Arlington Road stars Jeff Bridges and Tim Robbins. Jeff
Bridges is the guy from Arachnophobia, not the guy from Dumb &
Dumber. That guy, who’s also in Gettysburg, is Jeff Daniels. I just
want to get that straight, because I spent half my time during this movie trying
to remember who was in Dumb & Dumber, since it clearly wasn’t Jeff
Bridges.
But on to the film. How is it? The answer is, pretty good. I admit
that this film suffered from what I call "Traileritis." That’s when
the trailer for the film basically gives away the entire plot. In case you
haven’t seen the trailer for the film, I won’t give away too much about the
plot.
Jeff Bridges is Michael Faraday, a university professor who
teaches a course in domestic terrorism. He’s the single father of Grant; his
wife, an FBI agent, was slain in a botched FBI raid. When the film opens, he is
living comfortably in suburban Virginia with Grant and his new girlfriend,
Brooke.
Thanks to a graphic and disturbing (but effective) opening scene,
Bridges meets his neighbors, Oliver Lang (Robbins) and his wife Cheryl (the
wonderfully quirky Joan Cusack). The screenwriter of this film seems to think
ordinary names are boring; how many other films can you name with an Oliver, a
Grant, a Brooke, and a Brady (Oliver’s son)?
Anyway, Faraday and Lang become fast friends. But then Faraday
mistakenly receives a piece of mail for Lang from a Pennsylvania University,
though Lang had told Faraday he had gone to college in Kansas (got that?).
Faraday becomes quite suspicious of this, without any clear reason other than
being paranoid. Faraday then begins his own investigation into his mysterious
neighbors.
I won’t go into too much more detail, other
than to say that Robbins does an excellent job at being both congenial and
chilling, and Bridges is convincing as a man consumed by his own paranoia.
Cusack, as Robbins’s loving wife, is even more chilling than Robbins, with her
easy smile and caring nature.
The ending is where the film falls apart. It’s
the kind of ending that forces you to rethink the entire plot of the film; and
while it explains a few seemingly implausible instances, it creates more than it
explains. Consider, can things like the outcome of a car crash be predictable?
Can you be sure that the driver won’t be killed? And if you want to clear
out a building, the obvious thing to do is to call in a bomb threat of your own.
Don’t call and claim that someone else is putting a bomb there;
call it in yourself! Like the scene in Die Hard: With a Vengeance where
Bruce Willis is trapped in traffic, so he sends out a report of an officer down
and then follows the ambulance.
The end of Arlington Road also places it into a certain
category for me. It’s abbreviated by TBGW. Once you’ve seen the movie, you may
be able to figure the acronym out; if not, feel free to send me an e-mail.
Anyway, this is a moderate thriller, with a few intense moments, but you can
definitely wait to rent it.
—07/18/99
Disney has been somewhat in a slump the last few years with their films. They abandoned their traditional format of using fairy tales for their primary animated fodder after the Oscar-nominated Beauty and the Beast, and the result has been a series of hits and misses, from the botched Pocahontas to the hilarious Aladdin.
When Disney works from novels, such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Woman Warrior (a book by Maxine Hong Kingston and the inspiration for Mulan), the filmmakers have to try and stuff the story into two hours. When they work from a fairy tale, they usually have to spread it out–and that’s where the room for their classic songs come from. What’s more, the songs make more sense in the fairy tale setting, whereas Victor Hugo certainly didn’t write any songs for The Hunchback (at least, not to my knowledge).
Tarzan is a film that is true to the Disney formula with the fun and adventure that was lacking Hunchback and Pocahontas. Phil Collins’ soundtrack is refreshingly subdued, and except for one clever and entertaining song (“Trash the Camp”), not a single note issues from the characters’ mouths.
Actually, there’s a distinct lack of dialogue in much of this film – but that’s not a bad thing necessarily. Tarzan is a part of the natural world, and as such he often communicates through movement rather than his voice. But what movement! This is one of the most energetic Disney films I’ve ever seen. Tarzan slips, slides and swings through the forest with dynamics that would be nearly impossible to capture in live action. Finally, a Disney film with animation that rivals their Japanese counterparts.
The plot is familiar–indeed, it’s embedded in Western cultural tradition. A Victorian family is stranded on a desert island; the parents are killed by a panther, and the boy is raised in the wild by gorillas, who name him Tarzan (voiced by Tony Goldwyn).
The animated film succeeds in many areas all the previous live-action films could not. Tarzan’s gorilla parents, the loving Kala (Glenn Close) and the belligerent Kerchak (Lance Henriksen, an unusual choice for Disney) could never have the same personality and humanity in a live-action film without segueing into comedy (see George of the Jungle). Close and Henriksen succeed in giving their characters depth. Goldwyn’s Tarzan has a deep, resonant voice, the kind that easily attracts Jane, played by Minnie Driver.
All in all, Tarzan is a visual feast. The African jungle has never looked more gorgeous, or more interesting as it speeds by you as Tarzan slides from branch to branch. The story is fun, the characters are interesting, and the plot, while predictable, plays itself out to a satisfying end.
—07/11/99
American Pie is a funny movie. Let’s get that out of the way first. It’s very funny; it’s also quite risque. The sexually squeamish be warned: the infamous scene in There’s Something About Mary is taken to the next level here, with the offending bodily fluid being ingested. The film is brutally frank and, occasionally, truthful about teen sex in a way I found refreshing. While there is the obligatory aggrandizing of sexual activity, it’s touched by a curious amount of sentimentality and even sensitivity.
First, the comedy. It’s almost entirely based upon sex and its various effects upon teenagers. The most uproarious scenes have been predictably shown in the ads–namely, an encounter between one of the male teens and the title characters. There’s a lot of masturbation jokes, too, but I think that even parents can relate to one scene in which a father desperately tries his hardest to successfully have That Talk with his son.
The basic plot line revolves around four teens–Oz (Chris Klein), Jim (Jason Biggs), Kevin (Thomas Ann Nicholas) and Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas)–who make a pact to lose their virginity by the time they graduate, in three weeks. What’s interesting is the way the stories play out–there’s a subtext to the comic writing that’s not there in other comedies. One of the boys’ story is a romance; another a tragedy; another a comedy, and the last a sort of Modernist carthasis, though it doesn’t really become clear until the end.
The performances are good. Biggs’s Jim is an affable lug, and his scenes with his well-intentioned father are funny as well as endearing. Chris Klein, as Oz, essentially reprises his role from Election, but rather than being an entirely clueless jock, he falls for a choir girl and begins to question his place in the school dynamic. Tara Reid, as Nicholas’s girlfriend Vicky, deserves a lot of credit for successfully portraying the sexual pressure on girls in today’s teen world. Natasha Lyonne is also a treat as Vicky’s “experienced” friend.
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer fans beware: Alyson Hannigan (Buffy‘s Willow) does appear in the film (as band geek Michelle), but her part is quite brief. However, her role pays off in one of the funniest lines in the film, shortly before the end.
American Pie will doubtlessly go down as one of the Great American Teen Flicks, like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Scream. It’s as enjoyable as, well, a good slice of pie.
—07/11/99