#23 | December 4-17, 1997  

Speed was a superior action flick for two reasons (OK, three if you count the phat theme music); Speed 2: Cruise Control has exactly two holdovers from the original. Surely the Hollywood hacks had the sense to make these two things were the same, right? Of course not. For one thing, Dennis Hopper's head was torn off at the end of the first one, so he's out. And I guess Keanu just had better things to do. Good decision as it turns out, cuz Speed 2 blows chunks.

What we do have from the first flick is that goofy Tune Man guy whose Jag got totalled. This time he loses a speedboat. Big deal. The other second-time loser is Sandra Bollocks. Plenty of folks (including The New Yorker's Anthony Lane) thought she was a cutie in the original, but I didn't. This time she's even worse--mainly because she knows she's a star. You do get to see her in a bikini, but the sensible people will stay away.

Sluggish doesn't even begin to describe the "action" here. Crewcutted Keanu replacement Jason Patric is clearly not up to the task, and psycho killer Willem Dafoe is as dorky as ever. Even a cruise ship crashing into a tropical resort comes off as less interesting than the goo stuck in my bathroom plughole. By the end you'll feel much, much older.

In other news, Kenneth Branagh takes yet another stab at Shakespeare with a four-hour version of Hamlet, the first film of the complete text of the play. I guess that's why this is called William Shakespeare's Hamlet. I would predict that it's only a matter of time before John Grisham and Michael Crichton are afforded a similar authorial respect, but this has already happened (see the upcoming John Grisham's The Rainmaker). None of this matters much, though, because here in Moscow we get the two hour edited version, sort of an anti-director's cut that makes discussing the film all but pointless. Purists and Branagh fans will complain mightily, while others probably won't want to sit through the short version any more than they would the long one. The cuts really are severe--top-bill actors such as John Gielgud and Gerard Depardieu have had their roles removed entirely (they're still in the credits, though), and the crucial play within the play is reduced to the few brief lines it is usually given in film versions.

What's left over? A few good performances, particularly Branagh regular Derek Jacobi's remorsefully seedy Claudius and Kate Winslet's cringing (and briefly naked) Ophelia. At the other end of the spectrum, I have no idea what Michael Maloney's Sonny-Bono civil-servant Laertes is supposed to be about.

As for the Hamlet dude, Kenny Boy has definitely been working out, and he does bring some vigor to the role. But something about the form-fitting black suits, bleach-blonde buzzcut, and pointy beard made my skin crawl. It's possible that Ken got more than professional enjoyment out of his uncredited role as an SS officer in Swing Kids. Come to think of it, Claudius also had sort of an Aryan brotherhood thing going. Then again, they are supposed to be Danish.

The bleached buzzcuts really got me thinking--it's a damn shame Sting never got around to doing Hamlet before he had that lobotomy a few years back (just think back to his scorching performance in Dune if you have doubts). It's too late for that now, but we can still imagine it. Toss in Keanu as Laertes, and you've got a swordplay finale worth talking about.

Back to reality for a minute. Hamlet's big problem is the monotonous direction. Branagh's got all of about two tricks up his sleeve--rotating dolly shots and soliloquys shot into a mirror. The mirror business is sometimes effective (not when they goof up and let reflected equipment get into the shot, though), but the dolly shots get old real quick. The low-rent effects don't help, either; they just look silly. I don't think we're supposed to think of Darth Vader when the ghost of Ham's father appears. Maybe the visual monotony is supposed to draw attention to the text, but in that case why even bother with another Hamlet movie? Shouldn't Strange Brew have been the last word in the series?

Next up: The Ice Storm, a rarity for two reasons. First, because it made it to Moscow a little more than a month after its US premiere. Second, because it's a sentimental familatragicomedy loaded with nostalgic 1970s artifacts that somehow avoids being sappy and shite.

And it easily could have been. Philip Roth novels, that famous crying Indian commercial, teenagers experimenting with sex while wearing bulbous Richard Nixon masks--not the sort of thing you usually associate with thoughtful, subtle filmmaking, but Ang Lee pulls it off. His movies are effective for a number of reasons, but the most novel is the attention he devotes to music. I'm talking about the quirky gamelan bits and other incidental music, not the standard-issue '70s pop hits. The music here--simple, unobtrusive, and yet always distinctive--seems to have something of a Mike Leigh influence.

Kevin Kline and Tobey Maguire as father and son are the film's narrative and moral center, but Joan Allen (their wife and mother, respectively, she has the perfect face for aerodynamic '70s fashions), Sigourney Weaver (an outstanding vixenish turn as the neighborhood slag), and Elijah Wood (her son, a dreamy, precocious 14 year old) also play key roles. A terrific grab bag of kooky '70s characters, including a lecherous longhair new-age priest and a Caesar hairdo-sporting Liam Gallagher lookalike, round out the field. I know that isn't much to go on, but trust me, you'll dig it. As long as you don't mind a little bit of goofiness, that is.

Win Wenders' latest,The End of Violence, is also playing this weekend. It's probably worth forking out your dough for, but I can't say for sure because I haven't seen it yet. Go figure.