Crispin Glover Page 3

Don Willmott, 1 star [lowest rating]

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Given a weirdly futuristic spin, Jonathan Parker's interpretation of Bartleby takes him out of a law office and into a public records commission, subtly morphing from typist to file clerk. More notably than all that is Parker's balls-out casting, with the certifiably unhinged Crispin Glover taking the role of the lowest-of-low-key peons.

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A gripping study of teen ambivalence and the utter lack of angst, River's Edge is a creepy, powerful, and underseen picture that features some virtuoso performances (notably Crispin Glover's Layne, who organizes an ill-conceived campaign to get John out of town). Featuring some of the most inventive and believable dialogue, the locals (including Keanu Reeves and Ione Skye as the only kids even remotely bothered by the death of their friend) are at a loss for what to do. Atmospheric and numbing, the picture is an obvious precursor to Twin Peaks, and a better template David Lynch couldn't have found. The story is loosely based on a real murder, which makes it all the more chilling.

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After lacing up the shoes, Calvin ends up on the court of his favorite team, the Los Angeles Knights during a half-time promo, taking on the Knights' star player Tracey Reynolds (Morris Chestnut) in a bit of one-on-one. With the power of MJ in his soles, Calvin fakes left and ends up hitting a 25-foot jumper and then a devastating slam-dunk that stinks of the power of Flubber. The reactions from a stunned crowd inspire the manager of the Knights, Frank Bernard (Eugene Levy), to sign Calvin to a contract as a publicity stunt, without ever intending the play the lucky whippersnapper. But after Calvin hits the game-winning jumper when the tough-as-nails coach Wagner (Robert Forster) hands him the ball - the evil orphan headmaster Bittleman (Crispin Glover) earns more riches wen Calvin's contract is re-negotiated.

Continue reading: Like Mike Review

By all rights, "Like Mike" should be a lousy movie. Designed as a slap-dash kiddie flick, built around a dumb plot device (magic sneakers turn a young orphan into an NBA all-star) and starring a flash-in-the-pan novelty hip-hopper (Lil' Bow Wow), its overall concept is thick with seemingly predictable, third-hand story elements. Will the kid find adoptive parents? Will his team win the big game? Well, duh.

But director John Schultz ("Drive Me Crazy") doesn't use the shoes as a storytelling crutch (they account for about four minutes of the whole movie), he gets charismatic performances from his cast of talented players, and he beats down almost every encroaching cliché, creating in their stead a smart kids' picture of delightful surprises.

Sure, as the film begins street-smart but endearingly sweet 14-year-old Calvin Cambridge (Bow Wow) is living in a laughably diverse group home (his two best friends are a white boy played by "Jerry Maguire's" Jonathan Lipnicki and an Asian girl played by Brenda Song), where he's picked on by a teenage bully and dreams of being adopted. "Parents only want the puppies," he moans.

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Heretofore known for his viciously incisive, very black socio-sexual satires, director Neil LaBute takes a joyride in antic comedy territory with "Nurse Betty." It's charming effort of pure entertainment about a gentle, bouncy Kansas waitress who becomes convinced she's a part of her favorite soap opera after being sent into post-traumatic shock by witnessing a murder.

The murder was that of her abusive, redneck husband (LaBute regular Aaron Eckhart in another amazing chameleon performance) -- a retribution for a shady business deal gone wrong.

The waitress, Betty Sizemore, is the kind of bona fide wide-eyed innocent most Hollywood actresses wouldn't be able to play without slipping into a hammy, ignorant hayseed routine and winking ironically at the audience. But in the hands of Renée Zellweger -- who proved her sweetheart credibility in "Jerry Maguire" -- Betty is 100 percent genuine sugar.

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The first "Charlie's Angels" movie was a lightning strike of sexy, silly, butt-kicking-babe action-flick fun. But at least it made an attempt to have an intelligible plot with genuine stakes, cool twists, clever campiness and memorable characters.

Lightning does not strike twice in the sequel "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," which only bothers with a minute or two of story in each reel, as it tries to skate by on cheap wisecracks and surprise cameos (Bruce Willis! Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen! TV "Angel" Jaclyn Smith!) while spending the bulk of its time mired in over-produced, three-ring-circus-like, exclamation-point action scenes.

The Angels drive a military truck off the top of a Mongolian dam, and out pops a helicopter in which they escape from an army of bad guys! The Angels enter a motocross race in which bikes collide and explode during mid-air back flips! The Angels fight off two dozen punk-poser Irish gangsters at the San Pedro harbor in slow-mo/fast-mo uber-choreographed kung fu!

Continue reading: Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle Review

In one of many joyously over-the-top undercover scenes in the impish big screen adaptation of "Charlie's Angels," Drew Barrymore -- incognito as part of a sexbomb race track pit crew clad in cleavage-flaunting stars-and-stripes leather jumpsuits -- distracts a bad guy's chauffeur by seductively licking the steering wheel of his car.

The way Barrymore embraces the preposterousness of this moment with giddy aplomb personifies the spirit of this comedically sexy, digitally enhanced, candy-colored, B-movie mock-exploitation romp.

A vast, sassy, action-packed improvement on the '70s TV show, which never could reconcile its insincere femme empowerment message with its transparent jiggle factor draw, this picture adds to the mix a "Xena"-like self-aware sense of humor that gives flight to the formulaic proceedings.

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Perhaps I'm too much of a literalist to stomach a thickly ironic, extremely low-budget adaptation of Herman Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" set in an eerily sterile modern office. Or perhaps writer-director Jonathan Parker's update of the conceptual tale about a boss driven crazy by an uncooperative employee really is as under-rehearsed and lifeless as it seems to me.

At the center of "Bartleby" is the title character, a meek, withdrawn oddball played by Crispin Glover (the Thin Man in "Charlie's Angels" and George McFly in "Back to the Future") with his quiet, uneasy, string-bean quirkiness turned up full blast. He comes to work as a paper-pusher in a government records office for a fidgety boss (David Paymer) whose subservient existence of sedated equilibrium is thrown for a loop when Bartleby simply stops working one day, answering every order and request with "I would prefer not to."

Before long he's living in the office and spending the better part of each day staring at an air conditioning duct while Paymer goes nuts trying to reason with him.

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Could there be any dobut that a horror movie starring kooky, uncanny string-bean Crispin Glover would be a weird B-movie bonanza of creepy-crawly macabre?

A proudly kitschy remake of a 1971 cult horror flick, "Willard" uses its idiosyncratic star to maximum effect as a milquetoast misfit whose only friends are the scores of rats rapidly overtaking the cavernous, ominous, creaky old house he shares with a grotesquely old invalid mother (Jackie Burroughs) who could drive a guy to go Norman Bates. Constantly humiliated by a cruel boss (R. Lee Ermey) trying to run him out of the family business after his father's death, Willard trains his rodent army to do his vengeful bidding, and soon all hell breaks loose.

Glover -- best known as George McFly in "Back To the Future" and The Thin Man in "Charlie's Angels" -- is so perfectly peculiar in this flick that I imagine it wouldn't have gotten made without him in the title role. Shaking with sublimated resentment and quaking with psychological dysfunction (accentuated by the frequent use of fish-eye lenses), yet eerily calm and contented with rats crawling all over his body, his performance is funny, sad, sympathetic and menacing -- often all at the same time.

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