The Hittman Does The Movies
Because there just aren't enough movie reviews on the Internet
Because there just aren't enough movie reviews on the Internet
If this is your first visit here, you might want to take a look at the Introduction to this section.
The most recent reviews are be added to the top of this page. Older reviews can be found in our movie index. Once they've been here a month or two they'll be rolled off into an archive.
Reviews on This Page
Dogma Cider House Rules Shaft Snow Falling on Cedars Erin Brockovich Being John Malkovich End of Days American Beauty Return to Me Three Kings The 13th Warrior The Bachelor Three to Tango Index of THMC Reviews
Dogma
"What's he like? God?"
"Lonely. But funny. He's got a great sense of humor."
The best comedy relies on performance, not jokes, to generate laughs. Bill Cosby's stage show is hilarious, but if you try to repeat the jokes at work the next day they sound flat and unfunny. The humor is in the performance, not the punch lines.
Dogma has plenty of punch lines, but creates most of its humor through the performances. When Loki (Matt Damon) and Bartleby (Ben Affleck) discuss killing people for fun, most of the humor is in their nonchalance, not the script. Alan Rickman, as the voice of God, turns in a stellar performance. One moment he's speaking with authority and reverb, the next he's whining about his cloths getting dirty. Jay's filthy monologues are funny for their sheer excess. Chris Rock, as Rufus, the 13th apostle, creates his humor with his delivery and facial expressions. Even George Carlin, whose once brilliant stage show has deteriorated into nothing more than angry, unfunny complaints from a bitter old man, turns in a funny performance. One of the funniest jokes is who is cast as God.
Shortly after Loki brought the wrath of God down upon Sodom and Gomorrah, he and Bartleby were cast out of heaven. They've been exiled to Wisconsin ever since, but have found a loophole in Catholic dogma that will let them get back into heaven. Unfortunately, since the existence of the entire universe is based on the infallibility of God, their stunt will undo the existence of everything. Bethany (Linda Fiorentino), a Catholic who still goes through the motions of worship but finds no satisfaction in it, is recruited to stop them.
With the exception of one unnecessary scene that confused grossness for humor and spent far too long getting to it's lame punch line, this is one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long time. Despite the language, which some people might find offensive, and the irreverent slaps it takes Catholicism and at religion in general, it is, at it's heart, a very reverent movie. The naysayers, who are too unimaginative to appreciate the humor, much less understand the motives behind it, miss the point entirely. Kevin Smith is, by his own admission, very Catholic, and this is his clever attempt to deal with the issues of Catholicism, faith, and God. Buried beneath all the humor and special effects, there is a deep affection for God, religion, faith and the Catholic church.
But don't let that put you off if you're not religious. See it for one reason: it's really, really funny.
The Cider House Rules
The Cider House Rules was well written, well acted, well photographed, and well edited. The story made sense and the characters were likable and believable. There's nothing bad to say about it, but nothing made it outstanding either.
Michael Caine won an Oscar for his performance, and while it was a decent performance, there was nothing particularly difficult about it, especially for an actor with his talent. I suspect the Academy just felt that he was overdue for an award.
All of the characters had their own demons to deal with, and they dealt with them, and then the movie was over. It's a pleasant way to pass the time, nothing more or less.
Shaft
"You ain't even a cop no more"
"You think that makes me less dangrous, or more dangerous?"Don't tell John Shaft violence never solves anything. He knows better. Whether he's dealing with a low level drug dealer or a wealthy murderer, violence is his tool of choice, and it usually gets the job done.
Samuel L. Jackson, as John Shaft, is the epitome of cool, but we expected that. What comes as a surprise is how many other good performances fill the film. Villains who could easily be two-dimensional caricatures are instead real, believable people, and with a few exceptions, even the minor characters are well defined and performed. We even get to enjoy Richard Roundtree reprising his role as the original Shaft. (The John Shaft who's the star of this movie is his nephew.)
Walter Wade (Christian Bale) is a spoiled rich kid who is accused of murder. He jumps bail and hides overseas for two years while his wealthy daddy sets up an acquittal for him. When he comes back to face the trial only one thing is missing - the waitress who witnessed the murder. She's in hiding, and Walter enlists the help of Peoples Hernandez, (Jeffery Wright) to find and kill her. Shaft, of course, is racing to find her first.
Most of the movie involves finding the girl, and once found, protecting her from the bad guys. This, of course, involves plenty of fistfights, gunfights, and car chases. Surprisingly, there isn't a single explosion in the film. Even the when cars fly through the air while flipping over, they don't explode. They simply crash, the way they did back in the seventies. Rather than a disappointment, this makes things seem a bit more realistic.
The only thing missing is sex. There's a bit of conversation about it, but there's no gratuitous nudity or hot tub scenes. We expect to see at least a little bump and grind from a hero whose name is a double entendre.
As an added bonus the credits start with the original music by Isaac Hayes. (Who's the black lunchroom cook that teaches kids what ain't in the books? Chief!) Variations of the theme are used as background music though the whole film, and it fits perfectly.
The plot is nothing special, but the action scenes are fast and exciting, and Shaft is great fun to watch for his sheer coolness. It's very funny in spots without resorting to trite, old jokes. It even makes some solid statements about the relationship of race and wealth to justice, without being the least bit preachy about it. Get a big bowl of popcorn, sit back, and enjoy it.
Snow Falling on Cedars
Imagine how entertaining it is to watch snow falling on cedars. Or paint drying on cedar shingles. Or grass growing in cedar meadows. Any one of these activities are infinitely more entertaining than this movie.
Ethan Hawke (call him Ishmael) is a reporter living in the shadow of his much admired father. He's covering the murder trial of Kazuo Miyamoto. Kazuo's wife, Hatsue, was Ishmael's childhood sweetheart, and he's still obsessed with her.
The movie is set shortly after the second world war, when prejudice against Japanese Americans still ran high. It very obviously attempts to be another To Kill a Mockingbird. Max Von Sydow, in the movie's only notable performance, even sounds a bit like Gregory Peck as he plays Nels, the defense attorney. But Mockingbird was full of interesting, three-dimensional characters. With the exception of Nels and the judge, the characters in this film are flatter than the origami pressed between the pages of Ishmael's scrapbooks.
Most of the film is made up of flashbacks. Long, long flashbacks, some of them in slow motion to prolong the agony. We want to shout "OK, they were childhood sweethearts, we get it already." Even flashbacks of the camps where Japanese Americans were interned during the war evoke little emotion other than a yearning for it to be over and to get back to the story.
But when the flashbacks finally end, the story we get back to remains as slow and dull as ever. We keep hoping that a lamp will fall over and start a fire, or a tidal wave will hit the town, or a conversation will become interesting, or Ishmael will discover a pimple on his nose, anything, anything to break the monotony. Alas, nothing ever does. Even when Ishmael finally decides to stop being a schumck it's too late for us to give a damn.
This is one of the most miserable snoozers I've seen in a long time. And I haven't even mentioned the lousy, gray photography and schmaltzy soundtrack yet. (The photography was lousy, and mostly gray. The soundtrack was schmaltzy.) When this reaches the cut out bins, be a good Samaritan - buy it, take it home, and melt it in your microwave. You'll be saving a stranger from a horrible experience.
Erin Brockovich
Once again Julia Roberts plays the Girl Next Door. This time she's Erin Brockovich, a twice-divorced mother of two with no job skills and only a few dollars in the bank. When she's hit by a doctor driving a Jaguar, she hires attorney Ed Masry (Albert Finney) for the inevitable lawsuit. It should have been a fairly easy case, but she lets the defense attorney get the best of her, and the jury, put off by her temper and colorful language, vote against her. Desperate, she shows up at Masry's office and cons him into giving her a job.
While doing a routine real estate transaction she discovers medical bills in the file, and does some investigating on her own. She discovers that Pacific Gas and Electric have been polluting the groundwater with chromium six, a compound they use to slow corrosion. This compound, we're told in the movie, cases just about every disease known to man, from every kind of cancer to bone diseases to headaches to hemorrhoids. Erin tracks down everyone who has ever been sick on any property anywhere near the plant, and then sues PG&E for hundreds of millions of dollars, raising the rates of all their customers and grabbing a huge bonus for herself.
I went in knowing the science behind most of the suits was bogus, so I wasn't expecting to like this movie. But I couldn't help myself. Julia made Erin so appealing it was impossible to dislike her. Her best scenes were when people looked down on her. The moment anybody was condescending, no matter how politely, she went off on them with the speed and force of a rocket, always making fools of them for daring to underestimate her.
The romantic interest was almost a side story, involving a decent guy who lived next door but got tired of playing second fiddle to her job. We're left with the feeling that a lot of the romance ended up on the cutting room floor.
Chick: I almost didn't give it a chick rating because it's not really a chick flick. But based on the reactions of the three women I live with,* who all loved it, I decided to give it a four chick rating. Most women will love cheering for this woman who, using nothing more than guts, chutzpah, and low cut dresses, went from being an impoverished looser to a millionaire. *Don't get excited - I was referring my wife and two daughters.
Being John Malkovich
"Meet you in Malkovich in one hour."
Craig Schwartz (John Cusack) has chosen puppeteering as his career, and you can imagine how profitable and successful that can be. When he finally gives in and finds a real job, he discovers a secret door behind a filing cabinet. Entering the door provides a fifteen minute visit into the brain of John M, and then the visitor is dumped by the side of the Jersey Turnpike. After a few visits Craig and Maxine (Catherine Keener) start selling tickets. And then things get weird.
John Malkovich eventually discovers what's going on, and even makes the trip himself (which is one of the funniest scenes in the film). He's not too pleased with what's happening, but before he can do anything about it Craig inhabits him and discovers that, using his puppeteering skills, he can not only control Malkovich, but can avoid being booted out at the end of fifteen minutes. He decides to take up a permanent residence, and Malkovich's career makes some dramatic changes.
This is a good movie that could have been a great movie. The high ratings given to it by most critics illustrate how much their critiques are influenced by novelty. It is very original, and it deals with some intense ideas, but it could have been greatly improved if it were a little more Hollywood and a little less arty. The absence of background music, for instance, gives many of the scenes a sterile feel. The editing is more art school than it needs to be. The artiness gets in the way of the humor too often. The lighting and color balance were bad in several scenes.
But it's worth renting. You'll enjoy it, but don't expect it to live up to the expectations most critics have saddled it with.
End of Days
"Close your eyes, you know who I am. You're just afraid to believe it."
The bad news is the Devil is back. The good news is he pees gasoline.
Satan (Gabriel Bryne) has to have sex with Christine York (Robin Tunney) in the last hour of the millennium to cause The End Of Days. We're never told what the EOD is, but evidently it's even more unpleasant than this script. Christine is pursued by the devil, and a group of priests who want to kill her to prevent the coupling, and Jericho Cane (Arnold). Everyone chases everyone else around and a lot of stuff blows up and catches fire, and there's a lot of shooting and neck breaking and fistfights and etc.
Most Arnold Stuff Blowed Up movies at least attempt to make sense and have a bit of a plot to them. This one doesn't bother. Arnie doesn't get many funny lines in this one, and the few he does mumble fall flat. Kevin Pollak is the standard funny sidekick (this movie doesn't miss too many clichés) who tries to provide some comic relief and usually fails.
The best performance is turned in by Byrne, a smooth, smirking devil. Rod Steiger, as a good priest (as opposed to the murdering priests) seems quite embarrassed to be in this thing. In every seine he seems to be glancing around hoping no one will recognize him. Arnold seems tired, as if he's just going through the motions.
I like Arnie Stuff Blowed Up Movies, but this one just didn't deliver the goods.
I'll cut out my tounge because…well just because.
Why doesn't the devil just shoot Cane?
Satan is a gentle, sensitive lover?
And many, many more…Stuff Blowed Up: Lots and lots of explosions. Well done, of course, but most of them are expected.
American Beauty
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is enjoying his mid life crisis. He gets himself fired, starts working out while smoking pot and listening to the rock and roll of his youth, buys a sports car and obsesses about his teenage daughters best friend, Angela. He is the most normal character in the film.
Lester's wife Carol (Annette Bening) has driven out the next door neighbors. The family that moves in is just as strange as the Burnhams. Ricky Fitts is obsessed with the idea of beauty, and videotapes everything, including Lester's daughter, Jane. At first Jane is creeped out by his attention, but eventually falls in love with him, ignoring the advice of Angela, who is convinced he's seriously deranged. Angela has also decided that Lester is pretty cute, and taunts Jane with threats of sleeping with him.
And we haven't even mentioned Carol's obsession with money and success, Colonel Frank Fitts who beats his son regularly, the real estate king, or…well, suffice it to say that every major character in the film, and most of the minor ones, are deeply and thoroughly screwed up.
American Beauty is a very funny film, but it's nervous laughter. The final dinner scene (which will become one of the most parodied scenes since Tom Cruse's sideways slide in Risky Business) is worth the price of admission; you'll be laughing and cringing at the same time.
This is a very adult film, full of adult themes and scenes. Not a lot of sexual scenes, but just some very disturbing stuff. Parents are cautioned to watch it themselves before watching it with their teenagers unless they enjoy being very uncomfortable.
Jane and Angela and Colonel Fitts are cliché characters we've seen a thousand times before. The movie also obsesses on the color red (much like The Sixth Sense) almost, but not quite, to the point of annoyance. But the rest of the characters are so believable and so perfectly performed it's easy to shrug off these minor flaws.
After watching American Beauty you may find yourself looking at mundane things differently. A dead bird or a plastic bag floating in the wind may hold your attention longer than it would have before. Great art is like that - it changes your perceptions of the world around you.
Gratuitous Nudity: AB misses many chances for GN. All we get is one shot of Thora Burch's lopsided rack and one shot of Mena Suvari's large nipples and bony frame. They should have at least given us glimpse of Annette Bening so we could see how she's held up over the years.
Return To Me
I saw Return to Me right after seeing American Beauty. It was like having a dry, stale rice cake after eating a steak dinner.
Elizabeth Rueland (Joely Richardson) works with great apes at the zoo, and is hosting a fundraiser to build them a larger, more comfortable habitat. Her Husband (David Duchovny) is the architect designing the habitat. Grace Briggs (Minnie Driver), is dying in a hospital, waiting for a heart donor. On the way home from the fundraiser Elizabeth is killed in a car accident and Grace gets the heart.
A year later Bob is putting the finishing touches on the new Gorilla habitat, and Grace decides to go to the zoo. On the way she mails a thank-you letter to the family of the heart donor. You can now write the rest of the script yourself.
The performances are decent, except for Carol O'Connor's sloppy struggling with his accent. There is a fair amount of humor, some of it genuinely funny, some of it as tired and trite as the story line. (Look, the man who designs buildings hasn't figured out how to work a microwave in the past year. Ha Ha. And now he's burned the popcorn in it. Hee Hee. And now he's hiding the burned popcorn in the stove! Ho ho!) But there are enough real laughs to make it almost bearable to the guys who will be forced to sit through it. (Thank you Jim Belushi.)
The chemistry between Driver and Duchovny is surprisingly good. They come across as nice, decent people you want to root for, and the heart gimmick just gets in the way. The author should have given it more attention, or dropped it completely.
The movie also makes the huge mistake of trying to be Moonstruck. Hint to screenplay writers: There is only one Moonstruck. It is a masterpiece, and we don't need any imitations of it.
Chick: This movie could not be more of a chick flick if Frank Perdue wrote the screenplay.
Three Kings
"Are we shooting people or what?"
Stuff Blowed Up:
Sometimes misleading advertisements can ruin a movie. Three Kings was promoted as an action movie with lots of comedy, but if you've seen the longer version of the trailer, you've seen most of the comedy and quite a bit of the action. The humor is sparse and it takes way too long for things to start happening.
As the war in Kuwait is winding down, the solders are bored. One of them captures an Iraqi solder with a map stuck up his butt. It's determined that the Iraqi Ass Map reveals the location of a stash of gold, and four men sneak out of camp to find it.
A reporter (Nora Dunn) gets wind of the smelly map and is determined to find the story behind it. Dunn, who spent years being obnoxious and unfunny on Saturday Night Live, brings those same talents to this role. She whines and complains through the entire movie, resembling the Pillsbury Dough Boy with a yeast infection, though not as appealing.
The gang finally finds the gold but gets involved in a shoot-out that goes bad. One of their team is captured, and when they go back to rescue him the movie finally starts to get interesting. Unfortunately, it takes way too long to get there. About an hour into the move we turned it off out of sheer boredom. The next day I decided to give it another try before bringing the tape back, and found the action started right after we got too bored to continue.
The director spends too much effort trying to make an arty film, mostly by using strange special effects. Some of them, like the gunfight in slow motion with the sound in real time, work. But most of them, like body wounds viewed from the inside and imagined scenes of people being bombed, are obnoxious and distracting.
The ending is ridiculous - all I can say without giving it away is that the final resolution is completely unbelievable. The next to the last resolution is good, and makes sense, but the very end is ridiculous. The military would never have dealt with the solders that way, no matter how the Dough Boy reported her story.
Stuff Blowed Up: A war movie should have more explosions than this. Plot Holes: Gold is much heavier than that.
The military would never have resolved their AWOL status this way.
The 13th Warrior
"Grow Stronger!"
Just the other day I was thinking "Boy, I'd sure like to see a movie about Vikings fighting monsters. And if it had an Arab in it, that would be great." Lucky me; the 13th Warrior was at the rental store.
Antonio Banderas is Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan, a poet who is made an ambassador when his affections fall on the wrong woman. He meets up with a gang of Vikings, filthy, rowdy, hearty men who enjoy a good fight. A stranger visits their camp, pleading for help fighting off the monsters invading his village. The Vikings bring in an old sooth sayer, who tosses some bones, says some sooths, and declares that exactly thirteen men must go. For some reason that's never explained, one of them must not be a Norseman. Twelve Vikings step forward to volunteer, and Ahmed, the only non-Viking in the crowd, agrees to join them.
The dirty baker's dozen heads for the troubled village to rescue the hapless inhabitants. Ahmed is accepted by his new friends fairly quickly, but they do nothing to make things easier for him. When he complains to Herger that the sword he's been given is too heavy, Herger laughs and offers the helpful suggestion "Grow Stronger!"
This isn't a deep movie with six layers of meaning - it's a silly popcorn movie with lots of hacking and slashing and fighting in the days when a pointed stick was a pretty useful weapon. Although some of the scenes are more murky than necessary, and the subplots are thin and silly, it never insults your intelligence or pretends to be more than it is. If you're in the mood for some mindless, muddy warfare, you'll find this is a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half.
The Bachelor
Imagine a man running in front of a screen that's projecting stampeding stallions, pretending he's running along with them. Now imagine a rope catching him and bringing him to a halt. Picture a the same lasso grabbing a thrown wedding bouquet in mid air. Now imagine those two scenes scene over and over and over again, with different guys pretending to run. That is, literally, act one of The Bachelor.
Act two teases us with the prospect of actual humor. After Jimmie (Chris O'Donnell) botches his proposal to Anne, he learns he'll inherit one hundred million dollars as long as he gets married in the next 24 hours. Using a cigar box full of photos as his little black book he hunts them down his old girlfriends and asks them to marry him. None of these scenes are laugh out loud funny, but a few are worth a mild snicker.
Act three loses any pretense of romance, comedy, or sense, as thousands of women dressed in wedding gowns chase him through the streets. This might sound forced, stupid and unfunny, but it's much worse than that. And it keeps getting worse, until we get to the trite, predicable ending. The best part of this movie is seeing the credits roll, knowing it's finally over.
Chick: Just one chick, because women are too smart to mistake this for a romantic comedy.
Although I thought it was pretty bad, I don't think anyone hated it quite as much as Mr. Cranky.
Three to Tango
Reviewers are supposed to avoid spoilers. Giving away surprise plot points, or even hinting at how things worked out, can ruin a movie for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. Three to Tango removes that burden from the reviewer. The plot is so obvious it's impossible to ruin the surprise for anyone. By the end of the third scene the audience knows exactly what will happen, in what order, right down to the obvious conclusion.
Oscar (Matthew Perry) and Peter (Oliver Platt) are partners in a fledgling architectural firm. They are trying to win the approval of Charles Newman (Dylan McDermott), a one dimensional rich/evil/spoiled developer. Amy (Neve Campbell) is his very unlikely mistress. Charles gets the mistaken impression that Oscar is gay, and gives him the job of checking on Amy to see if she's cheating. As Mr. Rogers would say "Can you guess what happens, boys and girls? Sure you can."
Oscar, anxious to get the contract, goes along with this and of course falls in love with Amy. To the surprise of no one in the audience, pretty soon everyone thinks Oscar is gay. His partner Peter, who really is gay, is both amused and appalled by the situation. Amy, feeling safe, of course starts to fall in love with Oscar, but thinks it's an impossible situation because he's gay. He can't reveal that he's straight because (can you guess it?) she'll know he lied to her.
A newspaper article about Oscar and Peter's partnership outs Oscar to the world. In one of the many plot holes that fill this flick, a gay pride organization hasn't selected the winner for their Gay Man Of The Year award ceremony even though it's being held in a week. They decide to give the award to Oscar, who was unknown to the gay community for obvious reasons.
This could easily have been an episode of "Friends meets Party of Five." Matthew Perry is playing Chandler with pratfalls added. Neve Campbell is cute enough, but often comes across as if she's posing for the effect. And Dylan McDermont's character is so paper-thin he just doesn't have anything to work with.
So why does a movie with no great acting and dozens of holes in a plot that's obvious, contrived and predictable, get three stars? Because it was funny. Much funnier than it should have been. The jokes were often as obvious and predictable as the rest of the movie, but they made us laugh, a lot. We could see half of them coming and we still laughed. Maybe we were just in a silly mood that night, maybe we were more forgiving than we should have been, but we laughed and then laughed and then laughed some more. If we were sophisticated and/or snobbish we might have felt guilty about laughing at something so sophomoric. But we're not, so we didn't.
This is a completely forgettable movie. You won't remember much of it the next day, and a week after seeing it you'll forget it completely. But if you're in the right mood, and not afraid to enjoy something stupid and goofy, it's well worth the rental.
Plot Holes: Everyone will be so impressed if my architects are gay.
Our Gay Business Man of The Year Award is next week, and we forgot to pick anyone for it.
Hey, here's someone we never heard of before, let's give it to him!
Chick: Although it's a romantic comedy, the romance is too cute and predictable to earn any more than a two chick rating.
Comments? © 2000 Dave Hitt
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