day before New Year's Eve, "complex systems failure expert" Nick
Cromwell (Olin) and his boss Martin Lowell (Morton) observe a Y2K test of
the Washington, D.C., air traffic control system. As the lights blink out
at 12:01 a.m., the computers on board a simulated jet go wiggy, and the
plane crashes into an electronic Atlantic.
It's enough to worry Cromwell about the effects of the notorious Y2K
bug, despite the best preparations of his crack team of
technicians at "Z2"
(short for zero-zero). Nick's team will staff a high-tech command center
and monitor Y2K problems around the world as the millennial countdown ends.
In Seattle, Wash., meanwhile, Nick's physician wife, Alix (Vernon), is having
problems with their willful teenage daughter Kelly, who wants to
go
to a New Year's Eve party with her hacker friends Kaos and Klipper.
Nick and his team stand by as New Year's
Day dawns in
the Marshall Islands, the first time zone to see the year 2000. The
navigational computer on an F-18 fighter plane fails, and the jet crashes
at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Kwajalein.
Reports trickle in of power failures in China and Asia. Then, as Nick
and his team watch televised celebrations in Paris, "The city of light has
gone dark," says the TV commentator.
Cromwell orders all planes grounded. But not all get the call,
including
Flight 117 en route to Washington, D.C.
Kelly, meanwhile, is sneaking out of the hospital where her mom works.
And as midnight strikes in New York City's Times Square, the ball drops,
the lights go out, and the crowd gets ugly.
Power failures strike Philadelphia, Pa., then Washington, D.C. "We could lose the
entire Eastern Seaboard," Nick says. And the news comes that a nuclear reactor
in Sweden has gone supercritical, killing everyone. It has the same design
as one in Emerald Canyon in Washington state, next to Seattle,
where Nick's
wife is now frantically trying to find Kelly.
Unless Nick and his team can solve the problem, the plant will
melt down
in two hours, showering three million people in a 20-mile radius with a
plutonium-laced cloud that will slowly drift across the rest of the
country.
"I'm so sick of Y2K!"
Y2K, produced by David Israel (Pandora's Clock), is
the latest millennial-themed TV project to exploit fears of the by-now-overblown Y2K computer bug. Apparently concerned about raising
undue fears,
the sweeps-month telefilm carries a disclaimer that the disasters depicted
are pure fiction.
As if the audience needs to be warned. Though the telefilm is pegged to
the millennial computer problem, it is really a by-the-numbers TV disaster
flick that's interchangeable with any number of similarly themed movies of
the week.
Like them, Y2K builds its narrative around the predictable
travails of several stock characters, including Cromwell's Z2 team and his
family. Most of the characters are paper-thin and have little to do. Some are
introduced, but ill-used--like the young New York couple caught up in the
swirl of events who end up watching everything on TV in a cozy bar.
Though it teases with tidbits of Y2K disasters, the movie
takes a half hour to reach midnight on the East Coast, where the real
trouble begins. From there, the movie jumps around to give the audience a
sense of global chaos. But after a suspenseful sequence involving the ill-fated
jetliner, the movie settles down in its last hour into a narrowly focused
story about the Seattle nuclear power plant and its potential
meltdown.
Y2K toys with a couple of intriguing ideas, including
the concept
of complex systems failure: how seemingly insignificant events can cascade
in unexpected ways, leading to wholesale disaster. But it doesn't follow
them up. Instead, Y2K is a collection of the usual narrow escapes,
hysterical crowds and heroic acts--including a preposterous effort by Nick
and his team to fix the nuclear plant a la MacGyver.
The movie has the sheen of an expensive (for TV) production, though,
and it's mildly interesting to watch the lights go out all over the
country. But Olin, who is making a career of cheesy movies of the week,
isn't particularly convincing either as a brilliant systems analyst or as
an action hero. Other terrific actors, notably Morton, Vernon and Cox, are
wasted in their generic roles.
I've seen a more imaginative Y2K scenario in a recent television
commercial for Nike, which builds its disaster image by image, finds humor
in millennial paranoia and even contains one indelible metaphor: a giraffe
eating a suburban tree. Now that's wiggy.
-- P.L.
raig Schwartz (Cusack) is an eccentric and talented puppeteer who just can't get his artistic career off the ground. His complicated streetcorner puppet shows are met with bewildered stares and occasionally violent attacks, all because--as Craig grumpily concludes--they "raise issues." Not surprisingly, all of this leaves Craig feeling depressed, unappreciated and extremely unemployed. Left with little choice, and at the urging of his kindhearted wife Lotte (Diaz), Craig reluctantly searches for a day job.
Answering a want ad seeking applicants with fast hands, Craig lands a job as a file clerk on the seventh-and-a-half floor of a Manhattan office building, where the ceilings are so low that even the shortest employee has to walk doubled over. But that is only the first of many odd features that Craig discovers in his new workplace. He also finds that he has a 108-year-old loonball for a boss, an unabashedly manipulative vixen of a coworker named Maxine (Keener) and a mysterious door hidden behind a filing cabinet in his office. It is behind this little door that Craig finds the oddest thing yet: a dark, slimy tunnel that leads directly into the cranium of critically acclaimed actor John Malkovich.
Once inside, Craig sees what Malkovich sees, hears what he hears and feels what he feels. Then, after about 15 minutes, he is somehow sucked out of Malkovich's mind and lands in a ditch beside the New Jersey Turnpike. Craig shares his discovery with Maxine, who persuades him to turn Malkovich's mind into a lucrative little business venture. For just $200, everyday folks can take a thrill-ride inside the skin of a celebrity. Before long, everybody is taking turns being John Malkovich, and having their lives drastically changed in the process. After her 15 minutes inside the mind of a man, Lotte begins to question her sexuality. Craig, Lotte and Malkovich all become infatuated with Maxine. Maxine falls for Lotte, but only when Lotte is inside Malkovich. And then things start getting really odd.
Mr. Malkovich's wild ride
Being John Malkovich contains many firsts. It marks the feature filmmaking debut of director Spike Jonze, it was penned by first-time screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, and it is the first film in many years that truly deserves to be called original. It is also an extremely funny show, with gags that run the gamut from lowbrow to highbrow while hitting every brow in between.
But there is much more than mere yuks to be had here--there is one heck of a wild ride. In finding a portal into the mind of another human being (let alone a pop culture icon), Craig, Lotte and Maxine let loose unexplainable, powerful forces that quickly get out of control. The resulting twists and turns in the plot are positively dizzying. In fact, some viewers may find this film more bewildering than entertaining.
Another minor flaw with the film is its uneven pace. Here and there, the story takes abrupt leaps forward and then hangs around waiting for something to happen. But even at these slower moments, the well-rounded characters and fresh, quirky performances are more than enough to keep things interesting. Malkovich himself is particularly fun to watch and is the perfect choice for this story. His puzzling combination of soft-spoken femininity and wild-eyed machismo make him an ideal vessel for his many inhabitants.
Admittedly, the title Being John Malkovich does not sound like it belongs to a work of science fiction. Actually, it's pretty tough and probably pointless to figure out what genre this film fits into. However, like the finest examples of SF, this movie uses a fantastic, out-there premise to illuminate simple, fundamental facets of the human condition. Jonze and Kaufman take many complex modern-day issues (identity, sexuality, manipulation, spirituality, celebrity, to name but a few) and peek at them from strange, surprising angles. Best of all, they never tell viewers what to think about any of these issues. Instead, they just set the table, get out of the way and let their guests choose whatever morsels they wish. The resulting smorgasbord is satisfying indeed.
John Malkovich was a great sport to do this movie. My respect for him grew by leaps and bounds as I watched him gleefully become the butt of some of the film's most hysterical jokes. But I can't help thinking that from now on, every time I see him up on the silver screen I'm going to wonder...who's in his noggin this time around?
-- A.C.
lucky young Pokemon trainers Ash, Misty and Brock receive an invitation to travel to New Island to pit their Pokemon (a.k.a. Pocket Monsters) against those of the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Pokemon Trainer. Team Rocket, those double-troublemakers, follow (although they have not been invited--what cheek!). It looks like another fun adventure for the brave, globe-trotting truants and their Pokemon charges.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
For the "World's Greatest Pokemon Trainer" is actually a Pokemon himself! But not just any Pokemon. He's a genetically engineered, artificial Pokemon brewed up in a laboratory from fossilized DNA of the Pokemon reputed to be the most powerful of all: Mew. Mewtwo, as the decanted abomination is called, possesses awesome psychic powers and a thirst for world domination. He's destroyed the lab (and his creators) and rebuilt New Island into his seat of power from whence, in James Bond villain fashion, he shall destroy all humans and Pokemon everywhere with a raging storm whipped up by his mental powers. But first he needs genetic samples from the best-trained Pokemon in order to create super clone Pokemon like himself to inherit the Earth, hence the ruse to lure Ash and the others. While he postures and rails against the cruel world that created him, Mewtwo's genetically modified Pokemon ooze forth from sinister machinery, itching for a fight.
Even if Ash (and of course Pikachu) and the other Pokemon trainers and their Pokemon can defeat the super clones, how will they ever stand up to the mighty Mewtwo?
It's the Apokelypse!
Pokemon: the First Movie is not a two-hour treatment of the typical light-hearted escapades seen in the Pokemon TV series. Obviously the stakes are much higher in this film, and so's everything else. The action is spectacular and nearly nonstop--this movie is crammed with intense battles. At times it looks more like Akira than a kids' flick. The animation also generally exceeds that of the show, with many computer-generated backgrounds and effects. Mewtwo's gothic reworking of New Island is particularly striking.
In all the excitement, character interplay is minimized. The movie expects viewers to know who everyone is and what their goals are, and anyone unfamiliar with the Pokemon pantheon will be pretty confused. Most of the humans, including Ash, take a back seat to the Pokemon-a-Pokemon action. Team Rocket in particular is window dressing, taking no part in the central conflict and spending the majority of the film cowering in Mewtwo's basement.
The movie's attempt to inject a moral lesson is also a major stumbling block, coughing up a thin and contradictory message about how it's wrong to fight. At least, it's wrong sometimes (because that's what Pokemon do, they fight).
But all that action is darn exciting, and when it's combined with the high-quality animation, adults may find watching the movie isn't quite the chore they might expect. More importantly, the trillions of young, eager Pokemon trainers out there will be very pleased indeed because Pokemon: The First Movie delivers the goods: Pokemon. Dozens and dozens of flying, swimming, leaping, punching, squirting and squeaking Pokemon, many of which have never been seen on the TV show.
I was surprised how much fun I had at this show. It's a hoot.
-- Brooks
day before New Year's Eve, "complex systems failure expert" Nick
Cromwell (Olin) and his boss Martin Lowell (Morton) observe a Y2K test of
the Washington, D.C., air traffic control system. As the lights blink out
at 12:01 a.m., the computers on board a simulated jet go wiggy, and the
plane crashes into an electronic Atlantic.
raig Schwartz (Cusack) is an eccentric and talented puppeteer who just can't get his artistic career off the ground. His complicated streetcorner puppet shows are met with bewildered stares and occasionally violent attacks, all because--as Craig grumpily concludes--they "raise issues." Not surprisingly, all of this leaves Craig feeling depressed, unappreciated and extremely unemployed. Left with little choice, and at the urging of his kindhearted wife Lotte (Diaz), Craig reluctantly searches for a day job.
lucky young Pokemon trainers Ash, Misty and Brock receive an invitation to travel to New Island to pit their Pokemon (a.k.a. Pocket Monsters) against those of the self-proclaimed World's Greatest Pokemon Trainer. Team Rocket, those double-troublemakers, follow (although they have not been invited--what cheek!). It looks like another fun adventure for the brave, globe-trotting truants and their Pokemon charges.
