This week, Siskel and Ebert review Sean Connery and Richard Gere forging the legend of Camelot in first night.
A young New Yorker begins to question her life as a party girl.
And scientist Ben Kingsley unwittingly creates an intergalactic killer in Species.
Music
Sean Connery is King Arthur and Richard Gere is Lancelot, each in love with Guinevere, a recipe for possible tragedy in first night.
One of the big new summer movies we'll be reviewing this week on Siskel and Ebert, along with the alien thriller called Species.
A picture that might trigger some vacation rentals in Italy.
I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.
And I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Our first movie is First Night, and it's a story of love and idealism in the legendary time of King Arthur starring Sean Connery as Arthur,
Richard Gere as Lancelot, and Julia Ormond as the woman who loves them both, each in a different way.
Ormond plays Guinevere, the lady of Leoness, whose life is saved one day by Lancelot, a footloose and fancy-free mercenary of outspoken opinions.
Doesn't it please you to know you saved the life of a lady?
I'd be just as pleased if you were a dairymaid.
A dairymaid couldn't reward you as I can.
If she was as pretty as you, she could give me all the reward I wanted.
What did I do?
Insulted me.
Now I've insulted you.
She loves him but denies him because not only does she also love King Arthur, but she needs his power to help defend her own country.
Marry the king, Guinevere, but love the man.
I only know one way to love my lord, and that is body and heart and soul.
All would be happy in Camelot if it were not for the evil Malagon, played by Ben Cross.
He's a neighboring knight who has evil designs on Leoness and its lady.
Your dress is quite spoiled, my lady.
You!
Almost.
A queen.
Lancelot rescues her another time, and for his reward is given a seat at the fabled round table.
What do you say? Will you join us?
My lord, if I may speak.
Julia Ormond is an actress with a warm and sensuous presence, and she reminds me a little of the young Ingrid Bergman.
That's especially the case with First Night because the story in a way is very similar to the love triangle in Casablanca, where the woman must choose between romance and idealism.
Those parts of the story are quite strong, but the fatal flaw in the film, I think, is the notion that Guinevere would prefer Richard Gere to Sean Connery.
Gere's Lancelot is an immature narcissist, a man who is somehow not serious, and compared to him, Connery seems like the best choice for both idealism and romance.
The movie has some wonderful scenes in it, but that problem right at the heart of First Night keeps me from being able to recommend it because I was never really able to believe that dilemma.
I bought into it because I think there's clues early on that she would pick up on and that we can pick up on that this guy has some troubled past that he's dealing with,
and he's dealing with it in a way of trying to be footloose, unattached, and all that, and yet he has that good heart.
I like this picture as a love triangle. All the sword stuff and the villain unimportant.
I think these are three players who are captivating. Every time you get any combination of the two, any of the combinations of the two, I was captivated.
The sword stuff is not on the same level with Rob Roy or Braveheart, and then the problem with the love affair, as I said before, is...
Not for me.
Well, I mean, sure, Richard Gere has flashbacks to his tragedy as a child, but that's just movie stuff. The chemistry isn't really there.
Oh, I think he's pretty good. I mean, what interests me, I just happened to see Officer and a Gentleman again, and he has the ability in big scenes to be very charismatic,
big love scenes like that, and he does it again here, and I bought into that.
Okay, next movie, and our next film is Party Girl, and this Generation X comedy really rubbed me raw.
I didn't care for its lead character, a cute waif who is constantly trying to find herself but is mostly just annoyingly cute.
Parker Posey plays Mary, who is out of a job and money, so she hits up her godmother, a librarian, for both.
Wanda? This is my goddaughter, Mary. She's our newest clerk.
I assume you're familiar with the duodecimal system?
Back at Mary's apartment, we meet her friends and roommate, and basically most of the humor revolves around Mary trying to act outrageously in fashion and speech.
I found all of them to be real bores.
Natasha!
Party Girl is the kind of film that's supposed to win over your heart because she's such a little gutsy rebel, but it really set my teeth on edge.
So many of the scenes seem interchangeable, with Mary acting out until someone saves her.
I didn't laugh, and I wasn't charmed by Mary. In fact, I think they threw away the key relationship in the picture,
which is a romantic one between Mary and a falafel salesman she meets on the street.
If the picture had been all about them, then I think they might have had something in Party Girl.
Yeah, thumbs down for me, too. And, you know, the bones of this situation might have been made, actually, I see it as a stage musical, maybe.
Well, it depends on the quality of the music.
Yeah, well, good point. However, in the movie, as written, there is just too much left unsaid and un-dealt with. The screenplay is not really finished.
No, it isn't.
You have scenes that seem to go in one direction, scenes that go in another direction. The character is not well thought out. It's like a sketch for an idea for a movie.
It is. It's very much like a sketch, and I think the whole, the arrogance of it is where I get angry at the picture,
is just because she's, quote, trendy, we're supposed to pay attention to her for a hundred minutes, and it doesn't work.
Well, she's not particularly trendy, either, for that matter.
Coming up next, a scientist calls in a team of experts to rescue the world from an experiment gone very wrong.
The sci-fi thriller Species is next.
You created a monster with some kind of formula you got from outer space.
The damn thing got away, and now you want us to hunt it down and kill it.
Mary Clary thinks her zipper bags are the best and will never switch to Gladlock zipper bags.
That's right, never.
But, Mary Clary, what do you say we lock you in this phone booth here with either your bag filled with angry bees or a Gladlock bag filled with angry bees?
See that green color chain seal there, Mary? That shows you the Gladlock bag is closed. Your bag doesn't have a green seal.
You know, change is good. I'll take the Gladlock zipper bag.
Just kidding, Mary, when it really counts.
Only Gladlock has the yellow and blue make green seal.
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That looks like an innocent young child being gassed with cyanide and species, but she is no ordinary human, and that is why they are trying to kill her.
As the movie opens, we learn that mankind receive radio signals from outer space, including the blueprint for a DNA molecule that can be combined with our own human DNA.
Government scientists experiment with a new combination, and the result is a frightening creature that, although it can look like a little girl, it can also look like a frightening alien.
Ben Kingsley plays the scientist in charge of the program, and here he briefs his team, which leads the search for the alien after she, or it, escapes.
We decided to make it female so that it would be more docile and controllable.
More docile and controllable, huh?
I guess you guys don't get out much.
To find out more about this species, the government tries to incubate some of the pure alien DNA without crossing it with human genes.
The results are terrifying as two workers get trapped in a sealed room with the second alien.
Funny, but this doesn't look like the kind of creature that could send information about DNA throughout our space.
Just connect the gas line in the isolation box. Use it as a plane power.
Meanwhile, the alien hybrid grows very quickly. In fact, in no time at all, that little girl blossoms into a woman, played here by Natasha Hinstridge, who is driven by a need for reproduction.
I want a baby. What? Excuse me?
Let's go around the side.
Species is a very bad movie. One of the ways you know that is that in a science fiction movie with any brains, the alien doesn't spend most of her time taking off her bra.
The team that chases the monster is an ungainly unit, including a professional killer, played by Michael Madsen, and a psychic, played by Forrest Whitaker.
By the end of the movie, they're all slogging around in a sewer with the monster. In fact, the movie is just like the alien.
It starts out looking good and ends up by getting its kicks by having things jump at us off of the screen.
Well, I enjoyed the picture, Roger. I sure did. I enjoyed Natasha Hinstridge taking off her bra.
Absolutely, I did. That's one of the reasons I go to the movies, and I also go for some thrills.
I thought that this team, all different support troops with all their different specialties, including Forrest Whitaker, who has the empathy, and the other guys who have the science and all that, I think they were a great crack team.
And Michael Madsen, who's got his gun and he's going to shoot the alien when he sees it.
I thought it was a lot of fun, except at the end, it does run us around in a water pit, and that to me was kind of boring. But up until that point, I thought it was high energy and a lot of fun.
Has it ever occurred to you that a movie like this could occasionally be made with a little intelligence, and so a creature that's capable of sending messages across light years of space might not turn into a giant exploding sponge when it gets to Earth?
Well, they made a good one. Close Encounters of the Third Kind is that kind of movie. It's a lot better movie, yeah.
Oh, yes it is. But this is a lot of fun.
What this creature does is basically turns into something that jumps at you from behind things in order to give manufactured thrills.
They've been doing it for 80 years in the movies. Sometimes it's done well. I got tired of it a long time ago.
Okay, coming up next, the recent Batman movie that you may never have heard of. How does it stack up with the latest bad adventure that's a $100 million smash?
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Freeze!
That's a scene from Batman Mask of the Phantasm, a Batman animated feature that was made in 1993 and Roger and I never reviewed it and as far as I'm concerned, we made a big mistake because it's terrific.
I enjoyed it more than the current Batman adventure that's in theaters and I kind of like that picture.
This film, however, is really smart and beautifully drawn and intricately plotted.
Obviously, Batman lends himself to animation and just take a look at the Art Deco influenced drawing style, the classic cartoon drawing style, as we find Batman caught up in a web of love and violence and guilt.
Somebody dressed in a bat cape is killing mobsters. It's not Batman, but his name is now being sullied as a killer.
I'm telling you friends, it's vigilantism and it's deadliest. How many times are we going to let Batman cross the line?
I'm sorry, Councilman, but you can't blame Batman for what happened to Chuckie Shaw.
Why not? He's a loose cannon, Commissioner.
There's more, including the Joker, who frankly was better when Jack Nicholson played him in the first movie or Cesar Romero in the cartoon show on TV. I don't like this Joker's voice.
You're too late, Batman! There are 20 miles of tunnels under this place and they're all filled with high explosives.
In five minutes, everything goes up!
But it's the drawing style that really distinguishes Batman, Mask of the Phantasm. You can really lose yourself in all of these great images as Batman fights against the phantasm, his deadly imitator.
If I were forced to rank all of the Batman movies made in the last few years, I'd rank this one, this animated one, just under the first live action Batman from Tim Burton.
I wish Warner Brothers would produce more animated features from this same production team.
I'm sorry we caught up to this picture a couple years late, but it's available on tape and disc. I watched it at home on laserdisc and with a booming surround sound system, Batman, Mask of the Phantasm was big time entertainment. I really liked it.
You know, I think that the day is coming, and it's also happening with the Disney pictures, when adults are realizing that animation is not limited to an entertainment form for children.
And that animation can do some things live action can't do. For example, the sets of the city in this movie are seen more clearly than they are in the live action movie.
The live action movie is really kind of murky. The exaggeration of the effects and of the camera angles can be stretched and perspective can be played with in a way that isn't available in the real world.
And then also here, it's interesting that they really did have a story, more of a story than the movies.
And the characters and they pause and they think and they have feelings and motivations, and you get involved in it.
I got completely involved in it. And also, it's tight. It's 77 minutes long. Every image counts. Remember, they're spending more money in animation, maybe per minute, than they are in some live action pictures.
And they're very economically done.
So you saw Batman forever and you still want to see some Batman? Try renting this, right?
You got it.
Coming up next, a mailman meets a famous poet and thinks he can get tips about picking up girls in the postman.
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Our next movie is named The Postman, and this is a very special small human comedy inspired by events in the life of the great poet Pablo Neruda from Chile.
It's set in the early 1950s when Neruda, a communist, has just moved to a tiny Italian island as a political exile.
He absolutely fascinates the local postman who is convinced that poets must know all sorts of secrets for seducing women, or they wouldn't get so much mail from women.
Mario, facciamo un patto. Adesso faccio un bel bagno e riflettero sulla tua domanda. E poi domani ti darò una risposta.
That's the great veteran French actor Philippe Nore as the poet there, and Massimo Troisi as the postman.
Whatever he learns or thinks he learns from the poet, the postman hopes to apply in his village where he is trying desperately to win the heart of a local woman.
The woman's aunt complains to the poet that his methods are helping the postman to ruin her niece.
Ha cominciato innocentemente, dicendo che il suo sorriso era come una farfalla, ma adesso è passata a dire che il suo seno è come un fuoco a due fiamme.
On the surface the postman is a delightful comedy about how if you take poetry absolutely seriously and literally it might have a greater effect than you ever intended.
Beneath the surface the film is a little more sad and wise, telling the story of how the poet makes the mistake of thinking these island people are a little more simple than they really are.
There is also a sad story about this movie. Massimo Troisi, who co-wrote the screenplay as well as playing the postman, postponed heart surgery in order to complete the movie and the day after filming ended he died of a heart attack.
I really liked the postman. Oh I liked it very much too and I think that you put your finger on it. If this were done as an American film it would probably be light and frothy and everybody would get along and have a happy ending.
I think what's special here are the bittersweet qualities to the film, particularly the relationship between the postman, the most interesting love relationship between the postman and the poet and how not all of the affection is met.
That comes as a very adult surprise in the development of this picture. Philippe Noiré has never been better. He plays it effortlessly. It's a wonderful performance. The locations look great.
The village is the kind of place you'd want to go to. You could walk around in the town if you got there and talk about what had happened, a good test for any movie. I like it a lot.
It's a wonderful film. It really is. Coming up next, our video pick of the week and even better Sean Connery medieval love story than First Night.
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Siskel and Ebert's Video Pick of the Week, brought to you by Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn, the best part of the movies.
If your interest in medieval love stories is triggered by the release of First Night, a picture I do recommend, after you see that film you can do even better on home video by running another period Sean Connery love story, Robin and Marion from 1976, co-starring Audrey Hepburn as an older maid Marion to Connery's Robin Hood.
The story picks up with them in later years and speculates on a love not fully realized.
Robin and Marion features a wonderful script by James Goldman. Just listen to this dialogue.
I don't know anyone who has seen this film who hasn't truly loved it and felt they had a sense of discovery finding it and finding it to be so adult and mature.
There is a grace and maturity to it that is sadly lacking in most films we get today, maturity and grace. They sound, Roger, like words from another time.
But so is Robin and Marion, our Video Pick of the Week. Now let's recap the movies we reviewed on this show.
We split on First Night the medieval romance with Connery, Richard Gere and Julia Ormond. I thought it was powerful with a trio of good performances, but Roger had a real problem with Richard Gere's character.
Two thumbs down for The Annoying Party Girl, a film that wants us to embrace its heroine just because she's cute and quirky. No dice.
A big split boat on Species, a ripoff of Alien that I really thought delivered a lot of excitement along the way. Roger, however, was worn out by the creatures.
Two thumbs up for Batman Mask of the Phantasm, the 1993 animated Batman feature that's smartly written, beautifully drawn and available on home videotape and disc.
And finally, two thumbs up way up for The Postman, a story of both friendship and love between a great writer and a simple working class soul.
And so I think of all the new pictures out, The Postman is the best. The Postman is a real discovery, yeah.
And I think we're going to have to look at some more animation. It's getting to interest me more. That's it for this week.
Next week we'll be back with reviews of more new big summer movies, including Nine Months, starring Hugh Grant as an unhappily expectant father,
and also a family fantasy about a little boy who discovers the Indian in the cupboard.
That's next week, and until then, the balcony is closed.
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