A year ago, a million black men (give or take a few hundred thousand) descended upon Washington for the Million Man March. Get on the Bus follows a fictional group of these pilgrims as they travel by charter bus from impoverished South Central Los Angeles to Washington. For director Spike Lee and his talented cast, who made Bus for $2.4 million and shot it in just three weeks, this bus ride is very much a journey of the heart.
The riders are a cross section of types: There's the wise old man (Davis), the upstanding cop (Smith), an egocentric actor (Braugher), a gay couple (Isaiah Washington and Harry Lennix), a father (Thomas Jefferson Byrd) and his rebellious son (DeAundre Bonds), and the solicitous driver (Dutton) determined to get everyone to the march safely. Over the course of their six-day trip, the men joke (a bus trip without James Brown music, wisecracks one, "is like O.J. without a white woman"), spat, debate issues relevant to the black community and beyond, and get to know more about each other and about themselves. Much of this movie is fresh, funny, truthful—and inclusive. It is only when Bus embraces clichés (the gay couple reconciling, the father and son settling their differences) that it drags. The ensemble cast works very well together, with Braugher (NBC's Homicide), Smith, Dutton and Davis having the showiest parts. Hop onboard. You won't be sorry. (R)
Kevin Bacon, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Patric, Brad Pitt
Director Barry Levinson (Diner, Avalon) has always had a faultless ear for the rhythms of a neighborhood and the sounds of guys talking to guys.
Here he uses this perfect pitch to give Lorenzo Carcaterra's controversial 1995 memoir a deeper resonance. In scenes so swiftly paced and assured that, watching them, we feel giddy shivers of horrified excitement, Levinson tells this tale of four boys who are taken from Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen to a reform school so brutal that later they will risk their lives to punish the guards who abused them. But the director also transforms this film into a brooding, suspenseful meditation on morality and loyalty, vengeance and forgiveness.
Stellar performances by De Niro as a priest forced to rethink his notions of Christianity and conscience, by Hoffman as a bumbling alcoholic lawyer, by Bacon as a sadistic guard and, in addition, by Vittorio Gassman as the neighborhood don make Sleepers gripping and powerfully affecting. The film is so compelling that we were willing to overlook several gaping plot holes and to endure the hard-to-watch violence of the reformatory scenes, not to mention a grating voice-over narration. (R)
Peter Gallagher, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathy Baker, Claire Danes
Peter Gallagher spends most of this movie sporting several days' growth of beard. He clearly hasn't had anyone to shave for since his beloved wife, Gillian (Pfeiffer, who appears only fleetingly in flashback), died two years ago in a sailing accident. Still mourning, he spends his days speeding along Nantucket's twisting roads, as if courting a fatal accident of his own, and his nights gabbing with the ghost of his dead wife. Which would be fine, except that he has an adolescent daughter (Danes) who desperately needs his attention.
All this comes to a head on the weekend when the wife would have turned 37. Gillian's sister (Baker) and her husband (Bruce Altman) come to visit, carting along a divorced friend (Wendy Crewson). "Don't you think it's a little insensitive, fixing me up on [Gillian's] birthday?" Gallagher asks. Baker's reply: "Gillian has no more birthdays." What follows is a fitfully moving drama about love and letting go. (PG-13)
>The Dwight Gooden Movie
WHAT COMES AFTER A HAPPY ENDING?
IF EVER A BASEBALL STORY LOOKED like a natural-born movie, it was the Dwight Gooden story last spring. After a dizzying rise to fame with the New York Mets and an equally spectacular fall from grace as a result of drug use, Gooden, 31, who had been suspended from baseball three times, was given one last chance to prove himself—and he signed on last winter with the Yankees. At first the pitcher struggled to find his old form. Then, on May 14, he threw a no-hitter against Seattle in Yankee Stadium. The next day he flew to Tampa to be at the bedside of his father, Dan, who underwent successful heart surgery the next day.
It was almost too "Hollywood" to be true, and Gooden signed a deal (for less than the reported $1 million) with former Warner Bros, studio head Bruce Berman and producer Norman Twain. But then Gooden's season fell apart, and by late September he had a mediocre 11-7 record and was having trouble getting the ball over the plate. When the Yankees made the playoffs, manager Joe Torre cut Gooden from the roster.
To a normal person, Gooden's movie probably sounds like not such a hot property. But to a couple of Hollywood producers? No problem. Who needs the World Series when you have a High Concept? From the outset, they insist, the plan was to begin and end the film with Gooden's no-hitter and flash back to past seasons in between. Berman, who still hopes to sign Denzel Washington for the lead, says the story "will make a powerful inspirational movie about redemption."
- Contributors:
- Leah Rozen,
- Francine Prose,
- Cynthia Wang.
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!
