Movies
Patch
Adams
(Universal Pictures). Critics pan this inspirational "based
on a true story" dramedy about a doctor who cures with laughter. (Ignoring the
bad reviews, moviegoers gave the film a record-breaking Christmas weekend box
office haul.) As played by Robin Williams, Patch Adams is first an
"insufferable, sermonizing medical student" (Joe Morgenstern, the Wall
Street Journal ) and later an in-your-face clown-doctor with a bedpan on his
head and squeaky balloon animals in his hands. The film is sappy and grating:
Even the easy to please Gene Siskel calls it "utterly unctuous" and asks, "Who
would want Mork at their bedside?" ( Chicago Tribune ). (Visit the official site.)
The
Faculty
(Miramax Films). Teen horror screenwriting master Kevin
Williamson does it again in this "rip-snorting hunk of giddy, self-aware genre
trash" (Dennis Harvey, Daily Variety ). The Breakfast Club meets
Invasion of the Body Snatchers as six misfit high-schoolers try to save
the world from their alien-inhabited teachers. Critics credit the teen actors
(Elijah Wood and some unknowns) and the adult faculty (Famke Janssen, Bebe
Neuwirth, and others) with solid performances. It's a film that "ably gives the
audience what it wants: hope, revenge, and gross-out jokes" (Dave Kehr, New
York
Daily News ). (Check out preliminary models of the aliens at
this
site.)
Stepmom
(Sony Pictures Entertainment). Julia Roberts
plays the nightmare stepmom (i.e., beautiful, successful, sweet) to
über housewife Susan Sarandon's kids. Their rivalry dissolves, of
course, when Sarandon is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Critics call this
tear-jerker manipulative and trite, deriding its mandatory
sing-along-to-Motown-hits female bonding scene, stiff-upper-lipping by
Sarandon, etc. Female reviewers are kinder than males, and the New York
Times ' Janet Maslin writes that Roberts and Sarandon "make the film a lot
more watchable than it has any right to be." (Watch an interview with the two
stars here.)
Mighty Joe
Young
(Buena Vista Pictures). The critics deem this "shaky remake
of a hoary King Kong knockoff" (Morgenstern) mildly amusing. The story: Big ape
has special relationship (which USA Today 's Mike Clark calls "vaguely
unseemly") with beautiful girl, bad guys want to poach big ape, big ape gets
put in zoo/nature preserve, goes on rampage, and saves little kiddies from a
burning Ferris wheel. Charlize Theron (the object of the ape's affections) is a
stunner, and the giant gorilla is stunningly realistic, but critics say the
rest of the movie is too predictable to be anything more than strictly OK.
(Check out the movie poster from the 1949 original.)
Books
Hundred
Dollar Holiday
, by Bill McKibben (Simon & Schuster). Although
McKibben's earlier books (mostly on the ways he has reduced his environmental
impact on the earth) were slammed as having "the homiletic tone of a Sunday
school sermon" ( New York Times man Richard Bernstein on Hope, Human
and Wild ), this one strikes a positive chord with most reviewers. They
praise his proposal that we reduce the commerciality of the holiday season, and
only a few mention that Hundred Dollar Holiday recycles ideas from the
10-year-old voluntary simplicity movement. New York 's Walter Kirn
dissents from the pack, complaining of McKibben's books in general--"his
combination of arrogance and sincerity, narcissism and asceticism, is riveting
and infuriating at once"--and of this book in specific--"The thesis is ancient
and hard to argue with, though something in McKibben's pious manner may make
one want to try." (Read Kirn's review here.)
The Vintner's
Luck
, by Elizabeth Knox (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Mixed
reviews greet this New Zealand author's first novel published in the United
States. This story of a long and stormy love affair between a fallen angel and
a 19 th century French vintner is described alternately as having "a
ferocious display of inventive power" ( Kirkus Reviews ) and as having "a
disconcerting hollowness" (Richard Eder, the Los Angeles Times ). The
critics agree on the flashes of brilliance in her writing; the disagreement is
over how consistently Knox puts it all together. (Read more about the book at
Amazon.com.)
Recent "Summary Judgment" columns
Movie--
The Prince of Egypt ;
Movie--
You've Got Mail ;
Movie--
The General ;
Book--
Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American
Submarine Espionage , by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, with Annette
Lawrence Drew;
Book--
Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996 , by Seamus
Heaney;
Book -- The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, The Early
Years, 1869-1908 , by Hilary Spurling.
Movie--
Shakespeare in Love ;
Movie -- Star Trek: Insurrection ;
Movie -- Rushmore ;
Movie -- A Simple Plan ;
Movie -- Jack Frost ;
Television--
The Tempest (NBC);
Theater--
The Blue Room , by David Hare (Cort
Theatre, New York City).
Dec.
9:
Movie -- Psycho ;
Movie
--Central Station ;
Movie -- Hard Core Logo ;
Movie -- Little Voice ;
Book -- Amsterdam , by Ian McEwan;
Art --"Edo: Art in Japan 1615-1868" (National Gallery of Art,
Washington);
Theater -- Electra , by Sophocles (Ethel Barrymore Theater, New
York City).
Dec.
2:
Movie -- Babe: Pig in the City ;
Movie -- Home Fries ;
Movie -- Jerry Springer: Ringmaster ;
Movie -- Very Bad Things ;
Theater -- On the Town ;
Book -- The Rum Diary: The Long Lost
Novel , by Hunter S. Thompson.
