Reviews of 8mm, In Dreams, and Office Space
8mm** Sleazy Does It 8mm, the new thriller from veteran director Joel Schumacher (Batman and Robin) is a sadistic journey into the pornographic underworld of violent sexploitation films known as “snuff”. Tom Welles, played by Nicolas Cage (Leaving Las Vegas), is a decent, upstanding investigator hired by a rich widow (Myra Carter) to investigate the contents of an 8mm film reel found among her late husband’s possessions. The reel documents the brutalization and murder of a teenage girl. Welles is charged with proving or disproving the crime. A street-smart adult-bookstore clerk, Max California (Joaquin Phoenix), guides Welles through the porno grounds of Los Angeles and New York. Their quest leads to a disquieting, albeit anti-climatic conclusion. Director Schumacher may see himself as an heir to the rich heritage of Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), in which voyeurs (audience) watch the voyeur (protagonist). With a running time of over two hours, the movie is too long, suffers from brutal editing, and is painfully predictable, sins Sir Alfred certainly never would have committed. 8mm can’t escape comparison to its soulmate Hard Core (1979), which isolated and magnified a father’s pain as he ventured into porn’s mean streets to realize “oh my God…that’s my daughter.” The difference between the films is that 8mm falls far from the mark when trying to invoke sympathy with the audience. Devoid of a moral anchor, this dark movie sinks to even greater depths of sleaze. If you are curious, go see this movie, but be sure to shower afterward. In Dreams* Who Said a Sleeper Was a Good Thing? Director Neil Jordan has a talent for navigating on-screen nightmares, as he proved in Interview with the Vampire and The Company of Wolves. His latest, In Dreams is an eerie mind-meld between an artist and a serial killer. Claire Cooper (Annette Bening) has had psychic visions all her life, though she never understood their significance. Lately the visions have become much more disturbing. Because part of what she sees involves a missing girl, Claire begins to suspect that someone is feeding her dreams. She fears that her psychic penpal may be a serial killer (Robert Downey, Jr.), and that her visions anticipate his actions. The killer abducts and kills Claire’s daughter and burrows deeper into Claire’s brain. The nightmares upset her husband, Paul (Aidan Quinn), who thinks his wife is going crazy. In the beginning, In Dreams is as unentertaining as watching someone sleepwalking and then moves on to become a routine story of abuse, mixed with cliché images of a mental ward. The film is filled with evocative imagery and is masterfully shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji. The music is equally haunting, yet, there is not much else supporting the facade. Overachieving actors cannot obscure the film’s hollow core. Based on the novel, Doll’s Eyes, the nocturnal storyline loses steam as the writers try to offer a plausible basis for their improbable tale. Disjointed and confusing, In Dreams cannot wake itself from the nightmare of its own making. Wake me when it’s over. Office Space** Cubicle Sweet Cubicle Animation king Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead Do America) tries live action in Office Space, an absurd comedy about the contemporary American workplace. Peter (Ron Livingston) is a Generation X computer programmer rendered helpless by corporate bureaucracy. His passive-aggressive boss (Gary Cole) torments him to the point of exasperation. A life-altering visit to a hypnotherapist leaves Peter with a blissful disregard for consequences. When consultants arrive to choose layoff victims, Peter’s “id-run-wild” is mistaken for talent and gains him a promotion. When Peter learns that two co-worker pals, Michael (David Herman) and Samir (Ajay Naidu), are on the layoff list, the story takes a bizarre, if not ill-advised turn. The first half of Office Space is surprisingly biting – a white computer nerd blasts rap music on his stereo but hurriedly locks his door when a black person walks by. A gangland-style beating of office equipment evokes memories of Boyz in the Hood. Writer/director Judge reprises the character of Milton (Stephen Root), an overworked and downtrodden peon, first seen in a series of sketches on Saturday Night Live in the early nineties. Jennifer Aniston as Peter’s love interest is flatly remarkable. Half of Office Space is a smart salute to white-collar drones leading lives of Dilbertian desperation. The other half is just desperate.