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 54. This is essentially Whit Stillman's Last Days of
Disco and Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights mixed
together and mildly dumbed down. It tells the story of Shane (played
in Greek-god-with-a-lobotomy style by Ryanne Phillippe), a beautiful
New Jersey boy who comes to the big city and finds happiness in
the drug-crazed party atmosphere of legendary discotheque Studio
54. While we're treated to endless images of tasty men cavorting
shirtless in the club of dreams, the movie lacks substance beyond
the free play of manly nipples. Mike Meyers is particularly awful
as Steve Rubell, Studio 54's Quaalude-loving impresario, hamming
it up like a drunker, gayer version of Austin Powers. Director
Mark Christopher may have meant to make a downbeat, moralizing
film, but in failing at that he at least makes something that
shows how much fun the New York club scene was. There seems to
be no consequence to any action in this fairy-tale version of
the late '70s/early '80s: Shane's drug use is condemned but never
gets him into any trouble; the marriage of his two closest friends
is strained by their club life, but not terribly so; and even
Rubell's prison sentence seems like nothing more than a brief
vacation from the rigors of all-night partying. This film manages
to capture the ambiance of the disco scene in a way that other
films have not, making 54 a lightly pleasant nostalgia
piece that casts an unwittingly kind and loving glance at that
magical era that brought us Donna Summers, the herpes epidemic,
and glittery spandex posing straps. --DiGiovanna
THE GOVERNESS. Minnie Driver plays Rosina, a beautiful
and spirited 19th-century Jewish girl whose life changes after
her father dies, leaving the family destitute. To survive she
must either marry a smelly old fishmonger, become a whore, or
pass for a gentile and go work among the uptight goyim.
So she becomes a governess (disguised under the vaguely Goth pseudonym
Mary Blackchurch), and somehow manages to combine all three. She
finds a position on an island and ends up falling for the man
of the house, Mr. Cavendish (the utterly unappealing Tom Wilkinson),
a brooding man of science. The two invent photography, oddly enough,
but Cavendish is so repressed he freaks out because Rosina/Mary
Blackchurch is forever wanting to get naked with him. (If you're
dying to see Minnie Driver in the buff, this film is for you.)
Meanwhile Cavendish's hot young son is swooning for Rosina, rolling
around in her bedcovers and such, but she'll have nothing to do
with him. This has the feel of a once-good script that's been
homogenized and dumbed down by the movie studio for ease of digestion.
First-time writer and director Sandra Goldbacher shows some spunk,
but this ends up being just another one of those pointless period
movies where everyone's always overcoming repressive times by
having sex. --Richter
PASSION IN THE DESERT. Rather astonishingly, this film
is about a man who falls in love with a leopard. The setting is
Egypt, the time is the late 18th century, and soldier Augustin
Robert (Ben Daniels) gets lost in the dunes but is miraculously
saved by a pretty spotted kitty cat. Perhaps she likes his over-tanned
skin, or his Hercules-style mane of flowing bleached hair.
Or his shaved chest. Or his big muscular body. The two set up
housekeeping, but naturally such a love is not destined to last,
even if the man involved is a French man. This movie certainly
gets points for being strange, and for having a cast that consists
almost entirely of a man and a four-footed creature. There is
little dialogue. Yet despite this, it's curiously flat and lackluster.
Dare I say it--there's just no chemistry between Daniels and that
darn cat. --Richter
PERMANENT MIDNIGHT. If you hate Ben Stiller's acting, you'll
want to avoid Permanent Midnight like it was a weekend
with Richard Simmons. If not, this is definitely worth checking
out. Although not long on originality, this true story of Jerry
Stahl, the heroin-addicted writer for the TV series Alf,
has some creative and engaging moments, including the best crack-smoking
scene ever filmed. In the role of Stahl, Stiller does his entire
quivering, double-talking, hyper-active shtick here, and it works
well in conveying the excited desperation of someone on the edge
of fame. Still, I know a good number of people who find Stiller
unbearable, and this is him at his most intense. Maria Bello (of
ER) turns in a creditable performance as the anonymous
woman who finds him working at a drive-through burger stand after
his rehabilitation; and Elizabeth Hurley plays her standard role
as Stahl's beautiful green-card wife, but really it's Stiller's
show. Even if you can't stand him, at least slip in for the last
few minutes where, as Stahl, he goes on all the talk shows for
the obligatory post-modern, post-addiction, post-recovery, public
self-flagellation. --DiGiovanna
SIMON BURCH. Hollywood has the Oscars on its mind, and,
since films about mentally and/or physically challenged people
are surefire Oscar bait (Children of a Lesser God, Rain
Man, Forrest Gump), Disney goes for the jugular with
a story about the very, very tiny Simon Burch (Ian Michael Smith).
The unfortunate result is an assemblage of loosely related scenes
which milk the shock value of Smith's physical appearance in an
attempt to force viewers onto an emotional roller coaster. A weak
plot does surface about two-thirds into the movie, but by then
the audience has already been subjected to at least a dozen references
to Simon as a miracle/hero/instrument of God, a Forrest Gump-ian
use of an overly obvious soundtrack, and a whole lotta wooden
child acting (not Smith). The real tragedy of the film is that
its dramatic impact derives not from Simon's character, and the
obstacles a norm-obsessed society tosses his way, but rather from
exploiting how different Smith looks. Jim Carrey provides
cutesy narration and the always likable Oliver Platt contributes
to the few digestible scenes. --Higgins
SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS. This manipulative, cautious and
contrived comedy came out of the stifling Sundance Workshop, and
it shows. Like every other movie these days, it's set in the '70s.
The won't-this-be-touching story focuses on a young girl coming
of age, and her efforts to accept her body and her family, who
are a little off-beat, but not so off-beat as to challenge the
audience's beliefs or sensibilities. Alan Arkin does his usual
decent job playing the aging single father. (God forbid there
should be a single mother in a lighthearted film...single mothers
equal tragedy and pain.) The jokes are all reasonably funny, there's
enough sex to make it titillating but not enough to push it into
controversy, and there's a general lack of plot. Perhaps the most
interesting thing about this intentionally forgettable film are
the body doubles: both Marissa Tomei and newcomer Natasha Lyonne
must show their breasts at least twice, but their faces are never
in the shot, and the actresses hired to stand in for them sport
bodies with no visual relation to the ones they're supposed to
represent. A real oddity, that: There's Tomei, she gratuitously
opens her robe, and suddenly there's a shot from the neck down
of someone else's body. I guess if you're doing tits-for-tits-sake
you might as well bring in the best you can find, and damn the
torpedoes. Other than the curious interest that provides, though,
the film refuses to take any chances or do anything risky, and
winds up being so benign as to be a bit boring. Perhaps this can
be blamed on the heavy and notoriously treacly hand of Robert
Redford, who produced this cowardly, if somewhat humorous, project.
--DiGiovanna
YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS. Pessimistic filmmaker Neil
LaBute follows up his much-lauded first film The Company of
Men with this bleak and funny look at couple-dynamics. Everyone
is named Cary or Jerry or Barry or Cherry or Mary or something
here, and they all hop in and out of bed with each other in search
of something like satisfaction. Of course, they just end up feeling
more despair. LaBute really pushes things over the top with some
wonderfully evil characters (Jason Patrick plays a wildly misogynistic
gynecologist), and by stubbornly refusing all the characters the
tiniest shard of redemption. It's mean, but it's funny too--sort
of like if Woody Allen had written Carnal Knowledge. --Richter
DANCE WITH ME. In this piece that appears to have been
penned by a standardized script-writing computer, a beautiful
Cuban youth comes to America to find his father, the girl of his
dreams, and a career as a celebrated ballroom dancer. I wonder
if he will succeed?! The editing is perhaps the most atrocious
I've ever seen in a big-budget production. One phone conversation
is doubled in length by the fact that director Randa Haines can't
seem to cut away from the last speaker fast enough, alternately
leaving Vanessa Williams and male lead Chayanne standing there
with strained "can we cut now?" expressions on their
faces for several seconds after they speak each line. Even worse
is the cinematography: The dance scenes are all shot in close-up.
This travesty made me want to ask Haines if the word "duh"
meant anything to her. All she had to do was rent any Gene Kelly
or Fred Astaire movie to see how to shoot people dancing. Here's
a clue: Include their feet in the shot; and while you're at it,
why not include the rest of their bodies? Other than the fact
that it successfully creates the illusion of movement through
the rapid succession of still images, this film is a complete
and utter waste of time. --DiGiovanna
PI. A New York mathematician searches for a number that,
when placed in a formula, can effectively predict the ebb and
flow of the stock market. In the process, he may just be discovering
the secret to life and God--by way of Wall Street, Hebrew scripture,
spiral patterns, and the ancient game of Go. Darren Aronofsky
produced this audaciously premised first feature on the tiniest
of budgets, but he gets the most out of his settings by using
gritty black-and-white photography, smart editing and high-contrast
lighting. And dig that techno music soundtrack! In addition to
technical savvy, Aronofsky also proves himself a first-rate director
of ideas, effectively communicating the kinds of connective concepts
that might be more at home in a book like The Tao of Physics
than on the screen. It's too bad, then, that Aronofsky decided
to reduce Pi's second half to a neat little plot. He throws
ideas on the back burner and instead opts for chase scenes and
insanity. Consequently, lead actor Sean Gullette, whose hand shakes
even more violently than that of Tom Hanks in Saving Private
Ryan, totally freaks out. Then the Robert DeNiro Rules take
over: If there is hair, you must shave it; if there is a mirror,
you must punch it; if there is a drill, you must use it on your
skull; and so on. It's a silly finale for an otherwise stimulating
film. --Woodruff
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