Bad <I>Instinct</I>, Hideous <I>Men</I>

            

               Movies
            

            

               
                  Instinct
                (Buena Vista Pictures). Critics skewer this
psychodrama starring Anthony Hopkins as a primatologist who clubs two park
rangers to death while living in the wild with a band of gorillas, and Cuba
Gooding Jr. as the hotshot psychologist assigned to draw out his story. The
plot rips off the familiar one-on-one mind games of The 
               Silence of
the Lambs and adds up to nothing more than "a greatest-hits collection of
plot devices and emotional cues from such films as Gorillas in the Mist
and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest " (John Anderson, the Los Angeles
Times ). (Click here to watch the trailer, and for David Edelstein's review in

                  Slate
               .)

            

               
                  Limbo
                (Sony Pictures Entertainment). Good reviews for
writer-director John Sayles' ( Lone Star ) latest drama: "moving and empathetic ... Few directors are more
instinctively caring, or provide for more moments of grace between characters"
(Kenneth Turan, the Los Angeles Times ). The film, set in Alaska, follows
two middle-aged loners (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and David Strathairn) who
engage in a tentative romance. Halfway through the film, the plot suddenly
turns into a survivalist action adventure. Several critics say this transition
is rough but ultimately forgive the film: "If this oddly structured film feels
like two short stories stuck together, there is enough solid glue joining them
that they resonate off one another deeply" (Stephen Holden, the New York
Times ). Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly dissents, calling
the film "an earnest, dogged, squarely rendered wisp of a movie." (For more on
Sayles, this
page has a biography, filmography, and news.)

            

               
                  Buena Vista Social Club
                (Artisan Entertainment). Wim
Wenders' documentary about the Cuban musical group of the same name gets
consistent raves. Not only are the live performances transcendent ("the music,
in its acoustic beauty and power, jumps off the screen," says Peter Watrous in
the New York Times ), the scenes of Havana are spectacular, and the story
of the artists' recent professional rebirth is gripping. Many of the performers
are in their 70s and 80s and had not played music for years--one was working
shining shoes, another hadn't had his own instrument for almost a decade--until
Ry Cooder brought them together to record and perform. (Click here to buy the album that won them a Grammy last
year.)

            

               Books
            

            

               
                  Brief Interviews With Hideous Men
               , by David Foster
Wallace (Little, Brown). Wallace's second collection of stories is roundly seen
as a disappointment. Hailed as one of the best writers of his generation in
1996 when he published the immense novel Infinite Jest , Wallace irks the
critics with this collection, which is mainly a series of sketches describing
extremely unpleasant and misogynistic men. Though a few stories are on par with
his earlier work, most reviews find the collection riddled with
self-referential tics and self-consciousness. The New York Times '
Michiko Kakutani comes down the hardest, turning in a scathing review in which
she calls the book "an airless, tedious production" that "represents a sharp
falling off in ambition, nuance and vision from Mr. Wallace's previous works of
fiction." (Click to read 
                  Slate
               's recent "Book Club" on Brief
Interviews .)

            

               
                  Juneteenth
               , by Ralph Ellison, edited by John F.
Callahan (Random House). "Uneven" is the word used most often to describe
Ellison's posthumous second novel, which he had been working on for 40 years
before he died. Pared down to 384 pages from the sprawling, unfinished,
thousand-page manuscript by Ellison's literary executor, John F. Callahan, the
novel leaves many critics wondering about the enormous amount of material not
included and whether the novel can even truly be called Ellison's book. Ellison
envisioned a multi-voiced symphonic saga about race in America, but Callahan
reduced it to a single linear story with a few central characters--notably
omitting excerpts Ellison had published, such as the story "Cadillac Flambé."
Reviewers say that sections are on par with Invisible Man --especially
the set pieces, dialogue, and riffs--but the novel as a whole doesn't match up:
It "provides the reader with intimations of the grand vision animating
Ellison's 40-year project, but it also feels disappointingly provisional and
incomplete" (Kakutani, the New York Times ). (
                  Slate
               's Jacob
Weisberg found the novel more satisfying than most critics. Click to read his
review.)

            

               Music
            

            
               Death: Mel
Torme (1925-1999). The jazz, swing, and pop singer died of a stroke
Saturday at the age of 73. Nicknamed "The Velvet Fog" for his smooth voice,
Torme "sang with a geniality that seemed ingrained and a voice that was
incapable of making an unpleasant sound" (Holden, the New York Times ).
He was most famous for his scat improvisations and enjoyed a renaissance in the
1990s, when, after a lifetime of performing, he was discovered by a younger
generation interested in lounge music. Never a true superstar, he managed to
succeed mainly because he continued to perform and his voice miraculously
seemed to improve with age. He was also a songwriter, and his most famous
composition was "The Christmas Song"--better known as "Chestnuts Roasting on an
Open Fire." (Click here to see a listing of his albums.)