Movie Review: Some Kind Of Wonderful (1987)

Genre: Teen Romance Comedy

Director: Howard Deutch

Starring: Eric Stoltz, Mary Stuart Masterson, Lea Thompson

Running Time: 95 minutes

Synopsis: Art-loving teenager Keith (Eric Stoltz) is an outcast at his high school, but anyway sets his eyes on the popular Amanda (Lea Thompson), who is currently dating wealthy jerk Hardy (Craig Sheffer). Keith is best friends with tomboy drummer Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson), who is secretly in love with him. Amanda surprisingly agrees to go out on a date with Keith, disrupting all expectations within the high school social circles.

What Works Well: Written and produced by John Hughes, this is a smart and often funny romantic quadrangle set in the emotional jungles of the late teen years. The characters exist in pleasing realities of grey, working class and middle class melding as high schoolers grapple with hierarchy and deploy seduction for status advancement. Keith's home environment is rounded with go-to-college pressure from his dad (John Ashton) and animated contributions from his sister (Maddie Corman). Mary Stuart Masterson's nuanced performance is full of wistfully calibrated emotions, and in an early role, Elias Koteas has fun as an unlikely artist-in-the-making.

What Does Not Work As Well: The script is an almost exact mirror image of Pretty In Pink, so the originality quotient is low even for this sub-genre. The ending is rushed: Keith, Amanda, and especially Watts all earned a few more minutes than allocated to reflect on their journeys.

Conclusion: A sharp-eyed comedy about the politics of young love.



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Movie Review: The Butterfly Effect (2004)

Genre: Fantasy Drama

Directors: Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber

Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz

Running Time: 113 minutes

Synopsis: At seven-years-old, Evan learns that his incarcerated father possesses special powers. Evan then starts suffering blackouts, including during an episode of child abuse instigated by the father (Eric Stoltz) of his friend Kayleigh and her brother Tommy. At 13, blackouts accompany a prank that goes tragically wrong and a violent incident involving a dog. As a 20-year-old college student, Evan (Ashton Kutcher) reunites with an unhappy Kayleigh (Amy Smart), and realizes that through his journals he may hold the power to alter destiny's trajectory.

What Works Well: Co-directors and co-writers Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber craft an intricate, elaborate, and brilliantly thoughtful drama about little actions making a big difference. As Evan experiments with destiny's alternatives, the certainty of finding no easy pathways and always stumbling on unintended consequences plays out with magnificent suddenness, life's violence and humour often rubbing shoulders. With confident execution, Bress and Gruber maintain a strong hold on the intellectually sprawling material, allowing Ashton Kutcher to find a career highlight in an unlikely role.

What Does Not Work As Well: As a minor quibble, Evan's mother Andrea (Melora Walters) has a strong initial influence, but fades in the second half.

Conclusion: The vagaries of fate revealed with wicked cleverness.



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Movie Review: Anaconda (1997)

A horror movie about a voracious giant snake, Anaconda offers a predictable premise, cheesy good special effects, and a ready-to-eat buffet of decent cast members.

In South America, documentary filmmaker Terri Flores (Jennifer Lopez) is embarking on a dangerous river journey to find an elusive Amazonian tribe. Her crew includes cameraman Danny Rich (Ice Cube), anthropologist Dr. Steven Cale (Eric Stoltz), production manager Denise Kalberg (Kari Wuhrer), sound engineer Gary Dixon (Owen Wilson), and pompous actor/narrator Warren Westridge (Jonathan Hyde).

Boat skipper Mateo (Vincent Castellanos) navigates the group along the river and early in the journey they rescue Paraguayan snake hunter Paul Serone (Jon Voight) from his stranded boat. Grizzled and caustic, Serone starts to take charge. His singular objective is to find and capture alive a mammoth human-eating anaconda, placing Terri and her crew in grave danger.

An old-fashioned creature feature, Anaconda follows a traditional construct by lining up a small group of victims as sumptuous meals. Peruvian director Luis Llosa delivers an ultra economical thriller within 89 minutes with all the requisite creepy, scary and disgusting moments, and still invests the film's first half in getting to know the characters and terrain. The mist-shrouded spooky Amazonian setting proves more interesting than the people, who never rise above stock soft-meat targets.

Except for Serone. Following in the footsteps of Quint and many previous cinematic acerbic hunters on destiny's path to confront their greatest nemesis, Jon Voight bites into the role with reptilian venom. He deploys an upside down smile and exotic accent to express unbridled disdain at the urbanite civilian film crew, easy to manipulate and easier to kill as necessary.

The ridiculously large and frequently angry snake, a special effects creation slithering between funny and hideous, does not welcome visitors and starts to attack with satisfying regularity in the second half. But Serone proves just as treacherous, leaving Anaconda with two oversized villains and plenty of hissing.

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