Adventures in Babysitting / *** (1987)

The title "Adventures in Babysitting" evokes a sense of anticipation; it immediately fills the mind with all sorts of nostalgic memories, in which we as children were able to turn simple tasks into rousing adventures simply by breaking a few rules. For many, those undertakings were the first stage of rebellion, a sign that the future would be just as wild and unpredictable as our youth made them out to be. Unfortunately time proved otherwise; the world is a challenge in disguise of fantasy, tangled by all sorts of prejudices and insantiy. And because we only have one childhood, a little movie like this is good for the soul that wants to remain young.

Mad Love / *** (1995)

The Hollywood love story is the most predictable of all cliché-ridden movie formulas, a sappy series of romantic situations in which people find love, meet conflict, surpass trouble and wind up in each other's arms by the final frame. It is the reason why romance in the movies has become so sour and pointless; at one time, people actually cared about the characters and enjoyed seeing them tamper with fate because, in some cases, the conclusion was not always one in which the lovers live "happily ever after." Now filmmakers have become too afraid to break from the traditional formula--in their minds, the love story is something that can only be complete with a storybook ending. This is why I admire the oddities of the genre: the movies that choose to break from the repetition and recreate the definition of how one finds "true love."

The Passion of Joan of Arc / **** (1928)

The story of Joan of Arc has been an unsettling chapter in the French's past--a sketchy but ironic chronicle of religious faith, and one of the most perplexing essays in the search for identity. What makes it such a difficult subject is not necessarily the historical angle, but the moral instability of the people involved; very little information has been provided that can determine the sanity of the players (who made decisions that can both garner respective or disruptive judgments). The most puzzling debate is, not surprisingly, centered on the very source herself; it becomes all too unclear when some sources claim that she heard the voices of God, and others try to discredit those remarks by denouncing her as a mere lunatic. Actual documents from the trial that resulted her execution are an immediate defense for the latter conclusion, for they indicate Joan may not have been completely sane when fighting for France's army during an age when England was seeking control over many of the poor European provinces. Yet similar texts paint the portrait of an innocent, misunderstood woman who cared about people, and devoted her life to saving a country from utterly pointless turmoil.

Oscars 2000: Nominee Reactions

The movie industry was put on ice Tuesday morning when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for this year’s annual Academy Awards ceremony. The event, a widely-anticipated press conference, is the official kickoff of a month-long debate between various analysts, critics and public figures as to whom, or what, will come out on top when the ceremony actually takes place; the list of nominees itself, naturally, brews up its own debate with surprise nominees and shutouts. Unlike previous years, however, the nominees announced this year were more of a depressing surprise rather than a pleasant one.

Oscars 2000: Nominee Predictions

Trying to compare the movies of 1998 to the movies of 1999 is like trying to compare a republican to a democrat; they both look the same, but very few share any other similarities.

Whereas 1998 was a year of familiarity and less risk-taking (the Best Picture candidates were dominated by Elizabethan England and World War II), 1999 was something else entirely--a year that innovation took center stage and exploded with intense but rewarding results. From the eruption came some of the most unique ideas ever seen at the movies, including stories of technological takeover (“The Matrix”), cussing cardboard cutouts (“South Park: Bigger, Longer And Uncut”), dysfunctional families (“American Beauty”), mind unraveling (“Being John Malkovich”), journalistic integrity (“The Insider”) and even new takes on old favorites (“An Ideal Husband,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley”). The year also saw the arrival of highly anticipated events, such as the new “Star Wars” film “The Phantom Menace,” and Stanley Kubrick’s unforgettable final feature, “Eyes Wide Shut.” But especially wonderful was the continuity of the success at cinemas; many of the year’s best were not dumped out in theaters around fall, but were spaced apart for a good duration of the year.

Isn't She Great / * (2000)

Cheap and tawdry are some of the only English words that can fittingly describe Jacqueline Susann's "Valley Of The Dolls," and maybe that should be taken as a compliment. Written at a time when drugs and sex were barely walking the line between the taboo and the candid, her revealing novel offered the reader the chance to peer into the lives of unidentified Hollywood stars, who embodied these revealing qualities in such a way that exploitation of them was merely a fate. Attempting to identify the people who are portrayed in the book became somewhat of a challenging game, and it quickly resulted in one of the most popular books of its time when released in 1966. But no one really had the chance to watch Susann herself grow into the warped and shameless persona that those in her personal life saw her as, since she died a few years later after completing two more novels.

Scream 3 / ***1/2 (2000)

Wes Craven may very well be one of the most unconventional horror movie directors working in the cinema today, and that may be an understatement considering his marvelous history with the horror genre. Beginning a career without any knowledge in technical aspects of a motion picture is not always the first sign of a prominent filmmaker, but that little education helped shape the bitter and brutal substance of his debut effort, "Last House On The Left" in 1972, into something that horrified anyone who saw it. That film, at least for those who know it even exists, succeeded immensely, and he has since then gone on to make movies ideal for teenagers who have a thirst for bloodshed and ingenuity. Some of his projects--like "A Nightmare On Elm Street"--even go on to become cult classics. Others--like "The Serpent And The Rainbow"--are forgotten almost as soon as they arrive on screens.

The Cider House Rules / ** (1999)

Lasse Hallström's "The Cider House Rules" is one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in the recent months at the cinema, something so underwhelming and vacant that it's impossible for many to understand what exactly the picture is trying to say. Based on a novel by John Irving, who also adapted his story for the screen, this is one of those films in which the script has obviously been labored by an egocentric impulse to leave out many of the details from the novel, assuming that the entire audience has already followed the book. Unfortunately, I'm not one of the many who has actually read the story; for those who have not done so, walking into the theater of a movie like this is like trying to launch a space shuttle without knowing where the correct gadgets are.

Eye of the Beholder / 1/2* (2000)

Stephan Elliot's "Eye Of The Beholder" is truly something that has to be seen to be believed; a movie that forces the main character to pursue a merciless man killer, and then tries to be all noble by slapping in brief shots of religious statues and tears falling from the murderers face, as if homicide is not enough to keep her dull life occupied. Such a treatment is almost deserving of every criticism it gets, since it believes anyone with half a brain could find a single frame of this picture even slightly amusing. Those who say that new and invigorating ideas for movies are not all they're cracked up to be might have had this travesty in mind--by combining sorrow with suspense and love with obsession, the film leaves the moviegoer with a nasty aftertaste.

The Hurricane / ***1/2 (1999)

Sometimes the past is better left forgotten. Those of us who have looked back on yesterday seldom reminisce in the bright images that have been implanted in our memory banks; instead, it becomes easy to recall the most dreadful events that plague the mind, be they personal or historical. When one looks back at the 1940s, for example, they don't at first think of the joy of dancing to the Jitterbug, but of the immense differences between countries that inflicted World War II. Furthermore, those dreadful events tend to bring up others--the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Hiroshima bomb, and the Holocaust are just to name a few.

Play it to the Bone / *1/2 (2000)

Hollywood has apparently developed some kind of fixated obsession with brutal physical violence, as seen by a truckload of movies that have been released in the past few years. Most of them draw their energy not from drama or story, but the clutching of a fist and break of a bone; the recent "Fight Club," for example, ditches every effort to be entertaining for grotesque, creepy imagery that is often lurid and unrewarding to the eyes of the viewer. Yet there has also been a strength in the conviction of the events surrounding such occurrences for certain pictures--one will not remember brief moments of bloodshed in "The Hurricane," for instance, when matched up against the dramatic surges provided by the film's stars. The key to all of their success and failure is, in some way, determined by the magnitude of the visuals and depth of the substance. Violence can be amusing, to certain lengths, but not without some sort of plot point to back it up.

Princess Mononoke / ***1/2 (1999)

A universe bound by parallels and gravity could not have begun to comprehend the possibilities of animation when it was established as a new art form in the mid-1920s. The idea of thousands of drawings creating the image of a moving picture seemed, for the most part, like a false hope; yet the mind of Walt Disney, who essentially discovered the cartoon, proved differently. Suddenly, the world as we knew it was left behind--characters and their residing dimensions sprawled freely from the limits of reality, circumscribed exclusively by the constraints of the creators' imagination. Only massive budgets stood in the way of their innovation; this was a time, after all, when special effects and computer imagery could not help with the process, and individually hand-drawing and coloring the cells was rather expensive.

Summer of Sam / ***1/2 (1999)

New York's hot and humid summer of 1977 is one of the more unsettling time periods of modern American culture, and Spike Lee's eerie "Summer Of Sam" volunteers a solid, unorthodox portrayal of the dread that overshadowed massive bloodshed in a remote Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx. This was, of course, the year that the infamous .44 caliber killer David Berkowitz was on the loose; more important, though, is how the society within his killing ground responded to the sporadic massacres. Hordes of filmmakers have tried to adapt this type of factual material, but they often get lost by focusing much of the time on the actual murderer (it's impossible to guess what a serial killer recollects in this situation because, alas, he really exists, and no one knows what he thinks). But Spike Lee is intent on other worries for his depiction of the summer of Sam; his story is not about killers or killings, but about paranoia and the need to single out someone as a suspect. In the sweltering summer of 1977, in which these events took place, there were more than a few hundred stories going on in the city; here was one in which those affected were not celebrities, but real, average people.

Being John Malkovich / ***1/2 (1999)

"Being John Malkovich" begins with the image of a saddened puppeteer putting on a performance at the streetcorner; as his talents go unrecognized and he struggles for work, his ugly duckling of a wife encourages him to accept a job as a file clerk at a Manhattan firm called LesterCorp, which specializes (not purposely) in employing individuals with a penchant for relishing in elements of the eccentric. The 7½ floor is the focus of this man's future, a 4-foot high office that forces its workers to crouch when navigating the corridors, and features workers that, if let loose in the free world, would be subjected to wearing straight jackets in asylums. Slowly but surely, he and his fellow comrades realize their personal imperfections, in what is one of the most extraordinarily inventive films of 1999.

Next Friday / zero stars (2000)

It has been four years since the nightmare that is "Friday" was unleashed upon millions of unsuspecting humans. Now comes "Next Friday," a sequel that manages to be even more painful than its predecessor, and will likely succeed at the box office just as well. January traditionally clues us in one what to expect in the remaining year as far as movies are concerned, and if this is one of those indications, the apocalypse might not be that far off as we suspect.