Black Beauty

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

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

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

Barcelona

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

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

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

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

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

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

32 Short Films About Glenn Gould

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

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

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

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

Derek Jarman's Blue

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

Blue Chips

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

8 Seconds

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

Six Degrees of Separation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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