This week, Siskel and Ebert review Kurt Russell and Stephen Seagal joining forces against terrorist hijackers in executive decision.
Pitcher Matt LeBlanc goes ape after some coaching from Ed.
And Antonio Banderas romances Melanie Griffith and Daryl Hannah in too much.
This week, Siskel and Ebert review Kurt Russell.
This week, Siskel and Ebert review Kurt Russell.
Stephen Seagal and Kurt Russell are just two of the men who try to defeat airplane hijackers carrying poison gas to Washington D.C. in executive decision.
The thriller that's one of five new movies we'll be reviewing this week on Siskel and Ebert including the first major film from Friends TV star Matt LeBlanc
and a new comedy starring real life lovers Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith.
I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune.
And I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Our first film is Executive Decision and this is one of those movies that teeter totters between being a thriller and being a satire of itself.
There are some scenes here that could easily fit right into one of those hot shots movies.
As the film opens, a 747 has been hijacked by terrorists and the United States Special Forces Unit is planning to use a stealth type jet to secretly board the plane in midair.
Stephen Seagal heads the operation and along for the ride is an intelligence analyst played by Kurt Russell.
The safe house in Trieste. That was your intel, wasn't it? Nerve gas was there, Colonel.
The operation was late.
If you say so.
I just hope your averages improve a little.
But sudden turbulence jeopardizes the transfer and Seagal finds there isn't quite time for him to make it up the pressurized tube to the big plane.
Listen to me. Listen to me. Someone has got to close the hatch now or we're all going to die. Do it now.
We're losing track.
Colonel, we're not going to make it.
You are.
Russell believes the terrorists have a deadly nerve gas on board the plane and the hijacking is only a decoy to allow the plane into America where the gas can be spread.
He enlists the help of a flight attendant played by Halle Berry.
You're looking for a man with an electronic device. He's probably...
Sorry, phone the phone, Rick.
At the beginning of the film, Russell took flying lessons. So it goes without saying that sooner or later he's going to be called on to land the jumbo jet.
There are some difficulties of logic that defy description in this movie and they rather trouble me.
For example, since the bad guys have already successfully smuggled the poison gas on board the plane, if their real objective is to get it to Washington, why not just sit back, enjoy the flight, watch the movie and let the plane fly there?
Why bother hijacking it and calling attention to themselves?
But I guess that's not the sort of question you're supposed to ask in a preposterous movie like this, which I must confess I did enjoy.
Part of me liked the good stuff, including the special effects, and the rest of me loved the bad stuff, like that secret map the terrorist is carrying in his coat pocket, which shows a map of Washington with a lot of circles drawn around it.
Very useful map. Executive decision may not be good, but it is fun.
It is fun and I enjoyed it and maybe I enjoyed it more than you because I thought that this director, the director's name is Stuart Baird, I did a little research.
He's edited the first two Superman movies, the first two Lethal Weapon movies and also Die Hard 2.
This is his first crack at it as a director and he threw everything into it.
A lot of other directors would have stopped this picture before the landing of the plane sequence and a couple others.
There's some natural finishes to this movie and he's going full tilt. One other thing, a great device.
You're dealing with a cramped space basically, a plane, okay? Limited amount of visuals.
He comes up with these little pen-like cameras that stick up through the floor of the main cabin and down through the ceiling.
So they could look around.
Look around and it gives you distorted lens views of these spaces which visually on the big screen are fascinating to look at.
Now there are, you have to admit, a lot of problems with logic in the film. A lot of people would, you know, people come out of a movie like this and they say,
well I didn't like it because and then they list the logical problems and to me I like finding the logical problems.
That's part of the fun.
There's so much high energy here they're not going to be thinking about the logic of it all.
Okay, next movie and our next film is a baseball comedy called Ed and it's just plain awful.
I don't know how you can so thoroughly screw up a kid's film about baseball and a monkey.
It's about a minor league team with a hard luck pitcher played by TV's Matt LeBlanc and the team's new mascot, a chimp, that's awfully good around the hot corner.
Rather than make them a winning team, the movie Ed goes for the loser formula and also provides truly stupid situations with the ape and the hunk as roommates.
Now who's going to laugh at this scene, kids or adults?
There is a romantic interest in the film. She's played by Jane Brooke from the TV show Chicago Hope and she plays LeBlanc's downstairs neighbor and she has an annoying daughter.
Do you want to come over for dinner?
Only if Ed comes.
I'm making spaghetti.
I stared at long sections of Ed and seconds later I couldn't tell you what I saw.
Director Bill Couture lingers on scenes long after they've lost any interest. Screenwriters Ken Richards and David Mickey Evans have created a script without laughs.
Matt LeBlanc is a hot actor with his TV show friends. If his agent suggested he make his starring debut in Ed, well maybe it's time for a new agent because Ed is just awful.
Well it is just awful, Gene. I would like to make a footnote. You were saying who would laugh at this, adults or kids?
I believe that some of the bathroom humor and some of the slapstick humor and some of the cornball humor involving the monkey would appeal to younger kids.
I think when I was six or seven it would have appealed to me. That was before I really knew the difference.
Before you reached eight.
Before I reached eight. Good. Very good line. But apart from that little gap there, the kindergarten set, who might enjoy this movie? Who might enjoy this movie?
I agree with you. It's awful. Let's move on when we come back. Antonio Banderas is in love with both Melanie Griffith and Darryl Hannah in Too Much.
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So are you.
A match made in heaven.
An art dealer and con man played by Antonio Banderas meets the ex-wife of a mafia boss played by Melanie Griffith in that scene.
And she falls in love overnight and decides they have to get married as soon as possible.
And that's the set up for Too Much, a would-be screwball comedy that gets complicated when Banderas goes into the bathroom thinking it's Griffith taking a shower when actually it's her sister played by Darryl Hannah.
Can you guess what I'm thinking?
Can you guess what I'm thinking?
The situation grows dangerous when Griffith's ex-husband, a mobster played by Danny Aiello, turns out to still be in love with her.
I brought you some flowers.
Beautiful. Beautiful. I'm just a warm-hearted guy.
Hey! Hey!
What? What are you doing?
What are you doing? Giving them to kids and death?
Banderas falls in love with Hannah but is afraid to call off his wedding with Griffith, so he invents a fictitious twin brother and lets the twin be Hannah's lover.
The scenes where Banderas plays both twins, named Art and Bart, are supposed to be classic screwball comedy, but mostly, as you can see here, they're really lame.
Look, man. You can't do this to Betty. You've got to cut it off.
You amaze me. You just show up after four years and right away you launch into sermons. Jace Bart.
Art?
You are about to make the all-time biggest possible mistake that you know. And look at me when I'm talking to you.
You know, of all movie genres, I think screwball comedy is probably the hardest to pull off successfully.
When you get it right, it's a miracle of timing and tone, but when you get it wrong, it just looks silly.
And in too much, it just looks silly.
Banderas lacks the necessary desperation to make his predicament funny. He acts more like a guy who knows he's in a screwball comedy.
I think it's a very weak performance on his part. I don't think he defines the characters very much.
It's literally just taking down his hair and putting on glasses.
Darryl Hannell looks absolutely bored in this film. There's no life in it. I mean, I think she knew she was making a stinker.
Melanie Griffith. These are people who apparently fell in love, Griffith and Banderas, during this picture. You don't sense any spark of chemistry in it.
You know, there could have been a little editing done because Banderas is Spanish, so they have to explain that, yet he's living in America.
So they give him a father who fought in the Spanish Civil War and married a Spanish woman, so that explains why he's Spanish.
And then they give the father three friends who fought in the Spanish Civil War.
And then we see all the old guys playing cards and driving around together. It's like they got totally distracted by the subplot.
Don't Spanish people live in the United States? We encompass everything.
A brilliant idea, a brilliant idea, a brilliant idea.
They're desperate. They're desperate. But basically, this is a very unhappy picture to sit through.
I mean, let's not leave people laughing. It's painful to watch this comedy because a comedy that doesn't work, as you said, is really bad.
Coming up next, the new Oscar-nominated film from the director of the Oscar-winning cinema, Paradiso. The starmaker is next.
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Hello, everyone. I'm Anne Trujillo. And I'm Tony Zarella.
Seven News and the Denver Film Society invite you to deck yourself out and party with Oscar March 25th at America at Tivoli Plaza.
Watch the Academy Awards and all the excitement of the nominations on Channel 7 and enjoy great food and win great prizes.
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A cameraman posing as a movie talent scout travels the Sicilian countryside selling Hollywood dreams to the locals in Giuseppe Tornatore's The Star Maker, a nominee for best foreign language film.
And it's being released seven years after Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso was a box office smash around the world and won the Oscar for best foreign language film.
That picture, Cinema Paradiso, was about a small Sicilian town's love affair with its movies.
The Star Maker has some of the same appeal.
Here is the talent scout making his pitch to the locals for 1,500 lira to shoot a screen test.
He tells them he'll pass it along to casting agents in Rome.
The talent scout is nicely played by Sergio Castellito.
Naturally, the money-hungry talent scout meets a woman who captures more than his lens, and therefore he wants nothing to do with her.
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The Star Maker shows us about 100 faces, and it's amazing how some resonate and others don't, even when we see them just quickly.
And as I watched this picture, I thought it was okay.
But what recommended the film to me is that it constantly had me thinking about what makes a face stand out on the big screen.
It may be that the camera loves a free spirit and can see a free spirit, and it hates one that is closed and uptight.
And so a slight recommendation for me on the Star Maker.
I don't know if the filmmaker had that on his mind, but it was certainly on my mind.
I had some of the same thoughts.
And I was also noticing the fact that this guy who was a con man is nevertheless affected by what he sees through the lens.
He says at one point, Mother of God, what faces.
Yes, when he sees those Sicilian mobsters, basically.
He's reminded of Miss Lonely Hearts, the star of a book and a movie about a vice columnist who gets all these letters from the people who are suffering.
And he's very cynical.
He just does it for the money.
But as he reads these letters, he begins to take on the burden of the letters, even despite his cynicism.
And the same process takes place in this movie.
The guy knows he's a con man.
He knows these screen tests are not going anywhere.
And nevertheless, as he sees the need and the hunger and the ambition and the dreams of the people through his lens, they begin to get to him.
Yeah, I was affected by the picture.
And this guy, obviously, Tornatore, he made one in between these two, which I didn't care for.
This one works, I think.
OK, when we come back, the story of a young British man who volunteers to fight in the Spanish Civil War.
Viva la Revolucion!
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England.
Hold it.
One of the most interesting filmmakers in the world, always tackling tricky subjects and usually making substantial films out of them.
Over the years, we have praised a lot of his titles, including Kes, Riff Raff, Raining Stones,
and the brilliantly acted film about a disturbed mother called Lady Bird, Lady Bird.
All of those films were set in Great Britain, but now he's back with the films shot largely on location in Spain.
Set in the 1930s, it stars Ian Hart as a fiercely left-wing young man who has volunteered to fight against the fascist anti-government forces of Franco.
Here he blames himself for a comrade's death.
I should have opened fire, but I didn't and they got him.
That's all there is to it.
The thing is, he was a good man and he was a brave man.
We're all going to miss him.
That was Rosanna pastor as the dead man's lover.
Later, after Hart is injured, she meets him in Madrid and tells him about changes in their unit.
Women aren't allowed to fight anymore.
New rules.
Yeah, I had.
I can be a nurse.
I can drive a truck.
I can be a cook.
But I mustn't shoot a gun anymore.
The Spanish Civil War was fought not only between the left and right, but among the forces on the left.
What is fascinating about Land and Freedom is the way it reflects that ideological infighting in the life of this one man who goes to Spain as a communist,
fights on the side of the socialists and anarchists and goes over to the communists and is finally disillusioned by their cynical maneuvering.
Ken Loach has made a film that gives the audience credit for intelligence and curiosity and instead of just showing good guys and bad guys, like most war films, he shows a lot of the shades in between.
Well, Roger, the subject interests me.
And some of the speeches, a few of them, where that is going on and some of them are like there's a little town meeting.
I like that scene.
I like that scene.
But all of the, what I would call conventional material, the love relationship, all of that stuff, I thought was hackneyed.
And I really felt as though he's a great filmmaker and it's the first time I've been disappointed.
And I was disappointed by him trying to take this interesting, fascinating subject and maybe it's really a subject for a documentary and not for a film,
because I felt that a lot of this stuff was laid on and wasn't worthy of the other material.
Well, there have been documentaries, including To Die in Madrid, about this subject matter.
I agree.
It's one of his lesser films.
I'm still recommending it, though.
I like the town meeting where it's not a town meeting.
It's a meeting of their military unit where they're arguing about whether the land should be collectively farmed or individually farmed.
But the rest of it, come on, Roger, that's one scene out of the whole picture.
When we come back, a final look at one of the world's greatest directors who died suddenly this week.
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Now, don't ask me why, but Sharon wants to meet you.
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I can't believe our little Billy has a girlfriend.
Okay, first rule, my name is Bill and I'm not little.
Bill.
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What?
What's with that hair?
What?
Why is he in a suit?
Cool, huh?
Why did I agree to this?
Hi, Sharon, this is my family, let's go.
Hey, wait, we're just going to McDonald's.
Maybe they'd like to come with us.
McDonald's?
Yeah, that's okay with you, Bill.
Hold it, this isn't you, it's an older guy.
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Cisco and Ebert's Video Pick of the Week.
Brought to you by Orville Redenbacher's Gourmet Popping Corn, the best part of the movies.
There were some who thought him the best movie director in the world.
He was certainly one of the most original and innovative.
And when Krzysztof Kieslowski died earlier this week at the age of 54, the cinema lost a giant.
Kieslowski was born in Poland and made films there and in France and Switzerland, centered his work on big topics.
His Decalogue, for example, consisted of ten one-hour films applying the Ten Commandments to modern times.
But he became best known in America for his four most recent films.
The Double Life of Veronique, made in 1991, starred Irene Jacob in a double role as two young women with similar names whose paths never quite crossed
and who in mysterious ways seem to be traveling similar lifetimes or timelines.
Then came Kieslowski's Great Three Colors trilogy.
Blue, from 1993, starred Juliette Monoche as the young widow of a composer who must pick up the pieces of her life and finds that they do not all quite fit.
The following year came White, starring Zygnev Zamychowski as a Polish exile in Paris who tires at performing for money in the Paris Metro
and convinces a friend to fly him home inside a suitcase.
Once back in Poland, he becomes successful and tries to lure his former wife, played by Julie Delpy, back into his life.
The third color in the trilogy was Red, also from 1994.
It starred Irene Jacob as a young woman who, through a series of coincidences, becomes friendly with a retired judge, played by Jean-Louis Trentignon.
Excusez-moi, la porte était ouverte. Je suis désolée, je pense que j'ai écrasé votre chien.
His movies penetrated to the very heart of the secret of life.
He cast aside plot lines in order to show how we ride on a wave of chance, synchronicity, luck and fate.
After he completed the Blue, White and Red trilogy, Kislowski announced he was retiring from film.
He died Wednesday after heart surgery in a Warsaw hospital.
He once compared life to a café, where we sit next to strangers.
Everyone gets up, he says, and goes their separate ways, and if they meet again, they don't realize it's not for the first time.
He was a great director, and I think you put your finger on what he stands for, and that is the non-linear story.
And I think if people really want to stretch themselves, and this is normally where we do our video pick of the week,
I would say that the picture to see, I still love The Double Life of Veronique.
When I saw that picture, I was stretched in a very exciting way, trying to figure out the mystery of these two women, is a special movie experience.
A great director. Now let's recap the movies we reviewed on this show.
Two Thumbs Up for Executive Decision, a sometimes goofy but always entertaining hijack thriller with Kurt Russell and some great miniature camera shots.
Two Thumbs Down, way down for Ed, the lame children's baseball comedy featuring a chimp at third base and a chump in the starring role.
Two Thumbs Down for The Dreadful Too Much, a miserable farce with Antonio Banderas in a doubly boring role.
Two Thumbs Up on The Star Maker, which we both like in the way that it considered the nature of what the camera lens sees.
Finally, a split vote on Land and Freedom, the Spanish Civil War drama. I didn't think its personal stories were worthy of its political issues.
Roger, however, felt that there was a center to the picture that does recommend it.
And so the film we both recommend is Executive Decision. It's a lot of fun.
Executive Decision and also Red, White, Blue and the Double Life of Veronique by Kislowski.
That's it for this week. Next week we'll be back with reviews of more new movies including Diabolique, a thriller starring Sherman Stone and Isabella Johnny.
That's next week and until then, the balcony is closed.
Quality Check Dairies, where the check in the queue tells you our...