BY BONNIE DATT
SCARY? WE'LL GIVE YOU SCARY. Every movie coming out this month is about a cop or an excop. Besides that, there was a strange fit of guerrilla filmmaking, with strange groupings of directors and actors (RuPaul, Roseanne and Lily Tomlin?) And don't forget Halloween XLVI (we didn't bother previewing it — you know the deal). People are strange.
Strange Days
20th Century Fox
Ralph Fiennes (Quiz Show) plays Lenny Nero, an ex-cop who knows what you want and knows how to get it — via virtual reality. But when what someone wants is death, Lenny finds that virtual reality bites. Meanwhile, real reality isn't that great, either. If Nero doesn't stop fiddling around, the whole world will burn.
Blue in the Face
Miramax
Smoke has not even faded, and directors Wayne Wang and Paul Auster have already
fired up a sequel. They were having so much fun, they decided to keep the cameras rolling and let the sparks fly. Stars flew, too: Harvey Keitel, Roseanne, Michael J. Fox, RuPaul, Lily Tomlin and more.
Never Talk to Strangers
TriStar
Rebecca DeMornay's cradle-rocking days are over, but she's back into
risky business. Now she plays a criminal psychologist on the trail of a serial rapist. But someone's on her trail, too. Antonio Banderas (Desperado) plays the handsome stranger you shouldn't talk to. Or sleep with.
Heaven's Prisoners
Savoy
Alec Baldwin (The Shadow) plays a Louisiana cop who, bogged down by the
job, quits the force to live a peaceful life on the bayou. But when his family is threatened, he gets sucked back in and has to swim through mysteries and mysterious women to get justice.
Screamers Triumph Films
It's not about sex. It's about people making creatures to fight their battles on a wartorn planet. This race of killing machines is called Screamers. Not to be confused with Terminators. Or Replicants. Peter Weller plays the leader
of the good guys, who now need to destroy the warriors to stop the wars.
Four Rooms
Miramax
Four great directors (Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino), four story
lines, one hotel and one poor bellhop (played by Steve Buscemi, Reservoir Dogs) to tie it all together. Bruce Willis, Madonna and Antonio Banderas are among the guests.
Empire Records
Warner Bros.
Take the weird characters and personal crises of Clerks' day in a convenience store,
up the budget, set it in a record store and you have Empire Records. Debi Mazar (who "spiced" up Batman) and Liv Tyler (one of the "crazy"Aerosmith girls) star. And hey,the music should be good.
Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead
Miramax
Andy Garcia plays a nice-guy ex-gangster
Vampire in Brooklyn
who's called back into the life by The Man With the Plan, his former boss (Christopher Walken, Pulp Fiction). He recruits a few of the old cohorts, and they botch the job. So essentially, they're dead — what to do?
Paramount
Director Wes Craven (Nightmare on Elm Street) is no stranger to horror. What's strange is that Eddie Murphy is cast as the vampire. Angela Bassett (What's Love Got to Do With It) plays a New York cop he wants to neck with. See this if only to find out what that laugh sounds like on the undead.
Dead Presidents
Hollywood/Caravan Pictures
The Walking Dead didn't knock 'em dead. But now Albert and Allen Hughes, who did some knocking with
Menace II Society, take their own swing at the black Vietnam experience. Anthony Curtis (Larenz Tate, Menace) plays a 22-year-old who — guess what? gets warped by his war experience.
Get Shorty
MGM/UA
If you thought Vincent Vega was out of place in shorts and a "UC Santa Cruz" T-shirt, get a load of John Travolta as Chili Palmer. Chili, a loan shark, comes to Hollywood to collect a gambling debt and gets tangled up in the movie biz. Tsk. Always a shame when the good ones get corrupted.
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Screen Saver
Tie-Died: Rock 'n Roll's Most Deadicated Fans
Be grateful there's a movie. Even if you never followed the Dead — or thought Wavy Gravy was just a Ben & Jerry's flavor — you'll like the documentary Tie-Died.
Filmmaker Andrew Behar spent the summer of '94 traveling with Deadheads and capturing the phenomenon of a culture fused by music but elevated to spiritual status by the dedication of its followers. And considering the August death of founder Jerry Garcia, he has ensured that — on film at least — it will survive .
The interviews are colorful, the pace is lively, the film work itself is incredible — Tie-Died is just fun to watch. Yet it's amazingly thorough: There are the pot smokers and the Wharf Rats (drug- and alcohol-free Deadheads); vendors and concert security; people who make a life out of following the Dead and Dead culture scholars; and a lot of talk about peace, love and respect.
The-Died had a limited release in late September, but it will be truckin' on a spring college tour (sorry not in a psychedelic VW microtus).
The Reel Deal
Mailrats
You remember the '80s. Hanging out at the mail. Maybe — if you got really motivated — catching a movie. The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Mailrats will remind you of those days, says director Kevin Smith, who rocked Cannes last year with his low-budget first effort, Clerks.
"My intention was to make a John Hughes movie, but through my eyes," Smith says. "Mall-rats takes shots at the John Hughes angst."
You know, the day-to-day traumas of those crazy kids — not getting along with parents, breaking up, getting mistaken for a would-be assassin... But there's always the mall.
Former zip coder Shannen Doherty stars, as does Dazed and Confused's Jeremy London. But Smith's Clerks friends still make appearances, including motor mouth Jay (Jason Mewes) and his sidekick Silent Bob (played by Smith).
The language in Clerks, particularly Mewes', did some rocking of its own. How is it in Mallrats, Kevin?
"It's toned down, but it's still there. It's 'R' enough for Seventeen magazine not to do anything with us."
But it's no Kids (whose ratings controversy made Clerks' look like child's play)?
"Kids was like being locked in a room with 20 Jason Meweses. A little Jason goes a long way."
October 1995 • U. Magazine 35