Section A · Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Friday, March 13, 1998
Message lost in ego trip
Only big one in The Big One is its director
By Jeremy M. Doherty
jidoherty@kanson.com
Kansas movie critic
If Roger and Me had Michael Moore hot on the trail of General Motors CEO Roger Smith, then his latest documentary, The Big One, has him aiming just a little higher.
Filmmaker Michael Moore speaks to a group of 350 KU students after a special screening of his new documentary, The Big One, at the Dickinson Theatres, 2339 Iowa St. Moore, known for his energetic charges against corporations and politicians, encouraged students to take a more active role in local government. Photo by Lisa Stevens John/KANSAN
Now, he's going after everybody.
The movie opens in 1996. The tousle-haired Moore is on the college lecture circuit, preaching to capacity crowds on the evils of modern capitalism and the sleaziness of (gaspt) political candidates. Moore recounts how he sent bogus campaign checks to President Clinton, Bob Dole and Pat Buchanan. The "donors" were hemp growers, Satanists and abortion-rights organizations. Buchanan, who is anti-abortion, gladly accepted the donation, Moore says to the roaring crowd.
The Big One was conceived as Moore was about to set off on a nationwide publicity tour for his bestseller Downsize This! As a result, this rough, clumsily photographed opus is part road movie, part public relations junket and part message movie as the populist auteur investigates the downtradden firsthand.
We get tons of little episodes that play like weekly installments of a *Seinfeld* rip-off. There's Michael Moore, gripping about the quality of fast food.
Review
In other words, in a movie about a serious economic
issue, we sure see a lot of clowning by its celebrity director. Moore seems to have forgotten that what made Roger and Me such a brilliantly subversive exposure was its tight focus on the unemployed of Flint, Mich. He had only a few minutes of screen time, and the attempts at ironic humor were less contrived than they are in The Big One.
The highlight of the movie, one sure to keep up folks humming for weeks, is Moore's confrontations with Phil Knight, CEO of Nike.
THE BIG ONE
Moore asks Knight why he maintains a major shoe plant in Indonesia that pays its teen-age workers an hourly wage of less than a dollar.
Kansan Rating:
**1/2 out of ******
Running time:
1 hour 35 minutes
Rated PG-13:
for profanity
Knight replies, incredibly,
that Americans don't want
to make shoes for a living.
The silence which permeates the moment, as the tycoon tries to come up with a proper answer, is chilling and easily makes Moore's point much more powerfully than any pithy one-liner could.
Moore is an impassioned spokesman for unionization, and when he finally allows the people who have been affected by downsizing to tell their stories, The Big One makes a stirring statement. But the director's self-serving toast to his celebrity status and haphazard jabs at humor seriously undermine that message.
Dangerous less risky than risqué
Film aims to educate but merely stimulates
By Jeremy M. Doherty idoherty@kansan.com Kansan movie critic
For every joyous costume drama like Sense and Sensibility, we are given a clunker like Dangerous Beauty to sit through.
The difference is that Sense was performed by a robust troupe of British thespians. Under Ang Lee's sturdy direction, the movie, while totally immersed in the customs and behaviors of England in the 19th century, maintained its relevance.
Review
The moral of Dangerous Beauty,however,attempts something more ambitious in suggesting that prostitution actually performs a needed social obligation.
Close, but no cigar. Despite lavish costumes and an impressive recreation of Venice at the peak of the Renaissance, Dangerous misses the gondola and tries
to be both an erotic melodrama and a poem to early feminism.
Catherine McCormack, known for her performance as Mel Gibson's doomed bride in Braveheart, is Veronica Franco, a sprightly young lady who wants more than a seamstress's life. She reads books, writes poetry and longs to run away with Marco Venier (Rufus Sewell), a dashing senator.
But class conflict gets in the way of that romance. Veronica learns from her mother (Jacqueline Bisset) that the family coffers have run dry. To compensate for the lack of green stuff, Veronica has to take over Mom's old job as Venice's No.1 coursether.
Veronica once becomes the highest-grossing slut around the canals. The local church officials pay her no mind because she's good for tourism, and hey, they like her, too.
But, darn it all, the nearby Turks show up, and the Venetian men go off to war.
DANGEROUS BEAUTY
Kansan Rating: **1/2 out of ****
Running time: 2 hours
Rated R for urtility and sexual situations
Rated R: for nudity and sexual situations
leaving Veronica at the wrath of their disgruntled wives.
The main problem with all this is that director Marshall Herskovitz doesn't seem to know if he should be playing all this at face value. Much of Dangerous only serves as a long lead-in to the sweaty love scenes.
He also is unable to keep control of his actors, each of whom appears to be performing in different movie. Although set in Venice, some actors are obviously British, others are French and a few register as Italian. Then, there's Fred Ward and Oliver Platt, playing nobles and sounding a lot like the Americans that they are.
But McCormack's charismaetic performance manages to slice through the cheese. Let's hope she finds a good script soon.
Untamed plot emerges in Wild Things
By Marcelo Vilela
mvieira @ kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
During Student Union Activities sneak screening of Wild Things last Tuesday, a student told me he loved the movie because it had everything guys like.
Review
After watching the movie, I have to assume guys like threesomes, average acting and confusing plots.
No cheap tricks were spared to achieve that goal.
Kevin Bacon, Matt Dillon, Neve Campbell, and Denise Richards' star in the movie. They are all deceitful backstabbers who lie compulsively to each other to achieve their goals.
Wild Things, produced by Kevin Bacon, is the first major movie directed by John McNaughton. Via satellite after the movie, McNaughton said his goal was to make a sexy movie
Dillon's character does not wear much clothing, nor do the women characters. The mandatory washing the car in tiny shorts and white T-shirt scenes are there, along with the recurrent nearly nude by the swimming pool scenes. We even get a glimpse of Bacon's frontal nudity.
McNaughton does deserve some credit for providing audiences with the most explicit threesome scene since Threesome. With scenes suggesting sexual innuendo abound, the movie's rating is deserved.
The plot revolves around a guidance counselor at a high school in Blue Bay, Fla., who is accused of raping one of his students. Nothing is given away by saying all four lead characters become involved in a sordid and confusing scheme to earn some easy money.
McNaughton started confounding the
WILD THINGS
Kansan rating: * out of *****
Running time: approx. 2 hours
Rated Rr for violence and nudity
audience as soon as he tried to develop this plot. He allows the movie to become a joke after the first half, introducing improbable twists to the story.
As the credits rolled, revealing scenes attempted to tie the movie's loose ends, but they only assure us the plot was a real mess. In one scene, Campbell's character extracts one of her own teeth with a wrench. Need I say more?
Bill Murray, playing a opportunistic, sleazy lawyer, redeems the movie with priceless appearances that convey all the comedy the movie unintentionally provides. Murray's performance alone is a good reason to watch Wild Things, but do not underestimate the three-seme sequence.