september 6, 1995 Opie goes to the Movies Brothers McMullen by Peter T. Chattaway The Brothers McMullen tries so hard to be a Woody Allen film, it makes New York’s most famous purveyor of angst-ridden romances look positively relaxed. Picture, if you will, a male Irish take on Hannah and Her Sisters with a strong contra-Catholic streak a la Alice, but with the most banal dialogue possi- ble and a handfuFof-actors who, if not recent acting-school graduates them- selves, appear to think that this nugget in their portfolios ,just might get them into some back-alley Juilliard someday. Perhaps I’m being too hard on this film, but when something as ostensibly prestigious as the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize gets bestowed on something so mediocre, someone has to take a stand. Allen at least can find the poignant themes that burn within the everyday dronings of his films’ sub- jects, but McMullen writer/director/star Edward Burns offers up a script that is distinctly lacking in subtext. Nothing must have a double meaning; every- thing must be bluntly, painfully obvi- ous, as superficial and shallow as an oil slick. Consider these gems: “You don’t need me, you just think you need me.” “Do you think we’ve lost the ro- mance from our marriage?” “I’m never gonna love anybody the way I love you” And if I hear one more woman tell her man that he’s “distant,” I swear I’ll scream. Almost without exception, the ac- tors deliver their lines in one of two modes: apathy, or obsequious zeal. The latter mode rears its cloying little head in the part of Ann (Elizabeth P. McKay), a tactless, supercharged trollop who’s all eager to jump married-man Jack (Jack Mulcahy)’s love bone in the first reel, then turns vindictive in the oh-so- Double Happiness by Trent Ernst Mina Shum’s first feature film is a pleasure to behold. It isn’t big. It isn’t glamourous. It does not try to be something that it is not. Double Happi- ness is a pleasant, personal little film. Telling the story of Jade (Sandra Oh) a young Chinese-Canadian strug- gling to find her own path as her life is slowly ground between two cultures at by Holley Keyes odds with each other, director Shum is also telling her own story. It is this au- tobiographical feel that lends the char- acters and events such a weight. Even though the account is fictionalized, there is a painful realness to the film that transcends culture. Jade dreams of being an actor, but even here her personal struggle re- flects larger issues of sterotyping and culture. Though she speaks English per- Beyond Rangoon is supposed to be an enlightening dramatic piece on the political situation in Burma as seen by an American tourist. Unfortunately, the acting. is very bad, stale almost, and the cinematography is choppy and badly sequenced. In one scene, a dramatic car chase through a rice paddy, the background moves along quite smoothly while the car, an obvious computer overlay, jerks across the screen. The movie is one continuos action shot after another, with glimpses of great scenery and lots of bad acting. The basic story is of an American tourist who has suffered a tragedy and is trying to escape the memories of it by traveling to Asia. She ends up in Burma (Myanmar) without a passport and is stuck there while the country is under martial law. Most of the movie is of the American and her new found Burmese friends trying to escape to Thailand. While the movie itself stunk, the underlying story of the political situation in Burma was fascinating. Burma is currently trying to become democracy but the government now in power keeps denying the new government party. University students and Buddhist monks actively protest in non-violent demonstrations, only to be shot at. The whole situation is very disturbing and deserves a closer look and definitely deserves a better movie. For more info on the predicament in Burma call, write or e-mail Canadian Friends of Burma, PO Box 45056, Dunbar Postal Outlet, 4326 Dunbar St., Van., BC, V6S 2G0. Telephone: 253-0435, email: cfob@web.apc.org. predictable final act. While eldest McMullen Jack won- ders what to do with his wedding ring, youngest bro Patrick (Mark McGlone) — motto: “Repression is not such a bad thing” — faces a dilemma so common in movieland that I can only assume some popcorn-muncher has been there before: Patrick’s Jewish girlfriend (Shari Albert) wants to get married, and her “Daddy” has an apartment and a job and everything just ready for him. Nothing like a wealthy would-be father- in-law to make a routine dumping look downright principled, even virtuous. The one saving grace in this film is Burns himself. He claims to have taken the role of middle child Barry because it would mean one less person on the payroll — well, thank God for tiny budgets. Barry goes through lov- ers almost as handily as he finishes his brother’s six-packs, but (wouldntcha know it) he just might have met his match in Audry (Maxine Bahns), the fectly, she must affect a thick Chinese accent to get a bit part in a TV show. Jade manouvers through these cultural issues with the grace of a dancer. For her parents, she acts the part of a fine young Chinese woman. She dates the right boys. She says the words that her parents wish to hear. With her younger friends she goes to bars. She balances this double life successfully until the night she meets _the way, you woman who scoops a base- ment suite that he’d planned on renting. Burns brings such an effortless cynicism to his role, you just want to hang out with him and down a few brewskis to- gether (and I don’t even drink). Along begin to won- der why the rest of his movie couldn’t have been as interesting. As Burns himself demonstrates, low Mark (Collum Rennie). They wind up in bed together, and her carefully bal- anced deception inexhorably begins to fall apart. She can no longer be “all things to all people.’ She tries to hide Mark from her family, just as she tries to hide her family from Mark. Double Happiness is very much a character movie, and to her credit, Shum has given each character identity. So much so that when Jade is forced by Desperado by Peter T. Chattaway Made for a mere $7000, Robert Rodriguez’s ‘El Mariachi’ was a festi- val-circuit hit that embodied the best traditions of low-budget filmmaking: surreal dream sequences, experimen- tal camera angles, a tough-talking fe- male role, a tacky soundtrack, and the sort of nihilistic sadism that kills eve- ryone, friend or foe, within a mile of the hero (who does not go unscathed himself). Above all, it had an eye- catching gimmick: a guitar case filled with weapons. The wandering minstrel became a troubador terminator. Hollywood shelled out $100,000 to buy the film and upgrade it to the 35mm format. Now, with the sequel ‘Desperado,’ comes the *real* makeover. With the money at his dis- posal, Rodriguez can afford to destroy an entire building or two, crash cars together for a cheap slapstick joke, and flood the screen with (literally) buck- ets of fake blood. Most significantly, ‘Desperado’ eschews the Everyman look of ‘El Mariachi’’s cast in favour of stellar cameos; this big-name approach reaches its climax in the replacement of pudgy, fresh-faced Carlos Gallardo (the original Mariachi, he appears briefly in ‘Desperado’ as one of the Mariachi’s sidekicks) with bankable, sensual stud Antonio Banderas. At least Rodriguez hasn’t lost his sense of humour. To be sure, the fast- motion photography and screeching- tires sound effects that halted his steadicam in ‘El Mariachi’ are nota- bly absent from ‘Desperado’ (you can be funny in Hollywood, but not experi- mentally so), but the action sequences are ridiculously, if enjoyably, over the top (Sam Raimi could learn from this guy), and the minor characters pepper laughs throughout the film. Let’s begin with the most minor of all: Quentin Tarantino’s “pick-up guy”’.. Reportedly, Rodriguez wanted to give him a taste of his own gory medi- cine; frankly, Video Boy gave himself a more significant role in ‘Reservoir Dogs.’ (Along the way, Tarantino gets a chance to walk his shtick and plagia- rize yet another anecdote — let’s hear it for that lateral dialogue! Now, what was the film *about*, again?) Cheech Marin has a hilarious turn as an irasci- ble bartender, and Steve Buscemi gets the film off to a beautiful start as the teller of tall tales who makes ready the path of the Mariachi; hopping up and down on his barstool as he spins his story, he comes across like a shrivelled Jon Lovitz (in perfect yeah-*that’s*- the-ticket Pathological Liar mode) on a caffeine high. Less funny — though he tries — is ‘Clear and Present Danger’s Joaquim de Almeida as Bucho, the sort of des- potic druglord who will kill his own henchman as a facetious object lesson to the others. Apparently Bucho is somehow related to the nasties who plagued the Mariachi and killed his lover in the first film, and the Mariachi wants revenge. Distinctly *non*-funny — apart from the work she performs on theMariachi’s bullet wound — is Caro- lina (Salma Hayek), the woman fromBucho’s past who strikes up an af- fair with the peripatetic Mariachi.Forget the strength of will that made the ill- Good-looking people frolic in Brothers McMullen. budget does not have to mean low tal- ent. her family into a date with a young Chi- nese man, his nameless, faceless ano- nymity is striking in its symbolism. For a first film, Double Happi- ness is a mature, intelligent bit of film making. More than that, it rings true. No mean trick in a genre stained by the oceans of fake blood that Hollywood pours out fated love interest in ‘El Mariachi’ so interesting: this new girl looks and sounds far too delicate; her “fuckability” (to use Sherry Lansing’s term) is her sole raison d’etre. You'll never see *her* forcing the Mariachi to compose a song about castration at knifepoint. Which brings us to Banderas. When all the wise-cracking sidekicks and gun-toting machismoids are cleared away, the film must ultimately rely on his performance alone, and it works, to apoint. Banderas balances his role with some finely introspective moments when he isn’t twisting his way through shamelessly choreographed shoot-outs, but at times he gets *too* serious. For this the blame must go to Rodriguez. ‘El Mariachi’ was a pure exercise in low-budget narrative, unfet- tered by grand moral statements and half-assed stabs at “redeeming value”. It didn’t matter who the gunmen were, or why their cartel existed, so long as they were shot. ‘Desperado’ sacrifices this amoral purity by waxing eloquent on the villains’ drug trade, and offering stale moral commentary on the side. In addition, its final left-field plot twist is a total clunker; it doesn’t resonate with *any*thing we’ve seen in either of the two films. Not that continuity is a big con- cern here. The Mariachi left the first film with a motorbike, a docile pit bull, and an affinity for turtles. None of these make it into ‘Desperado’, and I would not be surprised if this film was simi- larly ignored by its successors. But when you’re paying to see bloody car- nage, who gives a fig for consistency?