12B
Movie Reviews
Friday April 17,1998
Nightwatch bores audience to death
By Jeremy M. Doherty jdoherty@kansan.com Kansan movie critic
Sometimes there are movies so God-awful bad they manage to be entertaining in a guilty-pleasure sort of way. Shougirls certainly comes to mind, as does any handful of Charlie Sheen movies.
Then there are the movies like Nightwatch, an unbearable gorefest starring Ewan McGregor and Nick Nolte, the latest in the current trend of serial-killer movies. This movie is just plain bad.
*Nightwatch* is a weird mix of Freddy Krueger-style homages and perverted arthouse eroticism. Blatantly stealing visual styles from some of the best directors around, the movie descends into a putrid world of deprived sex and human mutilation, and then tries to laugh it off as a
Nightwatch
Kansan Rating: * out of ****
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Rated R for strong, morbid violence, profanity and sexual situations.
big joke.
the plot is simple, and normally, I don't care about that as long as the writing and the acting can compensate with some kind of emotional element. Nightwatch, however, is cold — a flawless exercise with tremendously assured cinematography and no soul to fill it.
Scottish thespian McGregor dons an over-enunciated American accent to play Martin, a college schmo who takes a job as a nighttime security guard at the local morgue. What, was the Burger King fully-
Nolte figures in as a sullen homicide detective looking into a series of recent murders in which the victims were prostitutes.
staffed?
While Martin is on duty, the dead hookers' bodies begin disappearing from their gurneys and end up in totally unrelated rooms down the hall. Nolte is suspicious. Is this new kid on the job actually the murderer, trying to cover his tracks?
Perhaps the killer is James (Josh Brolin), Martin's drinking buddy from school. After all, he's been pulling practical jokes at the morgue, and he has a fondness for humiliating prostitutes, taunting them with $100 bills and ordering them to say, "I love you."
Maybe it's the slimy, pill-popping corer (Brad Dourif), who spends the movie wagging his finger at Martin. Or is it
Nolte himself?
Does anyone really care? Of course not, and this is why revealing the killer's identity contains not a jolt of suspense or satisfaction. Director Ole Bornedal simply yanks the marionette's strings, never investing any feeling into the proceedings.
The swirling close-up shot of a victim's eye? Hitchcock's *Psycho*. The screeching violins during the climax? *Psycho* again. The moths swirling in the light fixture? David Lynch's *Lost Highway*. The dark, mud-colored sets? David Fincher's Seven.
The big finish involves gouged eyeballs, vials of semen and the stolen trademarks of better filmmakers.
One final thought: Nightwatch had been slated for a release way back in 1996, but instead it's been sitting on the shelf for nearly two years. It's too bad they didn't keep it there.
Virginia Woolf novel revived in Mrs. Dalloway
Richard Dalloway(John Standing) and Mrs. Dalloway (Vanessa Redgrave)
greet guests at a high-society party in Mrs. Dalloway. Contributed photo
By Jeromy M. Dekerty
jdoherty@kansan.com
Kansan movie critic
Remember that awesome car chase from The French Connection? The one where Gene Hackman goes after an elevated train, dodging rush-hour traffic and the occasional baby stroller?
If that's your type of excitement, it's'd be a good idea to skip Mrs. Dalloway. The closest it comes to contemporary vices is a brief, very brief, streaking incident involving a joyous young woman in a darkened hallway.
However, if audiences want to soak in layered performances, witty dialogue and a touching story about a 30-year heartache, this should do the trick.
ences should be craving tea and crumpets after the credits roll.
Though slowly-paced, this well-acted adaptation of Virginia Woolf's 1923 novel is delightful when it's recreating the customs of aristocratic London. If anything, audi-
By that time, they could also be reaching for the Tylenol, too. Mrs. Dalloway suffers from the same problem which ails so many other literary adaptations: It tries too hard to preserve the voice of its source material. As a result, we are exposed to a load of windy interior monologues.
Vanessa Redgrave, perhaps best known to America's youth as the arms dealer in Mission: Impossible, stars as Clarissa Dalloway, the pampered wife of a prominent politician (John Standing).
Clarissa decides to throw a party for all the town's big-wigs, learning in the process that her old suitor Peter (Michael Kitghen) has just popped into town.
Mrs. Dalloway
Kansan Rating: *** out of ****
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Rated PG-13 for emotional elements and brief nudity.
The movie flashes back 30 years, where the sprightly Clarissa (Natascha McElhone) had been pursued by both her
future husband and Peter (Alan Cox).
Naturally, the French Connection fans are rooting for Peter, which is why they won't like this movie. After marrying Dalloway, Clarissa matures into a wealthy socialite, always wearing a fake smile for the snooty house guests.
With Dalloway, she found stability. With the brooding Peter, a world traveler, she discovered her adventurous side.
British cast are commendable, but it's a shame that director Marleen Gorris and screenwriter Eileen Atkins didn't trust them more. Atkins' affection for continuous voice-overes becomes numbing, saying things which are already obvious from the actors' body language. If that weren't enough, Gorris tends to milk the emotions for every last drop.
With Peter coming to her party, Clarissa becomes overrun with questions. Did she make the right choice? Was she wrong to marry the safe, reliable man? Will the guests be bored to tears at her little party?
Be warned: this is a 100-minute movie that fills every second. Get that catnap in early in the day.
The performances by the all-
Josh Brolin not mimicking role in second horror flick
By Jeremy M. Doherty jdoherty@kansan.com Kansan movie critic
In his latest movie, Nightwatch, he costars with Ewan McGregor in a bloody, intense thriller about a serial killer.
Actor Josh Brolin insists that he's not repeating himself.
Nightwalk arrives in theaters only a few months after Brolin appeared last fall in Mimic, a similarly violent tale about a merciless killer.
Speaking by phone recently from New York, Brolin said he took the part in Nightwatch because his callous character, James, possessed a vulnerability he found attractive.
"He's more desperate than anything else," Brolin said. "He's a sad character, crying out for help."
Nevertheless, he admits a scene where James humiliates a prostitute in a restaurant was not easy for him to shoot.
"It was very unsetting," he said. "I was a lot more emotionally distraught, and it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done."
Brolin's foray into movies followed a successful stage career and a stint on the short-lived ABC western series The Young Riders.
Still, most probably remember him for his role as Sean Astin's bullying older brother in The Goonies. Kids still stop him on the street, 13 years later, to talk about that movie, he said.
Brolin recalled Steven Spielberg, the producer, was a unifying force on the set of the hit adventure movie.
"He was on the set constantly," he said.
"The guy has a heart of a child."
Up next for Brolin is Best Laid Plans,
which is due out later this year. Once again,
he said he jumped at the opportunity to play
a nuanced character.
"You can expect a really whiny performance," he said. "I play a vicious, winy guy that you wish you could slap around for about three months."