Kidman plays a ruthless but clueless young woman who fancies herself the next Jane Pauley. The local TV weather person in a small New Hampshire town, she performs before her map with all the poise of a majorette twirling a flaming baton on an ice floe. She is also making an inane documentary about a trio of subliterate high school students, one of whom (Phoenix, brother of the late River) is dangerously infatuated with her. But this pathetic woman knows she is on her way to the top. The only obstacle, as far she can see, is her old-fashioned husband (Dillon), who thinks she should be content to help out at his family's restaurant. He'll have to go.
As a black comedy about some Americans' pathological lust for fame, To Die For, directed by Gus Van Sant, may not have the consistent cold gleam of The King of Comedy, Martin Scorsese's 1983 classic about a would-be stand-up comic who kidnaps a talk show host, but it's bracingly nasty, even so. This has more to do with Buck Henry's admirably heartless script than with Kidman's brittle, one-note performance. But the rest of the cast is terrific, especially Illeana Douglas, as Kidman's suspicious sister-in-law, and the heartbreakingly miserable Phoenix, who looks like a voodoo doll of Christopher Walken. (R)
Winona Ryder, Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn, Kate Nelligan, Alfre Woodard
By the end of this movie, the woman beside me was crying. So was the woman next to her. The woman on the other side of me wasn't crying, but she was sniffling mighty hard. I was dry-eyed. What can I say? American Quilt didn't do it for me, but it obviously got the ducts in my row.
How you react to this episodic tale of female fortitude will depend less on how you feel about quilting—a great American art form, I hold—than on how susceptible you are to movies in which women characters suffer, suffer and then suffer some more, all for love. Here, seven members of a contemporary quilting group in rural California tell their stories of romance and heartache, complete with flashbacks, to a wavering prospective bride (Ryder) for whom they are piecing together a wedding gift. Early on, Ryder asks, "How do you merge into this thing called a couple and still keep a little part of yourself?" As each quilter unspools her story (one tolerates a philandering husband, another discovers that her spouse has slept with her sister, etc.), it becomes evident that the quilt of love is a mix-and-match of different pieces that needs care and luck to last a lifetime.
Although in structure American Quilt resembles the 1993 weeper The Joy Luck Club, the stories here fail to resonate as strongly; and the whole, as directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse (Proof), seems more than a touch precious. (Do you really want to see Burstyn and Bancroft, as women in their golden years, placidly puffing away on a joint?) Of the talented cast, only Nelligan, all acerbic crackle and hidden hurt as a widow who is sleeping with another member's husband, creates a character you can believe. (PG-13)
Albert Finney, Matt Keeslar
Welcome to the Irish version of Hellzapoppin'. This coming-of-age story about an 18-year-old lad (Keesler) in County Cavan trying to sort out his emotions and ambitions after the death of his mother seems simple enough. But Country, directed by Peter Yates (Breaking Away), gets lost in a blur of incidents and catastrophes: a heart attack, a decapitation, an unwanted pregnancy, an IRA bombing, a tar-and-feathering and a drowning in a peat bog, not to mention a bungee jump, a cockfight and a bar brawl. With all this going on, no one (not even Finney, as the boy's short-tempered dad) gets a chance to really act. The only interesting detail about Country is that the boy keeps his dead mother's compact case concealed in his pocket. We never learn why this souvenir has any special meaning for Keeslar. But that's precisely what gives it a small, but much appreciated, resonance the movie otherwise lacks. (R)
>A SURVIVOR OF SUCCESS
HE HAS THREE OSCAR NODS (FOR 1987'S Street Smart, '89's Driving Miss Daisy and '94's The Shawshank Redemption) and a hit fall film (Seven, with Brad Pitt). So why isn't Morgan Freeman as miserable as many of his Hollywood peers? For one thing, Freeman, 58, and his wife of 11 years, Myrna Colley-Lee, 54, live on a 44-acre farm in his native Mississippi. (The actor has four children from a previous marriage.) Then there's his approach to acting: "I don't have to be angry to be angry [onscreen]. I'm making lots of money, doing what I want. How can I be in a bad mood?"
What was it like to make Seven?
The set was dark, uncomfortable and unhealthy. The director, David Fincher, and others developed a chronic cough because of the water and mineral oil that was blown into the air to create the murky atmosphere.
Could anything lighten the mood?
We rode Brad about being named [by PEOPLE] as the sexiest man in the universe. The cast gave him a director's chair that said that. I ranted, "What am I, chopped liver? How dare they insult me by putting this here!" We [finally] let Brad in on the joke.
What about the romance between Pitt and costar Gwyneth Paltrow?
The chemistry between them was real. I have always been floored by [her mother] Blythe Danner. And here she comes. She has the gift.
Is there a message in this movie?
I don't want the audience to get a message. I just want them to get their money's worth.
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Leah Rozen.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
