Movie Review: The Crush (1993)

Genre: Suspense  

Director: Alan Shapiro  

Starring: Cary Elwes, Alicia Silverstone, Kurtwood Smith  
Running Time: 89 minutes  

Synopsis: Investigative reporter Nick (Cary Elwes) accepts a new position working for a magazine in Seattle (but filmed in Vancouver, Canada). In a tony neighbourhood, he rents the guest house of wealthy couple Cliff and Liv (Kurtwood Smith and Gwynyth Walsh). Their precocious 14-year-old daughter Adrian (Alicia Silverstone) is frequently left home alone, and develops a serious crush on Nick. His initial ineptitude encourages her behavior, but when Nick befriends work colleague Amy (Jennifer Rubin), Adrian's obsessive malevolence is triggered.

What Works Well: Adrian is smart beyond her years, manipulative, and emerges as a psychopath. Alicia Silverstone (making her debut) just marginally overemotes as she captivates the screen with a combination of seductive flirtation and evil narcissism.

What Does Not Work As Well: The rest of the movie does not match the antagonist's potential. The mishaps become increasingly outlandish as Adrian develops far-fetched abilities to unleash wickedness on all her foes. Worse still is Nick's penchant for self-destruction by choosing the worst possible option at every turn (including skulking around Adrian's bedroom and voyeuristically hiding in her closet), and his inability to extricate himself from a clearly worsening situation (like, for example, by moving).

Key Quote:

Adrian (sarcastically): God, Amy... When I grow up I hope I can be just as smart as you.

Amy: Adrian, go play.

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Movie Review: Reptile (2023)

Genre: Crime Drama

Director: Grant Singer

Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Alicia Silverstone, Justin Timberlake, Eric Bogosian, Frances Fisher 

Running Time: 136 minutes

Synopsis: In New England, real estate agent Summer (Matilda Lutz) is brutally murdered. Detective Tom Nichols (Benicio Del Toro) questions Summer's boyfriend Will Grady (Justin Timberlake), who runs a successful real estate agency with his mother Camille (Frances Fisher). The other suspects include Summer's ex-husband Sam Gifford (Karl Glusman); and Eli Phillips (Michael Carmen Pitt), a neighbour who holds a grudge against the Gradys. DNA evidence appears to identify the perpetrator, but Nichols and his wife Judy (Alicia Silverstone) uncover clues pointing to a more insidious conspiracy.

What Works Well: The measured and well-marinated crime mystery unfolds at a deliberate pace, anchored by a weathered Benicio Del Toro performance and enriched by well-rounded characters and background depth. Director and co-writer Grant Singer colours-in life's details, including Tom's shady career background, his square dancing hobby, kitchen renovations project, complicated relationship with other detectives (including Eric Bogosian and Domenick Lombardozzi), and quietly tempestuous reactions to Judy's flirting. Short and sharp action sequences punctuate an otherwise cerebral focus on people and places.

What Does Not Work As Well: The substantial time invested in mood and details does not extend to the broad-brushed plot fundamentals. As Nichols pushes deeper into the web of deceit, the criminal roles and responsibilities remain blurry and hampered by absent antagonist voices, ultimately undermining the carefully constructed narrative foundations.

Conclusion: Elaborate packaging overwhelms less-developed substance.



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The Movies Of Alicia Silverstone

All movies starring Alicia Silverstone and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Crush (1993)

Clueless (1995)

Tropic Thunder (2008, cameo as herself)

Butter (2011)

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (2017)

Book Club (2018)

Reptile (2023)

Bugonia (2025)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Butter (2011)

A political satire, Butter delivers some laughs in a compact package.

In rural Johnson County, Iowa, Bob Pickler (Ty Burrell) is the reigning champion of the annual butter sculpting competition, a title he has won for 15 consecutive years. His ambitious wife Laura (Jennifer Garner) takes enormous pride in this achievement. When Bob meekly agrees to step aside and allow others a chance to win, Laura is furious, and decides to enter the competition herself.

Ten-year-old black child Destiny (Yara Shahidi) is finally placed in a stable home with loving foster parents Ethan (Rob Corddry) and Jill Emmet (Alicia Silverstone). She discovers a hidden talent for butter sculpting, and enters the competition as Laura's only serious competition. Meanwhile, a despondent Bob enjoys the services of stripper/hooker Brooke (Olivia Wilde), but they are interrupted before Brooke is paid. She sets out to get what is rightfully hers, resulting in an unusual relationship with Laura and Bob's daughter Kaitlin (Ashley Greene).

A satire directed by Jim Field Smith, Butter may or may not be a reimagining of the 2008 Democratic Party primaries, where an upstart black candidate rose from nowhere to challenge a high-strung entitled woman. Butter also may or may not be more broadly about the obsessive battle between haves and haves-nots for supremacy over something that does not matter very much.

Either way, this is an entertaining little film, clocking in at 90 minutes, poking away at the cultural divide in the United States. Laura and Bob represent tradition and the elite, and their art work recreates moments of religion and culture (The Last Supper, the Kennedy assassination) that matter to the old definition of the middle class. Destiny, now nurtured by a liberal white family, is much more instinctive and visceral, her sculptures speaking to the black experience and the suffering of the disadvantaged.

The irony of Laura, who has everything, feeling threatened to her core by Destiny, who has nothing, is an apt reflection of the politics of fear.

The script by Jason Micallef throws enough wacky moments and characters at the screen to diffuse any singular focus, and the sub-story involving Brooke (a sex partner for the straying husband of the candidate sounds familiar) and Kaitlin is irreverent enough to just about work.

Jennifer Garner (who co-produced) plays the highly strung Laura with full naked ambition and no irony whatsoever, a woman blinded by a love of power, willing to do anything to retain her status, and utterly oblivious to her privilege. Olivia Wilde powers through the film like a buzzsaw, the fantasy smart and resourceful prostitute more than willing to jump over the tracks to be acknowledged for her services to society. Hugh Jackman has a small role as Laura's old flame, a man she summarily uses to keep her campaign on track.

By pretending that a small town butter sculpting competition actually matters, Butter never takes itself seriously. At the end of the day, it all melts away for another year.

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Movie Review: Clueless (1995)

A high school comedy and romance, Clueless is a sparkling story about affluent teenaged girls navigating the hazardous complexities of friendship, love, schoolwork and trips to the mall.

Cher: Isn't my house classic? The columns date all the way back to 1972.

At a Beverly Hills high school, almost-16-year-old Cher (Alicia Silverstone) and her best friend Dionne (Stacey Dash) are fashionable and high- up on the popularity charts, but not that academically inclined. Cher lives in a mansion with her father Mel (Dan Hedaya), a successful litigation lawyer, while her mother died young from liposuction surgery complications. Cher has picked up her father's sharp argumentative skills, and manages to talk her teachers into increasing her grades.

Mel: Which reminds me, where's your report card?
Cher: It's not ready yet.
Mel: What do you mean, "it's not ready yet?"
Cher: Well, some teachers are trying to low-ball me, Daddy. And I know how you say, "Never accept a first offer", so I figure these grades are just a jumping off point to start negotiations.

Cher regularly spars with her ex-stepbrother Josh (Paul Rudd), and takes it upon herself to create projects out of other people. First she arranges for teachers Mr. Hall (Wallace Shawn) and Ms. Geist (Twink Caplan) to fall in love with each other. Then when dorky new student Tai (Brittany Murphy) arrives at the school, Cher gets to work transforming Tai's looks and attitude and finding her a boyfriend. But things get complicated when Tai starts to gain in popularity and Cher herself falls for cool kid Christian (Justin Walker).

Tai: Do you think she's pretty?
Cher: No, she's a full-on Monet.
Tai: What's a monet?
Cher: It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up close, it's a big old mess.

Directed and written by Amy Heckerling as a loose adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma, Clueless is a joyous and positive celebration of the teenaged high school world as seen through the eyes of privileged girls turning into young women. Here fashion and cliques are king, actual school work is irrelevant, every look to or from a boy is to be analyzed, and trends come and go in a day.

Mel (to Christian): Anything happens to my daughter, I got a .45 and a shovel, I doubt anybody would miss you.

At the middle of it all is Cher, and Clueless succeeds brilliantly thanks to the immensely likeable central character. Cher's heart is as big as her father's mansion, and she combines her privilege with an irresistible genuine desire to improve the lives of others, her instincts to do good a pointy antidote to privileged rich snootiness. Alicia Silverstone is exceptionally well suited for the role and brings an an alluring goofiness to Cher, whether delivering exquisitely underprepared homework presentations or navigating her mammoth wardrobe, defining the best of what being young, wealthy and clueless can be all about.

Josh: Do you have any idea what you're talking about?
Cher: No. Why, does it sound like I do?

Clocking in at a breezy 97 minutes, Clueless is bathed in bright Southern California colours blazing with vivid pink and yellow fashions. The film is consistently funny, and often hilarious, Heckerling adopting a sharp self-aware attitude spiced with epic one-liners carrying lasting cultural impact.

Mel: What the hell is that?
Cher: A dress.
Mel: Says who?
Cher: Calvin Klein.

And despite the prevailing sense of fun, Clueless still finds time to explore themes of jealousy, sexual identity, the importance (or not) of losing virginity from a young woman's perspective, distracted parenting, finding love in the unlikeliest of places, and the agony of passing the driving test.

Dionne: Hello? There was a Stop sign.
Cher: I totally paused.

While Cher herself is on a journey to discover exactly how Clueless she is, the film is as sleek and sharp as a Rodeo Drive boutique.

As if!

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