Issue #13/68, July 1 - 15  

by Krazy Kino Kevin McElwee

How not to spend your Sunday afternoon.: sitting through a shite-cinema triple-header of Entrapment, The Thirteenth Floor, and Forces of Nature. Without benefit of chemical stimulant, no less. The air conditioning was nice, I guess, but that shit on the screen can get to fucking with your mind after a spell. Take my scant notes from the first flick, which amount to "cafe mocha" and "porn Seal ballad." None too indicative of a healthy mind, I think you'll agree. Still, never let it be said that I don't take my Kino Korner responsibilities seriously. Indeed, my own well-being means nothing so long as you fucking people are happy. I know you're not, but that's beside the point. The important thing is to figure a way of keeping Yeltsin holed up in the Kremlin for another term. And something tells me that semi-coherent babbling on the subject of the more-or-less current cinema will eventually lead us to that elusive golden ring. So away we go!

In view of how bad things are likely to get, it's probably best to begin with the good news. In our case the good news is better described as the not-so-bad news, but you ought to be used to that by now. It is no exaggeration to describe Entrapment as the filmic epitome of Western corporate product. I imagine you get the essence of my drift without too much in the way of detail. If you don't, consider yourself lucky (although they'll be getting to you soon enough, oh yes).

Anyway, our time would be better spent considering the sexually charged chemistry between Sean Connery and his 29-year-old (and Welsh-born!) costar, Catherine Zeta-Jones. The man will be turning 69 in August, let's not forget. Yet, at an age when many are lucky to be able to go without diapers, Connery holds his own remarkably, and if anything it is Zeta-Jones (who's not exactly hurting in the drop-dead gorgeous or screen-presence departments, although she does appear to have aged at an alarming rate since her schwing-ing breakthrough performance in Mask of Zorro) who seems to be batting out of her league, romantically speaking. Perhaps it's just the balls-to-the-wall ludicrousness of the explosive action sequences that lend an air of comparative realism to the film's more tender moments, but Connery here gives the impression of being the kind of senior citizen who could bag a successful model even if he weren't "Sean Connery." If ever you've sought incontrovertible evidence that all men are most definitely not created equal, well there you have it. Seriously though, my hat is off to the man.

Not much else to say about this one, actually. As in The Man Who Knew Too Little, director Joe Amiel-something-or-other sits back and lets his gifted leading man turn some pretty bleak material into a passably mediocre film that we all really could have done without. Throw in an obligatory exotic locale and a Y2K-based plot for rapid dating, and you've got 110 minutes of celluloid that's guaranteed not to leave you with any lasting impression. As a wide old geezer once said, "We find it very difficult to hate that which we cannot remember."

One floor down of the elevator of quality we find The Thirteenth Floor, which must be the 13th virtual reality film in the last two years. Like most entries in this impromptu genre, The 13th Floor is a mix of science fiction and pure fantasy that takes itself pretty damn seriously for being such garbage. In the absence of an engaging cast or mind-blowing special effects, the movie does manage to distinguish itself from the pack by taking an even more superficial approach to its intermediate-level philosophical-ethical questions than your average techno-thriller starring Keanu Reeves. Meddling with the like-like inhabitants of simulated, virtual worlds is wrong, the film seems to be saying in all seriousness. "Just leave us all the hell alone," as veteran large Negro character actor Dennis Haysbert puts it to the maker of his imaginary world.

If The 13th Floor had bothered to follow through with this feel-good quasi-humanist logic into the theological sphere it was tentatively leaning toward, it would have found itself parading around with the unwieldy argument that God has no right to play God (I guess a benevolent New Testament-type Christian God would be OK, however). Which is pure bullshit, of course. Just as the strong (take NATO, for example) get to fuck with the weak simply virtue of being strong, God gets to do pretty much whatever he wants to whomever by virtue of being God. The ancient Greeks--with their "myths" about gods murdering mortals for sport and raping young maidens by the dozen--were at least in the right ballpark.

One thing I did like: the "Money Orders 25c" sign hanging in the window of the white-trash supermarket. What do suburban rednecks do with all those cheap money orders, anyway?

Now for the really bad news: Forces of Nature, brought to you by those lovably bearded guys at Dreamworks SKG (I know Spielberg is the only one of the three with a beard, but are we going to split hairs here?). Oh sure, there were some industry naysayers who snickered when Steve, Jeff, and Dave first announced the creation of their dream film studio, where unbridled creativity would reign supreme and promising child actors would not be mercilessly transformed into maladjusted junkies. Even ignoring such obvious breakthroughs as an animated Biblical epic with a schmaltzy theme song sung by both Whitney Houston AND Mariah Carey, there is no denying the remarkable contribution the fledgling studio has made in such a short period of time. Why, without Dreamworks, there might have been just one 1998 summer blockbuster about a massive comet nearly destroying the earth. Scary, but true.

Dreamworks has made its mark in less obvious ways as well, most notably in its attempts to tear down Hollywood's notorious gender barrier by allowing a crop of inexperienced, untalented females to direct overpriced commercial and artistic failures just like their male colleagues. A cynical critic might be inclined to interpret this as Spielberg, Katzenberg, and Geffen's male liberal guilt at work or perhaps even a clever way of shutting up all the opportunistic interns they've sexually harassed over the years, but frankly I think it would be downright irresponsible even to suggest such a thing. What's more, mean-spirited, baseless arguments such as these are effectively rendered moot by the richly varied work of such Dreamworks rising stars as Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker, Deep Impact) and Brenda Chapman (Prince of Egypt). With Forces of Nature, Bronwen Hughes becomes the latest addition to this impressive, estrogen-packed roster.

From the mass-market techno-fueled bachelor party intro (with its unpleasant reminders of Very Bad Things, a very bad movie indeed) to the table-turning ending set amid an unconvincing back-lot hurricane (where it is revealed that--despite the marriage-is-hell worldview and humor that has been the movie's backbone throughout--crippled imaginations, loyalty, broken spirits, marriage, unfulfilling sex lives, and breeding are really what life is all about), this is a movie that never misses an opportunity to make the viewer want to retch. For some, the mere fact that it is a Nora Ephron-style romantic comedy with Ben Affleck and Sandra Bollocks as Gen-X stand-ins for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, respectively, will be sufficient reason to take a pass. Others may find themselves sucked in by the occasional (three or four in total) patch of amusing dialogue only to be revolted by "harmless" pot humor and the soundtrack faux-jazzy intimations of the titular weather system's gradual intensification.

As for me, I wouldn't have gone anywhere near this movie if my job didn't depend on it, but even assuming my most professional, open-minded attitude, I was only able to enjoy about 45 seconds of nausea-free viewing. For those keeping score, it was Ben Affleck saying "I was lucky just enough to be getting married" that incited the first heave. To say nothing of the degrading sentiment contained in the statement, a man who is lusted after by 99% of the women (lesbians included) in America has absolutely no business playing the sexual self-deprecation card.

In closing, all I can say is that Forces of Nature is probably the kind of movie that Billy Joel would like.