Bovie Movie

Watching this messy comedy drama, you may well wonder if director Spike Lee has totally lost the plot. Not only is this film audaciously offbeat, but it’s also excruciatingly clichéd and so unconventionally constructed that it plays like a handful of genre movies all competing for supremacy. Jaws will certainly drop, as suave Anthony Mackie goes into unofficial business by impregnating rich lesbians — including Monica Bellucci’s Mob princess — after being sacked as a whistle-blower from a corporation pushing a defective Aids vaccine. Following the internalised emotion of 25th Hour, Lee is back on his socio-political hobby horse, attacking corporate culture, greed and preconceptions about black men. Unfortunately, the feature’s increasing ludicrousness and his insistence on pandering to crude male fantasies ultimately undermine any serious messages. Still, there are some very funny moments, not least John Turturro as a Godfather-quoting Mafia don. Consequently, the overall effect is like a car crash — a tragic waste, yet impossibly riveting. 

Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys, The Fisher King) directed this colorful, stylized, pseudo-psychedelic $21-million adaptation of the 1971 Hunter S. Thompson classic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream, about stoned sportswriter Raoul Duke, Thompson’s alter ego, on a wild drug-crazed road trip, a paranoid plummet into the belly of the beast, with his pal, lawyer Oscar Zeta Acosta. Originally serialized in Rolling Stone (November 1971), the book catapulted Thompson headfirst toward the Kerouac-Mailer-Capote pantheon and jump-started the entire movement of “gonzo journalism.” Carrying a suitcase of drugs, Raoul Duke (Johnny Depp with shaved pate) and his attorney Dr. Gonzo (Benicio Del Toro) drive a red convertible across the Mojave from L.A. to Vegas, where Duke has an assignment to cover the Mint 400 desert motorcycle race. As the drugs kick in, Duke ventures into voiceover, filling in the blank spots and narrative gaps. “This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs,” says Duke, but even so, they consume vast quantities, eventually escalating to ether. Duke notes that with ether “you can actually watch yourself behaving this terrible way, but you can’t control it.” The two trash their hotel room, and Gonzo goes back to L.A. Thinking the hotel room holocaust will lead to an arrest, Duke begins a drive back to L.A., but after an odd encounter with a highway patrolman (Gary Busey) and a telephone conversation with Gonzo, he returns to Vegas to cover the District Attorney Convention on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs in the glitzy Flamingo Hotel. This time the drugged-out duo trash their Flamingo room. The crazed carnival atmosphere segues into a carney casino, Bazooko’s Circus, where a barker (Penn Jillette) spiels amid aerialists, clowns, and a rotating carousel bar. Gonzo worries over runaway teen Lucy (Christina Ricci), who paints portraits of Barbra Streisand. Soon the hallucinations begin: Duke sees Gonzo transmogrify into a demon with breasts on its back, and an acid vision of a Vegas bar features large legit lounge lizards (courtesy of monster makeup man Rob Bottin). Flashbacks depicting Duke’s intro to the drug scene jump back to love-Haight relationships in San Francisco’s Summer of Love. Cameos and guest stars include Mark Harmon, Cameron Diaz, Flea, Lyle Lovett, Harry Dean Stanton, Ellen Barkin, Tobey Maguire, and Hunter S. Thompson himself. The film features a Geffen Records soundtrack mixing rock of the period with Vegas lounge tunes. Over the years, various script adaptations came and went as did numerous talents; people connected with past efforts to film Thompson’s book include Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and writer-director Alex Cox. Shown in competition at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

Despite returning to Las Vegas where the series began, Steven Soderbergh’s second sequel to 2001’s Ocean’s Eleven fails to rediscover the sheer insouciance of the original. George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon and the rest of the cast reprise their roles as the charming conmen, who this time target the hi-tech casino of ruthless Vegas businessman Willy Bank (Al Pacino). The strength of the series was always its breezy enthusiasm, but here there’s a chronic lack of fun: Pacino barely gets out of first gear, while Clooney seems to have his mind on other things. Only Ellen Barkin appears to be enjoying herself, shining in a comic role that sees her dosed with potent pheromones and seduced by a heavily disguised Matt Damon. Apparently there won’t be an “Ocean’s Fourteen”; clearly, Soderbergh’s under no illusions that Ocean’s winning streak has dried up at last. 

A career criminal who has been deformed since birth is given a new face by a kindly doctor and paroled from prison. It appears that he has gone straight, but he is really planning his revenge on the man who killed his father-figure and sent him to prison.

Robert De Niro plays the psycho fan from hell and the object of his obsession is baseball star Wesley Snipes in this misfiring thriller from Tony Scott. When Snipes is out of form and the San Francisco Giants hit a losing streak, pitiful loser De Niro moves into action with fatal consequences. Despite being directed by Scott with his trademark flash and dash, the sometimes over-vigorous use of mannered camera angles does nothing for an implausible plot that’s short of both suspense and surprise. Scott’s ace card is De Niro putting on his Taxi Driver act to good effect once more. For even though the edgy persona is familiar, it’s all this vulgar exploitation essay has to offer. 

This highly sophisticated black comedy takes the form of a pseudo-documentary as it follows a small-town beauty pageant from the auditions to the glitz and glamour of the finals. Kirsten Dunst plays a sweet girl from a trailer-trash background, who’s pitted against spoilt little rich girl Denise Richards, and someone in town is knocking off their competition. Ellen Barkin and Kirstie Alley are both excellent as the girls’ cat-fighting mothers, and overall this is a very refreshing and ironic take on suburban American life. Director Michael Patrick Jann has succeeded in making an accessible and intelligent independent film in the same vein as Fargo, and the result is so much more interesting than the usual Hollywood fare.