helps ch as
is Coy. d. If aey can
ir ass-
it as it a Tucker
note. The
e says,
shole."
asshole
over he
peo-
arious,"
books he and off an ap- hook up
ations a lally seri- with all ally when as New
em back.
hook up
Money Serve
X Stories,
January.
contains 10
ate and 12
is such as
h a girl he
owing her
force her to
see her. He
don't want
evil. Rap-
them. Very
her that if
mates, she
man and ane keeps to to women. things don't me and they o broke to
a nice guy, with the opish last;" he con for that
girl
mond, Okla.
e "nice guys
nt. "The nice
air nice girls
But the real
ever get any-
t"
reviews
Reviews: film
It occurred to us that our review ratings system may have been a bit vague. So as a service to our readers, we've decided to offer up a scale of comparison each week to help you decipher what each star rating means. This week, we've chosen movie trilogies as our category of examples. (Please excuse our shameless attempt to work the Problem Child trilogy into our magazine.)
If you have any suggestions for future categories, email us at joyplay2005@gmail.com. Hope this helps.
Ratings: Trilogies
Excellent
Lord of the Rings, The Godfather
Really good Star Wars: Episodes 4.5.6, Indiana Jones
Good Back to the Future, Die Hard, Naked Gun
Sucks
Free Willy Rambo, Porky's,
Cannonball Run
(Dare Players)
Sucks huge
Problem Child, Crocodile Dundee
Doesn't suck, not good Star Wars: Episodes 1,2,3 Home Alone
MOVIE
The Weather Man
R, 101 minutes, Southwind Theatre
★★★1/2
The Weather Man is a dreary move. The scenes are gray, the weather is damp, and smiles are few and far between. When the characters talk, they tend to talk just a little. more. slowly. than most folk.
The lynchpin of all this drear is the titular weatherman, David Spritz (Nicolas Cage). David is trying to make things right with his children and ex-wife, impress his Pulitzer prize-winning father and land a high-paying job as weatherman on Hello America. ("A very American accomplishment," his father calls the job, without contempt.) The results of his efforts are often laughably (sometimes even humorously) pathetic.
Mr. Cage can suck the light out of a scene like nobody's business. Here he uses his natural talent for gloom to good effect. Dreary it might be, but Weather Man is not dull. It flirts with dullness,
but ultimately manages to evoke just enough laughter and interest to avoid it.
The most affecting scenes are David's interactions with his children and his father (Michael Caine, doing a mediocre impression of an American, and a good impression of a smart man who doesn't really understand his son's world). Watching David try to get through to his family despite his limited communication skills is painful, but every now and then the audience's patience is rewarded.
The movie is too aware of its own poignancy, but at least it has some poignancy. The Weather Man might have been nothing more than a streak of pretentiously bleak deadpan, if it didn't have a heart.
- Kit Fluker
The Warriors:
UltimateDirector's Cut
R, 96 minutes, Now available on DVD
Movie: ★★★☆★
DVD: ★★★☆★
Now listen up all you suckas out there. The Warriors has the recipe for a perfect cult movie: Made in 1979 with a bunch of actors nobody's ever heard of; written with cheesy dialogue; set in a dirty, "sometime in the future" NewYork City and populated with a bunch of fashion-coordinated gangs who beat the crap out of each other for 90 minutes. That's The Warriors, now released on one of those director's cuts every movie seems to have, but this one deserves. In fact, the director's cut adds elements to the movie that make it better.
The plot is simple enough. Nine delegates from The Warriors, one of several hundred gangs in New York, leave their home turf of Coney Island for a meeting where every major gang in the city has been assembled. When The Warriors are framed for the murder of the president of the biggest gang in the city, they have to fight, rumble and bop their way back home during the course of a night.
Every gang and police officer in the city is out to get them, so this is harder than it seems. With gangs ranging from the all-women Lizzies to face-painting baseball-bat carrying Furries, the movie plays like a cheesier, violent version of West Side Story.
The Warriors are more than up for the challenge, armed with one-liners ("I'll shove that bat up your ass and make you a Popsicle" is one of my favorites) and wicked street-fighting moves. For the DVD, director Walter Hill adds an introduction to create parallelism between the movie and a classic Greek epic, and scenes were manipulated to jump along comic book panels. Missing, though, is a much-needed commentary from Hill. But as cult movies go, this one ranks up there with Escape from New York. Can you dig it?
—Jon Ralston
11.03.05 Jayplay.17
---
---