RENTAL Rushmore (15) 92 mins *fitt t
How often are your expectations confounded by modern American cinema? Be honest: almost never. Part of the joy of Wes Anderson's truly oddball comedy IS its unpredictability. At its heart is the rivalry between two friends for the affections of OliVia Williams’s young, Widowed teacher at the prestigious, eponymous private school in Texas. And the rivals? Precocious adolescent student Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman, dOing Holden Caulfield via Oliver Hardy) and depressed millionaire businessman Herman Blume (Bill Murray). Full marks. Simultaneously released on DVD, priced £15.99. (Buena Vista) (MF)
The Mummy (15) 125 mins Hit
The Mummy was the least frightening of the Universal horror movie monsters of the 305 and 405; it could barely walk, so how could it catch you? Bad news then that the Egyptian priest embalmed alive for copping off With the Pharaoh’s missus is back to exact an apocalyptic curse on the Iivmg? Not really, because he's been resurrected for a thrilling 19205 Indiana Jones-type adventure. Less horror than boy’s own adventure and rollicking good fun With it. Simultaneously released on DVD,
priced £19.99 and Video retail, priced £15.99. (Columbia Tristar) (MF)
20 Dates
(15) 92 mins i: * it
It's a novel concept: make a mowe about a guy making a movie about trying to find love in Los Angeles by going on twenty different dates. Throw in an unseen shady hood as funder of the piece and you should have a quirky work of comic genius. Well, almost. It is kind of quirky and kind of comic, and despite the whining monologue
from the star (newcomer Myles i Berkowitz) you don't actually want to
kill him until it’s almost over. (Fox
5 Pathe) (MR)
Sweet Angel Mine
(18) 85 mins **
Big claims have been made for this being the nastiest, sickest and most psychotic mOVie yOu’ll have the displeasure of VieWing. DispleaSure is right. Paul (Oliver Milburn) is a young Londoner in search of his missing father in the Wilds of Nova Scotia The locals are less than helpful and, as the truth is revealed, there are all kinds of bloody flashbacks and attempts at creating a claustrophobic hell. The film falls short With its flimsy premise and an eye on superior predecessors: 'Twin Peaks meets Psycho’, my arse. (High Fliers) (BD)
Disturbing Behaviour (15) 80 mins t it
Take a Cult sci-fi 70s thriller (The Stepford Wives), update to a modern day American high school and film it in Buffy style and what do y0u have? A mediocre teen fantasy as forgettable as its uninspiring title. Cradle Bay has more than its fair share of Ivy League school kids, but when the ’perfect’ pupils begin running amok, indulging in Widespread GBH, the suspicions of class outcasts -— Katie Holmes and her gang — are aroused. All of which is pure tedium. (Columbia Tristar) (MF)
A Cool, Dry Place
(12) 95 mins * ‘k
When handsome lawyer Vince Vaughn is left by his flighty Wife, Monica Potter, he has to bring up their son alone. Pressures of single fatherhood force him out of the big city and he moves to rural Kansas to start over. There he meets veterinarian assistant Joey Lauren Adams but, Just as romance blossoms, Mrs Vaughn returns leading to him being confused and stressed and unhappy. Pretty performers and a worthy subject, but this smacks of TV mowe and, as such, is a big yawn. (Fox Pathe) (MF)
Mickey Blue Eyes (15) 98 mins *
You could, we suppose, rent this video as a sick joke on someone who drove
RETAIL Alfred Hitchcock Collection
Master of suspense. Doddery old ' misogynist. Manipulator of audiences. critics and actors. Alfred
Hitchcock has been accused of, and hailed for, many things in his time,
‘ but he would have been upset most
about claims that he made a bad
, film. Remarkably though, in a
directorial career which spanned 53 movies between 1923 and 1976
(that’s one a year), there are not
many duds flying around.
This collection is inSpired by the
cinema re-release of Rear Window
(think) and contains seventeen of ; his greatest hits from the
Hollywood period. such as the
wonderfully paranoid Suspicion
: (****), through to the later, more
explicit works including Hitch’s only
'18', Frenzy (*tti). Alongside the famous landmarks - Psycho (* * ~k * t), The Birds (it t i t)
and Vertigo (*****) — there are the slighter moments including the
marital comedy Mr & Mrs Smith (iii) and the subtly macabre The Trouble
With Harry (****).
reviews VIDEOS
‘9
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Suspense and sensibility: King Alfred
Naturally, every collection has a collector up in arms and fault will be found in omissions such as Notorious, Strangers On A Train and North By Northwest. Particularly when space is found for the awful and, even by his standards, thoroughly anti-women Marnie (**) and the regrettable supernatural heist swan song. Family Plot (it).
Still, to the list of descriptions above. you can add the only one that really mattered: genius of cinema. (Brian Donaldson) ; l Available to buy from Universal on Mon 14 Feb, priced f 9. 99 each.
over your cat. Much safer on your sanity to bypass it completely. Hugh Grant's character (no different to Notting Hill, unsurprisingly) is an auctioneer whose bride-to-be's father is part of a notorious crime family. Cue misunderstandings, double crossings and the FBI, while Grant bumbles his way as the sensitive English gent. You'll be shouting at this for all the wrong reasons. (Universal) (SB)
Warlock III: The End Of Innocence
(18) 91 mins at
Six good-looking college kids. A spooky house in the middle of nowhere. A haggard old woman, for pity’s sake, forecasting doom before their arrival. You’d think Scream had never been made. Sure, the sadistic killer is a warlock, but this tenuous connection to the earlier movies doesn’t hide the fact that this is nothing more than an in-a-rut slasher
rehash. A film so bad they couldn’t
even persuade the risible Julian Sands
to return. (High Fliers) (AM) RETAIL
7 Night Of The Headless : Horseman
(PG) 60 mins * it at a:
Washington Irving’s fiendish tale of horses, heads and holy hell in the small village of Sleepy Hollow is certainly getting a run for its money, right now.
, Galloping on the heels of Tim Burton's excellent adaptation is this 3D
animated version which has equal celebrity prominence with Tia Carrere,
deVil wrong With that ll‘.‘.’t’lillt‘lll Century Fox £9 99) (BD) Late August, Early
September (15) 107 mins * k x1
Falling in love Falling out of love
Contemplating life There’s a \.'.'li(,l(‘ Cinema industry in Fienr h that's dedicated to raking iliis (iioiinrl out-i and over. It's now stir li laiiiiliai territory
that OliVier Assayas’s latest liliii is handicapped froin the stait, (".t"li though his loose, (l()( tllllt‘lll<il“,’d‘)l,“lt‘ camerawork gives the at tors llll(lll(llli(_) The Beach’s Virginie lerloyen) plenty of room to create emotionally (ierlilile characters. Middle-class French life in its daily doses, spread over a year and a hit. Soapy faSCination for those WIlli an eye for subtitles. (Artificial Eye £15 99) (AM)
Biogenesis (12) 119 mins it Jr
Very much one for the X lilmpliile, only. Three episodes ()1 paiaiioitl
nonsense are (raininerl together as our dynamic duo set out to (list over whether the genesis of humanity is
based on an alien soiiire A Iii/aiie Spinning artefact may hold the answer to this secret and help Mulder find out why he is havrnq di/xy spells (Jiin the strongest Will surVIve Wdit hing IlllS. Season six of the X—l‘i/es is also available in a box set, prited £79 99 (Twentieth Century Fox £14 99) (BD)
REVIEWERS THIS ISSUE: Simone Baird, Brian Donaldson, Miles
Fielder, Alan Morrison, Mark Robertson
, William H. Macy and Luke Perry ‘ * * H *STAR 5.6.333): Love is the slug: Leo fires on all cylinders in Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, part of gemng In onfthe Vices ah“- .Thel * * ** Very 00d the Romance Collection from Twentieth Century Fox, which also includes The Truth “Wm”? Watc "‘9 ,t '5 '5 C 05? to l * * * W0” <3 5'101 I ‘ About Cats And Dogs, Ever After and Hope Floats. Individual films are available to play'ng 5‘ V'deo game W'thOUt gett'ng * * Belqw average 3 i 1r » r 9 You ve been warned _ J
buy now, priced £9.99, i sore thumbs. And there's nothing the
3—17 Feb 2000 THEM“