Mira Sorvino Page 2

Mira Sorvino plays a princess who dresses up as a dandified male student to infiltrate the summertime estate of a misogynistic philosopher (Ben Kingsley). Under the old man's tutelage, a dashing prince (Jay Rodan) has been instructed to distrust the female sex. So clever Sorvino attires herself as a man to earn his friendship, trust, and above all, love.

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Something like The Big Chill meets Generation X, Beautiful Girls is one of those ensemble character movies that really defies description in terms of plot points. The ostensible main character is Willie (Timothy Hutton), who is ambivalent about girlfriend Tracy (Annabeth Gish) so heads back home to Knight's Ridge, Massachusetts to sort things out during his 10-year high school reunion. Here, he hooks up with old pals Tommy (Matt Dillon) and Paul (Michael Rapaport), each of whom is also flailing helplessly in his own romantic mess.

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The sixth line of my notes from the "Summer of Sam" preview screeningreads, "if Spike Lee wants us to sit here for 137 minutes, he'd betterpick up the pace."

An hour later, without a hint of an upswing in the movie'stempo, noticed I was near the back of the theater where there was a littlebit of light, so I pulled out the press kit and started reading it, justto have something to do.

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A harrowing, soul-searching account of the Holocaust is presented from a very unique perspective in "The Grey Zone," which is based in part on diaries found buried at Auschwitz and the memoirs of Miklos Nyiszli, a Jew who served as the camp's doctor and aided the abominable Josef Mengele in his experiments on prisoners.

The story tells of a 1944 revolt by the "Sonderkommando," a squad of Jewish internees who chose to serve as wardens of the concentration camp's gas chambers and crematoriums in exchange for a few more months of comparatively privileged life. In exchange for their detestable duties, they got larger quarters, fresh bed linens, good food, cigarettes, and the right to loot the belongings of new arrivals.

The selfishness and cowardice of this choice tortures most of the characters in this film, none more so than Hoffman (David Arquette in a rare dramatic and anguished performance), whom we see early on herding naked throngs into the "showers," promising "The sooner you shower, the sooner you'll be reunited with your families." As the doors are closed, the camera slowly creeps in on Arquette, hearing the gas pipes rattle to life and the screams that come moments later.

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Lisa Picard is a struggling New York actress who has had her 15 minutes and just doesn't realize it yet. She starred in a rather carnal breakfast-in-bed commercial for Wheat Chex that made her notorious and got her fired from her steady job playing "Sally Starfish" in a production that tours elementary schools.

"If the director's cut could be seen, this would be a non-issue," she grouses in "Lisa Picard Is Famous" -- an inept documentary by an under-prepared filmmaker who has decided this starlet is on the verge of being discovered and he's determined to capture the moment when it happens.

In actuality, "Lisa Picard Is Famous" is a mock documentary by actor-director Griffin Dunne ("Practical Magic," "Addicted to Love") -- and a whimsically sardonic concept that just doesn't quite congeal because the movie is more uncomfortable than it is funny.

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Good ideas are rare in Hollywood. But rarer still is the tendency to leave a good idea alone.

If a movie is smart enough to rely only on its good idea, the result is almost always a decent film, from "Speed" to "Dark City" and "Memento."

"The Final Cut" represents the opposite tendency, to tinker with something until it's dead. Here is a terrific idea: in the future, parents will have the option to purchase a "Zoe chip" that will be implanted in their unborn child. From the moment of their birth, the chip records everything as the person sees it. After their death, a "cutter" takes the hours, days, and years worth of footage and assembles it into a two-hour film that, more or less, sums up the person's life. (Fortunately for the cutters, people's memories are recorded in Cinemascope and Dolby Surround sound.)

Continue reading: THE FINAL CUT Review