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Angels, airedales, and alcohol at the movies
Since you're going home to Mom, Dad, and your favorite parent the multiplex, A&E takes on six fall flicks.CHARLIE'S CONTENDER
It's that time of year again: you've made it through the chunk of the semester, but you feel like the semester has taken a chunk out of you. What better way to forget those midterms and procrastinate from writing that term paper than to go to a true movie—one that will take you out of your everyday existence and allow you to come on and get happy? Both Charlie's Angels and The Contender—albeit in very different ways—deliver that dose of fantasy that you're craving.
Charlie's Angels is a fun little action movie. Don't, however, expect too much from it; character development, intelligent plot twists, and crackling dialogue are not to be found in this one. Everything in Charlie's Angels is incredibly silly, from the over-the-top villains to the gravity-defying martial arts to the Angels' "characters" themselves. The movie works because of, rather than despite, these eccentricities, and because all the actors seem to be having so much fun that you can't help but laugh with them. Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu have a great on-screen rapport that transcends their one-dimensional characters of geek (Diaz), uptight brain (Liu), and rebel (Barrymore). Diaz brings a whole lot more of the same adorably clueless quality from There's Something About Mary to her portrayal of Natalie. Delightfully, the movie's plot, like that of the original series, sends the Angels into improbable situations, working undercover as geishas, belly-dancers, and, of course, men.
The Contender, on the other hand, is fantasy of a different flavor. A sometimes gripping, intelligent political drama, it examines the intersections of gender, sex, and politics. When the President (Jeff Bridges) needs to fill the post of VP, he passes over the obvious party stalwart and chooses a Senator who happens to be a woman (Joan Allen). And so the political wheelings and dealings begin. All conclude that the President has chosen Senator Laine Hanson simply because he wants to leave a legacy, to have his presidential swansong be the appointment of a woman. They ignore the fact that she is competent, almost ridiculously well-spoken, and deeply principled. The villain who will do everything in his power to block her confirmation is Sheldon Runyan (Gary Oldman, in yet another overwrought performance), the Congressman from Illinois who is the chairman of the confirmation hearings committee. Of course he stoops to some pretty low blows, sullying the Senator's reputation with allusions to sexual promiscuity and orgies in her college days. Through all of the allegations, Hanson remains cool and collected, refusing to even comment on the subject, telling the President's advisors that if she were a man, no one would care how many people she slept with in college.
Here is where the movie derails a bit. Are the filmmakers indignant about the sensationalistic intrusion into politicians' private lives or about the double standards for women in politics and in our society? It seems that everyone did care, for a long time, about Clinton's sexual deviancy with Monica Lewinsky. Is this really a gender issue? While I admire the filmmakers' sentiment, and I, too, would love to see a woman achieve the second-highest office in the land, I'm not sure I buy their premise. Another shortcoming of the film is its polarization of the two sides: all anti-Hanson people are evil, and Hanson herself exonerates herself again and again as a truly virtuous public servant. The Contender delivers a fantasy world where politicians do act according to their higher principles and the most scrupulous, rather than the most scheming, are those that win in the end. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the dreams.
—Georgina Cullman
BEST IN THE YARDS
The plot is the only real difference between Christopher Guest's Waiting for Guffman and his new movie, Best in Show. The structure, the tone, even some of the characterizations have not changed. Guest recycles the mock-documentary format (complete with the six-months-later coda) and observes mercilessly as the characters unwittingly make fun of themselves. As usual, he spares no one. The yuppie couple shares a romantic memory of their first meeting at Starbucks, the suburban village idiot drones on about the weather, flamboyantly gay men in kimonos say "tsk," flap their wrists at the camera, and so on. It's not unfunny, thanks largely to the smart and extensive script. There's so much talk, actually, and so little interaction between the different caricatures that the movie feels like a collection of grotesque stand-up acts strung together by a poor excuse for a plot. Guest has no interest in coherence or subtlety, and his broad, vulgar strokes never produce anything that's more than just funny. For all his apparent viciousness, his mockery has no real power and goes nowhere. How can it, when Guest doesn't really care to explore how the flaws and eccentricities of his characters affect their relationships? He doesn't even mock real people—he mocks stereotypes. As a result, Best in Show is an irrelevant failure as a satire. Luckily, it is as at least an entertaining comedy to watch with friends; it's as good as Waiting for Guffman. Just don't go see it alone—you'll barely be tempted to laugh if you see it in an empty theater.If you don't have any friends and you have to go alone, see The Yards instead. Unlike Best in Show, it won't seem any worse for their absence. But then again, it's not much more than mediocre to begin with. This new drama by James Gray—a young director who has only made one other movie, Little Odessa—has a good cast and a decent script. The plot is conventional: a young man, Leo, who has done some time, comes back to his neighborhood and is drawn back into the criminal world despite his desire to go straight, with tragic consequences. Mark Wahlberg, who plays Leo, speaks very softly— when he speaks at all—and seems uncomfortable in the world of his friends. It's hard to understand how he ever became best friends with Willie (played by Joaquin Phoenix), a sociable and fiercely ambitious asshole. Phoenix is perfect for the role—a brutal determination to rise in the world seeps out from the dark hollow crevices under his eyebrows. The asymmetry and sharpness of Phoenix's features mirror the volatility of Willie's personality. Under Willie's patronage, Leo gets involved in the shady underside of the railway car repair business. One night, a job goes terribly wrong; Leo escapes, but is falsely accused of a murder. From that point, the movie abandons its ambition of fully recreating the atmosphere of the Queens underworld and reduces to a family melodrama. So it moves along towards an ending of such high drama as the rest of the movie hardly warrants. But though the serious tone seems out of tune with the petty goings-on, most of the individual performances—Charlize Theron's, James Caan's, Wahlberg's— deserve respect, and Phoenix's deserves more.
—Ilya Zarembsky
THE LEGEND OF DRUNKEN VANCE
There are two self-proclaimed "legendary" films currently available to you in lieu of awkward conversation over left-over turkey: The Legend of Bagger Vance and The Legend of Drunken Master. The choice between Will Smith talking about everyone's "authentic swang" versus Jackie Chan kicking ass while guzzling industrial-strength alcohol, however, is as clear as Zima. Bagger Vance, adapted from a novel that actually attempted to tie mystical Indian myth together with golf, is actually less exciting than watching a PGA tournament without Tiger Woods and makes director Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer look oddly entertaining. Drunken Master, on the other hand, is the theatrical re-release of perhaps Jackie Chan's funniest—and finest—piece of work, Drunken Master 2, with the one element it lacked the first time around to make it a kung-fu classic: badly-dubbed English.Set in Depression-era Savannah, Ga., Bagger Vance is the story of Rannulph Junuh (Matt Damon), a once-amazing golfer who promptly loses his swing and his concern for debutante girlfriend (Charlize Theron, whose on-again/off-again Southern accent shows her South African heritage) after returning, disillusioned and alcoholic, from World War I. Alcoholism, the Great Depression, and the Great War are all just scenery pieces for Redford to set up an exhibition match between Junuh and two golf legends, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen (Joel Gretsch and Bruce McGill), but who will help Junuh get back his "swang?" None other than Will Smith as caddy Bagger Vance, the sort of "mystic Negro here to help white folks," a role previous played by Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile. Duncan was nominated for an Oscar for playing his role; here's hoping that Smith, though game enough, does not get a nomination for what Spike Lee has rightfully called a "driving Mister Damon" part. Though beautifully shot, Bagger Vance does not succeed in fleshing out characters or schooling its audience in the meaning of life any more than it realistically portrays race relations. If it's between this and watching home videos, you've got a tough choice to consider.
When you get to the multiplex, try to talk Mom and Dad into seeing The Legend of Drunken Master instead. It's the sort of funny, fast film Jackie Chan built his reputation on before cowboy flicks and Chris Tucker overshadowed his incredible martial arts skills. Never mind the contrived plot (something involving evil Brits stealing Chinese artifacts only worth mentioning because it makes for hilariously-dubbed British accents). Don't even think about the questionable message sent by Chan's character, a "drunken boxer" whose strength and pain threshold increases exponentially with his alcohol intake (Yale's in serious trouble if DKE gets ahold of this). Just watch for amazing sequences like the sword and spear fight underneath a train, the incredible battle of Chan versus the hundred members of the "Axe Gang," and the finale, where he seems to take on the entire Industrial Revolution in a factory. Walking over hot coals to reach for—you guessed it—industrial alcohol, Jackie thrashes many men in suspenders and a couple of Chinese guys with British accents, then is knocked unconscious by the only thing that could fell so great a martial artist: the alcohol. Now that's family entertainment.
—Josh Drimmer
Collage by Sarah England.
All materials © 2000 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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