Featured attraction
Money changes everything. At least it does for the four main characters of A Simple Plan, a shrewdly engrossing, well-cast and-acted thriller in which sudden access to big cash calamitously corrodes family ties and moral values.
As adapted for the screen by Scott B. Smith from his 1994 novel of the same name, A Simple Plan starts out deceptively simple: Two brothers (Paxton and Thornton, both terrific here) and a pal (Briscoe) discover a
downed small plane in a snowy, wooded field in the rural Midwest. Inside they find a decomposing pilot and a canvas bag containing $4 million in cash. "It's the American dream in a gym bag," one of them says. Finders keepers, they decide. Soon, though, the three (along with Fonda, as Paxton's wife) are arguing over the money, plotting against each other, and bodies are piling up. Think of this as Fargo minus the guffaws and the wood-chipper.
Successfully venturing beyond his former shock-schlock niche, director Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead and Darkman) crisply establishes each of Plan's main players along with the class differences and festering rivalries that exist between them, then skillfully lets it all play out. In the film's best touch, the character who winds up being Plan's moral center seems, early on, anything but. (R)
Bottom Line: Impressive find
Jane Horrocks, Michael Caine, Brenda Blethyn, Ewan McGregor
Big voice, little story. That's the deal with Little Voice, a slight English film dominated by a wowza-wowza star turn by Horrocks, a waifish actress with a huge singing voice and an uncanny gift for mimicry. (She is best known in the U.S. as the ditzy aide Bubble on TV's Absolutely Fabulous.) Horrocks is cast here as the movie's title character, a withdrawn' young woman who sits all day in her room playing old LPs and imitating, with Memorex-like accuracy, the voices of Judy Garland, Edith Piaf and Marlene Dietrich. When her mum's new beau, a seedy showbiz agent played with winning bluster by Caine, overhears her singing, he decides she's his ticket to the big time.
Horrocks's crooning will knock your popcorn loose, but the movie's negligible story and obvious symbolism (something about setting caged birds free) don't add up to much. (R)
Bottom Line: Fab star, but otherwise, not a lot to shout about
Jerry Springer
Can't get enough of Jerry Springer on his rock 'em, sock 'em TV talk show? Well, here's your chance—not that I'm advising this—to see Springer in his very own movie, Ringmaster. Clearly, though not. cleverly, designed to cash in on Springer's current inexplicable popularity (his show has been known to whup Oprah in the ratings), Ringmaster-casts Springer as—big stretch—a TV talk show host named Jerry Farrelly. The role requires Springer to justify his show by explaining that he's offering viewers "a slice of American life" (depicted here by two sets of trashy guests eager to tell all on nationwide TV) and to parade about clad only in his under-shorts. This we could easily have done without. (R)
Bottom Line: Strictly for would-be guests on Jerry's show
Anne Parillaud, William Baldwin
Professional assassin Parillaud, with an uncombed helmet of Pat Benatar hair and an expression of soulless exhaustion, returns to her empty apartment after executing a hit. She hears a suspicious noise and trains her gun on...her cat, which has padded into the room and wants to be fed. "You don't beg, you insist," Parillaud (La Femme Nikita) whispers in a tiny, husky voice. "I like that in a woman."
Obviously this isn't a movie that expects to be taken seriously. Image, directed by Raul Ruiz, is a playful, occasionally very funny psychological-philosophical thriller in which Mr. Sandman and Dr. Freud pay a joint visit. Parillaud is cast not only as the assassin but also as a bride honeymooning in Jamaica with her new husband (Baldwin). The bride, an emotionally frail woman who suspects she's being stalked, keeps falling asleep and dreaming she's the assassin. And when the assassin nods off, she dreams she's the bride. Who's dreaming whom? The conundrum is worked out, with all sorts of twists and a cheerful disregard for plausibility, to a satisfyingly outlandish conclusion. (No rating)
Bottom Line: As unreal as a dream, but fun
>CENTRAL STATION A beautiful film from Brazil movingly depicts an older woman (Fernanda Montenegro) who learns that life is still full of possibilities when she grudgingly accompanies a boy on a long journey. (R)
ENEMY OF THE STATE Will Smith proves himself easily up to the job of carrying this entertaining techno-thriller, the kind of movie that keeps you happy on a Saturday night and is totally forgotten by Monday morning. (R)
BABE: PIG IN THE CITY Yes, it's dark and might scare small children, but this sequel about the little pig that could is visually inventive and smarter than most adult movies. And the singing mice are back and doing Elvis. (G)
- 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!
