Summer Film Reviews
Film reviews by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1994 Michael John Legeros
Contents ========
i. CRONOS ii. DREAM LOVER iii. FEAR OF A BLACK HAT iv. IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU v. NORTH vi. RED ROCK WEST vii. THE SHADOW
CRONOS ======
Mildly diverting Mexican horror film about an antique dealer who stumbles upon the Cronos Device--a 400-year-old device capable of bestowing immortality, among other nasty things. Said dealer is subsequently pursued by the nefarious nephew (Ron Perlman) of a terminally ill industrialist.
This very stylish film from director Guillermo del Toro won both the Critic's Week Grand Prize at Cannes and the Mexican Academy Award for Best Picture. The occasional nods to David Cronenberg are fun, but the story is both too slow and too simple to keep your butt from joining the legions of the dead.
Grade: B
DREAM LOVER ===========
Intriguing psychological drama about a super-successful young architect (James Spader) on the rebound who meets, marries, and ultimately misjudges his so-called "dream lover" (Madchen Amick from TV's "Twin Peaks"). Plot twists give plenty of pause, but the BF (believability factor) is undercut by an awful make-up job that leaves the leads looking way-too glamorous for this film.
Great fun for newlyweds. Not.
Grade: B
FEAR OF A BLACK HAT ===================
Third-rate SPINAL TAP spoof of ficitious rap group N.W.H. The jokes are okay, but writer/director/star Rusty Cundieff (HOUSE PARTY 2) paints a terribly unflattering portrait of rappers by embracing the very values that he's heckling.
FEAR OF A BLACK HAT has a couple great gags--including the hilarious explanation of why "the butt" is like society--but the characters spend too much time pulling guns on each other to be truly funny.
Lousy sound editing.
Grade: C-
IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU ======================
Dreadfully dull romantic comedy about a Big Apple beat cop (Nicholas Cage) who tips a waitress (Bridget Fonda) two million dollars (from a lottery ticket that he split with her). The atmosphere (New York as New York) is great and Fonda is uniformly appealing, but Cage's role is so ill-defined that he's neither a decent foil to Fonda nor a solid center to the story. Costar Rosey Perez is annoying as Cage's annoying wife.
Director Andrew Bergman once airlifted a planeload of flying Elvises (Elvii?) in HONEYMOON AND VEGAS. And wrote THE IN-LAWS. Rent those instead.
Grade: C-
NOTE: Film is third-tier on the Imitation Romantic Comedy scale, way behind SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE (second-tier) and not even close to WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (top tier).
NORTH =====
Woof! Rob Reiner's first dog of his directing career stars Elijah Wood as a well-to-do eleven-year-old who decides that he's tired of his unappreciative parents. The inexplicably named North finds a lawyer, declares himself a "free agent," and begins traveling the world for a pair of "perfect" parents.
The super-huge cast is a super-waste. NORTH stars Jason Alexander, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bruce Willis, Jon Lovitz, Alan Arkin, Dan Aykroyd, Reba McEntire, Faith Ford, John Ritter, and, get this, Kathy Bates, Graham Greene, and Abe Vigoda (!) as a trio of Eskimos. Yow! Believe it or not, only Willis emerges unscathed and that's no small feat from a man who has buried more than one movie himself!
Frankly, nearly everything that can go wrong in this film, does. Period. NORTH is not funny; NORTH is not charming; NORTH isn't even interesting.
Don't. Waste. Your. Time.
Grade: D-
RED ROCK WEST =============
Low-key, low-budget thriller about an out-of-work oilworker (Nicholas Cage) mistaken for a hit man while drifting through a small Wyoming town. The quadruple-cross plot has Cage agreeing to kill a man's wife (Lara Flynn Boyle), agreeing with *her* to kill her husband (J. T. Walsh), and running into the *real* hitman (Dennis Hopper) on the way out of town.
The story is good and the pacing is right, but the film is hampered by a half-effective cast. Both Hopper and Walsh are worth watching, but Cage is too intense. He never lightens up enough to infuse the story with the irony it rightly deserves. Lara Flynn Boyle is a loss. Neither her character nor her chemistry with Cage are even *remotely* believable. Phew!
NOTE: Film is also available on videocassette.
Grade: B-
THE SHADOW ==========
Cross DICK TRACY with BATMAN, subtract $20-30 million, and you're standing in THE SHADOW--the long-awaited update of the famous '30's radio show. The script is good--explaining both the character's origin and his network of agents--and the cast is appealing. The film could use some richer characterizations, but only Penelope Ann Miller (as Margo Lane) sticks out like a sore thumb. She's awful.
Other demerits include cheap FX, clumsy editing, and spotty direction. THE SHADOW *does* a great sense of humor, though. After all, how can film that costars Jonathan Winters, Peter Boyle, and Tim Curry be all *that* bad?
Grade: C+
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