AACID TUNG: SEPT/OCT 97
AACID TUNG (Urban
Cinefile’s world weary, sarcastic and cynical sourpuss goes
to the movies in the forlorn hope that something will appeal. It
rarely does.)
BREAKDOWN
National Release: October 9, 1997
They always go too far, these Americans, piling improbability on
top of impossibility, especially when it isn’t needed. The
thematic sister to The Vanishing, Breakdown is laden with lead:
young couple on deserted road have meaningless breakdown - which
turns out to be a loose wire. This is a device so Jeff (Kurt
Russell) can eventually go driving to look for his wife Amy
(Kathleen Quinlan) who hasn’t come back with help as
planned, when she stupidly drove off with a strange truckie who
stopped to offer help. Jeff stays with his 4WD just for the sake
of the plot. The truckie, played by J.T. Walsh, is far too good
an actor for a dumb crim who is not only dangerously vicious but
a complete gentleman as well. His accomplices and the folk at the
bar where Amy supposedly vanishes, are all hired from the talent
agency that specialises in redneck zombies. This could have been
a terrific thriller with genuine suspense had it been made and
cast in England, where they understand characterisation. The
final sequence is a tribute to (rip off of) several cliffhanger
scenes in other movies, but at least the music is good. Go and
hear this film.
DOING TIME FOR PATSY CLINE
)
National Release September 25, 1997
A real slap in the face for Tamworth (or a bit naïve) this film,
as the young hero, Ralph (Matt Day) sets off to make his name in
Nashville! Straight from his dusty outback home (population
three) to Nashville, without stopping on the way? Except he does,
of course, get detained, literally. By the cops. Ralph is an
object lesson in the evils of hitchhiking: his lift turns out to
lead into jail. The Jag driven by Boyd (Richard Roxburgh) and
Patsy (Miranda Otto) is stolen; they’re hauling drugs;
they’ve got no scruples. Well, very tiny ones. We spend time
in jail with the two boys and the inmate band (gruesome country
folk playing lousy music) while Patsy escapes in a truck, but
she’s suspiciously ill - suspicious because we can bank on a
teary revelation about her sickness. Guess what letter it starts
with. Anyway, the biggest problem of this film is its jump from a
bitter sweet story into a confused and confusing attempt to
either play with time or suggest that Ralph is dreaming. Since
the end result is unsatisfying, the device is a failure, and we
are left in emotional limbo.
DUST OFF THE WINGS
National Release October 30, 1997
This is a so called low budget movie, shot on video and made with
more enthusiasm than money; cheap would be a more accurate term.
It’s set in Bondi where sex drugs and rock n’ roll are
the only recognisable signs of life, if filmmakers Lee Rogers and
Ward Stevens are to be believed. (They both also co-star.) The
film is a study of a young man’s last moments before
marriage. It is presented as if it’s his last moments alive.
The blokey sensibilities will appeal to the blokes, but a tad too
much sermonising will put the same blokes off. Bared bums while
surfing notwithstanding, it’s not really raunchy, except for
one very gross joke, but it isn’t too sophisticated either.
The amateurs & the professionals in the cast come together at
the lowest common denominator, with the exception of Kate
Ceberano. But even she is not enough to save this from the
netherworld of movies that don’t appeal to any audience
block.
THE FULL MONTY
National Release, October 16, 1997
This overrated little film relies on getting an audience by
nudity - male nudity. Actually, by the PROMISE of male nudity. So
much for honesty in filmmaking. That aside, Robert Carlyle is his
usual engaging self as the strip leader of a group of unemployed
men in the provincial English town of Sheffield, whose women
happily (with much shrieking and screeching giggling) fork out
£20 to see male strippers - despite being broke and miserable.
Just goes to show that women are equal spendthrifts to men when
it comes to ogling the opposite sex, but at least men do it
quietly. The film’s tension is created and held by the
prospect of these unlikely men turning into strippers and going
the full monty - fully naked. Well, of course the film ends with
them going full monty, but the camera is behind them, and the
frame is frozen at the crucial moment anyway. So much fuss over
so little. We immediately realise we’ve been had.
What’s more, the men are still unemployed.
DAYTRIPPERS
National Release: October 9, 1997
We meet a young couple, clearly happy and deeply in love, Eliza
(Hope Davis) and Louis (Stanley Tucci), who live in suburban New
York. When Eliza finds what appears to be a love letter addressed
to Louis, she begins to fear the worst – another woman. Her
mouth of a mum and deadhead of a father drive her into town to
confront Louis at his office in a publishing house. He isn’t
there, because just coincidentally, he’s been given the day
off. (By the scriptwriter.) They try and track him down at one of
those publishing parties, but eventually find him at a very
different kind of party, on the roof. And not with another woman.
I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s one of those
unexpected (and rather sneaky) little devices that writers come
up with when stumped for progress. It looks like that because it
is completely arbitrary and because the film ends inconclusively,
as if the camera just ran out of film. It’s a cheat of a
film, although the cast make it a good cheat.
BUDDY
National Release: September 25, 1997
"I threw the pear into Buddy’s cage – and he
rushed after it. I pushed the gate shut and clicked the padlock.
He was safe now. . . this was no animal I had tricked back into
prison. It was a child of the human stem, a being with the power
to think and to love, and to suffer." So wrote Gertrude
Lintz in her book Animals Are My Hobby, about her pet gorilla.
She was not a total fruitcake, because she managed to convince
not only herself but her husband and her entire household –
along with a good many others who happened to cross her path
– that her menageries of animals were actually children. She
clothed and fed them as if they were. Her husband nodded
smilingly as the chimps careered out of control. (It should have
been called Gorilla in their Midst.) Her story was irresistible
to executive producer Francis Ford Coppola and the Jim Henson
company. The latter made a lot of gorilla suits with real good
hair for the actors to mimic the gorilla, Buddy, who was all the
time mimicking humans. But the film only tells half the story:
where does it show these animals reaching puberty and banging
each other? Where does it show them pooping on the expensive rugs
in the Lintz mansion? Bah, it’s all cleaned up. Of course,
it’s very easy to poke fun at people like Gertrude, with
their obsessive pandering to animals who should by all rights be
pounding the turf in the wild. It’s easy to suggest they are
a few hairs short of a wig for their fanatical obsession. Easy to
ridicule a story that ignores the fundamental questions –
including how Gertie and hubby came to such a pass. So it’s
easy. So what.
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Please see our REVIEWS and REVIEWS ARCHIVES for a complete selection of what our regular critics say about all the movies released in Australia.
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AACID
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL
National Release, Oct 30, 97

James Ellroy’s dark world of Los Angeles in the 50s has absolutely nothing original going for it, and the screen version ditto. As some critics have noted, this is a sort of Chinatown, but without Jack Nicholson & Faye Dunaway. Instead, we have Russell Crowe & Kim Basinger, and a very different mood. Crowe plays a vicious, self righteous thug in cop’s clothing, on the trail of a murder or three - what else is new? Basinger plays a glamorous slut in the arms of a hood. Yawn. Guy Pearce plays a cop who is straight. Cromwell plays a bent cop at the top of the ranks. Gee, really? And the whole thing pivots around Danny de Vito’s sleazy scandalrag editor who sets up celebrities for candid snaps, aided by another cop, played by Spacey. Corruption and lust drive this crowd, as always, and it catches up with everybody just as it always does, at the end of a gun.
MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING
National Release, Sept 25, 97

You could get credibility strain from watching this movie, notwithstanding that it’s directed by Australia’s wedding film specialist, J. P. Hogan. A woman, Julianne (Julia Roberts), approaching 28 hasn’t seen her long-ago boyfriend for years, but they were so close they promised to marry each other at 28 if they were both still single. When he calls, she thinks it’s time: and is surprised that the man has met someone else. Of course he has: he has a life. This is the first stretch. The second stretch comes when you meet the guy, Michael O'Neal (Dermot Mulroney): it’s hard to imagine her being so madly in love with him after all these years that a) she hasn’t seen him for so long that his impending marriage is a surprise, b) she is prepared to do outrageous things to kill his romance. Why didn’t she just ring him a couple of years ago? Then there is the insipid music, stolen from a past generation, stained with a fay nostalgia that is sickening. Perhaps this was spurred by Rupert Graves’ gay character as Julianne’s best friend. But it wasn’t his wedding - even the title is confused.
PAWS
National Release, Sept 25, 97

This is not Jaws reworked with a man-eating dog, although you might wish it were. No, this is that nasty Hollywood genre called ‘family film’ reworked as Australian dysfunctional family film: neither the family nor the film function. The Hollywood version would have had a comparatively ageing Macauley Culkin instead of our guitar-playing Nathan Cavaleri in the lead role, and the voice of his computer literate dog provided by Tom Hanks instead of Billy Connolly. The silliness of the plot would have remained similar: talking dog’s old master is killed by ferocious girlfriend who is after some hidden loot, and dog has the secret to both the loot and the murderer. Dog runs away and is befriended by youngster, who doesn’t like his stepfather. Okay, but why not? The man seems the absolutely ideal stepfather, guys! The problem with ‘family films’ is that they are too silly to be emotionally satisfying for adults, and too adult to be entertaining for eight year olds. In this case, a computer-smart, talking Scottish comedian dog is enough of a hook, wouldn’t you think, without the need for an unsatisfactory family drama device. Reckon the adult version, with Connolly writing a biting script, may be more to my taste.
PICTURE PERFECT
National Release, Oct 30,97

Would that this be a picture perfect; it is merely an imperfect picture to showcase a TV sit-com actress. With a complete wardrobe. She does look great, but is that quite enough? Can we last 102 minutes just watching Jennifer Aniston? Jennifer with little bits of her hair falling over her forehead to annoy us. Then there’s the central question of whether her clothes are really suitable for her job in an advertising agency, advertising agencies being no more than places for insincere con-men. This is riveting, huh? Blandness threatens everywhere, leading man Jay Mohr included, but Olympia Dukakis does a great hyena impression as the jewish mama who has to know everything about her daughter’s life. A tad predictably. Kevin Bacon is charismatic as ever, but shows extreme bad taste for taking the role. Picture Perfect is Popcorn for Poodles.
EVENT HORIZON
National Release, Oct 9, 97

A folded universe, which leads to hell, is the sci-fi premise of this film, in which Sam Neill is miscast, and Eisner’s script is mis-used. It belongs in a comic book in a doctor’s waiting room. Perhaps a psychiatrist’s waiting room. That aside, it’s a heartless piece, and predictable. Will somebody please come up with a new design for space-travelling vehicles? They’re all covered with little gizmos on the outside, and glittered up with angel lights for the long shots. Inside, the same old crew – as in all sci fi stories of ships on a rescue mission - fight off alien mysteries that we don’t know or care about, because they are mysteries. Instead of giving us characteristics we can relate to, they have scientific explanations that are meaningless. When the baddie in your film is a black hole, you have to worry. To make an impact, film relies on the shock value of dismembered bodies splattered around the set. It’s best disremembered.
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