October 30-November 5, 2003

movie shorts

New Movie Shorts

ALIEN

The "director's cut" tag notwithstanding, this is functionally the same Ridley Scott movie that was released in 1979 -- which is a relief, since the original needs no improving. Without the glossy vacuousness of later Scott pictures, Alien is mainly staged in the interior of a grimy, dank spaceship (albeit one with enough chains hanging from the ceiling for a Nine Inch Nails video). As opposed to James Cameron's followup, itself a model example of its kind, Alien keeps its killing machine mainly under wraps -- a function of limited special effects technology, perhaps, but brilliantly calculated to turn the hard-shelled, acid-blooded beast into each viewer's worst nightmare. (Swiss artist H.R. Giger had already designed the beast to draw on the deepest of sexual fears, spawning even more frightening decades of analysis by excitable academics.) Perhaps most surprising -- other than how goddamn beautiful the restored prints look -- is what a complex character Sigourney Weaver's Ripley is. The tough-chick caricature of Aliens and beyond has taken precedence in memory, but here she still has enough humanity to be scared, to tenderness that isn't tinged with protection. (Thus the movie's most important restoration, the so-called "nest" scene, in which Ripley's flirtation with shipmate Tom Skerritt reaches a gruesome but apropos resolution). Above all, what's amazing about Alien is how quiet it is, a strategy no large budget American movie (apart from Solaris) would dare to apply today. The box-office blockbuster of 24 years ago looks like the art film of today. --Sam Adams (UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

BROTHER BEAR

Following in David Spade's Disneyfied footsteps (prince-into-llama), Joaquin Phoenix now voices a human transformed into an animal to learn valuable lessons about community, family, and gender relations. When teenage Native American Kenai (Phoenix) rejects his totem (a bear), because it seems too girlie, he magically becomes one, only to be hunted by his own brother (Jason Raize), who is unaware of the change -- despite the fact that the tribe's connection to the great sky spirits (Joan Copeland) knows all about these shenanigans. Kenai meets two moose (Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas feigning "Canadian" accents, because these are so very hilarious), and orphaned cub Koda (Jeremy Suarez), whose unquestioning affection indicates that beasts are nicer than people and through whom he meets other bears (Michael Clarke Duncan included). All this cultural cutting and pasting, topped off by Phil Collins' score (including a big-belty number sung by Tina Turner) is not only ripped off from other animated (Disney) buddy/road movies, but also unimaginative, appropriative and vaguely insulting, what with its Native American-less cast, bland animation and formulaic plotting. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)

THE FLOWER OF EVIL

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Murder! Politics!
Rich French people trapped in a
web of lies and such!

(Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)

THE HUMAN STAIN

Philip Roth's novel, whose title refers both to original sin and Monica's dress, comes to the screen in an unprepossessing adaptation that forsakes overarching themes for May-December romance. Despite stoic turns from Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman, it's in the flashbacks to the 1950s that the movie comes alive. The romance between Hopkin's disgraced, tragic-flawed classics professor and Kidman's aggressively dowdy janitor (with Roth stand-in Gary Sinise standing by) pales in comparison to the anguish we read on young Wentworth Miller's face, a light-skinned African American who makes the decision to pass as white (a charade that continues long enough to deprive Hopkins, his adult self, of the perfect defense against charges of racism). As the period parents, Harry Lennix and Anna Deavere Smith have a chiseled dignity that suggests they would rather break than bend; Smith's cold dismissal of her race-denying son as a "murderer" carries more weight than Hopkins' ersatz Lear. Ultimately, though, The Human Stain finesses the issues it raises, touching down in a bed of goo. --(Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

IN THE CUT

Jane Campion's In the Cut is the most visually daring studio movie in recent memory; with its shallow focal planes and modified lenses, it looks more like George Washington than Master and Commander. Unfortunately, it's also a movie about a romance between a possible witness to a serial killer's deeds and the detective assigned to the case. Campion obviously thinks she's above her story's genre elements, which just leaves her blind to the fact that she's essentially created the most pretentious Red Shoe Diaries episode of all time. For all the movie's visual sophistication, its view of sexuality is laughably binary: Meg Ryan's teacher is smooth and silky, Mark Ruffalo's detective gruff and boorish. He's been around the block a few dozen times, though, and she knows it, leading to some allegedly torrid love scenes that would be commonplace in any more sophisticated industry. Sketched in filigree or not, the movie's sex-death equations ought to be obviously ridiculous, though some critics are already falling for Campion's elegant fraud. (They probably thought The Piano had a light touch.) With Holy Smoke, Campion showed signs of weaning herself from her most tendentious tendencies; here they return full force. For masochists only. --S.A. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

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