New releases:
a munificent, not quite magnificent seven
The Basketball Diaries
Written by Bryan Goluboff
Directed by Scott Kalvert
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg and Bruno Kirby
Based on poet-musician Jim Carroll’s celebrated memoirs, The
Basketball Diaries is a mediocre film that could have been a
stunner.
With material as rich as Carroll’s edgy, bracingly candid prose
to work with, it’s a wonder director Scott Kalvert couldn’t put
together a better film. Leonardo DiCaprio, fresh from his
impressive turns in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and The Quick and
the Dead, plays Carroll with an irreverent, in-your-face attitude.
A star player on his high school basketball team, Carroll shoots
hoops by day and heroin by night.
Undeterred by Jim’s worrisome mom (Lorraine Bracco, overacting
horribly) and their Catholic school priests, Jim and his pals
Neutron (Patrick McGaw), Pedro (James Madio) and Mickey ("Marky"
Mark Wahlberg, looking like a young Brad Davis) covertly explore
the underside of New York City, meeting prostitutes, dope dealers
and car thieves. Thoroughly addicted, Jim eventually hits rock
bottom. Thanks only to a local friend named Reggie (Ernie Hudson)
and a stint in prison can Jim claw his way back to sobriety.
On film, the drug trips and exploits are neither as harrowing
nor as exhilarating as Carroll’s prose. There’s an occasional
moment of inventiveness  panning around a cramped room with a
distorted lens to show Jim’s frenzied mental state, for instance
 but too often, Kalvert resorts to tired clichés, like a
slow-motion romp through a poppy field for Jim’s first heroin
trip.
Worse, what should have been a riveting central performance is
hampered by a voice-over narration that only points up the
difference between Carroll’s rough, gritty language and the film’s
glossy visuals.
Equally distracting, several players seem miscast: Aside from
Bracco’s irritating performance as the mother, an uncredited and
atrocious Juliette Lewis turns up as a prostitute and Bruno Kirby
plays a gay basketball coach (yeah, right). Stellar editing might
have concealed some of these problems, but instead several
continuity gaps have been left unaddressed.
All of this is not to take away from Carroll’s story: it’s a
compelling, affecting, and gritty tale. But it deserves better
treatment.
Lael Loewenstein B-
While You Were Sleeping
Written by Daniel Sullivan
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
Starring Sandra Bullock, Bill Pullman and Peter Gallagher
Soon you will not have a choice. You will be seeing her on
billboards, and large-screen televisions in shop windows. And on
the covers of tabloids, and on frozen dinners, and you will be
unscrewing a bottle shaped like her and pouring shampoo into your
hair  in due time. The actress in question is Sandra Bullock,
the star of the new film While You Were Sleeping and she and her
non-pathbreaking film are going to conquer America with the wrath
of the Tartar horde. A Tartar horde that writes and produces
romantic comedies.
Lonely subway token-taker Lucy (Bullock) dreams of meeting
handsome subway-riding rake Peter (a savvy, sassy, sexy Peter
Gallagher). When would-be muggers knock him onto the tracks, Lucy
scrambles to his side and drags him from the path of an oncoming
train. But he is comatose! Later, as Peter’s screwball family
huddle around the hospital bed, a rumor is bruited that Lucy is
prodigal-son Peter’s fiancee, of all things. Several trickily
interrelated contingencies keep Lucy from telling them the truth,
although Peter’s salt-of-the-earth brother Jack (a solid if stolid
Bill Pullman) senses something screwy. Perhaps it is his own
burgeoning feelings for the unlikely Lucy???
The movie has a few minor problems. First, Bullock’s dark,
brooding features. What bonehead wardrobe man dresses her in somber
earth tones? You would think the movie were called While You Were
Sleeping in the House of Usher (Not While you Were Sleepless in
Seattle, its actual title.) Also, it’s set during Christmas, and
now it’s spring. Third, the script is crap. These shortcomings,
alas, will keep it from breaking $300 million.
William O’Hara B
Kiss of Death
Written by Richard Price Directed by Barbet Schroeder
Starring David Caruso, Nicolas Cage and Samuel Jackson
Nicolas Cage is playing evil again, and we should all be
thankful. There are not enough bona fide freaks in Hollywood;
Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken and co. can’t be in every
movie
So we need Cage to chew scenery and assorted insects. And
lately, he’s been spending far too much time being nice. The only
pleasure in the sugar-coated Guarding Tess was his occasional
outburst, but it wasn’t as if he could’ve danced wildly, beat a guy
to death, or even screamed incessantly in that restrained role.
Kiss of Death gives him plenty of space and he steps up
admirably. Cage plays Little Junior, a family mobster whose ailing
father is about to hand him down an underground empire. Junior
hangs out at a strip club bench pressing bimbos and giving rash and
reactive orders.
Did we mention the hero of this picture? It’s David Caruso,
whose Jimmy Kilmartin walks the well-tread path of cinema criminals
trying to go clean. Jimmy doesn’t spend too much time on the good
side of the law in this film, but it’s enough to convince Helen
Hunt, who plays his wife, that he’s going straight before he’s
carted off to prison. Hunt doesn’t spend too much time in this
picture, period, and she’s gone before he gets out of the
slammer.
The moment Jimmy exits the big house, he’s immediately sucked
into a dangerous chess game between the mob and the authorities,
neither of whom are playing by any rules. The continual maneuvering
of all parties makes Kiss of Death intriguing throughout, but never
ultimately gripping.
While you constantly wish Caruso would get in Cage’s face and
stay there, he seems to be exercising restraint undervalued in this
film. Caruso is quickly overshadowed by Cage and their dynamic
never rises to the cutthroat intensity both performers are capable
of. You have to settle for Caruso milking a quantity of feuds with
every other living being in the film, including a solid-as-always
Sam Jackson and the slimy Stanley Tucci.
In the capable hands of Barbet Schroeder (Reversal of Fortune,
Single White Female), Kiss of Death doesn’t disappoint, and Cage
fans will rejoice his walk on the wild side. It just leaves you
wishing for a little more.
Michael Horowitz B+
Swimming With Sharks
Written and directed by George Huang
Starring Kevin Spacey, Frank Whaley and Michelle Forbes
If you liked The Player and Career Opportunities, Swimming with
Sharks will be your Citizen Kane.
Now that those seven people have run off to the theaters, let’s
discuss George Huang’s classy debut, at times dark and funny at
others just dark.
Guy (Frank Whaley) is your typical Hollywood dreamer. He wants
success, he just doesn’t know how far he has to go to get it. A job
working for film mogul Buddy Ackerman (Kevin Spacey) would seem to
put him on the fast track, so he becomes Buddy’s personal
assistant.
To put it mildly, Buddy is the hugest asshole on the planet. He
makes Guy fetch him women, make him coffee, and apologize
perpetually. Guy smiles while on the phone and Buddy screams at him
for being happy.
So Guy snaps and goes to Buddy’s, bent on torture and
retaliation.
Spacey has loads of experience being tied up (The Ref) and he’s
one of the best at it. His sardonic comments and constant disdain
keep him conversationally competitive even as he is powerless to
escape. And while he’s not being bound, he is ridiculously
intimidating. Swimming With Sharks bristles every time Spacey
enters the room.
Whaley holds together his end of the bargain, hitting the fairly
limited slate of emotions needed for his character’s systematic
emasculation, humiliation, degradation and usurpation. We never
tire of his presence, despite his massive screen time, perhaps a
sign in itself he may soon be something besides the kid locked in
Target.
Michelle Forbes may be the film’s weakest link, as her romantic
tangle with Guy is the impetus for many of the film’s conflicts.
She and Whaley never manage the chemistry, and her unconvincing
attempts to mindwrestle with Guy are disappointingly shallow.
Huang has written a smart script and he deserves credit for
taking his characters and audience along for the entire black
comedy ride. You keep waiting for him to flinch and start softening
his story, but thankfully it never happens.
With a miniscule budget, and a hellish shoot, Swimming with
Sharks isn’t going to capture any awards for cinematography, but
Huang is a promising talent. His next film will look as good as
this one sounds.
Michael Horowitz A-
The Cure
Written by Robert Kuhn
Directed by Peter Horton
Starring Joseph Mazzello, Brad Renfro and Annabella Sciorra
It used to be that stories about dying children were the sole
domain of television. But with the disease-of-the-week genre no
longer a TV-movie staple and Hollywood warming to socially relevant
topics (Philadelphia, Losing Isaiah), The Cure has made its way to
the big screen.
Joseph Mazzello (Jurassic Park) is Dexter, an ordinary 11-year
old with an extraordinary condition  he has AIDS. His illness
is common knowledge to his Minneapolis neighbors, among them Erik
(Brad Renfro of The Client) who lives next door. Believing that
only "homos" and "queers" can contract the disease  not boys
with blood transfusions  Erik ignorantly places Dexter among
them.
Bit by bit the boys discover how much they have in common and
become close friends. That turn of events delights Dexter’s mom
(the always winning Annabella Sciorra) but horrifies Erik’s mom
(Diana Scarwid, apparently doing an impression of the evil mother
whose daughter she played in Mommie Dearest ).
With the naïve determination that only children could
share, the boys set out to find a cure. Taking a cue from the movie
Medicine Man, Erik decides the cure rests in nature and administers
Dexter a diet of boiled leaves. When that proves fruitless, the
boys covertly embark on a journey for New Orleans. On a tip from a
supermarket tabloid  always a sound source of information
 they believe that a doctor there has found the cure.
That plan, and Dexter’s health failing, the boys return home,
where Dexter is soon hospitalized. Only then do they realize the
gravity of Dexter’s condition.
For the most part, The Cure avoids sentimentality by placing its
perspective firmly in the eyes of the two boys. Director Peter
Horton should have shown the same restraint at the end, which is
unabashedly schmaltzy, causing even the driest eyes to dampen.
The Cure isn’t likely to change ideas about AIDS, nor is it a
towering cinematic achievement, but it manages to be a sweet, at
times affecting story.
Lael Loewenstein B-
Clean, Shaven
Written and directed by Lodge Kerrigan
Starring Peter Greene
In this promising debut from 31-year-old Lodge Kerrigan, a
schizophrenic father’s quest to find his daughter finds terse and
unsettling expression. Clean, Shaven despite a narrative drive that
makes movies a thousand times bigger budgeted green with envy,
sullies its achievement with clichés inexcusable no matter
what the cost.
Peter Winter (Peter Greene, making his security guard character
from Pulp Fiction seem wholesome by comparison), has just been
released from a mental hospital. He is trying to find his daughter,
who was given up for adoption by his unbalanced mother while he was
indisposed. Explicated simultaneously is the search of the
detective (Robert Albert) who deals specifically with child
abduction cases. The paths of these two, as you might suspect,
cross.
And that’s the story. Clean triumphs in the telling. We meet
Winter through a sequence of immaculately spliced and
commensurately discordant static shots. No screeching violins, no
car horns, just the faint hum of intra-station radio traffic. The
synergy of sight and sound in these scenes is exquisite.
Not so the story plot line involving Det. Jack McNally. This
character could be in any movie directed by Tony Scott. Even at
only 80 minutes, Clean is cluttered by his angst and disjointed
liaisons. And in other places, the harrowing psychic tension
deflates at the pin-prick of poor acting, something this film
desperately could do without.
Assuming, however, that Clean, Shaven is meant to be enjoyed as
an overture, the coming symphonies could be very discordantly
melodious indeed.
William O’Hara B
Burnt by the Sun
Written and directed by Nikita Mikhalkov
Starring Nikita Mikhalkov, Nadia Mikhalkov and Oleg
Menchikov
Anyone who watched the Academy Awards will remember the cherubic
little girl Nadia Mikhalkov who accompanied her father Nikita
onstage to accept the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. The deserving
winner, Russia’s Burnt by the Sun, was written and directed by the
elder Mikhalkov and stars them both.
Father and daughter play Sergueï Kotov and his 6-year-old
daughter Nadia, who are passing a summer afternoon in 1936 with
guests at Kotov’s country home. Still admired by his countrymen,
Kotov is an aging military hero of the Bolshevik revolution. He
cherishes Nadia and his beautiful, much younger wife Maroussia
(Ingeborga Dapkounaite), but Maroussia has an underlying sadness
about her.
Into this idyllic setting enters Mitia (Oleg Menchikov), a
handsome young man who was Maroussia’s lover a decade earlier but
who left under shady circumstances. Now working for Stalin’s secret
police, Mitia has returned with an agenda. While Mitia rekindles
Maroussia’s memories of their romance and charms young Nadia, the
tension between him and Kotov builds until Mitia reveals the nature
of his sinister game.
Technically, the film is top-notch, from the soft, diffused
lighting to the lush, melodic score, both of which underscore the
overall atmosphere of insouciance and revelry. The acting is
superior all around, especially that of the two Mikhalkovs. A
stunningly natural actress, Nadia Mikhalkov manages to be adorable
without becoming annoying or cutesy, a feat most Hollywood child
actors have not mastered (Macaulay Culkin, take note).
Making the little girl the contested pawn at the center of this
game was a stroke of brilliance. Eternally trusting, Nadia adores
her father but is easily swayed by the debonair Mitia. Because she
knows nothing of the political or personal differences between the
two men, her naïve and poignant faith in them makes the
evolving conflict seem all the more heartless.
Burnt by the Sun recalls Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game in the
way that social and personal disputes are used to stand for larger,
political conflicts. But where Rules was a metaphor for the fall of
France’s Popular Front, Burnt illustrates the whimsical execution
of Stalin’s political terrorism.
Like Nadia, Kotov’s family and guests believe themselves
impervious to Stalinism’s burgeoning climate of fear. When it
finally hits them, that act of terrorism is as sudden, violent and
unexpected as stepping on a jagged piece of glass at the beach.
That evocative analogy is one of many that Mikhalkov uses in this
beautifully crafted, compellingly acted work.
Lael Loewenstein A-