Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd
Now the point of the otherwise incomprehensible Back to the Future Part II becomes clear: It was dull, confusing and full of annoying commercial plugs so that BTTFIII would seem innocuous by comparison.
The plot is certainly more coherent, sending Fox and Lloyd time-traveling to the Old West in 1885, with a final gun battle deciding whether they can return to 1985.
There are enjoyable moments: Mary Steenburgen gives a sweet performance as a schoolteacher who smites and is smitten by Lloyd. (He says she's "one in a million...a billion...a googolplex.") When Fox and Lloyd hijack a moving train—they need it for their escape—the engineer asks, "Is this a holdup?" Lloyd replies, "It's a science experiment." Old-timers Pat Buttram, Harry Carey Jr. and Dub Taylor are fun as galoots hanging around the saloon, though Buttram has to say the offensive line, "You musta got that shirt off a dead Chinee."
Mostly, though, this comes across as a case of missed opportunities.
There's little of the anachronism humor that fueled the series. In one scene Fox shows his marksmanship and a gunsmith gives him a new pistol. It's a nice spot for a gag about Michael Jordan-Jay Leno endorsements, but there's no attempt at a joke. Lots of straight lines fall off the screen for lack of a punch, as if director Robert Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale had decided they exhausted the concept in the original.
The mealy-minded ending, with Elisabeth Shue as Fox's girlfriend and Lea Thompson as his mom appearing briefly, will baffle anyone who didn't see BTTFII. In fact, it will baffle those who did see BTTFII, so here's what this film is about: E-X-P-L-O-I-T-A-T-I-O-N. (PG)
Amy Irving, Andy Garcia
The real-life story this film is based on is often called the Puerto Rican Watergate, but as a movie it comes a lot closer to Silkwood.
It centers on the deaths of two young supporters of Puerto Rican independence in 1978. They were killed by police who said the men tried to sabotage TV towers on Cerro Maravilla. (Puerto Rican politics often focus on the dispute among those who want Puerto Rico to remain a U.S. commonwealth, those who want it to become a state and those who favor independence.)
Subsequent investigations by journalists and the Puerto Rican Senate President, Miguel Hernández Agosto, established that the two men had thrown down their weapons before they were killed. Ten police officers were imprisoned in the case, and an investigation continues, with Senate Watergate Committee counsel Samuel Dash serving as special consultant.
This version of the story resembles Silkwood more than, say, All the President's Men because so much of the Cerro Maravilla case remains a mystery. This film, directed by Brazilian Bruno (Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands) Barreto from a book on the case by free-lance writer Anne Nelson, suggests that an FBI agent ordered the killings and subsequent cover-up while pursuing an order to encourage reelection of pro-statehood Gov. Carlos Romero Barceló.
Irving plays a continental U.S.-born TV newswoman whose late husband was Puerto Rican (there was no such character in the real case), Garcia (Black Rain) the special prosecutor who helps her try to find the truth. Robert Duvall has an oddly bland role as Irving's boss, while Erik Estrada shows up as a cop with a guilty conscience, and Lou Diamond Phillips is an agent provocateur.
The plot unravels awkwardly, in what too often sounds like cant: "Sometimes you have to bend things a little to protect the public." "The man's a damned good anticommunist." It's a lot like a Costa-Gavras polemic without his style. (Costa-Gavras's State of Siege remains the most memorable indictment of the U.S. role in Latin America.) Irving seems too naive, exposing herself to unnecessary risks; the FBI agent, played idly by Kevin Spacey, blabs foolishly in a public place. It's hard to avoid thinking that if these details are wrong, other aspects of the film may be wrong too, and if this isn't a believable extrapolation of a real event, it isn't much of anything. (R)
Blair Brown, Bruno Ganz
Diehard fans of TV's Molly Dodd should enjoy this chance to see its leading lady emote at length. Others should think twice.
The movie, written and directed by Brown's former flame, playwright David Hare, is a cross between a soap opera and a genteel version of the sexist Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!
Brown plays a doctor in a London hospital who is so dumb she falls abjectly for a bizarre man, Ganz (Wings of Desire), because he courts her so stubbornly. While she's coping with Ganz, Brown also faces a hospital funding crisis and hassles with her young sister, Bridget Fonda, a feckless, unmarried, pregnant clothes designer.
The only saving grace is that Hare writes with such wit and finesse. When Ganz keeps badgering her, Brown says, "Do you ever stop asking questions?" and he replies innocently, "What do you mean?"
In another scene Brown, mooning about relationships, sighs and says, "I like the early days, when love is given freely."
The end blends sappiness, equivocation and a misguided idea about dresses that gives Hare both his title and a supposed parallel for his theme of inexplicable love. Fonda finally designs a line of mostly strapless gowns, about which she says, "They shouldn't stay up, but they do." While Hare can be forgiven for being obsessed with the subject, it's no mystery why strapless dresses stay up. The reasons have to do with stays, zippers, contouring and friction. If only romantic obsession could be explained away so easily. (R)
>WE DON'T NEED NO STINKING CODGERS: OLD GRINGO
Gregory Peck is an aging American in Mexico during the 1913 revolution. Jane Fonda is a schoolmarm intrigued by the pontificating Peck and fornicating rebel Jimmy Smits. Argentinean director Luis Puenzo mounts vivid scenes but is too star-struck by Fonda, Peck and Smits to let them explore the U.S.-third world relationships that seem at the heart of things. (RCA/Columbia)
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!
