Senator Bullock and Nicole Kidman conjure up some practical magic.
You got spare rooms.
Could stay tonight if you had a mind to.
Two former slaves are reunited when Danny Glover arrives at Oprah Winfrey's house in an opening scene from Beloved.
One of the new movies we'll be reviewing this week on Siskel and Ebert.
I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.
And I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Beloved, based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison, is a film that circles around the pain at the heart of its story.
The fact that Setha, the runaway slave played by Oprah Winfrey, killed her baby daughter rather than have the child be returned to slavery.
Now years have passed and Setha is free, but the ghost of the dead girl still haunts her home.
And when a friend from the old days, Paul D., played by Danny Glover, enters her home, he senses a supernatural being.
Good God, girl. What kind of evil you got in there?
It ain't evil. Just sad. Come on.
Paul D.'s presence seems to quiet the evil in the house where Setha lives with her daughter, Denver, played by Kimberly Elise.
The adults talk about the plantation where they met named Sweet Home.
How come everybody who run off from Sweet Home can't stop talking about it?
It looks like if it was so sweet, you wouldn't have run away.
Girl, who you think you talking to?
True, true. She writes that it wasn't sweet and she wasn't home.
Then another visitor arrives at the house, beloved, played by Tandy Newton.
At first her identity is a mystery, but beloved and Denver bond like sisters, which in a way they are.
You won't ever leave us will you?
No, never. This is where I am.
Toni Morrison says it took her three viewings to fully appreciate Beloved, and I know what she meant.
This is a film constructed out of the fragments of memory and experience, and if you haven't read the book, you'll have trouble at first understanding the story.
The movie was directed by Jonathan Demme, who uses wonderful performances and an overarching supernatural mood to create his effect.
The ads, of course, try to package the story as uplifting, almost cheerful, but it's very dark.
The painful aftermath of the greatest sin in our nation's history. It's a strong, original film.
Oh, I absolutely agree, and you mentioned that it took Toni Morrison three viewings to appreciate the picture.
Well, it took me two, but especially after the second viewing, I was mightily impressed with this film in a variety of ways.
As an historical document about the Reconstruction era, during which the horror of slavery was still very much alive,
even though the slaves had been freed, and also as a tribute to generations of pioneer women in the African-American community.
And their ability to keep their families together is summed up in a beautiful speech that also shows Winfrey's ability to be a ferociously powerful actress.
I've got a tree on my back, and I ain't in my house, and nothing in between but the dart I'm holding in my arms. No, people. No running from nothing. You hear me?
I will never run from another thing on this earth.
Hers, I think, is a complete performance as she displays a range in this picture from maternal tenderness to wounded victim to hopeful lover.
Thumbs up for her, and for director Jonathan Demme's distinctive beloved.
Oh, I agree with you, Gene, about Oprah Winfrey's performance, and I think all the performances are good,
and the most interesting in a way is what Tani Newton does with Beloved, because she's basically, and we don't want to give away the whole story,
but she's basically a stranger to the body that she occupies, and a stranger to speech and to relationships,
and that alien quality that comes across is very effective, and this is a really complex and interesting movie.
You know, it does justice to the novel, which was also complex and weaved around,
because in a way the central character, Setha, can hardly touch that event that her whole life revolves around.
She can't even touch it in memory, and so the movie revolves around it instead of leading up to it and coming down after it,
and when you see it, when the movie is over, you understand everything, but during the experience, sometimes you're at sea.
You're lost, yes, absolutely, but you know, now we talk about epic pictures.
When we use that phrase, it usually means a physical landscape, you know, Lawrence of Arabia, the classic epic,
but this is a human epic, and I don't mean to be glib with that, but really this whole time, place, world experience, we're given.
You can easily see how this could have been turned into material that would be much less challenging and much less textured,
and it wouldn't have been as good a film.
We may not have given Demi enough credit. This is one of the great directors, and it is a beautiful looking film.
And also the writer, Richard de Grauvenise, who took the novel and some earlier drafts of the screenplay and shaped it into this final form for Demi.
Coming up later, Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman cast their spells in practical magic.
Hang on to your husbands, girls.
Coming up next, the most controversial film of the season, Happiness.
I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing with you. But I'm not laughing.
This year, the colors of fall are brown, red, yellow, and at your Buick dealer, lots of green.
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But hurry, because when the 98 Buicks are gone, the Buick fall collection will be too.
And Lord, we also pray for those less fortunate than we are this Thanksgiving. Amen.
Boy, am I starved.
Look at all this wonderful food.
Please pass the gravy.
Mom, is it time for pumpkin pie yet?
Not quite yet, honey.
More mashed potatoes, anyone?
Eat it up, everybody, or we'll be having leftovers all week.
I've got to get the recipe for this stuffing.
Please help the Denver Rescue Mission see that homelessness and hunger take a holiday.
I'm stuffed. I couldn't eat another bite.
A woman spends her entire life responding to a changing body.
Dealing with her monthly cycle is just another chance to practice.
InSync MiniForms, a whole new choice in feminine protection.
Was it gone?
She only knew how I felt. She doesn't even know I exist. I bore people.
Who is that boring person, they think. I've never before met anyone so boring.
Suburban New Jersey is the far shore of loneliness and desolation and happiness.
The much-debated new film by Todd Solance that won the Critics' Prizes at Cannes and Toronto
that will disturb many audiences with its sad portraits of sexual desperation and perversity.
The story centers around the lives of three sisters.
The first sister, named Trish, is played by Cynthia Stevenson
as an apparently happy homemaker whose husband, played by Dylan Baker, is a psychiatrist.
Hey, Billy. What's going on?
Nothing. He's depressed.
Well, is anything the matter?
I don't want to talk about it.
Ignore him. He's just doing it for attention. He thinks she'll be impressed, has he?
What Trish doesn't suspect is that her husband is a pedophile.
The second sister, named Joy, and played by Jane Addams, has low self-esteem because she's still single
and her life is going nowhere. She meets a Russian immigrant taxi driver, played by Jared Harris.
Do you like men?
Yes, but it's not so simple.
Are you lesbian?
No.
It's all right. If you are lesbian, I like lesbian.
What Joy doesn't suspect is that the taxi driver cannot be trusted.
The third sister, named Helen, is played by Lara Flynn Boyle, a semi-famous poet.
She feels she doesn't really deserve her success.
I'm just so tired of being admired all the time.
I mean all these men. They're beautiful, artistic minds, great sex, the whole package, but hollow.
What neither of the other sisters suspect is that Helen is lonely too, so lonely that when she gets an obscene phone call,
she engages the caller in conversation. But when they meet, it's just not the same.
Yes?
All of these stories in Happiness are interwoven with others as the movie moves unpredictably between tragedy and humor.
The audience is thrown off balance. We're not sure whether to laugh or be shocked or both.
And in forcing us into that middle ground, it works a kind of sneaky magic.
We don't like these characters, but we're haunted by them.
Well, Roger, we are shocked. I mean that's clearly shocking development in this picture.
You focused on the three sisters. I want to look at the picture from the male characters.
All of these guys, and I praise the film for the accurate way this is done, are cases of arrested sexual development.
And all of their problems come out of that. And Todd Solons, the director, has once again focused on emotional problems.
He did it in Welcome to the Dollhouse with an 11-year-old girl dealing with the terrors of entering junior high school.
And once again, I think Sigmund Freud would have approved of this film and really enjoyed it,
because the development of these guys simply haven't connected with their sexuality or with women.
It is true even of the psychiatrist who is a pedophile, and those are the scenes that are going to bother people the most.
It's not for younger viewers, and people are going to have a lot to talk about.
The word shocking is, I think, the key word to describe this picture.
Coming up next, something brewing between Sandra Bullock and Aidan Quinn in Practical Magic.
Do you mind if I just took a look around?
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Don't pass on this opportunity, American Furniture Warehouse Clearance Sale is going on right now.
This is that tee, and your choice of cover and your choice of oak or cherry ball and claw legs is $279.
The matching ball and claw chairs are $229, your choice.
And these Lane Queen Anne reclining chairs are $278, your choice.
And American, we've got the lowest prices.
Everything is in stock, ready to be picked up, all arranged for delivery.
American.
After reviewing this divorce case, it's the court's decision that the wife receive the car.
I don't want it.
No, no, you can have it.
Your Honor, you should see this.
Uh-uh, better get Mako.
For a great verdict, get Mako's Ambassador Paint for $189.95.
Season premiere of our Angel Network, America, you overwhelmed us with your response.
What are we up to next?
Who is this from?
You're going to do this on our TV?
Andrew Hsu, Al Roker, they're helping us kick off this huge idea.
Next, Oprah.
Oprah, weekdays at 4 on Channel 7.
You know she screwed Coach Halfbaker?
Ow!
Don't do that.
It wasn't me.
Well, obviously it was you.
Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman play sisters living on a Massachusetts island who are descended
from a long line of real life witches in the funny and clever film called Practical Magic,
which succeeds through a smart script based on Alice Hoffman's novel.
This story works because it takes witchery seriously, which means that the town residents
truly hate the Owen sisters.
Isn't that a snake tattoo?
Yeah.
And there's one on her bow too.
Yep, that's right, I'm back.
Woo!
Hang on to your husbands, girls.