Threesome

Eddy (Josh Charles) is a film student who's unsure of his sexual orientation. Alex (Lara Flynn Boyle) and Stuart (Stephen Baldwin) are his college dorm roommates. Alex likes Eddy, and Stuart likes Alex. Eddy likes both of them. Gosh, do you suppose...?

Threesome is the latest entry in the new Generation X genre of boy-meets-boy-meets-girl movie. It has a few minor jokes and some terribly overwritten dialogue. It also forces viewers to go a long way for its climactic menage a trois (that's French for complex body movements). But despite the characters' almost continual chatter about bisexuality, the movie sidesteps the issue until the very end – and then drops it into the story like a lead balloon.

The movie might have slipped by as a low-key comedy, if the cast was more engaging. But Flynn is shrill, Charles is annoying and Baldwin is mostly crude and dumb. All three of them are perpetually horny, and only Charles is ever seen near a classroom. They're the world's oldest undergraduates, and they carry on like a pack of high schoolers who just discovered sex. It's not a pretty sight.

Threesome is occasionally funsome, but mostly it's tiresome.

Red Rock West

It used to be that a guy had to go to the city for a bellyful of murder and duplicity. In the classics of the film noir genre, cities were so packed with corrup­tion that nice guys didn't sim­ply finish last, they usually finished face down in a back alley. But those were the old days when tough guys haunt­ed smoky jazz clubs and rain-slick streets. Today, the action is located on the prairie.

Which is what Nicolas Cage discovers in this year's hot cult movie, Red Rock West. It's the latest piece of "cowboy noir," following in the boot steps of Blood Sim­ple, Flesh and Bone and Kill Me Again, Red Rock West di­rector John Dahl's previous thriller. Not only has Dahl's new effort been a major criti­cal hit on the film festival cir­cuit, but it also has generated a deafening buzz among film buffs.

In Red Rock West, Cage plays a drifter who's cruising for jobs through the oil fields of Wyoming. He's flat broke when he pulls into the town of Red Rock and willing to try almost anything when a bar owner (J. T. Walsh) offers him a gig. What Cage doesn't realize is that Walsh has him confused with a hitman from Dallas whom Walsh hired and is expecting. Cage has no intention of doing the job, which is killing Walsh's wife (Lara Flynn Boyle). Then again, that money is damned tempting....

The plot of Red Rock West turns more twisty than a bad stretch of road, especially when Boyle offers Cage more money to murder her hus­band than her husband is of­fering Cage to kill her. Not to mention when the real hit­man (Dennis Hopper) shows up and offers to whack just about everybody. Add Dwight Yoakam in an effective cameo role, and you've got a movie lover's delight - a taut and surprisingly slick little gem of a film.