12 MONKEYS http://chaplin pkbaseline.com/screen/strange/reviews/2monkey html 12 MONKEYS (United States, 1995) SYNOPSIS: The year is 2035 and humankind subsists in a desolate netherworld following the eradication of 99% of the Earth's population, a holocaust that makes the planet's surface uninhabitable, and mankind's destiny uncertain. A desperate group of scientists secure a reluctant volunteer, Cole, to embark on a dangerous mission back to the year 1996, where they hope he can help unravel this apocalyptic nightmare before it completely erases humanity from the planet. When Cole arrives in 1996, he meets Jeffrey Goines, the unstable son of a renowned scientist, and Dr. Kathryn Railly, a psychiatrist and author whose initial alarm over his prophetic warnings of the world’s fate soon turns to conviction, and she comes to believe that mankind may indeed be doomed. While also questioning his own sanity, Cole struggles with Railly to unravel the mystery with his only two clues: a haunting childhood memory and a series of puzzling symbols from a group known only as The Army of the Twelve Monkeys. REVIEW: Director Terry Gilliam, the Hieronymus Bosch of film, mixes grittily real phantasmagoria with a scomfiully satiric hand--or, when narrative conventions prove too cumbersome, sleight-of-hand. In his serious and ambitious TWELVE MONKEYS, an ill-defined hero and reliance on cliches--visual and narrative-muddle a potentially enthralling work. Scripted by David Peoples and his wife Janet, an Oscar-nominated documentarist, TWELVE MONKEYS is "inspired" by the French cult classic short LA JETEE (1962), written and directed by Christian Francois Bouche-Villeneuve under the pseudonym Chris Marker. In LA JETEE, a WWIII survivor is sent to both past and future to obtain a powerful energy source. One fateful stop is at an airport observation jetty, where as a child he saw a man die and a woman react with muted horror. In TWELVE MONKEYS, a 1996-97 pandemic has killed five billion people. Some three decades later, cartoonish mad scientists time-trip "volunteer" James Cole (Bruce Willis) to seek clues to the virus’ origin. They inadvertently send him to 1990 and WWI France before landing him in November 1996, In 1990, he encounters psychiatrist Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) and mental patient Jeftrey Goines (Brad Pitt), who eventually comes to lead a revolutionary animal rights group, The Army of the Twelve Monkeys, who may have unleashed the virus.12 MONKEYS ‘htp://chaplin.pkbaseline.com/screen/strange/reviews/12monkey.html Is Cole for real or just crazy? Gilliam undercuts that suspense with clear evidence throughout that Cole is indeed from another physical reality. More troublingly, Cole is a cipher, less a character than an all-purpose plot driver. Most of the rest of the roles--including asylum director Dr. Fletcher (Frank Gorshin) and Goines’ arrogant scientist father (Christopher Plummer)--are one-note caricatures. Plot contrivances abound, and Gilliam resorts to such tired cliches as the sane man who can't convince doctors he's not mad, the Gothic-horror asylum and the requisite hookers-in-the-police-station. He also swipes a famous shot—-of a woman's face distorted grotesquely through a fish-eye lens-from his own BRAZIL. --Written by Frank Lovece STARRING: Bruce Willis - James Cole Madeleine Stowe - Railly Brad Pitt - Jeffrey DIRECTOR: Terry Gilliam U.S. DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures RUNNING TIME: 130 mins. MPAA RATING: R. RATING: Su Su 3TWISTER bttp://chaplin.pkbascline.com/screen/strange/reviews/twister html AAO, Hanne 5 “a cas vay (ae . TWISTER (United States, 1996) SYNOPSIS: The largest storm to hit Oklahoma in more than half a century is brewing, and it promises to drop multiple twisters into Tornado Alley. It's the storm that two rival groups of scientists-—Jo Harding and her band of brash university students, and corporate-sponsored Dr. Jonas Miller and his sleek, crack cadre with their state-of-the-art research vans--have been waiting for to earn their place in meteorological history. Each team wants to be the first to launch their own equipment pack inside a twister to transmit valuable scientific data about tornado behavior. But to do so, they must put themselves directly in the path of the marauding monster--and stay always just ahead of the swirling twister, anticipating its every move. Adding to the charged atmosphere, Jo's soon-to-be-ex-husband, meteorologist Bill Harding, reluctantly joins Jo and his old crew for this last, epic chase. REVIEW: Less a movie than a theme-park attraction, TWISTER is an unintentionally funny B-picture until the special effects kick in. Then it becomes a rollercoaster ride so dizzingly sensational--in all senses of the word--that you don't even need motion-control seats to feel it. As for a real story or real characters~well, the 1970s disaster movies tried those, and they were laughable anyway. After a 1969 prologue, in which a girl watches her daddy get killed by a tomado, we cut to present day Oklahoma. There's a mean wind a-blowin’, and that's a breath of fresh air to eight grad-schooly young storm watchers led by the grown-up girl, Jo (Helen Hunt), who's now apparently some sort of professor. Enter soon-to-be-ex-husband Bill (a colorless Bill Paxton), there to pick up divorce papers so he can marry therapist Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz, in a "Sure, honey" role). Back when he was a wild-man storm watcher, Bill designed a scientific barrel o' sensors called Dorothy. Jo, he discovers, has had four built, hoping to get one up into a funnel to glean unprecedented information about the inner life of killer storms. Bill signs on, seduced by both the camival-like atmosphere and by anger that Dorothy has been ripped-off by corporate storm watcher Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes). You can tell Jonas is bad by his fleet of glossy black vehicles. Jo and Bill survive a day and night of increasingly deadly tornadoes: flyingTWISTER http://chaplin.pkbaseline.com/screen/strange/reviews/twister:html cows, flying gas-filled tanker trucks, and flying farm equipment that regularly lands on the road in front of them with a scary thunk. And the extended climax isn't just one spectacular sequence, but several. The characters are stick-figures: Much-married co-writer/co-producer Michael Crichton is so bad at writing relationships, we don't even know why Jo and Bill divorced, or who that other Bill was that Melissa thought she was marrying. But as a thrill-ride, TWISTER is breathtaking. ~-Written by Frank Lovece STARRING: Bill Paxton - Bill Helen Hunt - Jo Jami Gertz - Melissa Cary Elwes - Dr. Jonas Miller Lois Smith - Aunt Meg. DIRECTOR: Jan DeBont U.S. DISTRIBUTOR: Wamer Bros MPAA RATING: PG-13 RATING: Su Se &Waterworld |http://chaplin.pkbaseline.com/screen/strange/reviews/waterwor html AWG anus od WATERWORLD (United States, 1995) SYNOPSIS: Centuries of global warming have caused the polar ice caps to melt, flooding the earth as civilization is left adrift. The inhabitants of this once-flourishing planet cling to life on incredible floating cities, their existence constantly threatened by Smokers--bands of marauding pirates who roam the featureless surface of Waterworld. For the survivors, one chance remains: a solitary hero, known only as the Mariner. Battling the Smokers and their ruthless leader, the Deacon, the Mariner sets out with a beautifull woman and a mysterious little girl on a search for a new beginning. REVIEW: Well, i's not HUDSON HAWK. Even so, the most expensive movie ever made also isn't the sweeping epic it wants to be. The tone of the long, lumpy WATERWORLD shifts with the wind: The film never decides whether it's an over-the-top STARGATE or a seafaring SHANE. It's a movie so derivative that it rips off not only THE ROAD WARRIOR but aiso the balloon-liftoff scene from THE WIZARD OF OZ--substitute old coot Gregor (Michael Jeter) for the Wizard, Helen (Jeanne Tripplehorn) for Dorothy, and tattooed child Enola (Tina Majorino) for Toto. Absence of vision is a liability for any film, let alone one reportedly budgeted at $65 million and coming in at about $100 million over that. Director Kevin Reynolds stormed out after assembling his cut. Producer-star-former-friend Kevin Costner then did hhis cut. The result is a movie melange. Dennis Hopper's, cartoony, totally evil villain Deacon and the serious, enigmatic loner (Costner)--who's either nameless or called Mariner—seem to be in different movies, Ina landless future, humankind survives on boats and atolls, the polar icecaps having melted and submerged the world. It's unclear when--the dialogue says "hundreds" of years ago, yet canned food, cigarettes and Magic Markers survive intact. However, it's been plenty enough years for evolution to have given Mariner gills and webbed feet. Such holes in the poorly thought-out plot mount endlessly as characters search for a place called, imaginatively, Dryland. Alll they had to do was turn the map upside down. Seriously. Hopper's fun, and Mariner's Rube Goldberg catamaran is even niftier than the Batmobile. But when you get to a narrated coming-attractions trailer within the movie-Enola's thapsodic voice-over intercut with scenes of Costner's derring-do—you know it's either sink or sink.Waterworld bbup://chaplin.pkbaseline.com/screen/strange/reviews/waterwor html ~Written by Frank Lovece STARRING: Kevin Costner - Mariner Dennis Hopper - Deacon Jeanne Tripplehom - Helen Tina Majorino - Enola Jeter Michael - Gregor DIRECTOR: Kevin Reynolds iniversal Pictures U.S. DISTRIBUTOR: RUNNING TIME: 120 min MPAA RATING: PG-13 RATING: Ss Se Copyright 1998 by Baseline II Inc. All rights reserved.