This week, Siskel and Ebert review detective Al Pacino romancing suspected serial killer Ellen Barkin in Sea of Love.
Kevin Bacon is Hollywood's newest boy wonder in the big picture.
And a fed-up housewife takes a vacation from marriage in Shirley Valentine.
It's all coming up next on Siskel and Ebert.
Al Pacino plays a detective who falls for Ellen Barkin playing a woman who may be a serial killer of men in Sea of Love.
It's one of five 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.
Our first movie is named Sea of Love and it stars Al Pacino and his best role in quite some time as a cop assigned to a murder investigation.
He discovers that the male victim of his investigation answered an ad in a Lonely Hearts Club sex magazine and then he meets another cop investigating another killing and the two crimes seem to be related.
I heard from one of you guys you caught a good one. Face down taxpayer back of the head in his own bed. Me too out on Yellowstone Boulevard.
No s**t.
Yeah, the bullet we can't do nothing with. It got pancake on a bed frame.
We got a great bullet. We got cigarette butts with lipstick on them.
Yeah? We didn't give any butts.
Did they please?
Yeah, nothing showed up on the files.
Let's compare them all.
That's John Goodman who plays Roseanne Barr's husband on television as the other cop.
Together they get a bright idea. Why not run their own ad in the magazine, take out all the women who reply and see if their fingerprints match the killer's.
What's with the backup? What's with the wire? What's she gonna do? Confess? Shoot me? We're in a restaurant.
You make me happy, okay? Now who's retinny ad? Who's the poet?
Ellen Barkin stars in the movie as a woman who answers Pacino's ad on their first date to something unexpected happens. He falls in love with her.
I believe in animal attraction. I believe in love at first sight. I believe in this. And I don't feel it with you.
Well, I'm hell on wheels once you get the bill gimme.
It's nothing personal.
Oh, come on.
The mystery deepens. Evidence seems to point to Barkin as the killer. But Pacino wants to ignore the evidence and listen to his heart instead.
What? What?
What are you looking for?
What are you doing?
What are you looking for? Huh? Huh? What are you looking for? Huh?
Like Jagged Edge and Fatal Attraction, this movie develops a lot of suspense out of the possibility that the hero has fallen in love with a killer, with a person who might wind up as his killer, and is totally vulnerable to the killer's secret instincts.
The conclusion of the Sea of Love is not as clever as I would have liked. The solution to the mystery seems to appear from out of the woodwork, almost out of thin air, without playing fair with the audience in terms of the clues earlier in the film.
But the movie itself is a chiller, a convincing mystery with good performances and convincing romantic chemistry between Pacino and Barkin. And Ellen Barkin, after this movie and the Big Easy, I think, really emerges as a woman who has great passion on the screen.
Well, you know, you said that they fall in love, or we're talking about them falling in love and all that. What I like about the film is that they don't exactly fall in love in a conventional way.
These are two street savvy New York characters that they're playing, and they're very tentative. I mean, he's a cop, and we buy him as a cop.
And this is what's so great about Pacino, finally, after such a long time, a decade of meaningless roles. He's got a good juicy one here, and he's good at it. But I thought it was just really two strong adults locked in battle. Forget the mystery.
You put your finger on the best part of the movie, which is the relationship between those two people in all of its complexities and in all of its implications, including the problem that is raised by the thriller itself.
But to say once again what disappointed me about the movie is at the end, and you say, oh, come on. In a way, they have to play fair, and although they technically play fair, they really have brought the killer in front of them.
I'm telling you, the tension level for me was not the...the mystery was there, of course, but the tension level was just to see two really strong adults go at it in a closed room, and what's going to happen?
Well, I can ask you about your tension level, but I'm afraid I couldn't do it without giving away a secret about the movie, so I'll...
It's a good picture.
You know what I'm thinking now.
No, I don't. I don't even want to know. Our next picture, we go from Sea of Love to a contemporary comedy called True Love, a slice of Italian-American life about a young couple in conflict as they plan to celebrate their wedding.
This would like to be sort of a young people's version of Moonstruck, full of conflict and colorful characters. Well, here the main couple argues about his plans for his bachelor party.
After Uncle Ben's party, I'm going to go out with my friends. It's going to be my last night out. Don't you understand?
No. How many last nights are you going to have, Michael?
Oh, I don't believe this. What do you want? I'm going to be with you for the rest of my life.
So, we can't be together tonight?
What's the difference? Now, later, we're going to be together.
That's what I'm saying. What's the big deal?
That argument is credible, but the film really pushes credibility with an argument over mashed potatoes being served at the wedding.
Now, you've selected a menu of prime rib, baby peas, and mashed potatoes. We often color the potatoes to match the colors of the wedding.
Oh, yeah?
But with Rainbow, you can go with anything. Might I suggest a pale blue?
Yeah, that's nice.
Did you say blue mashed potatoes?
Yes.
No. We're not having blue mashed potatoes at this wedding.
What kind of blue?
Men and women always take sides in these kinds of comedies. After the fight over the bachelor party, the women band together.
Don't worry, honey. Once you two are on your honeymoon, you can relax, have fun. You'll be fine.
Yeah, otherwise, you tell him to take gas.
I'm serious.
You open the oven door like this, and you say, Michael, take gas.
Some of the movie is overwritten, I think that scene is. Other scenes are funny and believable.
I think the real discovery of True Love, however, is not in its derivative script, but in the skill of its principal actors, Ron Eldard and Annabella Sciora.
I think they are always credible and likable, even when the script is hokey. I'm giving the film a mixed review, but not to these two fine young actors, Ron Eldard and Annabella Sciora.
Well, I'm not giving the movie a mixed review. I liked it, and I'll tell you why I like it.
First of all, you point out scenes like the mashed potato scene. That's accurate. They color mashed potatoes at weddings. They really do.
And a lot of the other things in this movie are accurate, too, in terms of showing the wedding industry.
And the point of the movie is that as the momentum begins to build with all the relatives on both sides and all the friends and the whole community pushing these two people toward the altar,
and then the arrangements are made and the tuxedos are rendered and so forth, the amazingly interesting thing about this movie is that these two people have no business whatsoever getting married.
I mean, the bride's father tells her in the limousine as they're on the way to the church, honey, if you don't want to do this, you don't have to.
But she has to because of the social conventions and pressures. And this is not, despite the title, True Love, this is not a movie that is about two wonderful young people getting married and everybody lives.
It's about the whole institution of marriage and how people sometimes feel that they have to go through with it because it's the role that they are assigned.
Whether they want to marry the person or not, the church has been rented.
Well, I understand. And what you say is true and it's a real force in a lot of people's lives, I'm sure.
I'm talking about the actual lines that were written. And some of those things to me seem very concocted. And I saw those played out.
I will say that this guy, particularly this Ron Eldar, I thought he was he was real and his responses seem kind of real.
It does seem a little bit audacious, wouldn't you say, to portray him, though, as a character who wants to go out with the boys on his wedding night, the night that they get married.
Wasn't that preposterous to you? Well, obviously, obviously. But on the other hand, it was believable. This guy is afraid.
He's afraid of getting married. He's afraid of getting married. He's afraid of his wife. He's afraid of his wedding night.
And he's an alcoholic. That's clear. So what does he want to do after he gets married?
He wants to go out and get drunk because what he doesn't want to do is not drink and go home with this woman that he really didn't want to marry in the first place.
Of course, it's believable. I think he likes her a little bit. I thought you just said a while back you thought it was preposterous.
What was preposterous? That he would want to go out at night. No. Well, I said that I misspoke. I'm sorry.
No, I think I can believe that as a matter of fact. I can. And I can believe a lot of the things in this movie.
I don't feel that it was overwritten. I feel that it does have a real documentary feeling to it, which is what I think they're trying to do.
Coming up next, the big picture about a would-be filmmaker who gets chewed up by the Hollywood system.
Anything that Alan was involved with is dead.
Neil, I don't have any money! It's amazing what you can invent with ordinary stuff.
And a little help from Daryl Wimberg. I bet this will be the only left-handed comic book page turner in the science fair tonight.
Mom said she never knew an egg beater could do that. And she made dinner one, two, three so Daryl and I wouldn't be late.
Burgers and tons of variety tater tots. Tater tots are stupendous.
I asked Mom who invented them. She said probably some kids like us.
Do you know what happens when these eyes meet these? And these? Love at first sight.
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Our next movie is named The Big Picture and it stars Kevin Bacon as a bright young film student
who wins a big Hollywood prize and is immediately the toast of the town for about 10 minutes.
As the movie opens, he's an honest, genuine, loyal, and truthful young man,
but then he gets blinded by the mirage of big bucks and overnight fame in Tinseltown
and he begins to believe what everybody is telling him.
And eventually, he even starts sneaking out on his loyal girlfriend.
Where were you?
I went out.
I know you went out. That was five hours ago.
I went to a party.
With Gretchen Gorman.
Who's Gretchen Gorman?
Susan.
Don't come any closer, Nick, unless you want to walk funny for the rest of your life.
She's just an actress, baby.
She's a bimbo.
She's an actress.
Okay. A bimbo actress. A no-talent bimbo actress.
There is a lot of truth in the big picture, but also a lot of confusion.
The movie is on target when it observes the way success can blind people
and make them forget their old friends.
But in a movie that was made by insiders about the Hollywood system,
it's a little amazing how many Hollywood cliches this movie falls for.
For example, the goofball agent, who's played by Martin Short,
is such an impossible parody that a lot of genuine comic opportunities are probably lost in that role.
Some of the best stuff in the movie is the angriest.
I liked it, for example, when the bacon character got hot all over again overnight
simply because he didn't answer his phone, and so everyone assumed he was in demand.
There's a lot of good stuff in this movie, but on the whole, I don't think it quite works.
I can't give a thumbs up.
Yeah, it didn't quite work for me either.
I think that sometimes the movie is shooting in movie parody style,
certain sequences and fantasy sequences, and when it does that, I think that's a little bit too inside.
I think they have a real good story here.
Oddly enough, I think if they told it in a less complicated way...
Yes.
I usually don't argue for that, but in this case, I think that Kevin Bacon's a real substantial actor.
The story is legitimate. Tell the story straight through.
That's exactly what I thought. In fact, this movie made me hungry for another movie on this subject
almost from the same starting point.
A young kid wins the prize, goes to Hollywood, gets an agent, and so forth.
If they had done it in a straightforward way as a movie about Hollywood,
instead of trying to turn it into also...
I think they were trying to cover their bets with a Hollywood shuffle-type parody style.
Also being just too inside and too knowing about the movies as opposed to, I think,
know more about that character, and you can have all kinds of spinoffs
into all kinds of yuppie professions that have nothing to do with the movie industry.
Coming up next, a movie called Shirley Valentine about one woman's journey for self-respect.
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