energy.
An ensemble comedy drama, Go swiftly introduces its half-dozen major characters, all in their late teens or twenties, and then jumps back and forth among them like a frog going for the gold at the Amphibian Olympics. Over the course of one very eventful night, drugs will be dealt, guns will be drawn, and the characters will discover just how well—or not—they can handle themselves under extreme pressure.
With its hip attitude, overlapping stories and fractured chronology, Go is a kind of Pulp Fiction reupholstered in Generations X and Y fabric. Like 1994's Pulp, Go is fast, funny and wildly inventive. But also like the Quentin Tarantino film, it has little on its mind besides its own cleverness.
Of the large and talented young cast, the standout is Polley, the Canadian actress so memorable as the abused teenage daughter in The Sweet Hereafter. In Go, she creates the movie's most credible character, a slacker grocery-store clerk who gets in way over her head when she decides to raise extra cash by peddling pharmaceuticals. Holmes (Dawson's Creek) also registers strongly as Polley's loyal friend. And Mohr (Picture Perfect) and Wolf (Party of Five) bring an artfully light touch to their scenes. (R)
Bottom Line: So what are you waiting for—Go already
Emily Watson, Christian Bale
Featured attraction
Waking in the middle of one fitful night in 1977, a young husband and father (Bale) throws a coat over his pajamas and heads outside to pace up and down a street of tidy suburban houses near London. Why, his sleepy wife (Watson) wants to know, does he feel the need to take these nocturnal rambles?
"I walk until the panic subsides," he tells her.
"What have you got to panic about?" she wants to know.
"Nothing," replies Bale, "that's what worries me."
Who says all happy families are alike? Metroland is an absorbing and quietly affecting movie about Bale's slow realization that he has become, and is content to be, the very thing he most loathed as a youth: a thoroughly domesticated suburban commuter. This epiphany comes only after his placid existence is shaken by the noisy arrival of his childhood best chum (Lee Ross), now a nomadic, sexually promiscuous poet. The old pal urges Bale to question his bourgeois life. Why, the friend wants to know, has Bale settled for being a mid-level advertising executive instead of the photographer he dreamed of becoming? Why does he not live in Paris, where he spent time a decade ago while in his early 20s? And why, oh why, doesn't he have sex with anyone besides his wife?
The film, based on a 1980 novel by British writer Julian Barnes and directed by Philip Saville, features excellent performances by both Bale and Watson. Bale deftly conveys the yearning boy still lurking in his adult self, while Watson, playing a far more stable gal here than she did in Breaking the Waves or Hilary and Jackie, radiates wholesome sexiness and smarts. (R)
Bottom Line: thirty-something for Brits
Drew Barrymore, Molly Shannon, David Arquette, Michael Vartan
In this hapless romantic comedy, Drew Barrymore plays a frumpy 25-year-old Chicago Sun-Times copy editor who goes undercover at a suburban high school to write an exposé about kids today. Trying on a trampy teen outfit, Barrymore checks herself out in a mirror. Gazing at her reflection, she mutters, "This is a very bad idea." Exacta-mundo, sister.
Although the message of Never Been Kissed—that being popular in high school is of no importance and will count for little in later life—is commendable enough, it's a truism tacked on hurriedly only late in the film. To get to it, we must endure scene after awkward scene of a hopelessly geeky Barrymore trying too hard to be cool. For those of us who have long since gotten over being excluded from the high school cafeteria table presided over by Suzy Stuckup, this all seems like trivial stuff. Who cares? Sure, it's nice to think that if our classmates could see us now, they'd be properly impressed, but it doesn't mean we have any desire to be back in homeroom again. Any more than you want to see a movie in which the main character wants precisely that. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Gag us with a spoon
Fele Martinez, Najwa Nimri
Otto and Ana are playthings of destiny and love. As early as grade school they sense they are meant to be one. After Otto's parents divorce, his father moves in with Ana's mother, bringing the now-adolescent pair together under the same roof and giving them the chance to consummate their budding love. This they do one night when the wind, for some portentous reason, shakes the trees mercilessly. Then Otto, plagued by guilt for having abandoned his late, brokenhearted mother, runs off to become a pilot with an airmail delivery service. Ana spends the rest of the movie pining for him, even as fate draws them closer and closer to a common point—Finland. That's how things go for playthings of destiny and love: no easy paths, no running into each other at the mall.
A hit in Spain, Lovers might work if the grown-up Otto and Ana seemed genuinely lashed on by passion, as were The English Patient's Ralph Fiennes and Kristin Scott Thomas. One can imagine Martinez and Nimri arranging a weekend getaway, but not to the ends of the earth. (R)
Bottom Line: Lacks heat
Goldie Hawn, Steve Martin
Hawn and Martin replace Sandy Dennis and Jack Lemmon in this remake of the 1970 comedy about a middle-aged couple visiting Manhattan and enduring the worst the city has to offer. They're relieved of their money by a mugger claiming to be Andrew Lloyd Webber, barred from their hotel by a poisonously condescending manager (John Cleese) and—indulging in a brief romantic respite—caught in a compromising position by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Apart from Rudy, it's all rather dated: the old tourist's nightmare fantasy. By now, thanks to Seinfeld, Americans know—in some cases even like—the true New York: shiny, brusque, busy, its citizens preoccupied with managing small-scale lives in a large-scale setting.
Faced with one indignity after another, Martin grins with facetious good cheer while Hawn lets her eyes frost over with anger. They're comedic pros, too seasoned for the film's clunky slapstick. Do we really need to watch Hawn, at this stage in her career, running down an East Village street in ankle boots being chased by an attack dog? Or Martin throwing deli meat to distract it? Not for a New York minute. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: Stay home
>A WALK ON THE MOON Set in 1969, this soulful little romantic drama tracks one housewife's very personal summer of Neil Armstrong and Woodstock. Leading lady Diane Lane signals here she's ready for much bigger things. (R)
THE MATRIX Cooler than cool. The plot, about guerrilla fighters battling a computer program, is gobbledygook, but it's the slick sci-fi look that matters here. Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne star. (R)
COOKIE'S FORTUNE It's your misfortune if you don't see director Robert Altman's latest, a genial comedy drama set in a small town. The top-notch cast includes Glenn Close, Patricia Neal and Charles S. Dutton. (PG-13)
- 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!
