Featured attraction
It's only a movie, folks. No more, no less. "Well, maybe more for kids and less for adults.
The eagerly anticipated and special effects-laden Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, the first Star Wars movie in 16 years and a prequel to the original 1977 film, will satisfy younger fans. They will identify with the initiative and bravery shown by Anakin Skywalker (Lloyd), Menace's 9-year-old slave boy hero (destined in future episodes to become Darth Vader). Adult moviegoers, however, unless they're Star Wars fanatics who believe creator-director George Lucas can do no wrong, will find themselves wishing the human characters were more dynamic and the story more compelling. Harrison Ford's bravado as Han Solo is sorely missed.
Star Wars movies are about myth, imagination, intergalactic travel and sword fights with those cool, humming Jedi light sabers. Menace delivers on all accounts, but its basic plot too closely echoes that of the original movie. Anakin must leave home to prove himself and win the respect of the Jedi Knights (Neeson and McGregor), much as Luke Skywalker (played by Mark Hamill) did in the first Star Wars. The familiarity of the story adds resonance, but it also means that there are few surprises. You know from the start that Anakin and the young Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor) survive, since both made it to the original and are likely to be in. Lucas's promised Star Wars: Episodes II and III.
None of the human actors here make much of an impression. How can they when Lucas's real interest lies not in their performances or dialogue but in the movie's snazzy landscapes, futuristic urban sprawl and phantasmagorical creatures, all achieved with impressively seamless digital animation? (Ninety-five percent of the film features digital work.) The most prominent of the nonhumans is an irritating reptilian creature named Jar Jar, a whining 'fraidy cat who reminded me of Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind. I kept waiting for Jar Jar to confess to the Jedi Knights, "I don't know nothing about birthin' babies." (PG)
Bottom Line: Cool looking, but can't help feeling we're being Force fed
Michelle Pfeiffer, Kevin Kline, Calista Flockhart, Rupert Everett, Christian Bale, Stanley Tucci, Sophie Marceau
Like someone throwing a rope to a drowning sailor, Kevin Kline helps pull a viewer through the morass that is the latest film version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. (Its full title is William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which didn't keep director Michael Hoffman from nervily claiming a screenplay credit.) In this romantic comedy about mixed-up lovers and mischievous fairies, Kline dominates as Bottom, the humble weaver who, while under a magic spell, trysts with a fairy queen (Pfeiffer). Kline is comfortable with the florid language, scoring comic points while also bringing pathos to a role usually played just for laughs. It is Pfeiffer's good fortune that the majority of her few scenes are opposite Kline.
The rest of Dream is, to put it kindly, uneven, with the cast mixing and matching acting styles as if fitting together pieces for a crazy quilt. Perhaps the nadir of this production is reached when romantic rivals Helena (Flockhart, in a particularly strenuous, fidgety performance) and Hermia (Anna Friel) mud-wrestle in a puddle. All that's missing is Jerry Springer blowing a whistle as referee. (PG-13)
Bottom Line: A Dream that casts no spell
Cher, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Lily Tomlin
War is hell, even for the privileged English expatriates who, in this autobiographical drama by director Franco Zeffirelli, stay too long in Italy after the start of World War II. No more afternoon teas amidst the paintings at the Uffizi Gallery for these plucky gals. No more leisurely strolls, parasols aloft, past the Duomo. They're not even allowed to take pet dogs with them to a detention camp. The horror, the horror.
Certainly these ladies show courage under Italian ire in Tea with Mussolini, but the film's basic story of how they all help raise a motherless Italian youth and survive the Fascists is as dramatically weak as the gallons of milky tea they consume during the course of the movie. Smith is wasted until late in the film, given little to do but sneer at the vulgar ways of the rich American ex-showgirl gamely, if not always subtly, played by Cher. (PG)
Bottom Line: Tepid brew
Mochizuki Takashi, Naito Taketoshi
One by one, the newly dead file into a dingy office and sit across a table from a caseworker. The caseworker gently explains that the dead person must pick a memory, a single precious moment, from his life. That memory will be re-created on film and screened for the person, who will then head off to eternity with only that memory.
This is the premise behind After Life, a stunningly profound, vital film by Japanese director-writer Kore-eda Hirokazu. After Life works on several levels. It is about recognizing happiness, about the limitations of what can be captured on film and, best of all, it makes viewers think long and hard about which memory from one's own life one would choose. (No rating)
Bottom Line: Pure heaven
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!
