| "The Man
With Two Brains" (1983) The
Man With Two Brains (1983) is a somewhat typical
Steve Martin comedy directed by Carl Reiner.
Steve is a recently widowed brain surgeon. He
runs over Kathleen Turner, who has just left a
man who cut her out of his will, and decides a
brain surgeon would be a pretty good target. Once
she recovers from her injuries, they are married,
but she withholds sex. The two take a working
vacation to Austria, where Martin meets another
brain expert who knows how to transfer brain
contents to another host, and just happens to
have Martin's deceased wife's brain on hand.
Meanwhile, Martin is not doing any better with
his mercenary bride.
This is lowbrow humor start to finish, but
Steve Martin fans (like me) will love it. Seeing
Kathleen in skimpy outfits is not hard to take
either.
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Kathleen Turner (1,
2,
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Randi Brooks (1,
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3)
"Malice"
(1993)
There are a couple of good words I can say
about Malice (1993). Nicole and Kidman. The good
news is that she takes her clothes off. The bad
news is that it is in a pitch dark room, and she
mostly shows her buns at that. This film could be
the poster child for multiple personality
disorder. Lets get the major subplot out of the
way. A rapist is terrorizing the students at an
Eastern college. The dean doesn't like it, and
neither does the female police officer. The dean
is married to Nicole Kidman, who is experiencing
abdominal pains frequently. Meanwhile the star
football player from his high school shows up in
town as a renowned surgeon.
I think that is enough of the pieces, so ...
this is a crime thriller about how the dean
catches the serial rapist, no, it is a story
about adultery, betrayal and revenge, ooops, it
is really about an insurance swindle. See what I
mean? There is, however, a neat bit of irony at
the very end. The entire film is very dark, and
not very exciting.
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Nicole Kidman (1,
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|
| "The
Beach" (2000) The Beach was a
much hyped 20th Century Fox star vehicle for
Leonardo Dicaprio. It opened in February on 2500
screens, and raked in a respectable $15 million
on its opening weekend, $34 million in the first
three weeks. And that was about it. That was as
far as hype could carry it. Movie reviewers saw
it and dropped a massive dump on it (19% positive
reviews, according to Rotten Tomatoes).
Moviegoers saw it and told their friends not to
bother. When the hype was over, there was nothing
left except a bloated, muddled, unimportant,
unintelligent, unentertaining movie that is bad,
bad, bad.
Oh, it's well photographed and cut by the head
trainspotter Danny Boyle, and the score is pretty
cool, and the first five minutes are striking and
absorbing thanks to some charismatic bantering
between Robert Carlyle and Leo while they gad
about exotic Bangkok settings, and the performing
is fine. And that's it. That absorbs the
positives. 50 million dollars for five minutes of
good footage and then some pretty tropical
locales and blathering.
Where to start. Let's see. Our three heroes
make it to a neighboring island from the secret
one they seek. They are standing on the edge of a
forest, look across and it's about two miles, and
they think they may not be able to make it. Now,
do they cut off a few branches to create a
makeshift raft, or even use a branch to hang onto
in case they get tired. Remember, they are
surrounded by about a billion trees of varying
sizes and shapes. Nope. They dive in and go for
it. Death before dishonor.
Then they get to the island. Remember they are
on a beach, looking for a beach. Now if you were
in that situation, what do you think would be the
most likely route you would take on a small
island? I'll bet you would walk along the beach.
Not our heroes. They go inland, so that they can
meet some evil gun-toting movieland Asian
druglords, and give themselves a chance to get
lost forever in the terrain. Then they flee the
druglords and follow a stream downstream.
Downstream? To where? To the ocean? Didn't they
just come from there? If they are already at sea
level, how can the stream be going lower? Well,
guess what? It apparently goes a lot lower,
because they come to a gigantic waterfall and
don't know how to get down.
Virginie Ledoyen decides to jump. Yup, they
don't know how deep the water is below the falls,
but they decide to make the leap anyway. Nothing
so scary about the jump, but anything less than
20 feet of water depth, and they're toast, but no
problem. This is the movies. They go for it. Now
that they've followed a stream downstream for a
long time and jumped down a waterfall, I suppose
they must be about 300 feet below sea level, but
they are discovered by a guy who takes them to
the beach they were seeking. This beach is
apparently at a different sea level.
You get the picture. It just goes on like
that. But that's just trivia compared to the real
problem, which is that there is absolutely no
reason for anyone to enjoy the life they lead in
this beach commune. They look at the perfect
beach and the perfect lagoon and beam proudly.
You ever been to tropical beaches? How long do
you think you can last without other things to
occupy your mind? Even if you're a real
volleyball freak, you're going to flee from the
sun in a short time, and then what makes any
place a good place to be? The people you share it
with. Perhaps I might be willing to give up rum
and nude bars and libraries and SportsCenter and
the internet and medical care and dental hygiene
and Mozart and Ray Charles and convenience stores
if I could spend my life with consistently
interesting people. But these people don't do
much of anything except fish and smoke dope and
play the drums, like some kind of Young
Protestant vision of what paradise might be like,
without thinking about how long it would be
before that stuff would be really boring. For me,
twenty minutes. Maybe some of you could last two
weeks - but a lifetime? A freakin' lifetime?
Without even boat drinks and Jimmy Buffett?
C'mon, now. DiCaprio leaves the island briefly
for a shopping trip to a city, and this makes him
long even more for the unspoiled island. Yeah, I
agree with that. After 10 minutes of watching
American tourists in Bangkok, we'd all be ready
to head back to the island, but give us an
overnight in Paris or San Francisco or Barcelona,
and most of us would say Sayonara to Gilligan
pretty damned fast.
The romance between DiCaprio and Ledoyen is
completely lifeless. They have no chemistry
together, and we can't even understand why they
like each other, since they seem to have neither
heat nor compatibility.
As you may know, the production of the movie
was rife with controversy. Apparently the islands
in that part of the world didn't look like what
they wanted tropical islands to look like, so
they dragged in tons of cocoanut palms, planted
them, and virtually destroyed the ecosystem of
their micro-environment. Unfortunately, the print
of the film survived. How does a studio exec
approve fifty million simoleans for a script like
this?
On the nudity side, sadly for us, this island
community must be the only place in the world
where European women wear their tops to go to the
beach. In addition to the complete lack of
realism in this situation, it also serves to
deprive us of some much-needed eye candy. The
only real nudity is a topless night swim from
Ledoyen. Tilda Swinton and Leo did a sex scene
where she may or may not have been naked behind a
curtain, but if you can't even tell whether she's
naked, it can't really be that good, can it?
Ledoyen (1, 2,
3)
"Magnolia"
(1999)
We may be through the past, but the past is
not through with us.
I had no idea that director/writer Philip
Thomas Anderson had this kind of talent. He's
gone way beyond anything he's shown with his
previous efforts to create a neo-biblical
masterpiece, complete with prayer, frogs raining
from the sky, and a sort of Hallelujah chorus
sung by everyone together. Like Noah, he's taken
all his characters two by two. There are two
women who can't cope without drugs, two quiz kids
who need their fathers' love, two men dying of
cancer, two compassionate but largely ineffectual
caregivers, etc.
Together these people take part in several
intersecting stories that deliver a tremendous
emotional punch underlined by black humor, and a
very high degree of cultural literacy. It's a
bleak, draining, intellectual, emotional, arty
movie, and it's umpteen hours long (3:11). Don't
rent it for a pizza and beer experience, but if
you are in the mood to see a film where the
director has put his heart and soul and talent
into creating a lasting work of art, you will
want to see this unique film. It took me a while
to get into all the stories, but when he got me
involved, I couldn't draw away.
PTA also hired a tremendous cast. I don't know
if you can single out one or two performers, but
if they gave an Oscar for best acting in an
entire movie, this film would get my vote.
Tremendous ensemble, backed with perfect
mood-setting from the folk-operatic musical
score, as well as the sweeping and slow grandeur
of the camera movements. Tremendous film. Best
one I've seen since "The Sweet
Hereafter", but please be advised it's not a
mass-market entertainment movie, and will not be
everyone's cup of tea.
Melor Walters bares her breasts a couple
minutes into the film in a sex scene, and then
later behind a shower curtain. There is no other
nudity, although Tom Cruise parodies his own
famous "dancing in the underwear"
scene, and proves that he's still in flawless
physical condition. Melora Walters. These images
are taken from a video tape. For some reason, the
DVD release has been delayed until October.
(1,
2)
"Drowning
Mona" (2000)
Yeah, like you guys are just sitting there
waiting to read my review of this movie. I would
review it, except that means I would have had to
sit all the way through a Bette Midler movie,
which I wouldn't do for 24 hours of private lap
dancing from Denise Richards and Laetitia Casta.
From what I could see, it looked a lot like a
comedy, except for the humor, of course. I did
see a lot of people hit each other with frying
pans, catch each other with fishhooks, sleep with
diner waitresses, and cheat a lot at the Wheel of
Fortune home game. So it was a lot like (choose
one or more): an episode of the Three Stooges
without Curly. a Charlie Sheen movie without
Charlie Sheen an actual day in Charlie Sheen's
life
On the nudity front, Jamie Lee Curtis wore a
see-through top of some kind. Jamie Lee ain't so
young, but she looked good and she really seemed
to enjoy her campy role as the town slut.
(1,
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