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Richard Linklater's latest junk is another pretentious talkie with three characters ten years out of high school, holed up in a rundown Michigan motel, trying to outwit each other about the past. How loud can I scream WHO GIVES A DAMN? Ethan Hawke plays Vince, a drug-dealer who never has grown up, and is in Michigan to visit his buddy John (Robert Sean Leonard). John is a "serious" aspiring filmmaker with a movie in the local film festival. Uma Thurman enters later in the movie as a past attraction of both men. Hawke is juvenile and slackerish (a much older version of his character in REALITY BITES). Robert Sean Leonard is as usual passive and rangeless as the brooding John, and Uma Thurman's character is an attorney that appears to still be a senior in high school. What ensues is mainly dialogue about the past with a little blackmail thrown in to keep the viewer semi awake, and the ususal sophomoric dialogue which has always been Linklater's true love. He really only got it right once, and that was DAZED AND CONFUSED. Here we don't care about the characters or their plight, we just wish the motel manager would kick them out so the movie could end and we could leave. 3 out 10

This movie, which I just discovered at the video store, has apparently sit around for a couple of years without a distributor. It's easy to see why. The story of two friends living in New York searching for their pal from high school who is now living homeless under the boardwalk at Coney Island, has flashes of being a very good film, but ultimately is weighted down by the story focusing on Stan and Daniel, rather than on their homeless friend Richie. Cryer is as usual very good and the film has a nice stark look to it, with the ghostly images of Coney Island. However, writer Cryer and director Richard Schenkman are too busy dealing with the fairly uninteresting lives of Stan and Daniel rather than focusing on Richie. One flashback in a music store, where Richie has a crush on an employee stands out and really shows the viewer where this film could have gone. But in the end, not much. Two many drawn out scenes of annoyance, such as inside the Skeeball building. RATING 4 out of 10.

Guilt is one of those inner demons that affects everyone differently, and often determines someone's future state of being. Alice Goodwin is consumed with it when her best friend's daughter accidently drowns while in her care. A MAP OF THE WORLD follows Alice over a period of a year, as she is center stage in two tragedies--the little girl's death and her arrest weeks later involving a seemingly unrelated matter.

Alice is married to Howard (David Strathairn), a man who is living his dreams of owning his own dairy farm. They are urbanites now living in rural Wisconsin. There closest friends, Theresa and Dan (Julianne Moore and Ron Lea respectively), are the parents of the deceased girl. Alice and Howard, along with their two young daughters live a simple but harried life, that comes crashing down after the death of the little girl.

On paper this sounds like a predictable TV movie, but its strength is not in contrived plot twists, and overly dramatic courtroom scenes, but rather in how one ordinary woman handles herself in the midst of tragedies that have engulfed her.

Sigourney Weaver is wonderful as usual in the role of Alice. She understands how often one has to heal themselves before they can continue the relationships with the ones around them, even their own children. Her husband David is supportive but is increasingly frustrated as Alice seems to be using her jail time (they are unable to come up with the bail) for her own interesting form of therapy. In one scenes she refers to her incarceration as getting away to a deserted island.

Other characters are strong in the film. Louise Fletcher plays David's passive aggressive mother who doesn't approve of Alice's unconventional ways. In one scene where Alice is trying to work through her own depression, she tells her to quit thinking such dark thoughts. Arliss Howard as Alice's attorney is also excellent as a lawyer who views his clients as pawns in a hyperactive game. Sadly, the viewer realizes that is the only way many attorneys keep up their competitive nature to be successful.

The film, directed by Scott Elliot is not without its faults. It's pacing is at times too slow, and the people within the community are painted too broadly as uncompromising country folk who are always suspicious of outsiders. One character mentions she knew Howard was strange when he painted his barn blue.

However, the strengths of this movie far outweigh its minor flaws. Julianne Moore is terrific as Alice's best friend. In many films her character would have been strictly consumed with anger at Alice, but here she is much more complex than that, which in turn makes her so much more believable.

A MAP OF THE WORLD is a powerful film about the strengths of family and friends and the capacity to trust one's own instincts in a world that quite possibly no longer believes in you.

As a popular pop song from 1999 remarked, tragedies are rarely able to be seen in advance. Instead, they blindside you on a Tuesday afternoon. This film completely understands that sentiment.

9 out of 10

When I read this book in the mid-eighties, one of the most interesting aspects of it was its listing of the items that seemed to intrigue the consumerism aspects of the yuppie's soul. Sure the book was horrificly violent as it followed Patrick Bateman on his random acts of homicidal violence, but it was a quick read--thought provoking, disturbing and over soon. Many hated the literary qualities of the book as the prose was based on a shopping list quality that I thought made the book even more intriguing. The movie starts off interesting as Bateman, played by Christian Bale, who should win an Oscar for overacting, tells the viewer of his facial cleansing regime and I'm thinking this is going to be pretty good. But that's where the fun ends and the movie begins simply following Bateman from one grisly incident to another. Problem with this is these scenes are not interesting. They show us nothing about the soul of Bateman and seem intended as nothing more than shock value. The premise of the book which was the utter shallowness of yuppie consumerism has been lost.

Not only is the film painfully slow, it is dull to the point that I was glancing at the clock every ten minutes. I soon realized that director Mary Harron's film is not an interesting piece about one man's utter descent into madness, glazed over with his yuppie pretensions, but a film about a killer that offers the viewer nothing more than your average slasher film. At least your average slasher film has some suspense where Harron's film has none of that. AMERICAN PSYCHO could have been a great movie, but obviously it got into the wrong hands and ends of being a cold passionless story about a man that stirs absolutely no emotions in the viewer.

Alvin Straight--old, stubborn, and in failing health, decides one day to visit his brother with whom he has been estranged for ten years. Problem is, all practical means of transportation seemed closed to Alvin, so he sets out on the 350-mile journey from Iowa to Wisconsin on his riding lawn mower. Straight, played by Richard Farnsworth who received an Oscar nomination and deservedly so, is stoic and quiet on his journey. He has a lifetime of wisdom, but dispenses it sparingly and without judgment to the locals he meets on his way.

Director David Lynch who made a name for himself studying oddball characters in everything from ERASERHEAD to BLUE VELVET and TWIN PEAKS captures Straight's story with just the right touch. In a refreshing departure from his normal style of film making, Lynch finally tells a story without raising the quirkiness level of everyone in the movie to irritating levels. As I watched Alvin go on his journey, the fact that his is on a lawn mower didn't faze me for very long. This film encompasses many big issues---aging, family ties, regrets of the past, and deeply buried secrets, but works them in an unobstructed simple manner.

Shot beautifully in the cornfields of the Midwest, Lynch uses the grandness of the land to seemingly contrast how all of us have very small lives in the grand scheme of life's major struggles. Just when it was looking as if Lynch could never reel himself in, he gives us a beautiful film about the quiet dignity of an old man, and for one day anyway Lynch is forgiven for his bombastic prior contributions to American cinema.

The great acting of Pitt and Norton and the top-notch visual stylings of director David Fincher cannot overcome the juvenile and absurd story of FIGHT CLUB. Fincher has remarked that his film is anti-violent, and there is certainly some validity to that. However, he seems to be having too much fun filming this overwrought film of two men trying to return to their masculine roots by having a series of fistfights with neighboring men. Some of the first half is fairly interesting and definitely puts a spotlight on the sadness of men who find they may have lost an aspect of their soul. However when the whole thing starts this cult-like following of epic-proportions and an idiotic last 45 minutes keeps you scratching your head, the film simply ends up being ridiculous. Want to see director Fincher really shine rent THE GAME with Michael Douglas or SEVEN with Pitt and Morgan Freeman. Also want to see this same story told much better rent Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE.