Copycat / *** (1995)

There is an ideological disconnect between those who study serial killers and those who are assigned to prosecute them. For the latter sorts it’s all about procedure, about connecting dots in a maze of riddles to identify a source that can be seen, touched and ultimately punished. Anything beyond those mechanics fall to deeper thinkers, who inhabit the underlying psyche as a means to find answers to the more probing questions – namely, what drives a person to the methodical precision of committing murder on a mass scale? “Copycat,” a thriller that borrows much of its structure from “The Silence of the Lambs,” features two such characters at the forefront of this descent. One is a psychologist specializing in serial homicide played by Sigourney Weaver, the other a deadpan police inspector played by Holly Hunter. Both lack the patience to work cooperatively with the other, and yet somehow they must, otherwise a recent surge of murders in the San Francisco area mimicking those of famous serial minds from the recent past could continue without interruption, even though they might be occurring with a critical pattern between them.

Seven / **** (1995)

Expanding into the reaches of marginal film genres was a defining impulse for the career of Morgan Freeman, a man whose screen presence is usually at the service of plots in search of a voice of reason. The stubborn conviction of formula stories certainly provided him an ample supply of such platforms; as was the case in “Glory” or “Driving Miss Daisy” (two of his earliest successes), he thrived on playing characters that had an underlying edge to them, written from a suggestion that they were the sorts of people who endured through the grind by being honest and assertive when others wallowed in delusion. Why did it take him so long, then, to appear in crime thrillers, which had usually been robbed of protagonists with calm temperaments and informed demeanors? As we watch David Fincher’s “Seven” in hindsight of all the came after, his presence takes on an almost ethereal dominance, as if to suggest he is there because fate insisted his was the only perspective qualified to give such deplorable narrative undercurrents an intellectual meaning. For nearly every movie about a sadistic criminal that would come after, some part of us recalls the careful modulation of words of Detective Somerset, who may be one of the first men in mainstream cinema that dares to ask the question: why do we easily dismiss serial killers as lunatics?

Showgirls / **1/2 (1995)

When Nomi Malone marches right into the early moments of “Showgirls” dressed like a rejected stand-in at a music video shoot, it becomes the first in a long list of our observations that inspire laughter. No, not the kind that is intentional or even self-aware; this is one of countless moments that warrants unexpected chuckles based on an underlying absurdity. That the movie is not even supposed to be a comedy marks it as something of a myopic miscalculation; under the well-known influence of writer Joe Eszterhas and director Paul Verhoeven, what we observe was, in truth, once considered a genuine character drama in the hands of people dedicated enough to the work to supply it with a sense of production value. Perhaps the notion that it was all supposed to be serious was very well sold as a ploy to all those in front of the camera, but who could possibly imagine anyone behind the scenes finding sincerity in this? Who could believe that Eszterhas’ story, a tone-deaf journey through absurd female sex fantasies, had hope of being passable, much less erotic or stimulating? Here is the portrait of a woman displaced from all sense of grace and modulation, who leaves behind the unknown realities of her past and walks brazenly into the bright lights of Las Vegas with a goal to become just another object in a long line of mediocre topless dancers.

Richard III / ***1/2 (1995)

There are few certainties rushing through the great Shakespeare plays, but a consensus does persist when it comes to considering the notorious Richard III: he is easily the most vindictive and cunning of all the bard’s major villains. Essays have been written over countless centuries as cathartic measures to understand the ruthless driving forces of his persona: the ability for him to anticipate human response in the face of grief, to manipulate grave tragedies to his political advantage, and to even create a convincing façade that masks his obsessive impulses in front of those who would grant him great power. It was the playwright’s first well-received tragedy, and its endurance through a career punctuated by more highs than lows adds substantial weight to its overreaching influence: for most audiences, the shadowy visage of a hunched man ruthlessly playing his way through the ranks of familial hierarchy represents the kind of multi-faceted antagonist one hopes for in all modern storytelling.

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."