Reviews

Willow (1988) is an interesting movie to me because I am interested in cinema history, and, at least for me, it represents the end of an era in that history.

That era perhaps began in 1981 with the release of Jon Boorman's Excalibur, and continued with Conan the Barbarian (1982) and its various imitations. By the time Willow was released, audiences at the time were well-acquainted (perhaps even a little overly familiar) with sword-and-sorcery movies.

Recently I rented this movie through Netflix because I could not remember if I had ever seen it. After watching it, I have to be honest and admit that I am not sure that I ever saw it before, even as a child.

I only remembered it at all because I believe in my childhood I had a Willow action figure, the evil queen's guard, if I remember correctly. I lost the toy a long time ago, but I figured I might as well watch the movie.

If I had seen this movie as a child, I might perhaps have liked it better than I do as an adult. Watching it as an adult, what struck me most about the movie is that it is a surprisingly big production for a 1988 fantasy movie.

Audiences today, accustomed to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy and other epic-scale fantasies with computer-generated effects, might not be impressed by Willow. But I am old enough to remember the 1980s, and I can safely say that this movie has everything that money could buy in 1988.

Since George Lucas produced this movie, the scale of the production should perhaps not be a surprise. He also had the advantage of producing this movie after several years of sword-and-sorcery movies, which enabled him to see what other filmmakers had done and make a bigger, more elaborate fantasy than any of the previous ones.

Bigger, however, does not necessarily mean better. Ironically, the main flaw with Willow, in my opinion, is that it has too much of everything: lots of chases, lots of monsters, lots of special effects, lots of sword-fights, as though George Lucas wanted to wear out the audience.

It almost seems pointless to discuss performances in a movie like this, which depends so much upon special effects. But as far as acting goes, my favorite performance in the movie was by Val Kilmer, as the rogue who helps Willow on his quest. He even survives the indignity of having to dress in drag for an extended sequence. It is easy to see why he went on to other things.

Warwick Davis, as Willow, grew on me as the movie progressed. My only objection is that, at times, it is difficult to watch a little person in so many dangerous situations, and being insulted by almost everyone he encounters (obviously that is the movie's point, that Willow perseveres despite the prejudice against him, but it is still hard to watch at times).

Fantasy movies are not noted for their terrific screenplays, and Willow unfortunately is not an exception. As I watched it, I could not help by notice where all the ideas were coming from—the Book of Exodus, Gulliver's Travels, the Lord of the Rings, The Wizard of Oz, etc. Since it lacks the literary origins of most of the best movie fantasies like Lord of the Rings, I also cannot think of any memorable lines from Willow.

I do not watch fantasy movies for their acting and writing, however. What interests me most about fantasy movies are their production design, and their visual ideas.

For example, I liked the sequence in which Willow and Kilmer escaped from the enemy camp by using a shield as a sled. It reminded me of a similar escape sequence in The Living Daylights (1987). I also liked the scene in which a troll, after being struck by Willow's magic wand, fell into a castle moat and emerged as a two-headed fire-breathing dragon. And I liked some of the unique design ideas, such as the wolves that are made up to look like giant rats.

James Horner's musical score is beautiful and suits the movie perfectly. I also have to commend Ron Howard's direction, as he finds just the right tone for this material. Back when this movie was released film critic Leonard Maltin wrote that it was too intense for its target audience of children, but at least it is not overly condescending and juvenile like so many fantasy movies of the 1980s.

For all of its fine ingredients, however, after watching Willow it is easy to see why movie audiences in the late 1980s were willing to forget about fantasy movies for a while. Audience tastes were changing, and in any case nothing more could be achieved with the special effects available at that time.

While it would be incorrect to say that no fantasy movies were produced between Willow in 1988 and the first Lord of the Rings movie in 2001 (Dragonheart, released in 1996, comes to mind) I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that this movie marks the end of an era.

When the first Lord of the Rings movie was released in 2001, it not only added computer-generated effects but was more adult in tone than any of the fantasy movies of decades past. The era of Willow, with its old-fashioned special effects and relatively simple storyline, is genuinely gone.

Recently I rented this movie through Netflix because I had not seen it for many years and wanted to see if it lived up to my nostalgia. And I have to say that Dragonslayer (1981) is still a special movie to me.

There is not much plot in the movie that is not described in the title. Peter MacNicol plays a sorcerer's apprentice who, when his master is killed before fulfilling a promise to slay a dragon, must attempt to slay the dragon himself.

Because it was released at the start of a run of sword-and-sorcery movies produced in the 1980s, Dragonslayer is different from almost every other movie in the genre that followed it. In fact, it is almost unique in movie history.

I actually believe that Dragonslayer has more in common with Jaws (1975) than it does with other 1980s fantasy-adventure movies.

Director Matthew Robbins, no doubt influenced by Steven Spielberg's directorial techniques in Jaws, introduces the dragon slowly, in fleeting glimpses, before finally revealing it in its entirety after more than an hour of screen time.

There is, for example, a great shot from behind a character's head as he slowly rises to his feet with the dragon in front of him, with the dragon's head only just visible around his own.

The director also makes clever use of camera angles to suggest that people are constantly in fear of death from above, crouching and even crawling along the ground in apprehension of awakening a sleeping dragon.

Like almost all the sword-and-sorcery movies of the 1980s, Dragonslayer is also a triumph of production design. Production Designer Elliot Scott creates a world in which a fire-breathing dragon does not seems out of place. The sorcerer's castle is appropriately dark and dreary, the people live in a village that appears to be little more than sticks and rocks put together, and the dragon's lair, full of fire and steam, is an unforgettable sight.

The screenplay has perhaps just the right amount of plot in it, yet I cannot say that it impressed me as much as the direction and production design, because it seems more like a series of clever ideas than a coherent screenplay.

I do not want to spoil the movie for those who have not seen it, but I thought it was a clever touch for the hero to use a shield made of the dragon's own scales for protection against its fiery breath. Also, when the hero ventures into the dragon's lair, the dragon is hiding in the last place that you would expect a fire-breathing dragon to hide.

Like many other movies of the genre, Dragonslayer does suffer from a bit of an identity crisis. Is this a movie for adults or for children? Obviously few people over the age of twelve care about the slaying of a dragon, yet the unrelenting grim and serious tone of the work suggests an ambition to be more than just a "kids' movie." This tone is maintained so completely that the jokey, lighthearted ending seems out of place, compared to everything that has preceded it.

The screenplay also suffers from some awkward moments of transition, as when the hero, after battling the dragon, appears outside the dragon's lair, with no explanation as to how he escaped or survived. The myth of Saint George and the Dragon, which provided most of the source material for the screenplay, suffers from the same abrupt transitions, if I remember correctly, yet the screenplay should have improved upon the flaws in the source material.

I also cannot praise the movie as an actors' showcase, especially since Sir Ralph Richardson, obviously the best actor in the movie and giving one of his last performances, is on screen the least amount of time. The other performances are merely serviceable, nothing more.

I would give this movie 7 out of 10, because if you are a fan of fantasy movies then the movie is definitely worth seeing at least once. If you are not a fan of fantasy movies, then you might give the movie only 5 out of 10, as its good points would not be as meaningful to you.

I have to admit that I have no idea how people today, accustomed to Lord of the Rings and other lavishly produced computer-generated spectacles, would view this movie. I would like to think that the movie has held up better than many other movies that rely upon special effects, thanks to its production design, and Alex North's atmospheric musical score, yet maybe this is not enough for viewers today.

Perhaps the greatest praise that I can give this movie is that, at least for me, it is memorable and unique.

This movie should always have a place in movie history, if only for its special effects. It was released the same year (1981) as Ray Harryhausen's last special effects movie, the original Clash of the Titans, and introduced a new stop-motion technique, "go-motion," which would be the special effects-industry standard for the next twelve years, until Jurassic Park was released in 1993 and made all stop-motion effects seem obsolete.

It would be easy to dismiss Dragonslayer as merely a footnote in the history of fantasy and special-effects movies, but I would prefer to think that, when viewed today, it still succeeds in transporting the audience to another time and place and makes them believe the impossible.

A bold, experimental movie, The Dark Crystal (1982) is a spectacular treat for Jim Henson fans, as well as evidence that Henson had ambitions for his craft far beyond The Muppet Show and Sesame Street.

I first learned of this movie when I was about thirteen years old. My mother gave me a Marvel Comic adaptation of it. I was the perfect age to appreciate it. The comic book (the "official" adaptation of the movie) also included photographs of the movie and sketches by the designer, Brian Froud. When I was finally able to see the movie at age fifteen, I was not disappointed.

Set in "Another world. Another time," as the narrator informs the viewer, this movie tells the story of Jen, a "Gelfling," apparently the last member of his race, and the only one in his world who can save it from the cruel and oppressive rule of the evil Skeksis by healing the Dark Crystal. As Jen's master and father figure, a member of the race of Mystics, lies dying, he sends Jen on a quest to find a missing piece of the Dark Crystal, which must be reunited with it before the three suns of the world form a "great conjunction," which occurs only once every thousand years.

The story is simple in the extreme, yet there is so much to take in visually that it does not really matter. Spectacular scenery is abetted by richly detailed sets, and the puppetry that brings the story to life is a tour-de-force.

It is hard to think of another movie, even another fantasy movie, with a more grotesque and varied cast of characters and creatures: the elf-like Gelflings; the Mystics, with their huge heads, long tails, and four arms; the Skeksis, both birdlike and reptilian; the crablike Garthim; and the landstriders, which are virtually impossible to describe—you will have to see them for yourself.

Without computer graphics, Henson and his team were able to create all these characters using only hand-held puppets, puppeteers in suits, etc. One can almost believe that these characters live on their own without being dependent on human manipulation. I have watched the movie several times over the years, and I have never seen the wires. There are certainly moments during the movie when one can see how a particular effect is being achieved, but you will probably have to watch the movie more than once to notice them. The movie is like a magic trick that has to be watched several times before it surrenders its mystery.

For me, the highlight of the movie is the scene in which the Skeksis eat dinner. Only Henson and his team could make puppets "eat" so convincingly, and make it entertaining.

As much as I admire Henson, it was Brian Froud, a British fantasy illustrator, who was responsible for designing these characters. Henson's contribution was to bring these characters to life with no apparent compromise. When you see Froud's sketches, there is no difference between what he sketched on the page and what appears in the movie. The movie is pure imagination, come alive.

The characters and story are somewhat underdeveloped, but the movie is also surprisingly adult and dark in tone for a children's story, as it involves duels for power, genocide, slavery, torture, and, ultimately, sacrifice. But I suppose all the best children's stories are dark in tone. No one who has ever seen Bambi has forgotten how dark it is.

I like the moment in the movie when Jen thinks to himself, as he sets out on his quest, "I can't do this alone…all right, alone, then!" Unlike the heroes of many fantasy stories, Jen does not have a large group of allies to help him in his quest. Ultimately he does find another like himself (Kira, a female Gelfling), but even with her company, there is an air of loneliness about this movie, as they are the last two of their kind—pretty tough stuff.

It is tempting to think that Henson might have created more movies along these lines; but in my opinion, at least, with this movie Henson and his team pushed their craft to its limit.

The one flaw in this movie, which I think is worth mentioning, is that the Gelfling characters do not express emotion as well as one might like. They are, after all, puppets, and puppets can only do so much to involve a human audience in a story. I think it is significant that although there are many close-up shots of the two Gelfling characters in the movie, there are few long, lingering close-ups, as though Henson understood that the longer people saw the Gelflings up close, the more they looked like puppets, and not living characters.

When Henson made Labyrinth (1986) four years later, there was a human actress (Jennifer Connelly) in the lead, to get the audience emotionally involved. Never again would Henson and his team attempt the pure puppetry and unrelenting otherworldliness of The Dark Crystal.

This movie makes spectacular use of widescreen, so if you do watch it, make sure you watch it in a widescreen format, preferably on DVD or in high definition. If you are looking for a movie with memorable dialogue or creative acting (there is no "acting" in the movie, of course, as it is all done with puppetry), you may not be interested. But if you are looking for a movie that looks and feels like nothing you have ever seen before, you will not be disappointed.

Normally I don't bother wasting my time writing comments for junk like this that I forget almost as soon as I see it, but since I saw this movie just yesterday on one of the comcast Showtime channels (346, I think) I decided to make an exception.

Besides the fact that I enjoyed watching Carol Alt, I can't give any rational reason why I watched this movie through to the end. I'm always amazed that good-looking women are willing to appear in awful movies like this, but I suppose she thought this movie would lead to something better. I hope she was right, for her sake.

Otherwise, this is an all-too-typical straight-to-video laugh riot, or just a piece of garbage, depending on your point of view. While there are a few decent moments of action in this movie, they don't really connect well with the story, such as it is.

The setup, as I recall, involved Carol Alt as a depressed housewife who believes her husband, a cop, is cheating on her. There was also something about their child dying in an accident, and she blaming him for it, but before that storyline went anywhere she shot and killed him.

On the same fateful night, a wounded stranger comes to her door and she tends to him, and almost immediately her house is under siege by government stooges and mercenaries intent on capturing the stranger, who appears to have almost superhuman fighting skills.

This same kind of material has yielded decent entertainment plenty of times before, most notably in Matt Damon's The Bourne Identity, and could have done so this time as well but this particular movie was let down by poor production values and a lousy script.

This movie really falls apart at the end, when the mysterious stranger turns out to be a cyborg (!) who was programmed to be a policeman, and after discovering that Carol Alt killed her husband he tries to kill her! The movie wasn't particularly good up until this point, but the ending really ruins it by trying to turn a modest action-thriller into a lumpy Terminator/Robocop wannabe.

I also thought that the violence in the movie was a bit excessive at the end, with the demented cyborg gouging out poor Carol Alt's eye before it finally bit the dust. What was the point of that? For that matter, what was the point of anything in this movie? It held my attention and entertained me for about an hour, until the end, when it reminded me that I wasn't watching a first-rate movie. It wasn't even really a second-rate movie, for that matter.

The final scenes seem to hint at a sequel, which I don't think ever happened, although I haven't carefully checked the web for it. Needless to say that I'm not in any hurry to see any sequel to this movie.

Even in this post-Matrix era, this movie is still the ultimate blend of Orwell and action. If the definition of a classic is a movie that's often imitated but never equaled, then The Terminator is definitely a classic, because the increasing redundancy of its sequels and imitations merely demonstrates how good the original is.

I wasn't fortunate enough to see this movie in the year of its release, the year predicted by Orwell's classic novel as a time when technology would be used to enslave people, but I did see it in about 1992, when the blockbuster success of the first sequel made me curious to watch the first film. At that time I preferred the second Terminator movie for being technically superior, but after all these years I now prefer the first film's raw intensity and kinetic energy.

The Terminator was of course the breakthrough movie for James Cameron, and even after Aliens and Titanic it's still arguably his best-directed film. I challenge anybody to watch this movie and point out one single shot that needs improvement, because the direction of this movie is so fluid and precise that I can't think of one moment in the whole 100-minute running time that I would want to change.

Cameron was and of course still is a notorious perfectionist who's very difficult to work with, but his perfectionism really paid off with this movie because it can be watched again and again without losing its entertainment value. He's a master of the small touch, as when the cop at the desk is filling out his paperwork with a small pencil and pauses in mid-sentence to look up and see the headlights coming towards him through the doors.

Cameron also co-wrote the story, so this movie meant even more to him personally than merely a directing triumph. Supposedly he drew his inspiration from a nightmare in which he was being chased by a humanoid with one glowing red eye, and indeed the whole film has the urgent, oppressive atmosphere and calm logic characteristic of a nightmare. But of course he was probably also remembering subconsciously a couple episodes of The Outer Limits that he saw as a kid, which explains why he had to acknowledge the writer Ellison in the credits.

Besides Cameron, this movie really belongs to the three lead actors. Arnold of course gives the performance of his career in this movie, but then so do Linda and Michael. Arnold's physical presence and harsh accent have never been put to better use in a movie, while Linda never had another role that required her to run through such a full range of emotions--sweetness and vulnerability, toughness and despair, etc.

Michael has always been a B actor, but since The Terminator is essentially a B movie he fits in perfectly. His performance proves that an action hero is much more compelling when he's vulnerable not only to physical pain but emotional difficulties, to which his big, haunted eyes are put to good use. Watch him in this movie, as a man thrown out of his time but with a mission, and you'll see a perfect match of actor and character.

In a typical action film, the amount of violence and bloodshed in The Terminator would be excessive, but in a movie about an unstoppable killing machine the envelope can be pushed. In one of the more memorable set-pieces, the Terminator takes on an entire police station full of thirty cops, and although I didn't exactly count them the viewer gets the sense of watching every single cop being gunned down.

Ordinarily I wouldn't describe such a scene of slaughter as "cool," and yet there is some-thing undeniably cool about Arnold, with his sunglasses and leather jacket, going through the station with a shotgun and assault rifle and taking on everybody. Arnold's charisma helps the audience stomach the cold-blooded determination of the Terminator, but also the character's single-mindedness invites admiration: even as we're appalled by all the killing, we have to admit he does it rather well.

This movie has more than enough gunfire, explosions and stunt-work (including some especially good stunt driving) to work purely as an action picture, but it's the film's anti-technology paranoia that makes it more than just an exciting ride. Notice, for example, the subtle role that Sarah's answering machine plays in the story: the cops can't get into touch with her because of it, while the message she leaves on it brings the Terminator right to her.

In one memorable shot, the tracks of a construction crane become those of a killing machine in the future, crushing an endless row of skulls, which you can interpret any number of ways (is it a crack against urban renewal?). Also note that the criminal psychologist is enslaved by his beeper, and that even in the post-apocalyptic future in which machines have destroyed the world children still huddle around a television set in a desperate effort to be entertained.

Some viewers may be turned off by this movie's preaching, but one quality that distinguishes The Terminator from its countless imitations is the strength of its convictions. Too many science-fiction/action movies fail under the weight of their own camp, but The Terminator is an exception because it actually has the nerve to take itself seriously. The bickering between seasoned cops Paul and Lance provides some levity, but at no point does the film make fun of itself.

The only reason I'm not giving this movie a perfect 10 is because it is, after all, The Terminator, and not Casablanca. If people still remember it in forty years, then I'll give it a 10.

With a stronger story and a better director, The Phantom might have amounted to something, but as it is it's simply a passably entertaining adventure yarn with gorgeous cinematography and an attractive cast to match. I've seen many movies much worse than this one, but I've also seen much better ones.

The best and the worst thing about this movie is the campy, old-fashioned style with which it was written and directed. This is the kind of movie in which the jungle animals call to each other to announce the approach of the hero (in an obvious nod to Tarzan films), the hero's dog and the hero's horse appear to have a conversation with each other, one of the villains blows circles with his cigar smoke for no reason at all, and so on.

Obviously, anybody who enjoys campy, old-fashioned movies is probably going to like this one, whereas other people are going to watch it and realize within five minutes that it just isn't for them. Unlike the Indiana Jones movies, which improve upon the Saturday matinée serials that inspired them, The Phantom never really transcends its source material and remains every bit as cheesy as those bygone serials.

This movie recreates the spirit of the serials so obsessively that, at one point, the hero rolls across a pirate cannon, the cannon obviously shakes, and you assume that the filmmakers left that shot in the movie deliberately as an homage to the shoddy props of the old serials but you're just not sure. This movie even begins with a caption that reads "For Those Who Came In Late…", which is not only the most obvious reference to old serials that I've seen in any recent film but also the most affectionate.

As an evocation of the old serials this movie works just fine, but when the cast is as well-chosen as this one it's almost a shame the filmmakers didn't set their sights a little higher and give the actors a more meaningful script.

Billy Zane, for example, was an ideal choice to play the Phantom because nobody looks at him and sees an action hero, and as a result he's completely convincing as an ordinary guy who is not a super-hero but is rather spending all his time struggling to live up to his heroic image. Perhaps no other actor could have played the Phantom with touches of empathy and humor so neatly and effectively blended together.

Treat Williams is a treat to watch as the arch-villain, and seems to be channeling much of his performance from Robert Armstrong's Denham character in King Kong, with dialogue like "There must be an uncharted island...This is the chance of a lifetime!" One of the few scenes in this movie that has any real bite to it is the one in which he tells the guy to look in the microscope, which I suppose shows how evil he is without violating the film's PG rating.

Kristy Swanson is wholesome and appealing as the heroine, Catherine Zeta-Jones provides a sultry villainess, and even the most modest roles, such as McGoohan as the Phantom's father and David Proval as a gangster, are so well-performed that the actors almost allow you to overlook the film's flaws.

The only disappointing performance in this movie comes from James Remar as the chief henchman, if only because years earlier in 48 Hours he gave one of my all-time favorite villainous performances. He's so dull and restrained in this movie (by the PG rating, of course) that I couldn't believe when I first saw him that he was the same guy who once gave one of the best psycho-villain performances of '80s action cinema.

Jeffrey Boam's script is stuffed with good dialogue, with my favorite line coming from the cabby who tells the Phantom "Coin of the realm would be appreciated" when he doesn't get US currency. But again, no amount of juicy lines can compensate for the lack of imagination and originality in the screenplay. The main story is pretty weak, involving powerful skulls that, when two are joined and pointing the way to the third skull, all too conveniently have the appropriate map on the wall and know how to use it!

The biggest failure of this movie is that it doesn't really do a good job building up the mythology of the Phantom. The only unique power of the Phantom, in my opinion, is his mythology,his ability to make his enemies believe that he really is immortal and more (or less) than human. But since none of the villains in this movie really believe in the Phantom's power, what's the point? Why bother putting on the purple tights (or any colored tights) if you're just going to punch, throw and shoot your enemies like any other, more conventional action hero? There's a sequence in this movie in which the Phantom follows the bad guys to a remote location, and when he suddenly reveals himself they're not the least bit terrified or even mildly surprised!

The only element in this story that really clicks is the romance between the hero and the heroine, largely because Zane and Swanson have such great on-screen chemistry. Like many other comic-book sagas, this one has a lot of fun with the idea of the heroine not recognizing the hero's alter ego, and the hero in disguise having to keep his true identity hidden through one scene after another.

So what we have here is a decent film that's disappointing only because it didn't reach its potential. The only missing ingredients in this movie are a compelling plot-line, and Steven Spielberg in the director's chair.

Rating: 6 (It's almost worth seeing.)

Although it's hardly a good movie, Stargate is yet another one of those movies that I can't completely dislike because I was the appropriate age when I first saw it. With its elaborate special effects and action sequences, ridiculous yet imaginative plot and cheerfully broad characters, this is a movie that speaks to the fourteen-year-old inside all of us. And yes, I was fourteen when I first saw it on the big screen.

First of all, this movie is basically a nerd's dream come true, with James Spader playing Daniel Jackson as the quintessential nerd who gets a chance to prove his theories about ancient Egypt when a woman working with the US government enlists his help translating some writing found on a mysterious artifact. Right down to the fact that he leaves his coffee mug perched on a metal pipe as he hurries into a meeting, Spader's performance is pitch-perfect.

The whole first act is so good, as we watch Spader at work and the suspense builds toward the opening of the Stargate, that it's almost a shame the movie didn't make better use of the Stargate and give it a bigger payoff. A more profound film might have put the journey into the Stargate at the climax of the story, and the result could have been something like the mind-blowing trip at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey or the walk into the spaceship at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

But this movie has other ideas, so Spader joins Russell and his presumably crack team of soldiers (we never really learn much about them) on a reconnaissance mission through the Stargate to explore whatever lies on the other side.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

My favorite shot of the movie comes when Spader and Russell walk a distance out into the desert that they find on the other side of the Stargate, then turn around and see that they've just walked out of a pyramid with three alien moons above it. It's the sort of simple yet striking visual that distinguishes the best science-fiction: it's done in the style of a pulp magazine cover, but it's intriguing and leaves a lot to the imagination.

Unfortunately, the movie hits a snag at about the same time Spader does: finding a strange animal, he stands in the exact spot that allows him to be caught in the animal's harness and dragged, seemingly for miles, to the next location required by the script. This is a stupid plot device: I have no trouble believing in the Stargate, but I can't believe that Spader would suffer no serious injury from being dragged through miles of hot sand.

A similarly tacky moment occurs when Spader befriends the chief with a Fifth Avenue bar, an obvious parallel to E.T. (not to mention an obvious bit of product placement). Indeed, the more this movie progresses, the more its patchwork quilt of ideas becomes apparent.

When the bad guys finally appear, they come with a bewildering array of hardware that, impressive as it is, seems designed not to evoke ancient Egypt but to facilitate the sale of action figures and plastic play-sets to kids. The movie is rated PG-13 for violence, but even so there's something so irresistibly toy-like about this movie that it's impossible not to think that older children were part of the target audience.

For the most part, the special effects and action sequences in this movie are still impressive even after ten years, but what's sorely lacking is a strong human element. This movie "loses its way dramatically," according to Leonard Maltin, but it doesn't so much lose its way as it does lack a dramatic hook even from the very beginning.

Characterization is a big problem: with the exceptions of Spader, Russell, and to a lesser extent French Stewart's sardonic soldier, none of the good guys in this movie have any real personality. Motivation, or rather its absence, is another problem: we never understand whether the soldiers volunteered for this mission or whether they were assigned to it, or how they feel about their situation in any case.

My favorite scene is the one in which Spader questions Russell about why he came on the mission, and Russell simply says that his son died and he no longer thinks he has any reason to live. I had thought before I watched the scene again recently that Russell went into greater detail about how his son died, but my point is that we at least know how he thinks. Far too many science-fiction movies don't even attempt to explain their characters' motivations: just once I'd like to see a movie of this genre that explains why everyone's willing to do what they do.

Anyway, like most other Roland Emmerich movies (notably Independence Day) Stargate has a great first act, a progressively conventional second act and a third act that goes overboard on action and special-effects spectacle. Basically the final reel of this movie turns into Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Stargate, with lots of shooting, blasting, exploding, punching and even a little attempted brain-frying thrown in for good measure.

Despite its flaws, I actually like this movie better than most Emmerich efforts. It's a B movie like Independence Day, but not nearly as overblown. It's more energetic and imaginative than either Universal Soldier or Godzilla, and it's not nearly as pretentious as The Patriot.

I haven't bothered seeing The Day After Tomorrow yet, because at 24 I'm feeling a little too old for the Roland Emmerich world of entertainment. But there are days, particularly when I'm thinking about Stargate, and how much I enjoyed it at age 14, that I wish I wasn't.

Rating: 6 (I like it, but I can't quite recommend it.)

It's hard for me to believe that fourteen years have passed since I first saw this movie. I was only ten at the time, and this was the first movie I ever saw that was both an eye-filling and a mind-filling spectacle.

It was also one of only two theater-going experiences that I ever had with my late grandmother, and I always think of her when I watch this movie. It always takes me back to an earlier time in my life no matter how many times I see it.

This is one movie that could only have been made in the post-Vietnam era, when Americans began to question the moral integrity of their country. How else to explain, in the opening sequence depicting the Civil War, the utter cynicism of the soldier who speaks with Costner's Dunbar character? Or Dunbar's later observation that "there was no dark political objective" to the Sioux battling the Pawnee?

The scene in which Dunbar receives his orders from the mentally ill major also seems to speak of Vietnam, the point being I think that while an entire generation of young men was being cut down in the Civil War the West was being managed by those who were not fit for duty in the larger conflict. Maury Chaykin, in that one scene, gives one of the most memorable and haunting performances I've seen in any film.

This movie's depiction of Native Americans is not nearly as politically correct as it may seem to those who watch it only once or only at a superficial level. In the very first scene depicting Indians, in fact, a Pawnee brave shoots one of the white characters full of arrows and then scalps him. The unrepentant villainy of Wes Studi's character, in particular, recalls the moral simplicity of countless earlier Westerns.

Even the most sympathetic Indian character in the movie, Kicking Bird, is not kind to Dunbar merely to be friendly but because he believes he can get useful information out of the white soldier about the other whites who are encroaching on Sioux territory. The interaction between Dunbar and the Sioux is powerfully effective precisely because the Sioux remain true to themselves. They are not cartoonishly hostile like the Indians depicted in old Westerns, but they are not soft or naïve either.

While this movie draws its inspiration from American epics as diverse as The Birth of a Nation (1915) and The Searchers (1956), its originality lies not only in its respect for Native Americans but also in its intensely personal treatment of the main character. Few other three-hour epics (Lawrence of Arabia and Braveheart come to mind ) have developed their protagonists as fully and dynamically as this movie develops Costner's Dunbar character.

Even after fourteen years, the Dunbar character's arc, going from a suicidal soldier in the opening sequence to an adopted Sioux who in the final scenes puts the needs of his people ahead of his own, is still one of the most remarkable I've seen in any movie. Costner's performance won no awards that I know of, but it provides the movie's indispensably tight focus. He's completely convincing every step of the way, if a bit too clumsy and self-effacing at times, hitting his head in the dark and fainting after a confrontation in a heavy-handed attempt to demystify the West.

Another quality this movie shares with The Searchers is that it associates the physical challenges of the frontier with the testing of the soul. The Dunbar character cleans out the watering hole at the fort because he refuses to lose his humanity like the men before him who abandoned the fort. Later he cannot decide whether he feel more or less at home in the presence of the Sioux, because he is struggling to remain true to himself even as he remains unsure of who he is.

This movie probably disappoints viewers who are looking for sheer entertainment. It's a quiet, thoughtful story, and although there is action in it the focus is on how the action transforms the characters (particularly Dunbar) rather than on the action itself. You won't see any computer-generated comic-book characters in this movie, but you will see real people having real conversations, and you'll see Costner and costar Mary McDonnell engaging in such intimate and convincing love scenes that you'll forget they're acting!

If I could rate the musical score for this movie by itself I'd give it a perfect 10, because it's one of the best I've ever heard, able to stand on its own but fitting the movie like a glove. It is sentimental without being schmaltzy, noble without being pretentious. Best of all, it captures the hesitant emotions of the story, the sense of curiosity overcoming fear and becoming trust.

Only this movie's extreme length works against its total success, particularly in the special edition that runs nearly four hours. The three-hour theatrical version is still long, but it's difficult to say what should have been left out of it.

Some people still resent the fact that Costner won the Best Director Oscar over Scorcese's Goodfellas. There's no question that Scorcese is the better director, but I believe the direction of Dances With Wolves is better than that of Goodfellas. If you disagree with me try this test: imagine that Scorcese did this movie, and Costner directed Goodfellas. It's a question of which directing job is better, not which director is better.

Unlike most epics, this movie ends exactly as it should. The final images, such as the journal floating down the river, the white man and the Native American speaking English to each other, and the brave shouting his farewell from the top of a cliff, are so beautiful and dreamlike that they manage to be both joyful and sad. This is a movie that looks into the very fabric of this country's past, and asks us to do the same.

Rating: 10 (Good job, everybody.)

Breakdown is SO close to being genuinely good, but it does fall short. Because it has received high ratings and positive comments from so many, I hesitate to criticize it too harshly: obviously, any negative review will not reflect the majority opinion. Still, I am surprised that so many people forgive or overlook its flaws.

The best segment is the first half hour: the setup is as effective and compelling as I've seen in any movie, thriller or otherwise. It's perfectly paced, with minimal dialogue, believable characters, telling details and subtle plot turns. The beautiful yet foreboding scenery of the American West is another strong asset: when the scenery itself adds character, that's good film-making!

I would have given Breakdown a high rating myself if the whole movie were as good as the first half hour. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Even the credible setup, in hindsight, is not perfect. I'm not convinced, for example, that Kathleen Quinlan's character would leave her husband (Kurt Russell) so readily. I can certainly understand her desire to avoid being stranded in the desert all day beside a broken car; but I would never regard a hitchhike with a strange trucker as a preferable alternative!

The explanation, of course, is that she's naïve, a trait that would be more convincing if she were a teenage girl or young woman; but the movie clearly establishes her as a woman in her 30s, the type of person I would never imagine making the kind of decision she does. And I don't understand why she'd be willing to leave Russell alone in the middle of nowhere.

Another moment that doesn't quite convince me occurs when Russell confronts the trucker (J.T. Walsh) who gave his wife a ride, and the trucker completely denies giving the wife a ride or ever seeing Russell or his wife before. Certainly this is the movie's most memorably chilling moment, and yet it's just not believable in any context.

Walsh's complete denial is such a transparent lie that it provokes immediate suspicion and hostility from Russell, convincing him that something terrible has already happened to his wife. There is no room left for doubt or suspense: Walsh is obviously lying, and doing it very poorly. Wouldn't the movie have been much more plausible (and chilling) if Walsh had been able to convince Russell that nothing had happened?

My favorite moment occurs when the sheriff suggests to Russell that his wife may have intentionally left him: the idea that Russell might never have known his wife as well as he believed is extremely intriguing; and if Breakdown had developed in this direction, and shown Russell doubting himself as much as everyone else, it would have been a thriller worthy of Hitchcock.

But this is an action movie, and writer/director Mostow was trying to emulate Duel and Deliverance rather than Vertigo or The Vanishing; but his premise is so compelling that I wish he had developed it in a more interesting and less formulaic direction.

Breakdown starts to go downhill as Russell's SUV does: to avoid spoilers, I'll just say that he drives his SUV into a river. I don't know what Russell was trying to accomplish by doing this, since he makes his situation worse rather than better (watch the movie and you'll understand what I mean).

Most ordinary people in Russell's situation (and Russell is allegedly an ordinary person) would drown, be swept downstream and smashed onto sharp rocks, or meet a terrible end by various other means. After a while, though, Russell begins to resemble a Saturday matinee serial hero (or a video-game protagonist), and not like the real person he was at the beginning of the movie!

Again, I want to avoid spoilers, so I'll just say that after a while Breakdown seems to have no originality left, and becomes familiar, derivative, and indistinguishable from countless made-for-HBO action movies. To be fair, it is entertaining and gripping for quite a while, though in retrospect its second act relies heavily on clichés, such as a guy who is shot and appears dead but is not really dead, and others that I dare not mention.

An hour into the movie, Russell performs a feat so completely unbelievable that it's worth mentioning. It's not a spoiler, because the back of every Breakdown DVD and videotape shows it: Russell climbs up the side of a moving truck, looking more like Indiana Jones and less like the average guy he's supposed to be.

No ordinary guy, without camera tricks and stunt doubles, would be able to do what Russell does. Film critic Leonard Maltin asserts that Breakdown contains "all-too-believable situations." Well, Russell's sequence on the truck is not one of them! Most people who attempted Russell's feat (on Fear Factor, perhaps) would be neatly pressed between truck tires and highway asphalt.

The major letdown of Breakdown is the anticlimactic final sequence, which I won't spoil except to say that it's completely incoherent and completely unnecessary. Breakdown might have been better had it simply ended with the confrontation in the previous scene; but it persists in ending on a ridiculous note, which I can only describe as a fight atop a truck that conveniently (and absurdly) ignores Newton's theory of gravity.

The final fight would have been appropriate in Rambo 4, Die Hard 4, Mad Max 4, or even a Coyote and Roadrunner cartoon, but it isn't appropriate in this movie. I don't want to risk a spoiler by revealing the outcome, although it is completely predictable. After watching it, I supposed that Mostow could be the right guy to direct Terminator 3.

Russell, Quinlan, and Walsh do far more for the movie than it does for them; in fact, it's entertaining only because of their combined star power. Breakdown is a good movie with a bad ending, or a bad movie with a good beginning; I can't decide. It's never boring, but after the first half hour it never reaches its potential.

Rating: 6

The Arrival is the most overlooked and underrated science-fiction thriller of the ‘90s, and possibly the most entertaining alien invasion/conspiracy yarn I've seen. More action-oriented science-fiction movies such as Terminator 2 and the Matrix are more entertaining by comparison and have better production values; but The Arrival works very well on its own terms and has its own imaginative ideas. As a science-fiction fan and particularly an X-Files fan, this movie is indispensable to my movie collection.

The plot setup is elegantly simple: a radio astronomer (Charlie Sheen) and his partner (the always-good Richard Schiff) detect an intriguing extraterrestrial signal, and Sheen is then unexpectedly fired by his superior (Ron Silver), who after Sheen leaves destroys the recording of the signal--the first hint of a conspiracy, though not the first sign of trouble.

The movie's memorable opening sequence shows a meteorological scientist (Lindsay Crouse) in a field of flowers and grass; then the camera soars upward to show the field surrounded by polar ice, near the North Pole (within 90 miles, she later explains). This seems to indicate alarmingly rapid global warming; yet she receives no cooperation from anyone, not even her colleagues.

Meanwhile, Sheen poses as a TV dish mechanic to create an array of dishes for his own personal use (the idea that he could do this is so amusing that it seems inconsequential whether it would actually be possible), and sets up his own observatory in his attic. He detects a second signal identical to the first, but it originates from Earth! This makes no sense, Sheen rightly argues, "unless they're talking." Heading to Mexico, he discovers that the radio station which led him there has been burned and destroyed the day before: the atmosphere of conspiracy and paranoia is now overwhelming.

The Mexico sequences are particularly good, adding beautiful scenery and convincing local color (Sheen chases his would-be assassin through a Day of the Dead procession, as people walk by holding up candles and a giant papier-mâché skeleton) to a story that is quite engrossing already. Sheen learns that a mysterious corporation, Planet-Corp., is buying decrepit industrial plants in the Third World for some unknown purpose.

SPOILERS AHEAD! WATCH THE MOVIE FIRST, OR READ CAREFULLY!

The alien facility that Sheen ultimately discovers underground is very well-conceived, with a huge circular structure sending giant balls of greenhouse gas (which are apparently fueled by car-sized canisters) up to the surface; the method Sheen employs to escape after being detected is also very imaginative, and appropriately unsettling as well. The entire sequence is so suspenseful that tension remains even after Sheen escapes successfully.

The movie then builds to an exciting, explosive climax at the radio observatory, where Sheen's determination to broadcast his evidence to the world leads to a showdown with the aliens. Before the end, he learns who he can trust, and who he was wrong to trust.

The Arrival is so absorbing and entertaining as a series of suspenseful situations and last-minute escapes that its real strengths, the performances and the direction, are easily overlooked.

I've seen Charlie Sheen often enough to know that his performance in this movie is one of his best: his performances in Platoon and Wall Street are more compelling, of course, yet I would argue his perfect depiction of obsession and paranoia in The Arrival is his most entertaining and enthusiastic performance to date. Casting him as a hotheaded astronomer was brilliant, since he's much more convincing in the role than I would have expected: his character's emotions are completely believable, and he has an everyman quality that a Hitchcock scenario like this (an ordinary man caught in extraordinary circumstances) needs more than anything else.

Teri Polo, best known for playing Ben Stiller's fiancee in Meet the Parents, also gives a convincing performance as Sheen's girlfriend, a woman exasperated with Sheen yet concerned for him, first because of his obsession with the signal and later because of his disturbing (though actually well-founded) paranoia. Lindsay Crouse, because of her intelligent, perceptive face, seems perfectly cast as a scientist who, like Sheen, becomes obsessed with discovering the truth at whatever price.

And Ron Silver is simply a great villain: he's one of those actors who I don't see very often, but based on his performance in this movie I like him. As the cold, enigmatic Phil Gordian, he manages in human form to exude as much menace as the aliens themselves; and when he finally reveals his true identity (which Sheen has already guessed), he expertly delivers the movie's most chilling line: "If you can't tend to your own planet, none of you deserve to live here."

David Twohy's direction of his own script is so adroit that it's a shame his follow-up effort, Pitch Black, isn't nearly as stylish by comparison. The Arrival displays many moments of inspired direction, such as a cut from the circle of the Earth to the circle of a radio dish (after the movie's first sequence concludes), and a distorted view of Ron Silver's silhouette (midway through the movie) that causes his head to appear alien-like--I have seen this same technique used in more recent films such as AI: Artificial Intelligence and The Mothman Prophecies. Such visual flourishes are probably not Twohy's original ideas, but I still appreciate the fact that he used them.

The Arrival certainly didn't deserve to bomb in its theatrical release, but I suspect why it did: I can't remember seeing a single TV ad for it back in the summer of 1996 (I did not know it existed until I saw it on HBO a year later), while I probably saw 100 TV ads for Independence Day during that same period of time. Whether a movie's good or bad, it needs to be well-advertised to succeed.

Isn't it a strange coincidence that cast members Richard Schiff and Ron Silver have appeared together on The West Wing, which stars Martin Sheen, Charlie's dad? Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

Rating: 8

Driven begins with the following caption (if I remember correctly): "900 million fans. 250 miles per hour. 20 races. 1 championship." Sounds like the start of an exciting movie, doesn't it? Unfortunately, this racing saga remains stuck in low gear for its entire duration.

My first objection to this movie is that its opening race is presented with such music video-style editing and breathless narration that for me it's obnoxious, not thrilling: it never really explains what's happening, or why I should care; and all the movie's racing sequences are presented in the same tiresome hyper-kinetic fashion.

I also hated the cheesy special effects, which in my opinion are ludicrous and unconvincing computer-generated f/x even compared to the shoddy f/x of other recent movies. The sight of one race-car spinning in mid-air (in slow motion, of course) while the other cars zoom beneath it like flashes of light is simply stupid and weird to the point of distraction: it contributes nothing to the so-called story, and serves as nothing more than a completely redundant and gratuitous imitation of The Matrix's famously stylish "bullet-time" sequence. I felt embarrassed watching this movie, with its obviously computer-generated quarters, manhole covers and even individual raindrops, none of which serve any useful purpose: I honestly believe the movie would have been better with no computer-generated images whatsoever; certainly I would have hated it less.

Some of the acting scenes are even worse than the racing segments! The first Big Emotional Moment comes from Estella Warren, whose "performance" is awful; no, make that AWFUL! She deservedly won a Razzie Award for her atrocious attempt to become another model-cum-thespian. Hollywood movies frequently showcase pretty girls with little talent, but she's bad even compared to others of her type: she makes Jennifer Love Hewitt look like Meryl Streep.

Stallone's performance is, in my opinion, the least objectionable in the entire movie: his pleasant, easygoing screen presence easily carries him through most of his scenes, and he seems subtle and relaxed compared to some of the other actors. Burt Reynolds gives his usual Burt Reynolds performance, though his unflattering facelift (caused by an unsuccessful visit to Cher's plastic surgeon, perhaps) attracted my notice more than his acting. His big emotional scene with Sly is thus rendered laughable: the only image more ridiculous than Reynolds's face is watching him try to act with it.

Not much plot to reveal, certainly not much worth mentioning: Stallone's character, a fallen legend among race-car drivers, is called in to help promising young driver Jimmy Bly, played by Kip Pardue, whose name reminds me of meaty chicken. Pardue's performance is so uneven that it's difficult to evaluate: at times he seems sensitive and appealing, at other times he seems as argumentative and unsympathetic as the other characters. He's supposed to be the lead, and yet he doesn't have enough charisma or personality to compete as an actor with Stallone or the others. Til Schweiger, by comparison, as Jimmy Bly's rival Beau Brandenburg, has a powerful screen presence, and consequently I found him somewhat appealing despite the fact that he plays a stereotypically cold-blooded German.

Robert Sean Leonard is intolerably obnoxious and headache-inducing as Jimmy Bly's agent (and brother!): I understand that his character is supposed to be annoying, but a better actor would have been able to project an irritating character without becoming irritating himself. Gina Gershon is the only other member of the cast worth mentioning, because her ugly, sneering mouth constantly distracted me during her scenes: some people believe she's attractive despite that mouth, but not me. Some people also believe she's a good actress, but not me.

Renny Harlin has directed at least two movies that I genuinely like, Cliffhanger and Deep Blue Sea; neither movie is very good, exactly, but both at least are energetic and have a sense of fun. The chief failure of Driven is that very few of its scenes, if any, have any energy or real sense of fun. It feels too clumsy to be much fun, as it continually shifts from dizzying (and ultimately numbing) racing sequences to static scenes in which uninteresting characters exchange dialogue that is too trite to be memorable. Driven could have succeeded in several ways (as a true documentary-style movie, or as an old-fashioned action movie using real cars and stunt people instead of laughable f/x), but in its present form it's too much of a hybrid to succeed as either an action movie or a drama.

POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!

The final race is so predictable that there's no excuse for it dragging out as long as it does. Did Harlin think he was building suspense? Did anyone who watched this movie from the beginning seriously doubt that Jimmy Bly would win the final race? Or that Reynolds would hurry up to Stallone after the race and say "You could have won that race!", and that Stallone would say "I did win it!" because he proved something to himself? (Everybody say "Aww.") Or that all the characters would be cheering the winners, their petty problems reconciled? Or that the three winners would spray each other with champagne while a generic feel-good song plays on the soundtrack? Or that the movie would end with a freeze-frame of the winners smiling in triumph? Was anyone seriously surprised by any of this?

Had the filmmakers edited out most of Estella Warren's atrocious performance, and made the car crashes realistic and exciting rather than laughable and unconvincing, I might have given this movie my "okay" rating of 5; but they did not, so I give it my "below average" rating of 4. To be fair, Driven is not terrible, but most of it is made unwatchable by the aforementioned weaknesses. I felt compelled to write this comment not because my opinion differs from all the other negative reviews, but because I squandered almost two hours of my life watching this mindless, smug, unfocused and (worst of all) pointless and forgettable movie.

Rating: 4

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is the cheap cable show, a cult favorite, in which a guy and two plastic puppets watch movies so bad that the only proper reaction is to mock and laugh at them. Repeats can still be seen Saturday mornings on the Sci-Fi channel.

Unfortunately, some recent big-budget Hollywood movies are so astonishingly bad that laughter is the only appropriate response. Battlefield Earth was one, Stallone's Get Carter remake was another, and 3000 Miles to Graceland is surely a third.

Be warned that 1,000 words can only begin to describe just how bad this movie is.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The opening scenes for Russell, Courtney and Costner are extraordinarily lame. Russell and Courtney engage in the two funniest sex scenes I've seen in any movie, then Russell puts a Snickers bar on Courtney's pillow, because she told him that if the lovemaking was nice he should give her chocolate.

Russell dons his Elvis regalia, and heads for Vegas. The director uses LOTS of obnoxious speeded-up film to get there quickly, while a brainless techno beat drones on the soundtrack. Costner finally lumbers into view in his Elvis regalia, looking uncomfortable; then he and the other crooks march into the casino like they're the Wild Bunch or the Untouchables or the Reservoir Dogs.

The casino heist should be an impressive set-piece, but it's hilariously brainless. The crooks march down an ordinary hallway (no guards or security checkpoints) and come to an ordinary door (no guards, just one camera). They unload a huge arsenal from their guitar cases (of course they weren't checked by security), and only then do they spray the camera that's recording them! The lock on the door is pathetic, and the crooks break in easily. A guy gets up, Costner breaks his face with his shotgun, then says `All right! Everybody STAY COOL!' Of course the counting room is filmed in a barfy blue color, and the director shakes the camera like Oliver Stone would.

The crooks do nothing about the security cameras in the room, so of course they're spotted and guards move in as they cross the gaming area. Since Slater and the others are carrying their automatic weapons in plain view, their Elvis disguises are useless. Why did they even bother? Because the director wanted to film a shoot-out in which guys dressed like Elvis kill lots of people, and that's precisely what happens.

The shoot-out is so badly directed (guards hurry into view like video-game targets so Costner and friends can mow them down in slow motion), appallingly edited (What the hell is happening?), and accompanied by such junky music that it practically embodies bad film-making. Get aspirin or Dramamine from your medicine cabinet before watching this dizzyingly bad sequence.

Post-heist, Costner shoots the others (even Russell) in an unsurprising double-cross. But he runs into a coyote (seriously!) and suffers head injury from the accident, an amazingly stupid contrivance that allows Russell (his vest stopped Costner's bullets) to escape with the loot after negotiating with Courtney in an extremely tiresome and badly written scene.

The movie's second act alternates between annoying scenes with Russell and Courtney and revolting scenes with Costner, whose astonishingly pathetic performance cannot be condemned enough. He obviously didn't care whether the movie was good, only that the check was good. Ditto for Russell, though he at least appears honestly embarrassed in most of his scenes. Being in this movie, apparently, was punishment enough.

One atrocious scene shows Costner stopping at a gas station with a B-25 (I think) perched on top. Why is the plane there? So Costner can drop a flowing gas nozzle on the ground (while turtle-brained music plays), light a cigarette, then drop it as he drives away, exploding the station and sending the plane into the air, the director filming this from several different angles in SLOW MOTION!

The movie's nauseating third quarter is actually relieved by its hilariously bad finale: after chasing Courtney's car down with a van (the director films this chase in jerky fast-motion photography, playing some rock garbage to make the whole sequence as bottom-of-the-barrel as possible), and literally kicking Courtney's butt, Costner says `Now what I want, is my money.ALL OF IT!' Such dialogue, when combined with Costner's uniquely pathetic delivery, becomes hilarious.

Her son now Costner's hostage, Courtney confronts Russell on his boat to beg his help. He doesn't believe her, so she starts crying.and her crying is so pathetic! It's the single worst piece of acting in the entire movie, and one of its funniest moments! I'm surprised that no other comment has mentioned it.

Russell and Costner meet in an abandoned warehouse (!), where Russell distracts Costner with a duffel bag of newspaper instead of THE MONEY, and several SWAT teams arrive. Costner tells Russell `You're going back in a bag!', and shoots him (again!). Russell hits the ground, the rumble music starts, and Costner starts running around killing dozens of SWAT guys, who can't hit him even once, despite their laser sights, the help of searchlights, and the confined area. Costner and his two remaining accomplices (Howie Long and Ice-T) murder lawmen on a scale resembling the massacres at Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas.

Trapped and wounded in the warehouse office, Costner looks over at a mirror and says `You recognize me now?.'Cause I recognize YEW!' Shooting the mirror, he turns to face the encircling SWAT team, watches their laser sights dance on his chest, and starts shooting. They shoot him into hamburger, Clyde Barrow-like, and he drops beside a toilet, Elvis-like, completing a mesmerizingly awful death-scene.

Costner, Russell and Courtney and assorted others really drove their movie careers into the ground with this stupid, pretentious, mean-spirited and incoherent movie; it's a career nadir for both Russell and Costner, remarkable considering their share of bad movies. I give it a point each for, respectively, the amazingly stupid direction, the unintentionally funny dialogue, and the unforgettably pathetic performances. Watch and laugh.

Rating: 4

Although hundreds of good comments have already been posted for this movie, and mine will probably not be a stand-out among all the others, I still felt compelled to add my own; because after seven years, Braveheart is still my favorite movie, and still one of the most impressive movies I've ever seen.

I saw Braveheart for the first time in June of 1995, at a local theater; and it was one of the most satisfying moviegoing experiences of my life. Not many movies cause me to feel a little transformed after I've seen them, but Braveheart certainly did: From its opening scene of breathtaking landscapes and stirring music, to its final shot of a sword planted in a seemingly endless field, it truly was and still is a tour de force of storytelling.

Braveheart is a movie blessed with many qualities, but more than anything a dual sense of achievement: on the one hand William Wallace, a legendary figure who accomplished the impossible by leading the Scots when no one else would; and on the other hand Mel Gibson, who demonstrated with this movie a directorial talent that we (or I, at least) never suspected he had. Previously, I had Gibson pigeonholed as a likable but goofy action hero from the Mad Max and Lethal Weapon series: his flip personality never indicated a passion for directing an intensely romantic and dramatic epic. The Man Without a Face proved that Gibson could direct a good movie; Braveheart proved that he could direct a great one.

Gibson's greatest accomplishment in Braveheart (besides the battle sequences) is that he elicited excellent performances from the entire cast: every actor and actress (even those who appear for only a few SECONDS of the movie) hits exactly the right note. In fact, I'm outraged that Braveheart received no Oscar nominations for its acting: Why honor Gibson as Best Director of 1995, yet ignore the performances which are the fruits of his labors? I'm not saying that any particular person in Braveheart (Mel Gibson, Patrick McGoohan, Angus McFadyen) SHOULD have won an acting Oscar: it's the fact that NOBODY WAS EVEN NOMINATED that bothers me.

But I love this movie too much to waste my time complaining. Before I can mention more of what I love about Braveheart, however, I must address one more inevitable topic.

I am aware that this movie is historically inaccurate: Even in 1995, when I first saw Braveheart, I knew enough military history to know that the battles of Sterling and Falkirk were not being accurately presented. But this awareness did not and does not interfere with my enjoyment of the movie, because Braveheart exists outside of history: like Dances With Wolves, Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Three Musketeers, it is an emotionally rich epic inspired by history yet not confined to it, less concerned with accuracy to every detail than with the eternal struggles of good and evil, love and hatred, freedom and oppression. And isn't that enough? Braveheart is one of the most stirring movies I've ever seen: If you can't reconcile yourself to its inaccuracies and simply enjoy it on its own terms, then I feel sorry for you.

Patrick McGoohan's performance as Longshanks has, in my opinion, not received nearly enough praise: After seven years, it remains the best (and most entertaining) villainous performance I've seen in any movie. He masterfully plays the king as a man who embodies the phrase 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'; he commands an entire nation, yet covets what he does not or cannot have. He answers to no one, and can barely restrain himself: he does not even try to conceal his contempt for his homosexual son, his lust for his daughter-in-law, his rage against any obstacle to his will. The performance is also physically impressive (Significant SPOILER): we see the king gradually consumed by tuberculosis through the movie, and McGoohan makes the ordeal so believable that, though Longshanks is unrepentant to the end, we are moved to pity for him.

Besides McGoohan, Angus McFadyen (as Robert the Bruce) gives the most impressive performance in Braveheart. When I first saw the movie, I identified with William Wallace; but now I identify with Robert the Bruce, who is in fact the key figure of the story. He is not a great man like Wallace, but he wants to be great, and he idolizes Wallace so much that he is almost overwhelmed to hear Wallace tell him "If you would lead us, I would follow you." But the Bruce is warned by his sly, leperous father (played unforgettably by the late Ian Bannen beneath Oscar-winning makeup) to not live a life of action, but rather a life of calculation. As he wrestles with the dual influences of Wallace and his father, he embodies a theme at the movie's heart: the eternal conflict between youth and age, idealism and cynicism, uncompromising heroism and craven opportunism.

When I first saw Braveheart, I was most impressed by the power of its battle sequences; after seven years, I am most impressed by the enduring power of its story. It is a great movie because it seriously argues that one man's lifelong struggle can make a difference, if not in the world then at least in the lives of others; it is a great movie because it is ultimately an inspiring story of perseverance in the face of considerable brutality and heartbreak; it is a great movie because a thousand words are not adequate to express all its emotional power and impact. I could not give Braveheart less than a perfect score, even if I wished, because it is much more to me than mere entertainment: It is a constant reminder to me that I must never lose heart.

"You have bled with Wallace...now bleed with me!"

If that moment in the movie doesn't make a Scotsman out of you, laddie, then nothing will!

Rating: 10

Contains mild spoilers.

Well, a week ago I finally saw Men in Black II (MIB2). Having read lots of negative user comments and critical reviews, I feared when I finally went to see it on the big screen that I would be appalled by what I saw, that it would be the worst sequel since Speed 2 or Batman & Robin (Not that I went to see either of THOSE movies. I pity the trusting souls that DID go to see them.) Well, I saw it, and I almost liked it: No, of course it wasn't as good as the first MIB. But how many of us really expected the sequel to be as good? On its own terms, this movie is a fine summer entertainment, with enough laughs, thrills and special effects to rate as acceptable escapism; if it were not a sequel to a superior movie, I doubt that anybody would be attacking it so harshly. I was satisfied that the filmmakers kept this movie short and sweet, innocuous enough for kids but not so childish that adults can't enjoy it as well.

Whatever plot this movie cares to have is established (sort of) in its priceless opening sequence, which spoofs UFO-speculation series of the '70s and '80s, and is hosted by Peter Graves (of course!) During the opening credits we see a spaceship obliterating planets, and we know that EARTH IS IN DANGER. We all know how the movie will proceed storywise, more or less, from this point forward; in a movie like this the plot is incidental. What mattered in the first MIB were the interesting characters, their lively dialogue, the surprises both funny and scary, and most of all the movie's style: the quirky, subdued manner in which the story was told. MIB2 possesses these qualities as well, but unfortunately it has slightly less to offer in every category than the first movie did (it is, after all, a shorter, smaller movie), and many people have not been able to forgive this shortcoming.

If everything in MIB2 was as funny and inspired as the opening sequence with Peter Graves, it would have been a great sequel indeed. But several of its notable gags misfire or fall flat: I can remember four or five separate instances in the movie in which director Barry Sonnenfeld failed to make the jokes at least as funny as they must have looked on paper. At one point, for example, agents Jay and Kay make a quick escape from MIB headquarters by being "flushed," as the room they occupy turns into a giant toilet; this absurd but undeniably funny idea should have been foolproof, but somehow it falls flat, perhaps because it's over almost as soon as it begins: the movie doesn't give us a chance to laugh at what's happening, and (even worse) gives us a punchline that's not very funny (or perhaps only poorly delivered). In another scene, MIB chief Zed (Rip Torn) attempts to fight off Seerleena (Lara Flynn Boyle) by hovering in mid-air, Matrix-style, and kicking her in the face several times. This moment was obviously intended to parody The Matrix, but it's not especially funny because it's not very inventive: Sonnenfeld and the writers apparently thought the mere sight of the elderly Rip Torn performing Matrix-style acrobatics would be enough to make the audience laugh, with no elaboration or explanation necessary. Many potentially funny moments in this movie are ruined by conceit and sheer laziness in the writing: Johnny Knoxville's alien character is given two heads, but no memorably funny lines; the writers apparently thought the mere sight of a two-headed Johnny Knoxville would be enough to make the audience laugh. How hard is it to write jokes about a two-headed alien?

Although MIB2 can't match the laughs of the first movie, I still enjoyed it, and I recommend it, for two simple reasons: Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. They are great fun to watch together, and Sonnenfeld, to his credit, gets some hysterically funny moments out of them both. You'll laugh to see Smith wrestling with computer-generated monsters of all sizes: I dare say he earned his money for this movie, which required of him enough pratfalls to fill a Jerry Lewis movie. You'll laugh to see Jones maintain his deadpan expression no matter how silly the action around him: even while hanging upside-down in an elevator, trading shots with a robot that's spewing machine-gun bullets (that's right, machine-gun bullets) at him, he responds with calm courage and cool sarcasm. He's a great guy to plunge so eagerly into such silliness, especially since he's old enough to know better: he has more lines on his face than Jack Palance, yet here he is shooting two little shiny laser guns while hanging upside-down. Smith and Jones: together they recapture the first movie's larger-than-life sense of fun, and give this sequel its most entertaining moments.

Please go see this movie, if you feel the need for big-screen entertainment in the next week or two; yes, it has some bad gags in it, but that flaw doesn't make it terrible, or unworthy of the first movie. Except for the bad gags, I would have given this movie a solid 7 out of 10; except for one or two inappropriate moments that hint at black comedy, this is a warm, lighthearted movie that amused me even during its bad moments, and left me feeling good by the time the credits rolled and Smith started singing "black suits coming." I prefer a flawed film that leaves me feeling good to a critically acclaimed film that would probably leave me feeling bad if I saw it. All the evidence suggests that The Road to Perdition is a good movie which does not life the spirits of its audience; the self-serious people who hate MIB2 should go see it. I'd rather see MIB2 again, which sadly seems destined to be one of the last enjoyable movies of the summer.

Rating: 6