Plus, Woody Allen and Sharon Stone voiced Little Insects with Big Problems and Ants.
I think it looks like a dog. Sure, you always take the easy ones. Well, how about that one?
That looks like a complete 24-piece dining set with a soup tureen. Robin Williams and
Annabella Sciorra are young and in love, but will it last forever? What Dreams May Come is
one of the new fall movies we'll be reviewing this week on Siskel and Ebert. And we'll also
take a look at the new animated feature named Ants. I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.
And I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. After Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra fall
in love and get married at the beginning of What Dreams May Come, they do not live happily ever
after. There are a couple of big surprises right at the top of the movie, some of which have already
been revealed by all the ads and trailers. So I feel safe, I guess, in saying that one of them is
that Williams dies in a car crash, and he moves on to the next world where he finds a long-lost
friend. And look at the remarkable vision of heaven that is painted in this movie. It's like
a landscape constructed out of the materials in his imagination as if paradise were an impressionist
painting. Maybe I'm not in your heaven after all, girl. Maybe you're in mine. His guide in
this paradise is a man named Albert, played here by Cuba Goody, Jr., who explains some of the rules
of life after death. See, we're all pretty insecure at first, so we see ourselves somewhere safe,
comforting. We all paint our own surroundings, Chris, but you're the first guy I know to use
real paint. There's so much here she didn't paint. Like that bird. Annie gave you a start,
sort of like holding on to handrails. Now you're creating an entire world here. Even in heaven,
gravity seems to be a fact of life, sort of. What Dreams May Come is the latest visionary
film by Vincent Ward, who made The Navigator and Map of the Human Heart. Both of those were
about journeys into unknown worlds, and so is this one, especially after the Robin Williams
character determines to venture into hell itself to save the soulmate that he loves. This is one
of the most visually imaginative films I've seen, and Williams somehow has a way of seeming at home
in all these imaginary universes, just as he did in Popeye and Jumanji. The flaw in the film,
I think, is that it compromises on a conventional happy ending, just when it seems poised to push
it over the top into something that would really have been special. That holds it back from greatness,
but still it's a very special movie. Well, in terms of its visual strategy, it is great. No
question about it. I'm glad you signaled out Vincent Ward. I had spotted his talent in Map
of the Human Heart, picking one of my top ten films that year, and if you're looking for a
video recommendation, Map of the Human Heart, which was also a love story, and I thought a very
passionate one, this picture is stunning. I mean, we know that computer animation is a major
development in film art. Well, this is the best it's ever been used, right? You haven't seen it
used any better than this. Well, it's not so much the technical quality so much as the imagination
that I'm responding to. How appropriate it is for that. The way that he exists in a landscape of paint that is
still wet, because his imagination has just completed the painting that he is now part of,
this movie is a movie just to be looked at, but I did feel that at the end, if they hadn't been so
conventional, they could have maybe pushed it over a little bit more in the dramatic area as well.
I was so excited at looking at it. That did not occur to me, if we'll say. The other thing is,
as long as I'm given advice, see it in a movie theater. The best movie theater in your town,
because you don't want to see this on tape someday. You're right, you're right. Okay, next movie,
and the next movie is A Night at the Roxbury, about two clueless, would-be hipsters always
trying to get into the same hot dance club and failing. It's a dreary and predictable comedy
that isn't helped by being about the third such film to come out recently. It's not in the same
class as either The Last Days of Disco or 54, which weren't themselves anything special, and in
just a few months, I guess, we've seen the creation of a whole new genre. The leads are played by Will
Farrell and Chris Catan, adapting their Saturday Night Live sketch. The Batabe brothers sure know
how to bore women with their stories about meeting minor celebrities. And who do you think that guy
was? Emilio Esteban, the mighty duck man. I swear to God, I was there. Of course you were. You were the one
who yelled the Breakfast Clubbers name. I was like, Emilio! What plot there is, as if we care,
involves the guys trying to get backing for their own dance club. In the process, they are mistaken
for being wealthy, which gives you an idea of just how dim the characters are in this movie. A Night
at the Roxbury is utterly trivial, and the Batabes themselves are a derivative bore. Boy, I agree with
you here, Gene. You know, and it's a funny thing because Chris Catan, I love on Saturday Night Live
when he does that missing link guy. I mean, I think he's really funny, but these characters are a one
joke sketch. And the first time I saw it, I liked it, you know, for ten seconds as they're snapping
their heads together, and then it ran out. And as I'm looking at this movie, I realize that it's
absolutely deadly to comedy when you feel sorry for the characters. These guys are so pathetic,
there's no way to laugh at them or with them. You just want to, you know, hope that somehow they find
happiness in life. The first ten seconds that you say you like is a dead lift from Wayne's World.
Well, there you are then. Okay. Coming up later, there's trouble in the colony. Woody Allen and
Sharon Stone supply some of the voices in the new animated feature Ants. Coming up next,
Dennis Leary on the mean streets in Monument Avenue. Sit back, relax, it's gonna be a long one. I hope
the food is better this flight. It isn't. What's that? Balanced nutrition bar. A nutrition bar? I'd rather
eat airline food. This tastes really great. Right, a nutrition bar with great taste. That'll happen
when pigs fly. With half the fat of a leading candy bar, balanced nutrition bars satisfy your
hunger in a variety. Great taste in all natural flavors. So get some balance in your life.
Have you seen this? What? Our eyeglass sales are off 20%. Who's taking a bite out of us?
It's America's best. They're giving them away. Two complete pairs of glasses for 49.99 and that
includes. What a lollipop. A doctor's eye exam. That price, how can they stay in business? It's
really quite simple, Frank. They're taking it from us. Call 1-800-2-PARE and discover what millions
have already learned that America's best has the lowest price in sight. This weekend on ER.
What you all did to save me was like a gift. Carol faces old fears and finds new courage.
I promised myself to remember that every day. Ross takes a risk. What we had is worth another chance.
And Mark takes matters. Has your father ever hit you, Frank? That's your chump. I'm Dr. Green.
You'd like to go somewhere to talk this through? Into his own hands. Carol, come quick. Mark's hurt.
ER 1035 tonight on Channel 7.
When the cops gonna learn, huh? This town don't talk. Especially this kid right here.
In a neighborhood bar in Boston, a local hoodlum played by Cole Meany drops in on a getting out of
prison party for Billy Crudup and that is Dennis Leary there playing the man looking on with a
certain concern because he knows that his cokehead friend is a weak blabbermouth in a neighborhood
that has swift punishment for people who talk too much and that's a setup scene in Monument Avenue,
a hard-edged observant slice of life that stars Leary as a neighborhood car thief who begins to
feel exhausted and desperate. A few moments after the previous scene, government working for Meany
shoot the talkative kid dead. Then the beat detective Martin Sheen turns up and he has seen
all of this before. I assume they already explained to you the part about keeping your mouth shut so
let me fill you in on the rest of it. You were in the bathroom. That's right, see everybody in this
joint was in the bathroom during the shooting. Maybe you didn't know that about this neighborhood.
Oh yeah, bar rooms around here got the biggest heads in America. The movie has a lot of everyday
detail depicting a neighborhood where young men are growing older every day but still playing the
same old tapes over and over again. What I want you guys to do is break the window on the ground
of a floor, reach in their mouths and hit that button. Go go go go go go go. Once the glass is
broken you activate the alarm. This gives you two minutes. I repeat exactly two minutes before the
cops show up so don't be around. There have been a lot of movies about the mean streets and about
local hoods on dead-end trips but Monument Avenue is a special one that looks and listens and sees
how a rotten system is preserved by a code that essentially destroys the lives of everyone who
subscribes to it. Dennis Leary, a comedian earlier in his career, returned into movie actor a few
years ago. Here shows real power and depth. This is a breakthrough performance for him and the whole
ensemble is right there with him in a movie where every day is a contest between boredom and
desperation. Well boredom describes my reaction to the film because I have seen so many of these
mean streets pictures and it's it's always the same. You know the punks, the alcoholic mother,
that's not an original thing. It's much more, it's not about her being an alcoholic mother,
it's about her being a mother who cares and who desperately wants her son to break out of this.
It's not about her drinking. I wait for the funeral scene. I mean this is yeah but you've
never seen, you've never seen a scene like the movie, the scene here where Colm Meaney goes
to the wake and passes out hundred dollar bills to the parents and relatives of the man that he
just had killed and everybody lets him get away with it. I mean that scene is really powerful.
I just felt I had been in this neighborhood too many times before. I had never seen it with such
with such attention to the texture of the everyday life to the way that they, you know,
their their their days dribble out in the middle of the night with drinking and talking and so forth.
Boy there's an original thing. No it's not just the drinking gene, it's the desperation,
it's the circular sort of thing. It's it's the way that they're trapped. They're trapped from
the get-go and I felt with this picture I was watching actors doing scenes and actors exercise
rather than real characters. I bought every single moment in this movie. And I didn't. Coming up next
Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, and Sylvester Stallone lend their voices to some amazing insects in the
new animated comedy Ants. In case you haven't noticed we ants are running this show. We're the
lords of the earth. Hey don't talk to me about earth okay because I just spent all day hauling
it around. I've been waiting 17 years to meet this man. Not knowing your father can leave a hole in
your soul. His is about to be filled. Come out and meet your son. For the first time father and son
finally meet. Next Oprah. Weekdays at four on channel seven. This is a seven news Doppler Max
update. Good evening I'm seven news meteorologist Joe Haynes. We have some fairly heavy thunderstorms
moving towards Deer Trail right now. You may see some gusty winds there. We'll have all the details
coming up. Yes ma'am right away ma'am. Oh better get Mako. When the unexpected happens see Mako
for free estimates a nationwide warranty and ambassador paint service for 189.95. Park your
worries and say uh-oh better get Mako. The birthday bash celebration is going on at all stores.
Even though it's our birthday you would think it's yours with savings like these. This beautiful
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