Reviews

AMERICAN BEAUTY

…and context plays a huge part in what is defined good or great. Yes: as regards the mainstream studio system, AMERICAN BEAUTY is an earth-shattering revelation. However, after all the excess praise lauded on its shoulders, hindsight suggests the film is far from perfect.

Kevin Spacey is always great, but in jaded pawn Lester Burnham he delivers his finest performance to date. At first he appears to be an impotent protagonist, but by the end of the film, he has made a complete journey from one unfulfilling life to the dawn of another, liberated existence. Unfortunately this journey is hindered by Sam Mendes' kid-gloves direction. He devotes so much screen time to underdeveloped, super-simplistic caricatures and this detracts from the impact of the film.

Good actors deliver stereotype roles with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, such as Chris Carter (the explicitly evil homophobe drill sergeant) or Peter Gallagher (a sleazy salesman). The opportunity to make a sincere statement about small-town homophobia is squandered with a resolution straight out of a Benny Hill sketch. Mendes and writer Alan Ball seem desperate to wrap the viewer in cotton wool, from the revealing opening (not necessarily a bad thing) to the contrived end.

Thankfully, the flaws of plot mechanics are overcome by a great lead performance. It doesn't say as much about suburban discontent as HAPPINESS, or have the same force as the far-superior FIGHT CLUB, but AMERICAN BEAUTY is a challenging example of its own kind, accommodating mainstream fare.

I agree with the user comment about the film being life affirming, not nihilistic. It is just a shame I found it a little too manipulative, dishonest even. But it would be nice to see more films like this in the multiplex. Unfortunately, twelve months down the track it doesn't seem the studios have taken up the challenge.

I knew HIGH FIDELITY was hitting the mark when I became jealous of Rob Gordon's (John Cusack) knowledge of ultra-obscure rock history. Music appreciation lends itself to snobbery you see, but in the best possible manner. Music is soul, and the characters in the film understand as much. It is surely the sign of a great film when you look at the screen and see people just like yourself up there.

You rarely see films as committed to people as HIGH FIDELITY that are this much fun. It is about men dealing with themselves, with women, and with music, often all at once. After the break-up of a relationship, Rob proceeds to organise his record collection not chronologically or alphabetically, but autobiographically. `Music is the soundtrack to your life' as the tagline tells us.

HIGH FIDELITY is about so much more than music. It handles relationships sincerely, not sentimentally. When issues like infidelity and abortion arise, director Stephen Frears avoids making it feel like these are merely plot devices or sympathy plays. In fact, the characters make little effort to be liked. It is credit to the ego-less performance of Cusack that Rob's story is so affecting.

But apparently there were creative differences between director and star over editing, Cusack wanting the music to play a more significant role in the film. This is intriguing because the ultra-cool soundtrack is relegated to the background throughout. It is annoying that while the songs represent such a strong emotional significance to the character, they're little more than hipster muzak to the audience.

Struggling with an unconvincing pledge of male sensitivity, the film loses its legs a little towards the end. That said, HIGH FIDELITY is a grand achievement. From the first scene until the killer Stevie Wonder/Love 1-2 over the closing credits, it preaches genuine cool all the way, something films are always trying to force, but rarely achieve.

A film with the history of AMERICAN PSYCHO behind it hardly needs a plot summary but it's still likely a lot of audiences will be surprised by what greets them. The film comes to the cinema with an almost unqualified endorsement from its creator, Brett Easton Ellis. Ellis, whose 1991 novel divided and disturbed audiences, has called Mary Harron's film 95 per cent faithful to the source material.

This is surprising because AMERICAN PSYCHO is a few novels at once: a black comedy about soulless eighties culture; a feminist tome about `crazy insane sexism and misogyny' (the authors words); a trip inside the head of a serial killer. The word `unfilmable' comes to mind, a tired phrase that has been proven wrong too many times before.

To Harron's credit, the film has captured the attention of a strong, rational audience base while avoiding the expected media hoopla. There is no grey area this time around. AMERICAN PSYCHO is played as black comedy and it hits the mark most of the time.

Beginning with a crafty credit sequence that teases the audience, Harron and star Christian Bale proceed to subvert their expectations. Bale hits the perfect note of satire, ridiculing and patronising the idiot Bateman. In a recent interview, Bale said he hung out with yuppies to get a feel for the character and they told him to watch WALL STREET. Life imitates art imitating shallow, empty lives. Forgive the terribly mishandled twist late on (a costly lapse in directorial judgement) and AMERICAN PSYCHO rewards handsomely. One of the best films of 2000.

I didn't plan to review BRING ME THE HEAD OF MAVIS DAVIS, much like I didn't plan to watch it. It was a Sunday night thing, you see. It is a sad consequence of the day of rest: you fill in time however you can, even watching awful films like this.

The film tells the story of a scheming manager who plots to kill his faded pop star, and in doing so increase her album sales. Years ago, in a rush to complete a first-year Screenwriting assignment I hatched a similar, lazy plot.

I never thought it was particularly astute, because everybody knows that the legends of rock stars are built on their deaths. The makers of this film think it IS astute, even if their execution is excruciatingly sloppy. Worse still, where I made the point in ten minutes, this film runs to ninety.

Ninety minutes. Ninety horrible minutes. Ninety minutes, no jokes.

I could hardly feel angry that I watched this film: it was on television and it was my own fault. I felt no malice or ill-will towards the cast and crew. I foresaw the inevitable lameness of their poorly-made product and yet I watched it anyway.

In the end I just felt like a bit of a loser. Ninety minutes I could have spent stimulating my brain or collecting for the worlds poor, but no. I watched a bad film.

Don't make the same mistake I did. But then again, Sundays make people do strange things.

Long synopsis: An eccentric weatherman falls in love in crazy Los Angeles. Add filler material.

I rented LA STORY because it seemed to undergo a critical reappraisal ten years after dying on initial release. Unfortunately it hasn't aged into a good film. It just appears so in comparison with SGT BILKO.

There is no doubting LA STORY is a labour of love for its writer and star, Steve Martin. He obviously has great affection for the city and that is half the problem. There is a romantic gloss he paints over the Hard Rock café and trendy Hollywood restaurants which doesn't hold true. Having never been to LA (or the Hard Rock for that matter), I'll reserve judgement. But the Beverly Hills of this picture is shallow and boring, and the movie feels that way too.

Romantic comedies don't have to be inspired but LA STORY is insipid. Why up the ante with highbrow humour when you can't even deliver likeable characters? Rick Moranis turns up to embarrassing effect in a spoof of the comical gravedigger scene from HAMLET. In the hands of this comic titan the timeless words of Shakespeare play like an outtake from The Martin Short Show.

`They took a desert and turned it into a land of dreams'. `Love can blossom in the heart of crazy Los Angeles'. LA STORY is choc-a-bloc with such pearls of poetry. The film would be pretentious but Martin doesn't aspire to create art, just lightweight, immediately forgettable comedy like this.

Blackouts, baseball, drugs, disco, sex and serial killings. Spike Lee's SUMMER OF SAM is a little bit of everything. The verve is in place. Unfortunately, some bad research and abysmal stereotypes detract from Lee's best film in a decade.

The ensemble cast is great. John Leguiziamo in particular stands out as a man whose infidelity and definition of loyalty conspire to bring him apart. His sorry anti-hero is a wonderful throwback to the daring school of seventies filmmaking that Lee pays homage to.

The potential is great, and the nature of both script and narrative promise an unpredictable ride. But whoever told Lee that The Who were the seminal punk rock band was playing a really bad joke. It can't help but detract the action. There are also some silly racial stereotypes (the Italian community is represented as little more than a lynch-mob).

A director as racially conscious as Spike Lee surely shouldn't set himself up for a critical battering in such an obvious manner but he does.

When it comes to editing though, he is in his element. Lee mixes film stocks and mediums, and the tone switches well throughout. It isn't Mean Streets, of course, but SUMMER OF SAM is a welcome treat - seeing a brave, if frequently maligned director stick his neck out.

I wouldn't imagine it being much fun being the rhythm section of The Jack Frost Band - and not just because your founder is a dead snowman. Additionally, there are no speaking parts, no solos and not even much rhythm. But they are the ones who got off easy.

After dying in a car-crash, Jack Frost (Michael Keaton) is reincarnated as a snowman, so to reconcile with his son. He saves him from a perilous snowball fight, but their newfound happiness is threatened when dad starts to melt. Yes. The premise is so idiotic, it's a wonder anybody had the know-how to write the title, let alone a whole script.

JACK FROST is all about bad mechanics. The plot is derivative and contrived. You can see why the Frost Band are hot property (no pun intended). Anybody who can get rock crowds to dig Christmas jingles have definite mainstream potential.

After the human J.F dies, a new, altogether uglier side to the film emerges. The snowman looks evil and sinister, but blood is thicker than water. The kid tells a bully, with pride `he is my father' and we're in bad movie heaven. Has Michael Keaton lost touch with reality? Yes, much like Kelly Preston, who accepts a call from her dead husband with aplomb. Much like Mark (THE FULL MONTY) Addy, who cried when he saw the finished product - apparently because it hit a chord, not because it hurt.

Critics are good for one thing. They tell you when a film is inexplicably bad, too horrendous for the public to behold. I shall now proceed to review BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN: AN ALAN SMITHEE FILM.

Joe Esthereas is the sleazy equivalent of ED WOOD. He's a writer of films that don't seem to need a writer. Hollywood being Hollywood, mindless sex and violence writes itself. Unfortunately, the man himself harbors ambitions of being Robert Altman. A tad overreaching for the mastermind behind SHOWGIRLS, perhaps?

The writer is no stranger to comedy, as the cast of the above would attest. Unfortunately, comedy is hard. Dying, on the other hand, is easy, as the box office fate of BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN goes to show. It's about a ludicrous film-within-a-film: a studio has sunk its money into a film teaming Whoopi (THEODORE REX) Goldberg and Jackie (CANNONBALL RUN II) Chan (after Willis and Schwartzenegger declined). It is cinematic anarchy, though nowhere near as much fun. In fact, the whole sorry film - and every caricature - is entirely unpleasant. It's an Alan Smithee film, so there was nobody around to push the quality control…I mean, edit button.

Thanks to BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN, the Smithee pseudonym is now too great a death-kiss for wretched films. Think about that. It's funnier than anything that occurs in the film proper. Unredeemable.

Truck Turner is an ex-football star, built like a Mack truck. Fortunately his name IS Mac (though why they released it as BLACK BULLET in Australia is beyond me) which makes for a sensible nickname. There is practically nothing else remotely sensible thereon in, when Mac goes head-to-head with a bunch of no-good…well, macks (pimps).

It is a typically paradoxical blaxpolitation film. It serves as both a reminder why the genre were so enjoyable - brazen heroes and villains, loads of sexy chicks for each, a top soul soundtrack - and why it had to die eventually - the burden of uninspired cashing in, here there and everywhere.

BLACK BULLET is as b-grade as they come, and it's surprisingly nasty in places. With a similar cast and crew to the far-superior BLACK BELT JONES (a blaxploitation gem), you expect tongue in cheek, but by the time you've heard the world `bitch' a thousand times, it starts to lose its comic gleam.

But at the end of the day it's all in good fun. It's just a shame the modern gangstas didn't get the joke.

Easily one of the top ten films of 1999 (no small achievement in the best year for daring cinema in a long time), this response to the 1992 Presidential election uses a simple jumping off point effectively, and makes a whole lot of waves.

Finally Matthew Broderick gets his teeth into a good story, and doesn't disappoint. Witherspoon is fantastic as the cold, ruthless Tracy Flick, a complicated product of her background, manifested into a sadly driven monster. Both are brilliant in an unpredictable and scathing film.

It is the soulful, empowering ending that sets ELECTION apart. Rarely do Hollywood films send up ‘the dream' without descending into doom.

This is powerful comedy, real enough to be disturbing at times, and the lead characters successfully inhabit that grey area between right and wrong. Cynical, biting and compassionate, ELECTION is a surprising film to come from the stable of MTV films, a traditional home for lame-brained jock comedy.

No five words say `straight to video' quite as effortlessly as `from the director of GHOULIES'. As far as I can gather, LUCK OF THE DRAW is the only film in two decades to earn this label. Director Luca Bercovici has also gathered together a b-grade rat-pack to star in his comeback film.

The video A-list come in all shapes and sizes. Michael Madsen is an acclaimed poet, and Dennis Hopper directed THE LAST MOVIE and EASY RIDER. Along with respected artists, the film boasts a bit-part for Ice T (transitional rapper), some kid apparently in GLADIATOR, and Eric Roberts, who never needed to pay cinema admission to see his own work.

It starts off a bit like a b-grade rip-off of Michael Mann's HEAT, a contradiction in terms seeing as that film is the greatest of all cops & robbers pictures. It ends a little bit like.put it this way, if you haven't ever seen this ending, you spent the '90's under a rock.

There are only two types of DTV films worth renting: those that are surprisingly good, or those that are woefully bad. In that sense, LUCK OF THE DRAW is a failure because it is average all the way.

After a long wait he's back (Schwartzenegger, not Steiger). And who cares? By now, Schwartzenegger is a dinosaur, and his heart clearly isn't in it. The proof is on show: he wants to diversify. While it isn't such a drastic change of pace as Stallone doing comedy (and it's nearly impossible to be THAT bad), the big man is clearly out of his depth.

END OF DAYS is funnier than STOP OR MY MOM WILL SHOOT (a line you will not see on the poster). Unfortunately, the producers have decided that any INTENDED humour had to go, because of the `serious' subject matter.

Instead, they've stolen the premise of LETHAL WEAPON, and tied it to the funny-the-first-time hook of DEVILS ADVOCATE. As if to prove he really is concerned about the effects of screen violence on his children, Arnie seems to have removed all the action as well. And what the children are led to surmise from the pompous ending - suggesting symmetry between Schwartzenegger and Jesus Christ - is anyone's guess.

No doubt he'll keep making them as long as he can trade on the name - particularly in foreign markets. He always made as many bad films as good ones, but END OF DAYS is almost like TERMINATOR 2 never happened.

A list of best films-you-didn't see from the seventies and eighties could not be complete without a host of John Cassavetes films: THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (1976 - given thumbs down on release, lauded as a classic now), and LOVE STREAMS (1984) are just two overlooked gems. Likewise, the only reason you can make for anybody not seeing MIKEY AND NICKY (Cassavetes starred, but didn't write/direct) is that nobody heard of it.

I assume you have one of two reasons for reading this review. Either (a) you love the film and are looking for like-minded opinion; or (b) you stumbled upon it accidentally, in which case I shall put it as simple as possible: you gotta see it.

Mikey (John Cassavetes) sits in a shoebox hotel room, a price now on his head, scared stiff. In desperation he calls his gangster childhood pal Nicky (Peter Falk) to help him get out of town.

A synopsis doesn't cover the density of the film. Two fragile male egos rebound off each other as the leads recall just why they love and hate each other so much. I cannot think of a better casting move than coupling Cassavetes and Falk. Good friends in real life, and frequent collaborators, they bring an intimacy to the film rarely seen elsewhere.

Within the first half-hour it dawns on the audience that engrossing as the story is, the outcome is not the most important aspect. Director Elaine May draws strength from the honesty of the characters. Her handling is at once compassionate and even-handed. The result: the characters are likeable for all their flaws.

It resonates more and more every time you watch it, enough for me personally to consider it will be a major influence on anything I might have the chance to film in the future.

The passing of Cassavetes was heartbreaking, the casual neglect of his output just as much so. If you don't know much about the man who took Scorsese under his wing, take the time today to investigate. Elaine May went on to make ISHTAR. Sadly, she hasn't directed since.

MIKEY AND NICKY is one of the greatest American films ever made.

I'll put this as plainly as possible for those of you unaware of Bill Hicks' legacy. He was quite simply the greatest stand-up comedian in the world, almost certainly in my opinion the greatest that ever lived (his stand-up idol being the great Richard Pryor, whose battles with addiction he paralleled). His death in 1994 went barely noticed in the popular media, coming just weeks after Kurt Cobain had committed suicide. His tragic death at such a young age eclipses any sense of the injustice that he was criminally ignored during his life, of course. But the harsh truth is clear as day: nobody has stepped up to claim his mantle. There is not a stand-up comedian alive with nearly the skill and invention.

The observation is made in the affectionate tribute `It's just a ride' that stand-up comedians often view the job as a stepping stone to richer pursuits - lame movies and morally-driven sitcoms, made to occupy - but never enrich - the lives of an unimaginative audience. It's everything that Bill Hicks spoke against. His sermon was always a rallying cry for people think for themselves, to scrutinise authority, to come together as one race.

His appeal continues to grow with every passing year since his death. His star will continue to shine long after so many lesser lights have blew out. Once you've been exposed to his brilliant, intelligent, but ultimately compassionate output, you will be enriched and rewarded.

The man himself was fond to quote Dylan: `To live outside the law you must be honest', he said. Bill Hicks was honest, beyond that he was the funniest of them all.

Dan Hedeya and Saul Rubinek are tremendous character actors (Rubinek also directed the brilliant JERRY AND TOM) whose faces you probably know from somewhere. A keen eye would spot both appeared together amongst the cavalcade of stars in Oliver Stone's NIXON, though were reduced to minor roles. They're elevated to positions of extreme power in DICK (Hedeya the president, Rubinek is Kissinger) and have a ball. Little touches like this contribute so much to this tremendous little film.

Two clueless fifteen year old girls, Arlene (Michelle Williams) and Betsy (Kirsten Dunst) set off a chain of events that leads to the fall of President Nixon when they innocently break into the Watergate building. From that point forward, the very clever script sends up the answers to every mystery shrouding the investigation.

This means that `the radical muckraking bastards' from the Washington Post are sent up mercilessly by Ferrell and McCulloch (Hoffman and Redford don't escape either).

Of course the marketers have conspired to screw it up. After failing in the States it played for about a week in Australia (there were three other people in the cinema when I saw it on the opening day) under the tagline: `If you enjoyed Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion…'. Obviously they didn't want to scare away a teenage audience unconditioned to the significance of Watergate.

However, you don't need to understand the significance of the details - the joy is that the jokes work on all levels, although the more you understand the more you will laugh. Few comedies promise to amuse across the age bracket as DICK.

Stanley Kubrick never made a film that wasn't a masterpiece. True, the gaps between pictures became longer and longer with every release. But consider the idealistic changes he negotiated and plotted for twenty years before Scorcese made MEAN STREETS. Remember that Coppola's star only shone for a decade between THE GODFATHER and RUMBLE FISH, and Friedkin's even less. A tortured perfectionist, the twelve-year hiatus since FULL METAL JACKET further and further increased expectation for EYES WIDE SHUT.

If I delayed in delivering the `But…' part of the review, it's because it's almost impossible to give EYES WIDE SHUT the thumbs down immediately. Part of the heart desperately wants to enjoy it, the remainder begs to understand it. After two viewings and still finding I could do neither, I had to face the facts. EYES WIDE SHUT starts with a real sense of direction, but ends up going absolutely nowhere.

True, Kubrick never minded slow-revealing narratives (best example BARRY LYNDON) which belong to an altogether different period of cinema. That would be easier to accept if the film did not burst to life with the energy and sense of dark humour that made A CLOCKWORK ORANGE tick. After nearly an hour of hypnotic, considered filmmaking, it just stops dead in its tracks.

You find yourself pondering little blunders like Nicole and Tom's embarrassing effort at playing stoned, flaws which take on huge significance when you consider how trying the director was on his stars to get his vision across. If it is true that Kubrick demanded Cruise cross a road 90 times to `get the feel', you can play a guessing game, trying to pick which scene drove the star crazy. It has to be said, he crosses roads okay, but Cruise looks helpless most of the time.

It seems that in the end, Kubrick's paranoia and neurosis crippled him where it really hurt. After being a slave to cinema - at the expense of the outside world - for the last two decades of his life, his final work fails to do justice, not to the hype (which was always an effective ploy) but to the great mans legacy. You can't help but feel sorry that such a badly-paced film is a poor epitaph. After a decade spent bringing it to the screen, EYES WIDE SHUT will go down as disappointing coda.

A woman suffers mental trauma twenty years after being raped - at least that's the most obtainable synopsis for this bizarre but entirely unengaging drama. Theresa Russell plays the bored housewife, trapped in a passionless marriage with doctor Christopher Lloyd. When a man claiming to be her son - stolen from her arms at birth after the rape - appears out of nowhere, knowing an awful lot about her, it releases the trauma she has kept hidden for so long.

What should be intriguing is anything but. It is impossible to care for Russell because she's embarrassingly bad. Lloyd has nothing to do (never mind nothing funny). The young Oldman is shown up in this most difficult of roles. That's probably thanks to the director more than himself. Roeg's output is horribly inconsistent. You would have hoped that working from a script by the late, brilliant Dennis Potter would have inspired him to make a masterpiece. He can't even keep the film on the ground.

But then again, the Americans never got a grasp on Potter's humour. And Roeg has hardly been worth watching since he went to the States.

A bunch of escaped criminals take over a shopping centre. One of them is a genuinely nice guy, so his well-meaning brother Rudy Ray (Mickey Rourke) infiltrates the shopping centre to save him. Still reading? If you were expecting a good film, you've got the wrong POINT BLANK. It's terrible - plain and simple.

It was Greil Marcus, talking about Rod Stewart, who famously declared: `rarely has anyone betrayed his talent so completely'. Of course, the phrase could be aptly used to describe Mickey Rourke. The finest actor of the 1980's (Angel Heart, Barfly, Prayer for the Dying, White Sands, Rumble Fish, 9 1/2 Weeks) always lives up to expectations. Unfortunately, expectations of Mickey Rourke are not what they once were. A string of embarrassing pictures led to a self-imposed retirement. On return, his fortunes have not improved.

If this reads like a career obituary, that's not the intention. Fingers crossed that a Soderbergh, Tarantino or Ferrara can resurrect his fallen star. Anything - absolutely anything - to spare us any more films as bad as POINT BLANK. It's a juvenile action romp, so gleeful in its stupid, sadistic violence it's almost unbearable to watch - and certainly impossible to enjoy.

If it hurt Mickey to have his scenes removed from Terrance Malick's THIN RED LINE, or even DOUBLE TEAM, it seems his role has been reduced here too. He fades in and out of the action - perhaps he's trying to hide in the background. Either way, the results are inevitable, and nobody - least of all Rourke - could care less.

It's not just that it's been done a million times better. The shoddy logic of the filmmakers is inane beyond comprehension. (a) The crime kingpin decides to sedate a frenzied psycho-rapist by giving him a whole brick of cocaine to snort. (b) After tormenting a female hostage, she then willingly performs a private sex-show for the pervert. (c) After the striptease he takes her out on the balcony and shoots her in full view of the surrounding cops. (d) He achieves the incredible feat of actually snorting the whole brick of cocaine in ninety minutes.

That's just one incident that doesn't bear close scrutiny. The writer and director clearly revel in sex/drugs indulgence, and it comes out just as dubious as one would expect. There's dramatic license, but then there's a police force that idly watches as hostages are randomly executed.

And let me assure you my vote of one for this film is no knee-jerk reaction. I tried - and failed - to watch it twice. But much like Mickey Rourke in the ring, his audience has a habit of coming back and suffering again and again.

For those too young to remember, Vanilla Ice was a malignant tumor growing on the popular music scene ten years ago. Along with MC Hammer and Marky Mark he pilfered and diluted black music to make it commercially acceptable to middle-class white children. His flash-in-the-pan `attitude' eventually fizzled away - but not before becoming the blueprint for every idiot bad-boy pop star on top of the charts today.

Cut to ten years later, and the threat of an Ice comeback is unlikely. It's the perfect time to watch COOL AS ICE. The film bombed on release, and signaled the end was nigh for Vanilla Ice. Watching it today, the star reduced to a relic of inane pop history, the film becomes a candidate for the best worst film of all time.

Rebels and their motorcycles have a history on screen. They define the times. Marlon Brando was the quintessential bad boy when he rode into town as THE WILD ONE. Fast-forward fifteen years and history repeats: Fonda and Hopper rewrite the Hollywood rulebook in EASY RIDER.

In COOL AS ICE, the bad boy of rap rides into the suburbs with his all-black posse, ready to reap havoc on suburbia, right? Wrong. Ice's crew only reappear when director David Kellogg requires a cut-away shot. Even then, rather than scaring the local children, they're making peanut-butter sandwiches and watching TV. They sit around, waiting for Vanilla to get the girl.

The romantic sub-plot is a peach. She's the highest achieving student in town, but will she risk her future for Vanilla Ice? He's a self-educated poet of the street, although his actual words of wisdom somehow escape me at the moment. The sub-sub plot involves her father, who we are led to believe was the most honest cop on a corrupt force. Despite seemingly being transplanted back into the same community, he doesn't mind going on television so the bad guys can find him.

There's a few other sub-sub-sub plots of minimal concern, but no real story. It's a star vehicle resting on the shoulders of a ludicrously vain idiot. Fortunately, his fifteen minutes of fame and torture translates to a typically foolish ninety minutes. The most vain ego exercise in Hollywood history? Perhaps. All in vain? Definitely.

Seen today, DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS is hampered by its obvious eighties-ness, which still doesn't detract from its fair quota of charms. When a homeless man, Jerry (played by the ever-reliable Nick Nolte) is saved from drowning in the swimming pool of nice-guy millionaire Dave (Richard Dreyfuss), his subsequent welcome into their family has unpredictable implications for Dave's badly-adjusted lot.

The humour is still by-and-large amusing after all these years (a highlight being when Dreyfuss hangs out on the beach with Nolte's fellow bums), even if the periphery characters are slight and shallow. The appearance of Little Richard early-on signals he's got to find a piano before the film is through. Unfortunately, his character - a black record producer unhappy at the implicit racism of the suburbs - has nothing else to do in the mean time.

While it hasn't stood the test of time, hamstrung by its good intentions and badly compromised ending, DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS is an amusing diversion. The most surprising outcome you draw from watching again a family that does not communicate is just how well the issues were addressed in AMERICAN BEAUTY, an altogether darker comedy, but more funny, sincere and resonant.

At its end, HUMAN TRAFFIC has hit one note quite charmingly for a breezy ninety minutes, not overstaying its welcome, but never in danger of becoming anything more than a curiosity to its audience.

In fact, it begs the question why the opening credits interspersed footage of protests against the draconian Criminal Justice Bill with scenes of revelry. The film cops out at every opportunity to make a serious comment on disillusioned youth, tied to mind-numbing jobs, a drug generation needing an escape. Any film which contains an affectionate tribute to the prophet Bill Hicks (the best, most astute and concerned stand-up comedian that ever lived), and an inspired cameo from Howard Marks surely demands a bit more substance.

But HUMAN TRAFFIC never allows you to linger on its flaws. It adopts an entirely disjointed narrative, liable to go off on tangents at any stage, for any interval. You get the suspicion the filmmakers think there is something especially inventive about the surreal treatment (which extends little further than illusion sequences and direct-to-audience addresses). But it hardly matters whether the visual tricks hit-or-miss, they offer a surprising, and refreshing way of extending a slim idea out to a relatively full 90 minutes.

Justin Herrigan actually develops the characters to the extent you can't help but care about them. Honest in their weaknesses, they are easy to relate to. He should be applauded for extending the appeal of the film beyond an exclusive target audience. It would be inadvisable to compare it with the much stronger TRAINSPOTTING and TWIN TOWN, although all three are refreshingly different. HUMAN TRAFFIC is an affectionate, semi-autobiographical account of modern culture.

It's surprising that GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS hasn't been remade until now. In the original, the affectionately known star Elenor jumps over not twenty, not ten cars, but one car. To compensate for the slim budget, the shot is repeated about fifteen times, in slow-motion, in close-up, from different angles. Considering BULLITT was made the previous decade, the 45-minute car-chase was not the most exhilarating sequence ever shot.

Perhaps the problem was the fact that the films heroes are no-good criminal punks. But, modern Hollywood logic has a way around every problem. The good guys are good to their mothers, and the bad guys are British.

Brits make great villains. Thesps like Rickman, Irons and Branagh sneer their way - in vain - towards defeating holier-than-thou yankee heroes. The good guys get the witty lines, the bad guys die a painful death, and it's been that way since the dawn of time.

Now comes GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS, and it's Christopher Eccleston's turn to ham it up. The difference here is that the dialogue does not discriminate. This is equal opportunity embarrassment: three Oscar winners and a talented supporting cast looking foolish as anything.

Delroy Lindo gets the lions share of the clangers (`I should arrest you…but I understand brotherly love', `I know him…he fears that car'), and compared to his idiot cop partner, he's the brains of the force. Angelina Jolie is a typically slight romantic interest.

Eccleston is supposed to be a villain fearsome beyond comprehension. This is off-set by his bizarre wood-fetish, and an assessment of baseball (`it's so bloody boring') that would make the worlds worst stand-up comic cringe. Robert Duvall, the finest actor in the film, is reduced to putting lines through stolen cars on a blackboard - that's it.

Now I realise that the characters are hardly a fundamental concern in a Bruckheimer picture. But from a critical perspective, it's hardly worthwhile reviewing any aspect of them. The action set-pieces are as spectacular as always. While the big car chase is only half as long as the set-piece in the original film, it is a definite crowd-pleaser. While there's a strangely long time between thrills, the tempo never drops. Writer Scott Rosenberg can take credit for this. His script is so insubstantial and cliched it never lingers on any plot detail long enough to become a pressing concern.

Perhaps it was intentional the dialogue is so bad. Perhaps it's a joke at the expense of the stars track records (except for Cage, not averse to setting his sights so low). Either way, the embarrassment factor yields ten times as many jokes as AMERICAN PIE did. And while most people would no doubt - given such a credible cast - have made a more substantial sum of its parts - GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS is a passable action blockbuster.

...if only this was the 1980's and both still made good movies every year. Steve Martin's descent into comedy hell has been well documented. Everyone knows he hasn't been funny for ten years.

It's hardly a consolation that at his lowest he was still better than Robin Williams and Dan Ackroyd. You see, Steve Martin was never in Soul Man.

Eddie Murphy has appeared on more than one occasion to be trading on past glories. But Steve Martin is such a nice guy that everyone hoped he could regain some pride.

The reputations of both Murphy and Martin are resurrected in Bowfinger, drawn from a typically polite and inoffensive Martin script, which shows just how at odds his brand of humour is with modern comedy practices. Unfortunately, director Frank Oz - responsible for IN AND OUT - has directed a film similar to that effort in that great things are expected, but only mildly amusing ones materialise. still manages to deliver an exceptionally nice Hollywood satire, which is strange. The big question is: is it funny? Kind of. You best rank it as Martin's best film of the nineties, that way you can sit on the fence.

It promises self-parody but the material is restrained and neither star plays on their real personalities. There's more than a hint of bitterness in Graham's character. She's an awkwardly manipulated caricature, like the writer was hanging his dirty laundry out to dry in public. The end result is more embarrassing than funny.

It could have been great or it could have been terrible but BOWFINGER ends up being neither the masterpiece its inspired premise suggests or a complete failure. He's not a spent force, but if this is the best Steve Martin could muster, I wouldn't hold your breath for his next effort.

Andy Kaufman was not the most radical or subversive comic that lived, neither as dangerous as Bill Hicks, as trailblazing as Peter Cook, nor as taboo-challenging as Lenny Bruce. When he died, the public had long forgotten him, having given up on his enigmatic, annoying brand of performance art. The very thing that made him doomed made him brilliant. He annoyed the world to entertain himself, he didn't care whether he was loved or hated. MAN ON THE MOON is faithful to Kaufman's ideology. That is, it is annoying and trying, but ultimately rewarding.

Milos Forman's portrait is that of a genuine anarchist - Kaufman makes reference to admiring the sneering arrogance of punk rock - but beyond that, is curiously alienating. While Carrey delivers his best performance yet - you completely forget who is playing Andy - his character is distant. When MAN ON THE MOON runs out of gas at the end, it is because, much as we admire him, the exhausted audience finds it hard to care too deeply about what happens next.

A film has to get points for caring enough to alienate its audience, and it's the ultimate tribute to Andy. Certainly, the best way to watch this film is as a series of escalating practical jokes. The narrative, and supporting characters are neglected, and we never get an insight into what makes this fascinating, complex individual tick. But, if you sit back and watch Andy turn his tricks on the world, and turn the audience into the punchline, you will laugh yourself silly.

In the end, it's not a classic to rank alongside Forman's AMADEUS, CUCKOOS NEST, and LARRY FLYNT. But you get the impression Andy would approve, which makes it an incredibly brave biography.

With their lazy, taboo-touching brilliance, the Farrelly Brothers have always been hit the mark. Transposing their oddball characters and clever observations of everyday insecurities onto successful formulaic plots, their every effort has been a winner. So when they swaggered to the top of the table with THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY (after the equally outrageous KINGPIN cruelly bombed), everybody cheered.

Unfortunately, ME MYSELF AND IRENE is more EIGHT HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG than anything they've directed before. That is, it's a Farrelly clone. Time after time they try to offer a new slant on the devices that worked so well in MARY (animal cruelty, disabilities, sexual experimentation), but it feels forced, as if they're compelled to repeat the old tricks, despite previously tearing up the rule book.

This film begs for a clever marketing campaign to fool an audience it is worth watching. Gone are the loveable goofs we're accustomed to in Farrelly films. Carrey gets carte blanche to retread tired old Jerry Lewis gags (he beats himself up a la LIAR LIAR), and Zellweger proves she is not a comedy actress. Other established actors like Chris Cooper and Robert Forster have nothing to do at all.

Clumsy scenes go on too long, and the times in between jokes seem like an eternity. It raises a laugh from time to time, but so what? ME MYSELF AND IRENE is a predictable cash-in, it's appeal comes in familiarity at best.