Salon.com > Robin Dougherty

Diana Rigg

Tue, 14 Sep 1999 16:00:00 +0000

In a scene from the 1960s TV series "The Avengers," film director Z.Z. von Schnerk describes protagonist Emma Peel in this way: "You are a woman of courage, beauty and of action. A woman who could become desperate yet remain strong, become confused yet remain intelligent, who could fight back yet remain feminine." What he left out is that she also possesses a disarming sexiness, the best leather wardrobe in the history of television and a mean karate chop.

Schnerk is a fiction, of course, as is Mrs. Peel, who was played by Diana Rigg. But his words do justice to the female half of the famed crime-fighting team and, to a large degree, to the actress who played her. With the suave John Steed (Patrick Macnee, impeccably tailored and outfitted with bowler and brolly) making up the other half of the duo, the Avengers sent cybernauts, flesh-eating monsters and professional assassins to their demise -- then toasted the day with a bottle of champagne.

“Playing God”

Fri, 17 Oct 1997 19:00:00 +0000

THERE'S NOTHING AMBITIOUS -- or even entertaining -- about "Playing God." It's not camp enough to be a bona fide turkey or full of enough small, thought-out acting moments from its costar to make us wish that, post-"Beautiful Girls," there were a Timothy Hutton resurgence on the way. Director Andy Wilson, who helmed episodes of the gritty British TV series "Cracker," makes his feature film debut by having his actors and stuntpeople merely go through the motions. Its comic moments, which depend on the looniness of deranged gangsters, fall flat because we've seen them done better -- by better actors -- dozens of times. Its drama, framed by intermittent film-noir voice-over and hinging on one character's presumed moral dilemma -- just falls.

The movie's main appeal would seem to be David Duchovny, star of television's "The X-Files" (and of next summer's "X-Files" movie, "Blackwood"), who is called upon to carry a drama that has none of the quirky trappings or comic infrastructure of his sci-fi TV show. And given the fact that the majority of the audience at the screening I attended walked right by the pile of free Duchovny posters available at the end of the movie, "Playing God" is essentially a cautionary tale for actors who reach beyond their limits -- and possibly for their fans, as well.

Contact

Mon, 11 Aug 1997 19:00:00 +0000

the phantasmagoric opening shots in "Contact" -- in which the camera slowly pulls back from the Earth to take in the infinity of the solar system, the Milky Way and finally the whole bottomless universe -- set up the intellectual mystery that steers the movie. A series of blinking lights, muted color fields spiked by neon shades, humongous far-away clouds that look like -- oh, a girl and her dog -- it could all be the microscopic mappings of a human cell. Or the light show that goes with the "Back to the Future" ride at Universal Studios.

At any rate, as the screen unfolds, so does our movie-viewing mind, trying desperately to make sense of what's in front of us. The human eye always wants to recognize what it sees. At the same time, we want to believe that there are experiences that defy easy explanation. That's the driving idea behind "Contact," Robert Zemeckis' intrepid movie version of Carl Sagan's 1985 bestseller, which itself grew out of an idea that Sagan and his wife, Ann Druyan, once had for a movie. Faithful to Sagan's brand of popularized science, the film never reaches beyond Hollywood spectacle and sentimentality.

Batman & Robin

Sun, 20 Jul 1997 19:00:00 +0000

holy creative breakdown, Batman!

Instead of berating Joel Schumacher for spending, by some reports, upwards of $1.5 million per minute to deliver the summer's most inert movie sequel, let's stop for a minute and try to figure out what the director thought he was up to.

There's something almost maniacally heroic about packaging the fourth sequel of a superhero action series without resorting to the old standbys of good writing, capable acting or inspired directing. With "Batman & Robin," Schumacher has daringly thrown tradition to the wind, proffering instead a vision of Entertainment as a huge computer screen on which little blips -- machines, superheroes, particles of light -- vie for screen time.

OK, now here's the tsk-tsking.

You won't find any writing, acting or directing to speak of in "Batman & Robin," the most sentimental of the Batman movies and the second directed by Schumacher (in between his film versions of John Grisham thrillers "The Client" and "A Time To Kill"). With George Clooney taking over the Bat-cape from Val Kilmer, the franchise may be safe. Lost beneath the overproduced fight scenes, the rubber nippled Clooney doesn't really get a chance to embarrass himself, much less act. But the Bat-thrills are long gone. Worse, Kilmer's recent career path -- duds like "The Saint" and the bona fide turkey "The Island of Doctor Moreau" -- seems downright glorious compared to any cachet the swoon-provoking "ER" actor is going to take away from this bomb.

Night Falls on Manhattan

Mon, 16 Jun 1997 19:00:00 +0000

night Falls on Manhattan" could be the working title of almost any Sidney Lumet movie, with its hints of gloom and doom in Dirty New York, Lumet's now-rusty crucible of corruption. And, in fact, this movie is a generic vehicle about how rot starts in City Hall, flows into the police force and gives a good moral flaying to anyone who's dumb enough to still believe in justice. The problem -- as anyone who gets home from the movie in time to catch even a portion of "NYPD Blue" can tell you -- is that the genre that Lumet invented has buried him alive.

The story's about -- need you ask? -- how, while trying a drug lord for the killing of three policemen, a fresh-faced assistant district attorney discovers a lode of dirty cops, including, it seems, his father and his father's partner. Sean Casey (Andy Garcia), the Irish cop-turned-assistant-DA hero, gets handed this career-making criminal case by Morgenstern, a district attorney with a political agenda. Casey's policeman father (Ian Holm), riddled with bullets during the botched ambush of the drug lord, becomes an irresistible star witness in his son's big case. (The script, written by Lumet, is based on the novel "Tainted Evidence" by Robert Daley.)

Romy and Michele

Sun, 25 May 1997 19:00:00 +0000

when they invent the 20-minute feature film, "Romy and Michele's High School Reunion" may be the perfect subject for it. Fluffy pink and vinyl-shiny as its protagonists' clothes, it's a one-joke story that's better crafted than it really deserves to be. To enter it is to experience an entire universe peopled by two creatures seemingly inspired by Kelly, the airhead daughter on the sitcom "Married ... with Children." How much giddy spaciness can one movie watcher endure?

That may depend on how much you identify with the protagonists. Starring Mira Sorvino ("Mighty Aphrodite") and Lisa Kudrow ("Friends"), "Romy and Michele" is not so much a fable as a white flag for the slacker generation as it hits the big 10-year mark since high school graduation. "Ten years! Where have I been?" asks Sorvino's Romy in tones that make it clear she hasn't really been able to keep track of herself, even if her green and blue nail polish does perfectly match her outfit.

“The Daytrippers”

Mon, 28 Apr 1997 19:00:00 +0000

i'm not sure if "The Daytrippers" is the first movie to take place primarily inside a station wagon. But it certainly does go a long way toward explaining why the family car is one of the most intimate spaces we know. (And why the station wagon will keep evolving into spin-offs like the minivan and not into those rocket-driven individual transportation devices they use on "The Jetsons.") Inside one such group-toting vehicle, writer-director Greg Mottola's entertaining debut captures the experience of an American family caught up in a crisis affecting one member. It's the adult equivalent of a family trip to the Dairy Queen to soften the blow of one kid's getting beaten up at school.

The story begins when Eliza (Hope Davis) finds a letter -- a love poem, actually -- to her husband from someone named Sandy. Unable to digest its implications alone, she drives out to Long Island to discuss it with her family. There, her overbearing mom, Rita (Anne Meara), her laconic father, Jim (Pat McNamara), her sister, Jo (Parker Posey), and sister's Kafka-reading boyfriend, Carl (Liev Schreiber), pile into the wagon and drive to Manhattan, the better to confront the possibly philandering Louis (Stanley Tucci). The result is a sweetly comic, small-scale essay on family interactions, a road movie that never seems to have left the dinner table.

Crash

Mon, 21 Apr 1997 19:00:00 +0000

David Cronenberg's "Crash" is one of the dirtiest movies you'll ever see -- steamy, naughty, stuck through with bruised thighs, sleek chrome, the warm glow of ambulance lights. Not to mention very real sexual elements, such as semen, that are usually hidden from the camera. (No frontal male nudity, alas, but "Crash" does go all-out for its NC-17 rating.) The astonishing thing, however, is how pleasantly hypnotic the film is -- despite the fact that its subject is confined to peculiarly gruesome sex.

At least on the surface "Crash" is gruesome.

As you've probably heard, given the year-long controversy surrounding it (a hit at Cannes, banned until recently in England, its release in the U.S. initially delayed by Ted Turner), the story's about a group of people who are turned on by car crashes.That may seem shocking, and it is. (I haven't even mentioned the scene in which one character sexually penetrates the vulva-like scar of another.) But given its premise, the film is astoundingly free of either horror or repulsiveness, unless you count your own surprise at readily jumping on its characters' wavelength.

Smilla's Sense of Snow

Mon, 14 Apr 1997 19:00:00 +0000

a meteor smashes into Greenland in 1859. Then, 100 years later, a small boy plunges to his death from a Copenhagen rooftop. Throw in the discovery of some prehistoric worm-shaped parasites and you've got a great set-up for a sci-fi thriller. If you've read Peter Hoeg's 1993 bestseller "Smilla's Sense of Snow," you already know how these events are connected. But, even if you're not in the know, by the time you reach the end of Bille August's shallow film adaptation, you may no longer care.

That's no small disappointment when what's at stake -- according to the mad-scientist scenario at the heart of this tale -- is nothing less than the future of the world. Instead, the movie feels like a treatment for a great cinematic film rather than a film itself -- something Hitchcock might have worked with if he wanted to make a thriller at the top of the world. It's a sequence of plodding but beautifully shot set pieces that take advantage of Denmark's perpetual winter twilight and its monstrous ice floes, but don't illustrate anything. The screenplay is by Ann Biderman ("Primal Fear").

Animal Magnetism

Tue, 25 Mar 1997 20:00:00 +0000

despite its occasional charm, the short-lived ABC-TV show "Dinosaurs" will not go down in history as a brilliant programming move. It lasted only two seasons before becoming a dinosaur itself. But one of the show's characters -- a dinosaur dad who was, if I recall correctly, a TV station manager -- came up with a programming idea that was pure gold: "Box of Puppies."

And "Box of Puppies" was just what its name implies -- the camera turned on a container of adorable fur balls. The undeniable thing about puppies -- even puppies on TV -- is that they love you without ever having met you. They hold out the promise of wet tongues, fat tummies, ceaselessly wagging tails. In short, they are a pornography substitute for the intimacy-starved. Just the sort of thing you want to tune into after a hard day at the office, after breaking up with someone or after the third time you've checked at the supermarket and discovered that they stock every variety of macaroni except the one you want.

In fact, there's only one conceivable thing more comforting than a box of puppies. That would be an entire network devoted to bringing images of cute animals into your home.

“The Graduate”

Fri, 21 Mar 1997 20:00:00 +0000

to anyone seeing it for the first time, "The Graduate" must seem as dated as "Stagecoach." A boy, a Mrs. Robinson, something about plastics. Dustin Hoffman's unlined face. The cloyingly sweet Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack. What did these musty hieroglyphics once signify?

For viewers who remember it as part of their upbringing, "The Graduate" presents an entirely different problem. Now that it's hit its 30th birthday, the film throws our '60s shortsightedness in our face. How sheepish one feels, realizing the movie is no work of genius. In fact, what was once an all-important signpost to adulthood is really little more than a simple romantic comedy whose "countercultural" message, insofar as it has one, is decidedly retrograde.

Or perhaps "The Graduate" is really a tragedy, considering that what we thought we were watching was something altogether different than what's actually on the film. (Women, in particular, may be disappointed to rediscover that Ben's coming of age requires them to participate from the wrong side of the bed sheet.)

Hillary's Milquetoast “Rosie” Turn

Tue, 04 Feb 1997 20:00:00 +0000

memo to the first lady: He won, already. So stop playing the goody-goody and speak up.

Yesterday, the White House let Hillary Clinton out to play.

The first lady visited the "Rosie O'Donnell Show." What a coup for Rosie, who was able to top the high-voltage buzz she got from trotting out Madonna several weeks ago.

And what good luck for the White House. It's no mere coincidence that Hillary and Rosie harmonized on "The Telephone Hour" from "Bye Bye Birdie" (really) just 24 hours before the president was due to deliver his State of the Union address. America's good sport whoops it up with America's sweetheart. If that's not good media buying, I don't know what is.

Of course, now that candidates and anchormen show up on MTV and hip, late-night talk shows with frightening regularity (and Bob Dole has made a third career out of cameos on "Saturday Night Live"), a first lady flapping her gums in an afternoon time slot shouldn't turn heads.

But Hillary's TV appearance, actually taped last week, is a front-page headline. For the past two and a half years, the first lady has been in virtual seclusion. Early into President Clinton's first term thanks to her ill-timed remarks about moms who bake cookies, not to mention health-care reform Hillary was sentenced to the political equivalent of having to spend the rest of the day in her room.