If voyeurism didn't already have a bad name, this dumb, listless, explicit but never sexy murder melodrama would give it one. Don't get your hopes up, Basic Instinct fans: As far as Stone is concerned, you've seen it all, literally and figuratively.
Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas (who also wrote Basic Instinct) is meanwhile trying, futilely, to come up with some clever, poignant or profound dialogue to bridge the short gaps between Sharon lakes her shirt off and Sharon simulates orgasm stage directions. Eszterhas works desperately to seem hip by cramming in a mention of the band Pearl Jam (even though other characters use such outdated expressions as "the real skinny").
Baldwin performs like a graduate of the Mickey Rourke Snarl-and-Sulk School of Acting. He's grossly embarrassing in a scene where he wrestles for a gun with Berenger, who seems like he could snap Baldwin in half.
Nobody could make Stone look less than ravishing, but director Phillip Noyce sets a trudging pace and slicks to it. He is also sloppy in his editing. The reportedly much reworked ending is still an emotional unsatisfying jumble, except for the film's only strong line, which has Stone scolding Baldwin, "Get a life!"(R)
Tyrin Turner, Larenz Tale
Opening scenes don't come much more shockingly brutal than this: The Korean owner of a convenience store in Los Angeles's Watts neighborhood tells two black teenagers to pay for the beer they have already started guzzling and to leave his store. One of the two (Tate) shoots the owner through the head and, after forcing the dead man's wife to hand over the videotape from a surveillance camera, kills her too. "I knew it was going to be a long summer," says Tate's buddy (Turner), the film's ostensible hero.
Where can a movie go from there? On to even more numbing episodes of carnage and pat sociological explanations (absent fathers and easy drug money) of how the two teenagers got to the point where killing someone is just another way to spend a day. As Turner's character says, "I had done too much to turn back, and too much to go on."
Its excesses aside, Menace II Society has sincerity and stylistic flair. Allen and Albert Hughes, the 21-year-old twin first-lime filmmakers who directed the movie and helped devise its narrative (Tyger Williams wrote the screenplay), really know how to tell a story and where to put their camera. There are scenes here that are chillingly fresh, such as the one where Tate repeatedly shows the video of the convenience-store murder to his pals and brags that he's going to sell copies, and one where Turner watches It's a Wonderful Life on TV as if viewing a documentary about Martians. The young cast does well, and there's a deft cameo by Charles S. Dutton of TV's Roc as a lather doing his best not only to save his own son but help out the other boys in the 'hood. (R)
Lumi Cavazos, Marco Leonardi, Regina Torné
A Gabriel García Márquez-fla-vored folktale blending fate, forbidden love, family feuds and food, this adaptation of Laura Esquivel's best-selling novel is—let us not mince words—a feast. Like Water for Chocolate, set in Mexico in the early part of the 20th century, centers on the youngest daughter (the luminous Cavazos) of a family ruled by iron-fisted matriarch Torné. Cavazos' only safe haven is the kitchen, where through elderly cook Ada Carrasco she learns the mystical properties of food.
The trouble begins when Cavazos and a handsome neighbor (Leonardi) fall in love and seek Torné's permission to marry. No, she decrees, according to obscure family tradition, Cavazos as the last born must remain single to serve her mother's every whim. But perhaps, she suggests, Leonardi would care to many Cavazos' sister (Yareli Arizmendi). While the general reaction of the household is horror—"You can't exchange tacos for enchiladas," gasps a servant—Leonardi agrees to the plan to be near his beloved, who is assigned to cook the nuptial feast. The wedding cake, accidentally flavored with Cavazos' tears, has a disconcerting effect on the guests: They become violently heartsick—and sick to their stomachs—as they recall their own lost loves. On another occasion, when Cavazos cooks quail in rose-petal sauce, using flowers given her by Leonardi, those gathered around the dinner table are infused with incalculable sexual passion.
This visually sumptuous movie, which takes its title from the Mexican method for brewing hot chocolate by boiling water to the point of exquisite agitation—a metaphor for sexual arousal—may not be everyone's dish. But those willing to give themselves over to the gently ironic narrative, a large portion of mysticism and some wildly fanciful plot turns, are in for a treat. (R)
- Contributors:
- Ralph Novak,
- Leah Rozen,
- Joanne Kaufman.
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