Theresa Randall discovers a talent for hot phone sex in Spike Lee's Girl 6 and Ben Stiller leads an all-star cast in the black comedy Flirting with Disaster.
lider.
Be patient. I'm not going to be able to do this.
Well, I suggest you try. It isn't like you burnt the toast, Mia. You killed your husband.
Sharon Stone and Isabella Gianni are murderers, fearfully awaiting discovery of the corpse in Diabolique.
One of five new films we'll be reviewing this week on Siskel and Ebert, including a screwball comedy starring Ben Stiller, Alan Alda, and Mary Tyler Moore,
and a close-up look at the phone sex industry by Spike Lee. I'm Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Time.
And I'm Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune. Our first film is the American remake of Diabolique,
and here is a rare, intelligent remake, bringing a new sensibility to a classic French film.
The new point of view is a 90s feminist one, as women gang up on a bestial man.
The setting is a private boys' school run by a tyrannical headmaster played by Chaz Palminteri.
But as tough as he is on the boys, he's even rougher on his wife, a fragile beauty played by Isabella Gianni.
I didn't have to get married to have lousy sex. No, I did.
In a revenge plot, his wife and a hard-as-nails teacher at the school, played by Sharon Stone, conspire to kill him.
And this performance by Stone should solidify her reputation as the screen's leading femme fatale.
What do your saints say? I'm brooding. I'm not free.
Lost your faith, huh? I never really had any to begin with, I guess. Never believed in any of it.
God, the Virgin Mary, life begins at 40, and the people are all just basically good inside.
Eventually a third woman enters the story, a detective played by the wonderful actress Kathy Bates.
So, uh, none of his friends know where he might be? We haven't asked them. You know, it's kind of awkward.
Hey, my husband's disappeared. Have you seen him? You know, her husband.
It wouldn't be awkward for me. If it's okay with you, Mrs. Baran, maybe I could take a look at his address book.
And Kathy Bates turns up the pressure a notch when she's alone with Sharon Stone.
What about her? Does she ever want to kill her husband? Why would she want to do that? Maybe she found out you were sleeping with him.
Oh, that's so clever. What'd you do? Ask one of the faculty or any of the students?
Oh, I know. You read it in the brochure, right?
So she knew? Of course she knew. Ask her. Come on, she's not a murderer. She's an ex-none.
Now, this diabolique is not the landmark of bold original filmmaking like the French classic upon which it is based.
At the same time, for an American thriller, I think it does represent a watershed in legitimate male bashing.
You thought Angela Bassett had cause to torch her husband's car and waiting to exhale? Well, you should see diabolique.
Well, I don't think anybody deserves to be murdered, but then again, maybe that's the way it works out.
I disagree with you, Gene. I think this is a pretty bad film and really bad in comparison with the 1955 classic.
That's a better film.
Why remake the film if, A, you don't appreciate the ending and, B, you don't appreciate the character of the police detective?
Here, instead of that wonderful, perfect, elegant ending in the original that everybody was asked not to reveal,
you go right back to the same thing they did in their remake of The Vanishing
where you have people being knocked over the head with shovels and rakes and one ending after another
and a completely phony, baloney reconciliation at the end between two characters, one of whom really shouldn't be alive at that point.
It's not the one you're thinking of.
And then the police detective in the original film, that character inspired Columbo, the Peter Falk television series.
Here, the police detective essentially has nothing to do, isn't made into as interesting a character.
I think that she has a function and I tried to say what it was without giving out too much away,
which is that she is in sync with the feminist sensibility of this picture.
Well, if you're referring to the scene I'm thinking of, she makes that decision without having the information she would need in order to make it.
She doesn't know what they really did or what they really didn't do.
She has enough reason to make that judgment, in my opinion.
But beyond that, you didn't like any of the performances?
Oh, now that's where I make an exception. I liked the performances. I thought Sharon Stone was very good.
Sensational.
Isabella Gianni, this is kind of amazing. She plays the child bride.
She's playing about 20 years younger than she is and that's totally convincing. I don't know how she does it.
And Shaz Palminteri is very good. I loved the performances in this movie. I thought the screenplay was done.
I think there's a lot in this picture to recommend.
Okay, next movie and our next film is called It's My Party.
It stars Eric Roberts in the story of a man who discovers that an age-related brain disease will rob him of his identity and self-consciousness in just a few days.
So he decides to throw a party to say farewell to his family and friends before taking his own life.
Ah, good morning.
You look great. I can't believe you're sick.
Oh, no. You see my head shot.
Now you can get me a Tylenol commercial.
So, um, who can I call?
Yeah, we're doing okay. Right, Ken? We'll probably need a bouncer.
Robert's guest list includes his mother, played by Lee Grant, and his sister, played by Marlee Matlin.
The one unexpected guest is his former lover who broke up with him after he discovered he had AIDS.
The lover is played by Gregory Harrison.
What a surprise.
Uh, Charlene told me.
You look great.
Well, live fast, die young, live with a living corpse.
Saying goodbye means coming to terms with his estranged father, played by George Segal.
I'm sorry. I wasn't a good father to you.
As well as comforting his distraught mother.
Jacob, please don't leave me. I can't make it without you.
You're gonna have to.
This party is sometimes very funny, but mostly it's gentle and sad.
The Eric Roberts performance is one of his best, I think, very restrained, especially in the way he finds the right note.
It's a party, but nobody's partying.
The issue of voluntary suicide is much in the news right now, but It's My Party doesn't debate it so much as simply assume that it's better to die while you still know who you are.
I think it's a good film, too, and I thought there was a sense of discovery.
It's almost like it was shot by Randall Kleiser, the director, and it's surprising to see his credit.
There's a guy who made Blue Lagoon.
To see him follow this like a documentary, we're tracking through the homes that we see in this picture, and I felt like I was a guest.
I was walking through the party, and, for example, he didn't have, there's a big conflict between Eric Roberts and his lover.
Rather than have that payoff in one big scene, it keeps developing like it just might if you've got years of hostility, and so you do a little bit here.
And then ten minutes later in the film, they meet up again as they walk through this party.
I thought that was very well orchestrated, and I'm glad you praised Eric Roberts, because here's an actor I thought was a big talent, was star 80 since then, and I don't know, that must be a decade.
He hasn't gotten a good film in that time period.
Sometimes Eric Roberts has played kind of bizarre or over the top or eccentric or all wound up kinds of characters here.
It's a straight dramatic role, and he's very good.
I felt like you did, as if I were attending a memorial service in a way, or as if I were attending this event.
Absolutely.
The movie doesn't, it's not in your face with a lot of plot.
That's the director.
It's about being able to absorb the meaning of this passage.
Good job by Randall Kleiser. Coming up next, Flirting with Disaster, an offbeat comedy with an all-star cast, including Mary Tyler Moore on Alda, and some 30-something stars, too.
No matter where we are in our lives, especially if we're adopted, we can't help but feel that there's something missing.
This woman strikes me as being very dangerous.
You know, FedEx and the Dream Team have a lot in common.
They're fast.
We're fast.
They've got moves.
We've got a few moves of our own.
We both spend a lot of time in the air.
They get called for traveling.
We travel when we're called.
They're masters that grab eat a pie and slam and jam and fowl I'm done.
Well, okay, so they got us there.
FedEx, proud sponsor of the USA Basketball Dream Team.
Neat, huh?
Hey, wait for me.
Smells good.
Pass it down.
It's an indisputable fact that kids love the taste of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.
Don't hug it all.
And ever since we added more chicken, there's been even more to love.
Graham, I'm hungry.
Which means there's even more to go around.
Hey, I never knew there was chicken in this soup.
Mm.
Campbell's makes everything better.
When I got rid of my gray hair, I wanted a natural look, so I didn't take any chances.
I used the sure thing for a natural look called Just For Men.
Apply Just For Men, and in five minutes, rinse.
It's specially timed to blend away gray.
Bring back your natural look and condition hair.
It's a sure thing.
Just For Men, the sure thing for a natural look.
And now try Just For Men colored gel for the hard-to-color hair of mustaches and beards.
Brush in, rinse out, just five minutes.
Come on, honey. Come on.
That's my big boy. Good. There you go.
Now come on. Come on.
Mommy's gonna put you in your high chair and fix you some dryers, cookies, and cream.
Whoa!
It's more than ice cream. It's dryers.
Some people look down on drivers like we're low class.
Not me. I always wanted to learn how to drive a big rig.
You never told me that.
Well, I might not have voiced it until now, but it's always been a fantasy of mine.
You want a lesson?
Ben Stiller plays a Generation X-er crisscrossing America and the West.
He's a great guy.
He's crisscrossing America in search of his real parents in Flirting with Disaster,
a very funny and wholly original American comedy packed with some very big laughs
and even better, some characters you haven't seen anywhere before.
The film opens with Stiller and his wife, Patricia Arquette,
having their sex life interrupted by meeting an adoption agency employee,
Taya Leoni, who is going to help the adopted Stiller find his real birth parents.
That's all right. Nancy understands how important this whole thing is.
Great. The baby's gorgeous, by the way. It looks just like Mel.
Thanks. Really? You think so? Everybody always says he looks like me.
Well, what do I know? I'm just another 30-year-old woman desperate for a baby of her own.
Aside from the fact that Stiller is immediately attracted to Leoni,
the main reason he wants to find his real parents is that his adoptive parents,
played by Mary Tyler Moore and George Siegel, are such neurotic jerks.
Nancy, did you get that support bra yet?
What are you waiting for?
Hey, I want to introduce you to somebody.
This don't make such a big deal out of it.
It makes a real difference.
All right. Could we not talk about this right now?
Yes, we're going to talk about this because she's not listening to me.
And so they hit the road and meet all sorts of oddballs,
including Stiller's real parents, a couple of hippie-dippie free spirits
played by Lily Tomlin and Alan Alda. Good casting, good performances.
Yeah, it's very rough.
Oh, yeah. It looks rough, but it's very smooth.
Right, smooth, smoother than you would think, but still, still living.
This is wonderful, great stuff.
And you guys, you guys make your living through the arts, huh?
Well, we try. Sometimes you have to supplement.
Yeah, you have to supplement with other things.
And then there's the bisexual federal agent along for the ride,
who just happens to be an old boyfriend of Stiller's wife.
Suddenly we have two extramarital affairs going on.
Oh, my God.
Can we stop all this craziness, huh?
Yes, because I wasn't even enjoying that.
It seems like you were enjoying it.
Well, the attention, maybe.
Very funny stuff.
Flirting with Disaster was written and directed by David O. Russell,
who achieved some fame with his first independent feature, Spanking the Monkey.
Here's a rare case, however, of a young filmmaker going more mainstream
and not having his fresh voice diluted.
Flirting with Disaster is nervy in the way it constantly dares to put
strange new characters in front of us,
and it marks David O. Russell as a movie-making name to remember a very funny picture.
A very funny film, indeed. I loved this film,
and I loved about it probably the same thing you did.
I never knew where it was going next.
And who you were going to meet next.
Who you were going to meet next, because, of course,
they wind up in all the wrong places with all the wrong people,
and then the people they do meet, including Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin,
so funny as those bizarro New Mexico recluses and their son,
played by Glenn Fitzgerald, and he is really a classic character.
The entire thing just builds and builds and builds
and gets wackier and screwier, and it's very funny.
You know, you get the feeling that when he was sitting at his typewriter,
David O. Russell said, all right, and this is what more screenwriters should do,
sit there and think, now, what can I do to delight people?
What new surprise can I give them?
And maybe I'll have a coincidence happen, like the agent is an old boyfriend,
but you know what? Coincidences happen in real life.
We can accept that kind of stuff. It's delightful.
When we come back, Spike Lee enters the world of phone sex in Girl 6.
MUSIC
Hi, I'm Jake Japs.
At American Furniture Warehouse, we know furniture.
We buy furniture. We sell furniture.
We stock furniture. We finance furniture.
We guarantee furniture. We deliver furniture.
Seven days a week.
MUSIC
When you're ready for furniture, we're ready for you.
MUSIC
What is a family?
A family is a group of people who look out for each other.
A family prov...