Featured attraction
A boy covered in blood stumbles down a suburban road in the middle of the day. He seems dazed, using every ounce of strength he has left to put one crimson-soaked sneaker in front of the other. Did he escape a killer? Has he butchered someone? What is going on here?
Arlington Road, as goosebump-inducing a thriller as has opened in ages, starts with that scene and those questions. By the time this thoughtful, provocative film about domestic terrorism is over, it will have you questioning everything you know or—in the paranoid world the movie inhabits—thought you knew about the folks next door.
The boy, it turns out, was injured in an accident. He is rescued by a history professor neighbor (Bridges), whose wife, an FBI agent, died in a Ruby Ridge-like shootout. Bridges now spends his days teaching a course on, and obsessing over, acts of domestic terrorism. He soon becomes suspicious of the injured boy's grateful parents (Robbins and Cusack), an engineer and housewife new to the neighborhood, who seem like regular folks. Are his suspicions justified or is it paranoia?
Arlington Road is full of unexpected twists, including a gotcha ending that will haunt you for days. Director Mark Pellington (Going All the Way) and first-time screenwriter Ehren Kruger expertly pump up the volume on all fronts. The always able Bridges convincingly plays a man who suspects he may know too much, and Robbins and Cusack are both chillingly creepy. Watch especially for a scene in which Cusack utters the seemingly harmless word "shopping" with the finality of a death sentence, which, in context, it is. When it comes to nightmares, Elm Street has nothing on Arlington Road, especially since the horror on Arlington is all too real in the U.S. today. (R)
Bottom Line: Scarily effective
Jason Biggs, Chris Klein, Thomas Ian Nicholas, Eddie Kaye Thomas
Growing up is hard to do. Especially in American Pie, a riotously raunchy adolescent sex comedy that manages to charm as often as it offends. It is about four male high school seniors who make a pact to lose their virginity by graduation. This leaves them exactly three weeks to get busy.
All four are essentially decent guys suffering from hormonal overdrive who will, over the course of the movie, discover that there's more to life than just lust. There is Jim (Biggs, in a breakout performance), who has trouble chatting up dates. "I should be able to talk to girls," he moans. "I got a 720 on my SAT verbals." Oz (Klein, again showing the sweetness that made him such a winning presence in Election) is a hunky jock who has yet to learn that most women don't appreciate sentences ending in a hardcore proposition. Kevin (Nicholas) is nearest to achieving the goal, but is troubled about whether he really loves his girlfriend. Finally, there's the introverted Finch (Thomas, who does a mean Nicolas Cage impression), who is too repressed to use the school lavatory.
American Pie, for all its crudeness (and there are some jaw-droppingly crude scenes, including one involving adulterated beer), still amuses. Although the women in American Pie get short shrift, Jennifer Coolidge triumphs with a single hilarious scene as a predatory mom who makes The Graduate's Mrs. Robinson seem like a schoolmarm. And extra points go to director Paul Weitz for turning out a teen movie that doesn't include the obligatory scene of three luscious babes in scanty frocks walking in slo' mo' down the high school's hallway. (R)
Bottom Line: Porky's for the '90s, but smarter
Zachary Browne, Michael Moriarty, Ann Dowd, Scott Wilson, Rod Steiger
Tired of summer movies filled with off-color jokes and sexual references, movies such as Big Daddy, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Wild Wild West? Then try Shiloh 2: Shiloh Season. The only kissing going in this low-key, heartwarming family movie is between a boy and his dog.
The boy is Marty (Browne, succeeding Blake Heron from Shiloh 1), who in the first film rescued a beagle puppy named Shiloh from Judd (Wilson), a nasty neighbor who beat his dogs. Not much has changed. As Marty tells us at the start of Shiloh 2, "Judd was still mad. He still wanted his dog back. And he was drinking more than ever."
Based on a popular children's book series by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Shiloh 2 emphasizes old-fashioned values like telling the truth, heeding parents and caring for one's neighbors. The performances are serviceable, and the film is refreshingly free of special effects. (PG)
Bottom Line: A boy and his dog, no more, no less
Marie Rivière, Beatrice Romand
In his 40-year career, French director Eric Rohmer (Pauline at the Beach) has perfected his own brand of comedy—light as chablis, a wine lover might say, but with a lingering finish. His movies are also rich with uncommonly alluring heroines. Pretty, smart and chatty, they tend to brood over matters of the heart. So it is here. Isabelle (Rivière), a married woman of a certain age, secretly determines to find a match for a widowed friend (Romand). She takes out a personals ad for herself, meets (and flirts) with the candidates and picks a businessman who looks like a poetic Bob Dole. The story works itself out from there with elegant simplicity, humor and outbursts of romantic giddiness. (No rating)
Bottom Line: A summer film to fall for
>Ben Gazzara
Hard-nosed actor Ben Gazzara can't get used to the mollycoddling on movie sets today. "You have so many production assistants," he says. " 'Mr. Gazzara is entering his trailer, Mr. Gazzara is going to the bathroom, Mr. Gazzara is coming to the set.' And you drink a lot more water now. You used to be able to have a scotch at 4 p.m. Now, if they see you with a drink, you're an alcoholic. Everyone is jogging and eating nonfat food, wanting to live forever so they can bore you forever."
That blunt approach livens up enough roles to fill a megaplex these days, including a turn in Spike Lee's Summer of Sam. Gazzara plays a Bronx don who thinks his goons can stop a serial killer. Why so many arty films?
"They're the ones who are calling, heh heh heh," says Gazzara, who once starred in soapy mainstream movies like Sidney Sheldon's Bloodline as well as the experimental work of his friend John Cassavetes, who died in 1989. His next films are the comedy Illuminata and the heist movie The Thomas Crown Affair, both due next month, and he will soon costar in the indie The List with old pal Ryan O'Neal ("We picked up a conversation as though it was yesterday"). At 68, he's clearly savoring his flourishing career: "I'm really having the time of my life."
- Contributors:
- Tom Gliatto,
- Jennifer Longley.
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!
