Feature attraction
In the autumn of his career and coming off a big fat turkey called Love Affair (1994), Warren Beatty has made a movie that is fast, funny, furiously original and just plain furious. The 61-year-old Beatty co-wrote (with Jeremy Pikser), directed and stars in Bulworth, a raucous political comedy that makes Primary Colors seem beige by comparison.
Beatty plays Jay Billington Bulworth, a Democratic senator from California who, in the throes of an emotional and financial meltdown, puts out a contract on his own life. Suddenly freed to speak the truth in his final days on this earth, the senator gets down and dirty about race, money and political fund-raising. On a campaign swing through his home state, during which he anticipates being killed at any moment, he joyfully insults black and Jewish supporters, smokes marijuana, dances the night away at an inner-city nightclub, delivers F-word-filled raps instead of speeches and appears on television dressed like Snoop Doggy Dogg's older brother. (Think Sullivan's Travels crossed with Black Like Me.) Bulworth's popularity soars. He also falls for a young African-American woman (Berry), and this infatuation persuades the suicidal Bulworth to turn pro-life once again. Much of the movie's second, slightly deflated half is devoted to his efforts to elude his assassin.
At Bulworth's center is a great gonzo turn by a revved-up Beatty, who perfectly conveys the desperate joie de vivre of a man beyond caring. Berry has too little to do but does it well, including her pip of a last line. And Oliver Piatt, a human sheepdog, is amusing as Beatty's panicky aide. (R)
Bottom Line: This one gets our enthusiastic vote
Alexandre Lazarev
Same notion, different movie. Like Bulworth, the Ukrainian film A Friend of the Deceased is about a man who hires a killer to do himself in. But while Bulworth is all anarchic rush, Friend is a rueful comedy brimming with melancholic moments. Its hero (Lazarev) is a 35-year-old translator who lives in Kiev—there are fascinating glimpses of the city here—but isn't making it now that commercialism has replaced communism. He has no money and his marriage is going bust, so he decides to end it all. But then, just like Senator Bulworth, he meets a gal and changes his mind. Friend neatly captures a society in flux and the hurt of those left behind. (R)
Bottom Line: Soulful, small Ukrainian film
Breckin Meyer, Peter Facinelli, Eddie Mills, Ethan Embry, Patricia Wettig
Four classmates are about to graduate from high school in the dusty hamlet of Dancer, Texas. Back when they were 11, the boys made a solemn vow—they always refer to it exactly as that, a "solemn vow"—that they would all move to Los Angeles upon graduating. But now, some of them are thinking about staying put. How, over a long weekend, each of the four reaches a decision about where his own future lies is pretty much all that happens in this refreshingly modest drama. But it's enough. In addition to getting appealing performances from his young cast, first-time writer-director Tim McCanlies sharply delineates the problems and strengths of each of his main characters, accurately portrays the allure and boredom of small-town life, and captures the peculiar angst of being 18 and thinking that your entire future rests on a single decision. (PG)
Bottom Line: A gold star for this Lone Star effort
Patrick Swayze, Randy Travis
If giant, loving close-ups of the grille, hood and tires of an 18-wheeler turn you on, climb aboard. Only true truck devotees and undiscriminating fans of action films need bother with this pedal-to-the-metal thriller.
In Black Dog, Swayze scowlingly plays a trucker who lost his license following an accident and spent two years in prison for vehicular manslaughter. Now released from the slammer and working as a mechanic, he agrees to haul a load of illegal arms from Atlanta to Newark because the $10,000 payday will save his house from foreclosure. But then the bad guys sabotage Swayze, take his wife (Brenda Strong) and kid prisoner, and otherwise make him real mad. The results couldn't be dumber, louder or more predictable. Swayze seems to be warming up here for a future role remaking Charles Bronson movies. As a fellow trucker, crooner Travis looks alarmingly like Abe Lincoln. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Keep on truckin' past this one
Robert Carlyle, Juliet Aubrey
Nick (Carlyle), a Scotsman, is doing just fine. Having moved south to the industrial city of Bristol, he holds a decent job as a plasterer, plays regularly in a local soccer league and has started a passionate love affair with a hotel worker (Aubrey, of PBS's Middlemarch). Then his hand goes numb. His vision wavers. He gets a bum leg. After running numerous tests, the doctors give him the bad news: He has multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease. He must learn to accept his illness, and he and Aubrey have to figure out—individually and together—what it means for their future.
Although the story is the stuff of routine disease-of-the-week TV movies, Go Now's unflinching look at the physical and emotional costs of Nick's illness distinguishes it from more cloying efforts. Helping greatly to make the movie an affecting drama is the intense central performance by Carlyle (The Full Monty and Trainspotting), who demonstrates once again that he has both rage and charm to spare. (Not rated)
Bottom Line: Moving portrait of a man who, given a lemon, must learn to make lemonade
Michel Serrault, Valentina Cervi
Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) is today considered the greatest woman painter of the Baroque period—not only by default (few women in 17th-century Italy were encouraged to take up the brush) but because of her spectacularly violent portrait of Judith, the Old Testament heroine, slicing off the head of her enemy, the Assyrian general Holofernes. (Has Sister Wendy gotten to this one yet?) The sketchy instruction that led to that masterpiece, painted when Artemisia (Cervi) was only 17, was provided first by her indulgent father, Orazio (Serrault), himself a prominent painter of the period, and then by another artist, Agostino Tassi, who became her lover. Discovering the relationship, Artemisia's father, suddenly less indulgent, sued Tassi. The lovers came to trial, and Artemisia was tortured to confess the affair.
This chapter from art history ought to make a fascinating movie, but the French-language Artemisia is romantic mush. The point seems to be that the artistic genius of the headstrong young woman is unleashed only by Tassi's intimate anatomy lessons. But Cervi's Artemisia, bosom heaving with desire, would have drawn Fabio, not Holofernes. (R)
Bottom Line: Uninspired
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto.
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!
