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:., The Game us (1997) Dlr: Davld Flncher
n a corporate world of paintballing and team building exercises, The Game would be in the gold card league of executive nightmares. Set in modem day San Franslsco, Michael Douglas plays whltey stockbroker, Nicholas Van Orton, having in the course of his career cornered the selfish wealth market nicely and living a dark immaculate life, friendless to the nth degree and steeped in money. Which as we all know doesn't buy you love, especially if you've done nothing to deserve it in the last 20 years. Deborah Kara Unger is sidekick Christine, looking suitably bashed up and knowing. Sexy too, of course. Sean Penn pops up as Conrad, the problem brother (well, the one with the more obvious problems anyway) and offers a novel birthday present. The innocuous little card from the Consumer Recreational Services company, "sounds like they make tennis racquets," seems suitably discreet and tantalising too. Good ol' Mike, his curiosity motivated by
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arrogance as much as anything, takes it up. Soon bits start falling off his life, a ghastly momentum gathers and and it's sink or swim • literally, before going on to make full use of torturous quandries, awful coincidences, eerie parallels with the past and extreme paranoia. The action unfolds with no clues as to who is behind the turning of events. A tense, cold piece, it's a nasty Hollywood table as there is. Although David Fincher delivers a slightly more sutble and less gory film than his previous effort Se7en. There's lots of crazy action, no special effects, but maybe the thing that's hardest to believe is just how damn rich Eroica Mlldmay some buggers are!
A feature dedicated to those really good films you very rarely get the chance to see these days ...
fter the success of Trainspotting, the same writing, directing and producing team have joined up again to follow a slightly different track. After the intensity of their two previous films, A Life Less Ordinary is firmly in the genre of romantic comedy, but don't worry, Meg Ryan is nowhere to be seen. Celine (Cameron Diaz) is a spoilt rich bitch , wh ile Robert (Ewan McGregor) is a disgru ntled dreamer recently sacked from his cleaning job in Celine's father's (lan Holm) company. Robert kidnaps Celine, only for her to tell him she's seen it all before, and then devises a plan to screw her father out of several million dollars when Robert proves he just doesn't cut it in the kidnapping stakes. "Rule one of hostage taking,"
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screams Celine, "Have you asked for a ransom yet?" Meanwhile, the archangel Gabriel is in heaven (which looks suspiciously like an American police station) complaining that all he sees between men and women is "divo rce, divorce, divorce," and assigns angels Delroy Undo and Holly Hunter the job of making Celine and Robert fall in love by putting them in as mui:h life threatening danger as possible. Thanks .to this amusing new twist and the fact that Diaz and McGregor are equally strong characters, the film succeeds in stepping out of the shadow of it's mighty predecessor, as well as kicking When Harry Met Sally's butt. And the cartoon at the end is fun as well. John Spacey
THE EVENT, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER¡15, 1997
Vertigo us (1958) Dir: Alfred Hitchcock Showing - Cinema City
"you shouldn't keep souvenirs of a killing. You shouldn't have been that sentimental."
t the only experience you've ever had of Alfred Hitchcock is the shower scene in Psycho, Vertigo is a great chance to see the master in action . In Vertigo's opening scene, a beautiful woman , her bl ond hair pulled in a tight bun, stares grimly at a grave in an ageing ch urch. As the California sunlight streams in, blinding the man who watches her from a distance, she walks away slowly, staring at the bouquet in her hands like a morose bride, and the man following her trots quickly over to see whose grave she was looking at. Suddenly, the church bells clang and the music, previously angelic, becomes ominous and dark. This is th e beginning of the strange connections between the living and the dead which characterise the film. lt is not only one of Hitchcock's finest , almost flawless works, it is also one of the those rare films which actually lives up to its immense reputation . Coolly received on its release in 1958, Vertigo is a film with complexities, a psychological drama with distinct emphasis on the word psychological. The film stars James Stewart as Scottie Fergueson , a San Francisco policeman forced to retire because of his crippling fear of heights, and consequently fills his days by following the wife of a college friend . The wife , Madeline, played by Kim Novak, has been falling into trances and even trying to kill herself as part of her obsession with a tragic ancestor. As Madeline's madness grows, Scottie's love for her becomes ever more compulsive. On the technical level, the di rection is unusually calm as Hitchcock uses the stark angles of San Francisco to create an uneasy atmosphere. Everything appears precariously balanced and uneven : no matter how idyllic the scene, there is a nervousness. The mood is enhanced through the musical score of the director's greatest collaborator, Bernard Hermann , the man also behind the sound of North by Northwest and, of course, the shrieking strings of Psycho. The real person worthy of mention is James Stewart, who exudes star quality in a way unseen in films today. Stewart, some two decades into his film career mostly spent playing loveable everyday people (a la Mr Smith Goes to Washington) , plays a character who evolves from just such an everyman to a deeply disturbed person , at once filled with self-loathing and enacting Pygmalion-esque attempts at reliving his memories. it's a powerful performance which makes the film the great work it is. Diane Goodman
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