The List: 17 Jun 1994 (20/88)

FILM REVIEW

BACARDI BLACK

GREEN

STE ,

Are you waiting with bated breath for the new Eddie Murphy ﬂick? Get the **** out of here! The List casts its eyes elsewhere as we review the new films opening over the next fortnight.

I Shopping (18) Back out after three months in prison. teenager Billy (Jude Law) teams up with his slightly older girlfriend Jo (Sadie Frost). and immediately reinstates himself as the local hero. His is a disaffected world where drugs. crime and bass- booming music is the only culture. and ram—raiding — stealing fast cars and crashing them through store windows — is the only way to get a kick. But up against Billy are weary police officer Conway (Jonathan Pryce). whose colleagues provide the gang with the thrills of high-speed car chases. and dangerous crook Tommy (Sean Pertwee). who treats ram-raiding as a business. not a hobby. Maybe the leads are a bit too clean-cut to be believable. And maybe there‘sjust too much of a feeling of designer rebellion. But writer- director Paul Anderson — who‘s now off to the States to work on the feature adaptation of arcade game Mortal Kombat — has succeeded in creating a slick visual style and delivering breakneck set pieces that will appeal to the MTV

generation. At the same

time. however. by aiming ' unashamedly for the multiplex market. Shopping lacks the raw bite of otherjoyriding films. notably Richard Spence‘s BBC award- winner You, Me Aml Morley. See feature. I Three Colours: White (15) Dominique (Julie Delpy). a young Frenchwoman. decides to divorce her Polish hairdresser husband Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) on the grounds that their marriage has never been consummated. Left penniless and without even a passport. Karol is smuggled back to Warsaw by a friend. but vows to wreak revenge on the woman who ruined him. Not perhaps. the model storyline for a comedy. but Kieslowski‘s second instalment could be seen as the scherzo of the

tricolour trilogy. This time. the theme is ‘equality'. as Karol

_ combines misogynistic intent and confused passion in his desire to get even. Less lyrical than the Kieslowski we‘ve been accustomed to in recent years. it is nevertheless supremely crafted filmmaking. See preview.

I Police Academy: Mission To Moscow Yep. the one you‘ve no doubt been waiting for all year. And they can‘t fool us by dropping the numeral from the title: we know it's instalment seven. This time. ifyou really want to know. the team travel eastwards to bring down a Russian Mafia godfather. who is about to take over

the world through a

af§§$rs3 q 4

computer game. To date. ' the press haven‘t had the

item. but if the trailer consists of the good bits. it would be funnier to be caught naked in the heart of a Siberian winter. it's sad that this is contractually obliged to clog up cinema screens before its video release.

l pleasure of seeing the full

REALITY BITES

Hot long after graduation, lelaina

Pierce (Winona Ryder) gets fired from

her TV lob - which makes completing

her autobiographical documentary

rather difficult - and is forced to buy

food for her not unspacious flat on the

petrol credit card Daddy gave her

along with the old BMW. Flatmate

Vickie (Janeane Garofalo) is facing

baby-boomer trauma as the over-

educated manager of the local Gap,

while longtime friend Troy (Ethan

Hawke) lazes about in a slacker haze,

torn between his rejection of society’s

demands and his unexpressed love for

i lelaina. But Lelaina’s passions are

i directed more towards MTV-style

; cable station boss Michael (Ben

Stiller).

This, ladies and gentlemen, is

‘reality’. Or, at most, the navel-gazing,

.- middle-class, self-indulgent, spoilt-

5 kids reality that Hollywood pushes our

! way. Hot the loose chain of life that

i really did capture Generation X in

Richard linklater’s Slacker, instead, a

succession of blown-out-of-proportion

5 personal crises that are difficult to

3 relate to and almost impossible to

‘ sympathise with. Unlike Singles, the

1 music only partly captures the current

3 teen spirit: sure, Dinosaur Jr, Crowded

. House and The Juliana Hatfield 3 are

t in there, but the film opens with Gary

t Glitter, touches on Squeeze, Peter

Frampton and The Knack, and even has Troy’s band doing a cover of The

K‘>r:§‘

9M”;

iﬁwmbuu. of

5M '

“kafhﬁggiyru-

Reality Bites: ‘blown-out-of-proportion

personal crises’

Violent Femmes. Hot, I would say, the grunge backtrack to which these kids are supposed to drag out their weary

lives.

Maybe this feeling of dissatisfaction is the point, as this is a depiction of a disposable culture without role models or heroes, where expectations are a thing of the past and there’s only a typical love story to fall back on.

The characters,

and the film, have

problems properly expressing themselves. If this is reality, it sucks rather than bites. (Alan Morrison)

Reality Bites (12) (Ben Stiller, US, 1994) Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, Ben

Stiller. 99 mins. All UCls.

From Fri 17. All MGMs.

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Given that Robocop 2 was one of the

; worst sequels ever, one’s expectations é of Robocop 3 are, inevitably, extremely low. However, although it tones down the violence and lacks the cruel wit of Paul Verhoeven’s original, it is at least a vast improvement on Irvin Kershner’s disastrous follow-up. Told to aim for a PG-13 certificate in the US, Monster Squad director Fred

" Dekker opts for a more tongue-in-

cheek approach, while retaining the l lawless Dld Detroit Setting and the

1 central opposition between the

conscience-led Robocop and avaricious Dmni-Gonsumer Products supremo Dan D’Herllhy.

This time out, 0GP has instituted a draconian policy of evictions and street-clearance, driving ordinary people from their homes and sweeping the homeless off the streets in order to build a luxury apartment complex which will provide a high-security

haven for the city’s richest inhabitants. Initially an instrument of

’law and order’,

Robocop later rebels

against his masters, joining up with a motley crew of street people who fight to regain their homes and their

neighbourhood.

Working on a modest budget, Dekker provides some reasonable visuals and i action scenes, but the whole thing feels more like a pilot for a TV series than a film in its own right. One of the oddities of the film is that nobody - not even Murphy’s partner Lewis (Hancy Allen) — notices that Robocop is now played not by Peter Weller, but by Robert Burke, best known to genre l fans as the Man-With-Ho-Hame serial killer in Richard Stanley’s Dust Devil.

(Higel Floyd)

I- THE CHASE

L. ‘«'ﬁﬁ"

ad .

The Chase: ‘unroadworthy comic vehicle’

Nobody knows how

Charlie Sheen unerringly

sniffs out cinematic stiffs. but if this talent could be taught to police tracker dogs. then missing bodies would be a thing of the past. ()nce again. he deploys his bland features and trademark smile to no great effect in an unroadworthy comic vehicle that has go-fast- to-video stripes all over it. An escaped. falsely convicted bankrobber turned reluctant kidnapper. Jack (Sheen) jumpstarts his romance with unhappy heiress Natalia (Kristy Swanson) by abducting her from a gas station. The daughter of Dalton Voss (Ray Wise). the Donald Trump of California. she is none too pleased; even less so when her father offers a paltry ransom sum and turns her live-on-TV kidnap into a travelling media circus. As the ill-

matched couple settle

their initial differences and get better acquainted. eventually making out in the front seat while still on the move. the growing

convoy ofcop cars and

outside broadcast vans

I nears the Mexican border

and freedom — or perhaps

a dead end

Sometime vampire

~. slayer Swanson displays

line dental work and a synthetic ‘attitude'. mostly whining on about what a drag it is to be rich. so only rock ‘n‘ roll hard-

man Henry Rollins as a

‘standard issue‘ cop and blasé star of ‘reality TV' makes any lasting impression. Adam Rifkin‘s anonymous

movie adds another facet

to his bizarre directorial oeuvre; as RifCoogan. he made the puerile teen sex comedy The invisible Maniac and. as himself. he made The Dark Backward. a grim black comedy about a guy who grows a third arm. His swerving career seems headed south at breakneck speed. (Nigel Floyd)

The Chase ( l5) (At/om

Robocop 3 (15) (Fred Dekker, US, 1994) Rijkin. US. I994) Charlie Robert Burke, Hancy Allen, Rip Torn. 104 mins. From Fri 24. General

release.

The List: 17 Jun 1994 (Issue 229)