Rick's Flicks Picks on AWN

Nick Broomfield is a gutsy documentarian. It’s amazing sometimes what he gets people to do on camera. I’ve seen his other celebrity docs about serial killer Aileen Wuornos and Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss and it seems that Broomfield is interested at how people latch onto famous people and take advantage of them.

KURT & COURTNEY created a lot of buzz in 1998, because it was pulled from the Sundance Film Festival after Courtney Love threatened to sue. Eventually, the film was released on video and bolstered the conspiracy theories that surrounded the death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain.

Did he really commit suicide or did his wife Love have him murdered? Broomfield starts out the doc looking into the many conspiracy theories. Could Cobain really have pulled the trigger on the rifle? Would the amount of drugs in his system really have left him unable to move, rendering suicide impossible? Bloomfield interviews private eye Tom Grant, who Love hired to originally investigate Cobain's death, Hank Harrison, Love's father, and punk singer El Duce, who all believe Love conspired to have Cobain murder. I’ve heard many people walk away from this film, saying that it proves that Love had Cobain killed, but it didn't convince me. The evidence is flawed at best or in some cases a big stretch.

There is a short list of directors that even in their lesser work I find greatness and inspiration. John Sayles is one of those directors. I have seen seven of his films and six I'd recommend to anyone in a heartbeat. (LIMBO, I felt was an experiment that failed). Like all his films, it is filled with dozens of well-developed characters. The worlds he creates are full like life, because there are no real side characters. The “minor characters” you know have lives that have nothing to do with the main characters.

The story chronicles the many faces of Mexican baby adoption. We are introduced to six white American woman, who are staying at a hotel where they are waiting for the day when they will be given a baby, which has taken as long as nine months. Skipper (Daryl Hannah, KILL BILL: VOL. 2) is an exercise freak and into holistic medicine. Leslie (Lili Taylor, HIGH FIDELITY) is a single, editor from New York, who the other women think may be a lesbian. Gayle (Mary Steenburgen, WHAT'S EATING GILBERT GRAPE?) is a born again Christian, who actually is a real born again Christian. Nan (Marcia Gay Harden, POLLACK) is a know-it-all, who might be a little too off to be having children. Jennifer (Maggie Gyllenhaal, SECRETARY) is an emotional young woman married to a busy broker. Eileen (Susan Lynch, FROM HELL) is an Irish immigrant living in Chicago, who does not have the same kind of money the other women have.

This film is totally absurd and that’s why I loved it. The film is like an Ingmar Bergman film if Bergman was a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe. The film starts off with absurd vignettes that establish a modern city, at the turn of the 21-century, that has gone into total chaos. In light of the fact that the Y2K catastrophe was just another miscalculated overreaction, the events of this film seem even more poetically ridiculous.

Director Roy Andersson takes pot shots at everything and knows the old statement that tragedy is comedy. What ties together the absurd gags is Kalle (Lars Nordh, LEADING ASTRAY) who, at the beginning of the film, wanders into a café with his face full of soot and yells at his son Stefan (Stefan Larsson, ANJA) for not taking the fact that his father’s business just burning down as all that tragic. Soon enough we find out that Kalle burnt down his furniture store on purpose to rook the insurance company into thinking he sold more expensive sofas than he really did. Kalle has another son named Tomas (Peter Roth, VÄGEN UT), who “wrote poetry until he went nuts.” One of the funniest scenes in the film takes place at the asylum when we first meet Tomas and it’s only a side gag like something out of AIRPLANE!

I must admit that I have never read the book in which this film is based on. But do to its classic status and what I’ve read about it, I think it might be fair to say that the film has less bite than the book.

Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon, FREEWAY) is an orphan living at an all girls’ school. She is set to become a governess, but dreams of a better life. The mother (Deborah Findlay, ME WITHOUT YOU) of her best friend Amelia (Romola Garai, I CAPTURE THE CASTLE) describes her best – “At first I thought of her as a mere social climber, but now I see she’s a mountaineer.” The film makes Becky likeable and makes her out to be more than just a “mountaineer” at times. However, the true pleasure of the film is when it bears its teeth. My favorite sequence is with Becky and Miss Matilda Crawley (Eileen Atkins, COLD MOUNTAIN). The bite of the social commentary that the novel must have comes out brilliantly in these segments.

How dare I even think of giving GONE WITH THE WIND anything less than four stars, you may ask. Well, I’ll tell you in just a bit.

First let’s get the plot description out of the way. Scarlett O’Hara (Vivian Leigh, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE) is the beauty of her town and the desire of many of the men. She is in love with Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard, PYGMALION), but he is engaged to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD). (I guess because that’s what Southerners do.) Scarlett is furious and that’s when the roguish Rhett Butler (Clark Gable, IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT) walks into her life and they begin their love hate relationship. This story is set in front of the tragedy of the Civil War and reconstruction.

Set in Spain during the revolution, the story takes place at an orphanage in a desert area whether leftists bring their children to keep them save. However, some of the children have lost their parents yet do not know. Carlos (Fernando Tielve, THE SHANGHAI SPELL) is brought to orphanage and does not know that his father is dead.

The orphanage is run by the passive doctor Casares (Federico Luppi, MEN WITH GUNS) and the crippled teacher Carmen (Marisa Paredes, TALK TO HER). Carlos quickly learns the ropes of the place from the students, especially Jamie (Inigo Garces, MY FIRST NIGHT), who we know is involved in the death of Santi (Junio Valverde, HIDDEN HANDS), who is now a ghost who haunts the school. But more frightening than the ghost is Jacinto (Eduardo Noriega, OPEN YOUR EYES), a former student at the orphanage who has become the janitor. He is set to marry the beautiful maid Conchita (Irene Visedo, APRIL AND JULES), but sleeps with Carmen in an effort to steal the gold that is hidden in the school for the rebels.

Director Stuart Gordon is best known for the RE-ANIMATOR, a zombie like flick that played for laughs as much as for scares. This film, which is based on two H.P. Lovecraft short stories, follows Paul (Ezra Godden, TV’s BAND OF BROTHERS), his girlfriend Barbara (Raquel Meroño, THE MARK) and friends Vicki (Birgit Bofarull, SECOND NAME) and Howard (Brendan Price, THE NAMELESS) as they sail off the coast of Spain.

A violent storm quickly kicks up and their boat crashes against the rocks. Vicki is injured and Paul and Barbara head into shore to get help. They quickly discover that the town in inhabited by fish-like mutants. In Paul’s attempts to escape, he meets Ezequiel (Francisco Rabal, SORCERER), the town drunk and only surviving human, and Uxía (Macarena Gómez, PLATILLOS VOLANTES), a young woman who Paul dreamt about as a mermaid.

In 1967, BONNIE & CLYDE changed cinema. Like mainstream Hollywood, the B-movie business also likes to copy hits. BOXCAR BERTHA’s similarities to BONNIE & CLYDE are obvious. Infamous B-movie master Roger Corman produced this film on a shoestring budget. But for film fans, Corman is best known for launching the careers of young actors and directors. This was Martin Scorsese’s (GOODFELLAS) second feature directing job.

Bertha Thompson (Barbara Hershey, LANTANA) is a poor farm girl, who finds herself without a father and without means to an income during the Great Depression. She falls for Union leader “Big” Bill Shelly (David Carradine, KILL BILL: VOL. 2), but they get separated and she ends up with two-bit gambler Rake Brown (Barry Primus, NEW YORK, NEW YORK). After a Union bust, Shelly ends up in prison with the Thompson family’s former black farm hand Von Morton (Bernie Casey, UNDER SIEGE). Through circumstance, Bertha, Bill, Rake and Von end up falling into a life of crime.

Think ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW as a maudlin message film and you’ll get an idea of the joys of THE APPLE. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a film so bad and loved every minute of it. This film pretty much fails on all levels.

The film starts with a big rock competition where Bibi (Catherine Mary Stewart, THE LAST STARFIGHTER) and Alphie (George Gilmour, only film performance) win over the hostile audience with a cheesy love ballad until the evil record producer/government dictator Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal, RED DAWN) tells his crony Shake (Ray Shell, VELVET GOLDMINE) to disrupt the performance. After losing the competition, Bibi and Alphie are invited to Mr. Boogalow’s party of sex and drugs where he uses his stars Pandi (Grace Kennedy, only film performance) and Dandi (Alan Love, GREGORY’S GIRL) to seduce them into signing record contracts with his BIM records. Bibi signs, but Alphie is scared away when he has demonic visions.

Serial killers intrigue me very much. It's something about the dark side of human nature that seems unimaginable. This film was documentary director Nick Broomfield's first film on serial killer Aileen Wuornos (the second used footage from this film and was released in 2003 to coincide with the release of MONSTER). The title of the film is perfect. Sadly enough, it seems that a good deal of the people in Aileen's life tried to capitalize on her crimes.

This doc works as a sad postscript to the feature film MONSTER, which was one of the best films of 2003. Wuornos killed seven men, mainly truck drivers, in the early '80s. She was a woman who pretty much got the roughest deal since birth. She was pretty much bred to become a killer. In a very emotional speech, Wuornos chronicles the beating and rape she endured from the first man she killed. She's truly the only person in the film that I thought was honest.

When it comes to the best of comicbook movies, they are always the ones that deal with the heroes like humans. We get to know what it's like to be them. Hellboy (Ron Perlman, ENEMY AT THE GATES) is half-demon half-human, who is bright red, has a tail and files down his giant horns. To say he doesn't fit into the world would be an understatement.

He works for the top-secret paranormal division of the FBI, under his adoptive father Trevor 'Broom' Bruttenholm (John Hurt, THE ELEPHANT MAN). His fellow "freak" partner is Abe Sapien (Doug Jones, ADAPTATION), a super-intelligent psychic who is half-man half-fish. The third member of the team has recently left to try and create a normal life for herself. Her name is Liz "Sparky" Sherman. She is pyrokenetic and when she loses control of her firestarter powers you better watch out. Unlike Hellboy and Abe, she looks normal. Added to the mix is rookie FBI agent John Myers (Rupert Evans, TV's PARADISE HEIGHTS). This sets up a love triangle between Hellboy, Liz and Myers.

This indie romantic comedy stars Oscar winner Adrien Brody (THE PIANIST) as a slow, shy 28-year-old man named Steven, who has finally decided to quit his job and follow his dream of becoming a ventriloquist. He begins to take the dummy everywhere he goes. Will following his dream allow him to open up or make him hide behind something new?

Steven lives at home with his unsupportive parents (Jessica Walter, SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS and Ron Liebman, NORMA RAE) and his wedding planner sister Heidi (Illeana Douglas, GHOST WORLD), who is trying to get over her psychotic ex-fiancée Michael (Jared Harris, HAPPINESS), who keeps stalking her. Steven's best friend is the wanna-be punk rock singer Fangora (Milla Jovovich, FIFTH ELEMENT). When he goes to the unemployment office to find work as a ventriloquist, Steven develops a crush on single mother, Lorena (Vera Farmiga, the new MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE). There relationship is bumpy, because she doesn't like dating two men — Steven and his dummy.