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How does De Niro do it? Playing a panic-attack-prone Mafia boss who seeks psychiatric help, he doesn't sacrifice any of the blunt, menacing power he developed over the years in such Martin Scorsese gangland epics as GoodFellas and Casino. But in this smart comedy, in which OCD can mean both Organized Crime Division and obsessive compulsive disorder, he gives his screen persona a little spin, a near-imperceptible tweak, and somehow executes a full comic turn. An actor who never misses a punch, he doesn't miss a laugh, either. Analyze This is worth seeing solely for the look of disgust that creases De Niro's mug when his new shrink explains the Oedipus complex.
De Niro is backed by one of the sharpest ensemble casts in a movie in some time. There's the very quick, very assured Crystal, of course, as the psychiatrist who isn't accustomed to patients bringing along their henchmen. Then you have Lisa Kudrow (Crystal's displeased fiancée), Chazz Palminteri (a rival crook who can't fathom what De Niro means by the word "closure") and Joseph Viterelli (De Niro's slow-moving, baggy-faced enforcer)—all terrific. Directed by Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day), Analyze This goes down like a cannoli filled with the lightest cream. (R)
Bottom Line: Looks like a Mob hit
Diane Keaton, Juliette Lewis
Just as Pretty Woman was a feel-good romantic comedy about a prostitute, so The Other Sister is a feel-good romantic comedy about a young woman (Lewis) who is mentally disabled. And just as director Garry Marshall had to do mighty fancy footwork in Pretty Woman to make his sidewalk hostess heroine seem like the lovable Ivory-girl next door, so here he gives us the rosiest view possible of everyday life for a person whose brain hums slower than those of most folk.
There are amusing and even inspirational moments in Lewis's battle to find a life and love apart from that of her overprotective, disapproving mom (Keaton), but Sister is as soft and gooey as a marshmallow. Lewis and Keaton both overplay their roles, but Giovanni Ribisi (Frank Jr. on TV's Friends), playing Lewis's even slower beau, captures exactly a guy doing his best despite sizable limitations. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: So sweet it hurts
Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini
Nicolas Cage is a private investigator tracking a girl who may have been murdered while starring in a snuff film. The tattooed porno-shop clerk (Phoenix) serving as Cage's guide to the porno underground tells him, "You name the vice, I'll name the price." The price turns out to be perilously high in this mirthless but fairly intriguing thriller written by Andrew Kevin Walker (Seven) and directed by Joel Schumacher (Batman & Robin), which shows Cage being increasingly drawn into the porn netherworld, alternately attracted and repelled by what he sees.
Eight Millimeter is dark and deep but not as deep as it thinks it is, particularly in its resolution. Cage continues to impress but spends much of Eight grimacing like the poster boy for a migraine drug. Keener, who normally gives any film a lift (Out of Sight, Your Friends & Neighbors), has naught to do here but whine as Cage's wife. Both Phoenix and Gandolfini, as a porno producer, convincingly wriggle in the slime that covers their characters. (R)
Bottom Line: Darkly diverting, sunk-in-the-muck thriller
Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon
In this latest adaptation of the classic French tale Dangerous Liaisons, Phillippe and Gellar star as Mr. Valmont and Ms. Merteuil. Partly for sport and partly out of selfish motives of revenge, this cynical, sophisticated, sexually adroit pair launch a scheme of seduction and betrayal that results in the deflowering of several virgins and the breaking of many hearts. This version, though, is set not among the aristocracy in pre-revolutionary France but among snotty prep-school kids in '90s Manhattan. Intentions isn't believable, but it's stylishly shot and full of attractive young people posed in chic clothes in expensive settings. It's a brainless good time for The WB set.
Smiling while delivering yet another dry, supposedly devastating insult, the milky, softly handsome Phillippe (54) is initially ill at ease, like a seminarian at a cocktail party. His acting deepens when he goes all soppy over a good golden girl (Witherspoon). But Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) delivers a tense, unpleasant performance as his other half, which makes the movie feel lopsided. Selma Blair, one of the dumber victims, is the standout here. Her enthusiastic descent into depravity (she more trips than falls) is very funny. (R)
Bottom Line: High-grade kid stuff
Isabelle Huppert, Vincent Martinez
One night a Parisian fashion designer (Huppert) ducks into a bar for a drink. She and the bartender (Martinez), though he's some 20 years her junior, make eye contact. Soon the two are engaged in that power struggle also known as love. She has money and status; he has youth. Both enter the relationship with eyes wide open, but Huppert's remain that way in The School of Flesh, a romantically elegiac French film (with English subtitles) by director Benoit Jacquot. (No rating)
Bottom Line: Love Parisian-style
- Contributors:
- 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!
