instance, is both graceful and jerky, the result of having broken more than 300 bones due to the congenital bone disease that stunted his growth and makes his skeleton extremely brittle. (He's broken bones simply by moving.) He also has a distinct speech impediment which he's successfully tamed into something that sounds like a vague accent.

No wonder his face betrays a strong sense of strength and suffering. Anderson is only 40, but he looks ageless, as if he were both a youthful elf and a wizened spirit.

"I'm not a candidate for a role about a large, black basketball player," he laughs. "But it's also nice to do roles in which everything doesn't revolve around my being a little man."

Nonetheless, Anderson's size has been his meal ticket into major guest-starring roles on TV's Picket Fence and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In addition, Anderson has continued his association with Lynch (for better or worse) - he appeared in the critically disastrous Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and is on hold for the long-awaited (and still stalled) production of Ronnie Rocket, the movie that could succeed in making Eraserhead look like The Brady Bunch.

"I have four different versions of the script for Ronnie Rocket," confided Anderson. "But Lynch has, for the moment, lost confidence in the project. Which is too bad. If he stays to his vision of the film, it would be like a cold wind blowing through this room."

His eyes momentarily twinkle. Anderson likes to work in movies that are bold, daring and different. That's what brought him to Columbus for First You Live and Then You Die.

Most of the movie was originally shot several years ago, during a rambling, cross-country trip. The movie didn't make much sense, but it received a few screenings and, more surprisingly, a favorable review from Joe Bob Briggs. Burson and Ashton decided to take a try at clarifying the footage, but they needed a way to tie the storyline together.

So they invented the concept of a "necroscope," a telepath who can read the memories of the dead. Since the pair was looking to land a video distribution deal with a Pacific rim-based company, they needed an American actor who was unique enough to handle the part, but also well known in Asian markets. Anderson had the look, and the huge popularity of Twin Peaks in Japan made him an established star.

But there was an ulterior motive to their recruitment of Anderson. Burson and Ashton are also working on a movie based on a series of mystery novels about a dwarf detective.

Despite his claim that he "sits around a pool in Los Angeles, looking abstract," Anderson is a busy man.

"The way I see it," he says, "the more balls I can juggle at the same time, the more likely that one of them will hit me."

His eyes fill again with that magical sparkle. Despite his old nickname of "little man Mike," Anderson's persona is finally beginning to grow.

Eva Marie Saint

"When I first came to Ohio by bus," said Eva Marie Saint, "I cried because everything was so flat."

It was the 1940s and she had just left her home in Upper New York state to attend school at Bowling Green State University. The young Eva Marie arrived at Bowling Green convinced that she was going to become a third grade teacher.

"My mom had always been a teacher, and I thought that that was what I wanted to do," she explained during a recent telephone interview. "But then someone got me to try out for a play and I suddenly realized what I wanted to do."

It was those early, faltering steps on stage in the flat lands of Ohio that eventually led Saint to a successful career on Broadway and then in Hollywood during the 1950s. Much admired for her performances in such films as On the Waterfront and North by Northwest, Saint was able to handle a wide variety of roles, ranging from fragile, working-class idealist to cool, sophisticated spy.

She also worked with such legendary leading men as Marlon Brando and Cary Grant - which is why she returns to the stage May 26 at the Palace Theatre to host a presentation of Grant's romantic melodrama An Affair to Remember. Both the screening and Saint's appearance are being provided by American Movie Classics and Coaxial Communications. An Affair to Remember is the 1957 weepie classic that was recently repopularized by the movie Sleepless in Seattle. Prior to the screening, Saint will lead a discussion of her friend Cary Grant from her "insider's" viewpoint.

"I never saw a flaw in Cary Grant," said Saint. "He was larger than life and a total professional. Midway through North by Northwest I started to feel a little guilty. I thought I should be paying the studio for the chance to work with Cary."

It will be an evening of sweet nostalgia as one legend pays tribute to another. It also, ironically, will continue Saint's association with crying in Ohio.

"It's such a great movie," Saint remarked about An Affair to Remember. "I just hope people have their hankies ready."

Addams Family Values

Uncle Fester is howling at the moon, the kids are burying cats in the backyard and Gomez is arm wrestling with a severed hand. Just another evening at the Addams' house. Then Morticia announces that she's having a baby. Literally - at that moment.

This is as close as Addams Family Values gets to a plot. The hurried sequel to 1991's monster hit shares all of the original's strengths and weaknesses. The movie has its moments, but there's not much connecting any of the scenes or jokes.

Okay. There's a bit more to the plot. When the children, Pugsley and Wednesday, try to bump off their new baby brother, the family decides that it's time to hire a nanny. Appropriately, the new nanny (Joan Cusack)is a serial killer who marries, then murders, wealthy men. She targets Uncle Fester as her next victim and sets out to deftly win his heart. But she quickly discovers that you can't easily kill an Addams - Fester thinks the murder attempts are just displays of her love.

Some of the flick's best jokes are saved for the kids, when they're sent to summer camp, where they're surrounded by the next generation of the WASP elite and forced to watch videos of The Brady Bunch. You can't wait for the two little ghouls to threaten the entire place with mass scalping. While at camp, Wednesday finds her soul mate, in the form of a pint-sized Woody Allen look-alike.

Addams Family Values is occasionally funny. But it's all punchlines with no build up. It plays like the highlights to another movie.

The Lion King

Things have been a little rough around the Magic Kingdom lately. Walt Disney Studios - and their numerous subsidiary companies - have spent the past year releasing a ton of bad movies to well-deserved critical beatings and lackluster box office. EuroDisney has taken a financial bath in a sea of red ink and has virtually provoked the French into declaring war on Mickey Mouse. Then Nancy Kerrigan showed up with a crappy attitude and blurted out how silly she felt taking their money.

But you know what they say: when the going gets tough, the tough get back to animation. The Lion King is the sort of film that the Disney empire was built on, and it's still the kind of movie that Disney does best. Sure, it's a typical production that you can just about write in your sleep. But on technical points alone, The Lion King ends up being one of the more impressive movies of the summer.

The story is a mix of The Jungle Book and The Sword in the Stone, with a good lion king squared off against his evil brother. Mufasa (voice of James Earl Jones) has just produced a son, and his sneaky sibling, Scar (voice of Jeremy Irons), can't stand the thought of being passed over by his new nephew. Scar joins forces with a pack of hyenas (voice of Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Martin and Jim Cummings) and plots a little regicide. But prince Simba (as an adult, the voice of Matthew Broderick) survives, and once he reaches maturity, he finds himself forced to return to his father's now crumbling kingdom.

The animation work in The Lion King is one of the most masterful jobs done by Disney's artists, as they successfully create a visual design that's more realistic and slightly less sentimental than the mouse that roars usually produces. Only the musical score comes close to a few false steps. For once, the empire gets it right.

Two Small Bodies

"If you want false hope, go to church," snaps Fred Ward in the film Two Small Bodies. "This is reality."

Ward (Henry and June)plays a police detective who's investigating the disappearance (and possible murder) of two kids. Suzy Amis (Ballad of Little Jo)plays the missing children's' mother, a cocktail waitress with loose morals and bad luck. She may have committed the kidnappings, but Ward is mostly interested in her sexual habits. They're the only characters in the movie, but they succeed in taking sexual politics to the level of full-scale war.

"It's a little bit in the manner of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Night Porter," says Beth B., the director of Two Small Bodies. "But it also has touches of Sam Fuller and Joseph Losey."

She was barely able to squeeze in the time to talk by phone from Los Angeles while pursuing a hectic week of meetings. Since the late '70s, Beth B. has been the most critically prominent filmmaker of the Punk movement. But with Two Small Bodies, she's now entering the major leagues with a film that invokes favorable comparison to the works of Robert Altman and R. W. Fassbinder. Two Small Bodies is her most polished and emotionally satisfying movie, and it easily ranks as one of the finest films of the year.

"After doing several larger films - Vortex and Salvation - I was finding it very hard to raise money," explains B. "So I decided to go back to my roots with a simpler production."

A friend suggested making a film version of the play Two Small Bodies by Neal Bell, and B. felt an instant rapport with the text. "A lot of it borders on the question of fantasy and reality, and is really about the internal drama between the two characters."

The twists and turns contained within the vitriolic exchanges between Ward and Amis plays like a witch's brew of seductive gestures, macho posturings and marital recriminations. "But I think it has a very hopeful ending," says B. "You have to go through a lot of shit to get there, but that's the way life really is."

In many ways, Two Small Bodies is a radical departure from the director's earlier, more rough-hewn movies. Aside from the intense performances by Ward and Amis, the film is structured with a series of complex camera movements that visually entangle the actors in the intricate web of their own deceits. "I wanted the camera to become a third person in the room with them," B. explains. "That way, I could chart the psychological differences and changes taking place between them."

The result is something akin to a feverish dance by the damned. Yet in the end, when their characters have reached the point of crazed exhaustion, Ward and Amis discover the meaning of compassion.

"I'm still attracted to the dark side of life," B. confesses. "But I'm feeling that there's more hope now in things involving men and women."