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a smooth but amoral impostor named
Tom Ripley (Matt Damon) as he slides
deeper into a criminal career
(Beechwood. Carmike, Georgia Theatre)
THREE KINGS (R) Screenwriter and
director David 0 Russell's engrossing
war him settles into elements ot drama
and black comedy that explore the hor
rors ol modern global warfare This is a
surprisingly exciting and disturbing film
with serious political views that raises
important questions about the nature ol
war. (Mall Outside)
THE TIGGER MOVIE (G) Director Jun
Falkenstein's bittersweet animated
family film (inspired by British writer A
A Milne's stories) finds the rascally
Tigger alone and upset that he's "the
onliest" Tigger in the Hundred Acre
Wood and determined to find his family
tree where “there’ll be more Tiggers than
you can stick a shake at ’Jim
Cummings supplies the voice for both
Tigger and Pooh Worth a look if only to
view the inspired psychedelic musical
montage ot “Tigger ancestors" Narrated
by British actor John Hurt (Beechwood,
Carmike)
TOKYO STORY (NR) 1964 A bitter
sweet drama from acclaimed Japanese
director Yasupro Ozu about an elderly
couple's journey to Tokyo where they're
met with disrespect and indifference
from their grown children Shot in black
and white. Japanese with English subti
tles. (Tate)
TOY STORY 2 (G) Disney's amazing,
alt-computer animated tollow-up to the
1995 hit. Ends Thursday (Beechwood)
THE WHOLE NINE YARDS (R) A
quiet suburban neighborhood gets all
mobbed up in this comedy when a
tough hit man (Bruce Willis) moves in
while on a witness protection program.
The thug scares the hell out ot his goofy
next door neighbor (Matthew Perry)
while Hiding with the local ladies
(Roseanna Arquette. Amanda Pee!)
Directed by Jonathan Lynn (Trial &
Error. My Cousin Vmny) Opens Friday
(Beechwood, Carmike)
PARADISE LOST
THE BEACH (R) One disturbing trend in recent
American cinema is the steady stream of beau
tiful, talented French actresses brought across
the pond so that they may be reduced to the
film equivalent of armcandy. In recent years,
we've seen Irene Jacob go from working with
Krzysztof Kieslowski to B-thrillers like Incognito.
Emanuelle Beart go from Jacques Rivette's La
Belle noiseuse to what was effectively the Bond
girl in Mission: Impossible, and Sophie Marceau
interrupting her collaborations with Andrzej
Zulawski to work with David Spade. My com
plaint isn't that these women are being exploited
for their beauty—Emanuelle Bead's beauty is
basically what La Belle noiseuse is about—but
that these women are only being allowed to be
"beautiful." Women actors are reduced to roles
more suited to Playboy bunnies. The latest to fall
victim to this trend is Virginie Ledoyen, stunning
in A Single Girl and Jeanne and the Perfect Guy.
now in multiplexes across America as the "French
babe in a bikini" in Danny Boyle's The Beach.
Hooray for Hollywood, I guess.
Adapted from the popular Alex Garland novel
of the same name, The Beach is, as some blurb on
the book jacket doubtlessly puts it, "a Lord of the
Flies for Generation X." Leonardo DiCaprio stars
as Richard Fischer, an American backpacker in
Thailand whose credo is "never resist the unfa
miliar." In a rundown hotel on Khao San Road,
he encounters Daffy (Robert Carlyle of
Ravenous), and is told of a perfect beach, hidden
away on an island. Daffy soon slits his wrists,
but he leaves behind a map and soon enough
Richard, with French backpackers Etienne
(Guillaume Canet of En plein coeur) and
Francoise (Ledoyen) in tow, is en route to the
beach where they are greeted by Ricardo
Montalban and Herve Villechaize. Or not, regret
tably, because then at least there would have
been a semblance of plot and character develop
ment.
Instead we get a band of extremely unlikely
hippies headed up by Sal (Tilda Swinton,
Orlando) and Bugs (Lars Arentz-Hansen, Sophie's
World). Then: idleness, sex, sharks, alpha-male
tensions, encroachment from the outside world,
insanity, a remarkably bad video game sequence,
and the destruction of paradise via manjuana
farmers beanng AK-47s and a game of Russian
roulette.
That there's virtually no tension dtuing the
Russian roulette scene is a sign that there s
something very wrong with The Beach: the truth
is nearly everything's wmng with it. The dia
logue is pathetic; the supporting characters are
paper-thin and largely indistinguishable; there's
a complete absence of story development, and
the film as a whole is surprisingly dull. To his
credit, DiCaprio strives to flesh out his character,
but the script works against him.
Voice-over narration and pop music are used
ineffectively, particularly disappointing from the
director of Trainspotting, which u r ed narration
and pop music better than any film this side of
Goodfellas. That Boyle is out of his depth
becomes especially evident during the Khao San
Road scenes, which exude a vigor that the rest of
The Beach sorely lacks.
There's a small cloud of controversy hovering
over The Beach due to the film's being shot (with
the Thai government's cooperation) on the previ
ously protected island of Phi Phi Leh. One recalls
Spalding Gray's noting in Swimming to Cambodia
that the filming of The Killing Fields had had the
effect of a small war in the area of Thailand
where it was shot, and one recalls Garland's com
plaints in the novel and elsewhere that travel
books like the "Lonely Planet ’ series have effec
tively ruined Thailand, and one wonders just how
much destruction the filming of The Beach
wrought and just how much those Thai officials'
palms were greased. The irony of The Beach, and
perhaps the only thing interesting about it, is
that in order to make a movie about paradise
they had to destroy paradise. Hooray for
Hollywood, I guess.
James Slount
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