REVIEWS IN A HURRY For May 2005 Everyone Says I Love You - The Game (1996) - Judge Dredd - Killer's Kiss - Love's Labour's Lost - Paris Awakens The Game (1996, 128 min, R) *** - Directed by David Fincher, starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn. As surreal as mainstream American film gets. Director Fincher (“Seven,” “Fight Club”) uses his enormous powers of flash and production design to create a Kafkaesque nightmare about a powerful businessman watching not only his empire crumble but, apparently, the laws of physics and causality. After a mysterious meeting with his brother, the businessman loses his assets, is beset by criminals and clowns, and in general wonders if he’s losing his grip on reality. Casting is used as shorthand: as the businessman, Michael Douglas is in pure, heartless Gordon Gekko mode, and Sean Penn, as the brother, is a no-good sleazebag. Judge Dredd (1995, 96 min, R) ** - Directed by Danny Cannon, starring Sylvester Stallone, Armand Assante, and Max von Sydow. Listless and noisy post-apocalyptic-warzone adventure about a future cop (Stallone) framed, sent up the river, and out to uncover a conspiracy that involves his past. The villain (Assante) is not menacing, the comic relief (Rob Schneider) is more annoying than funny, and the stunt sequences are not impressive. The production design and ideas behind the future world are not, however, without promise: the population of a blighted and barely-livable Earth lives in giant towers around the globe, hundreds of stories high and home to millions. More Reviews in a Hurry for May 2005. Reviews in a Hurry for April 2005. Index of All Reviews.
Everyone Says I Love You (1996, 101 min, R) ***1/2 – Directed & written by Woody Allen, starring Alan Alda, Woody Allen, Goldie Hawn, and Julia Roberts.  The men and women of Woody Allen’s exceedingly charming musical sing and dance not because they’re good at it and you want your money’s worth out of that Broadway ticket, but because they’re so filled with joy or sadness that they can’t help it.  The proof is in their small voices and limited ranges, or in the open-faced exuberance that Edward Norton uses to stumble through a dance routine and reveal, once and for all, that he may be a lover but he’s no dancer.  The songs are all standards from the Big Band era, with mellow arrangements and non-professional singing, performed in a minimum of shots with dance routines that seem almost like a Muppet movie.  In a hospital, a guy throws down his crutches to do backflips while another sings in a strait jacket.  What’s also impressive is how “Everyone Says I Love You” is true to both the standard musical format and the standard Woody Allen movie.  There are A couples and B couples; there is comic relief in the form of foreigners, working people, or the elderly; a Shakespearean contrivance is used to bring two lovers together; and at the three-quarter mark everyone seems doomed.  There’s even a commanding father, booming at his daughter in the great hall, insisting that “you will marry your intended!”  Yet the message is clearly Woody’s:  is this all there is?  Should I be happy now?  What if I had done something different?  Should I risk all this for something better?  In Woody’s New York—of sophistication, intellectualism, and infidelity, where the solution to most marital woes is to scrap the thing and get a new mate—we find the short guy in glasses.  He’s wondering what life would have been like if this were a monogamous universe and he had stayed with his first wife (Goldie Hawn).  She lives with her husband (Alan Alda) and their mixed offspring, and we follow them through their romances.  One daughter (Drew Barrymore) seems set to have a storybook wedding with a bland but well-meaning lawyer (Ed Norton).  Another spends the summer in Europe getting into romantic mischief alongside her biological father (Woody).  While still another (Natalie Portman) shoots straight in her pursuit of a local heartthrob.  There’s also the son (Lukas Haas) whose issues are not romantic but ideological, as he wakes up one morning as a flaming Republican in so liberal a household.  Meanwhile, the contrivance is that Woody sets off in pursuit of his “dream” woman (Julia Roberts), armed with information his daughter acquired from eavesdropping on her psychotherapy sessions.  All this is watched by the German maid who may have worked for Hitler, the doddering grandpa, and the ex-con (Tim Roth) brought over for Thanksgiving dinner. Certainly everyone says “I love you,” but do they mean it?  As always, Woody directs comedy with much more virtuosity than we’re used to:  dialogue overlaps, conversation and musical scenes are done in relatively few cuts, and the use of foreground, middle-ground, and background action allows all the funniest lines to be even funnier by making them tossed off from the back of the stage.  As always, no one in Woody’s all-star cast behaves like a movie star.  As always, he is not mean-spirited when he condemns the foibles of his New York culture.