The Miami Herald from Miami, Florida • 179

WEEKEND MOVIES charm shines despite Nasty static staging and a passionate defense of truth and the right to knowledge Verhoeven who notes in an opening title card that The Nasty Girl "is pertinent to all small towns in introduces us to Sonja (Lena Stolze) inspired by real-life German scholar Anja Elisabeth Ros-mus and her fictional home town of Pfilzing Everyburg (based on the Bavarian town of Passau) and Sonja is the image of a wonderful German student As a young girl she wins a national essay contest on in but a few years later she tries a new topic: Home Town in the Third Not everyone is thrilled especially Professor Juckenack (Hans-Richard Muller) the local teacher too ambitious and eventually she goes back to college to research her topic Resistance from the town and neo-Nazis continues Verhoeven son of German actor-director Paul Verhoeven (not Dutch director Paul Verhoeven of Total Recall and Robocop) tells his tale ip a charged sometimes frenetic verity that mixes traditional narrative with TV reporter style and third-person interviews of her family Verhoeven also shoots many of his indoor scenes on a stage using projected photographs as backdrops It creates an almost surreal atmosphere but also becomes the own worst enemy No matter how many ways he bathes the stage in multicolored lights still static and contrived After a while the technique loses appeal at times stifling urgency He makes us believe that anything can happen but in those cheesy set-ups we rarely believe room for surprises The style threatens to detract from the substance of the film but difficult with the energetic Stolze leading us Playing Sonja from her early teens to her Stolze makes her stubbornness admirable and endearing Sonja never loses her ponytailed charm Ultimately The Nasty Girl is about the power of history and own brand of personal repression Yes a universal tale and at the same time that it enlightens it gives you a chill By JUAN CARLOS COTO Herald Entertainment Writer Contemplating the horrors of Hit-j Third Reich invariably leads to a wall a barrier founded in fear built by anger and still fortified by unanswered questions In the German film The Nasty 1 Girl director Michael Verhoeven tells the maddening but darkly comic tale of Sonja a young Bavarian woman who faces that wall She sets out to uncover the history of her town during the Third Reich only to find lies a steadfast bureaucracy and lots of the silent treatment In a time when the biggest wall in Germany has just come down The Nasty Girl is at once a cautionary tale a again" parable MOVIE REVIEW THE NASTY GIRL (U) Cast: Lena Stolze Monika Baumgartner Michael Gahr Robert Giggenbach Hans-Richard Muller Writer-director Michael Verhoeven Cinematographer: Axel de Roche Music: Mike Herting Elmar Schloter A Miramax Films release Running time: 95 minutes Nudity vulgar language violence and publisher of the town newspaper obvious hiding something The deadline eventually passes and instead of finishing her research Sonja marries one of her high school teachers (Robert Giggenbach) and starts a family But Man Inside tries to be a thriller but it falls short By BILLCOSFORD Herald Movie Critic Winter believably relays fears of moving away By BILLCOSFORD Herald Movie Critic In The Last Winter a little boy whose family is preparing to move from rural Canada to the city where father has landed a plum government job suffers the full range of terrors over his coming displacement a bittersweet character drama as seen through the eyes of a 10-year-old and nicely made Young Will (Joshua Murray) is the key character It is he who is so unhappy at the prospect of leaving the Manitoba home for the city which means among other things giving up his lucrative trade in gopher tails a bounty on gophers and the village store pays off per tail) The move is inevitable of course and has been since dad first said the magic words to mom drawing them out as if they had magic in them: "In door Will also has a powerful crush on Kate who is just close enough a cousin to be out of reach Clearly a bad year for Will The most well-drawn relationship is the one between Will and his grandfather (Gerard Parkes) The old man and the boy face uprooting and each senses that some chapter in their lives is ending grampa is wiser but in the end the boy is braver Aaron Kim Johnston who also wrote the screenplay directed and did a handsome job The Last Winter is sentimental and slow but rich with character and full of life Johnston got good performances from a large cast of children too no small achievement and crucial here FEMINIST TONE: Rosalind Chao and Chris Cooper star in Thousand Pieces of Gold Lalu is intriguing in Gold The Man Inside means to be a thriller about an investigative reporter who infiltrates a corrupt newspaper but a muddle instead The story based on fact deals with a collaboration between a high editor and government agents in Germany to bend the facts of news stories to political ends (including smears of opposition politicians and apparently support for terrorists) The principals a crusading reporter played by Jurgen Prochnow and his mentor at a tabloid-style screamer played by Peter Coyote are fine though in truth the business of infiltrating a newsroom never does seem as dicey as more conventional forms of spying The supporting cast is not so good however and includes several performances that are simply out of control The most bizarre of these is the twitchy turn by Dieter Laser as the editor Schroeter who is perpetually on the verge of the kind of hysteria we associate with deranged Nazis from World War II potboilers (At one point Schroeter offers character a cigarette When he declines citing the danger of cancer Schroe- ter trembles and shrieks no -n As a kind of All the President 's Men turned 2 inside out The Man Inside has its moments but they add up to much and the por- tentous wail of the sound track (music by Tan- gerine Dream) promises more than the film is ever able to deliver 2 MOVIE REVIEW THOUSAND PIECES OF GOLD (U) Cast: Rosalind Chao Chris Cooper Dennis Dun Michael Paul Chan Director: Nancy Kelly Screenwriter: Anne Makepeace From the novel by Ruthanne Lum McCunn Cinematographer: Bobby Bukowski Producers: Kenji Yamamoto Nancy Kelly Music: Gary Remal Malkin An American Playhouse release Running time: 102 minutes Vulgar language adult situations In English and Chinese with English subtitles Thousand Pieces of Gold plays Saturday night at 7 at the Coral Ridge Theater in Fort Lauderdale Sunday night at 7 at the Oceanwalk Theater in Hollywood Beach and Monday night at 830 at the Ridge Plaza Theater in Davie as pari of the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival 00 personal American dream But at the same time Kelly is making a picture on the range she and screenwriter Anne Makepeace put their male characters through cowpoke cookie-cutters used from Tom Mix to Tom Selleck Most of the men in Thousand Pieces except Charlie whom Cooper manages to steer clear of stereotypes spend their time and at the saloon falling over prostitutes and betting their fives at the card table Yee-haw! Still we do have Chao engaging us from the first scenes in the kind of performance that makes a career Chao never lets Lalu become a cliche either The character is enterprising and charming We never know what going to do next but we know her heart is with those she loves whether in China or America her strength and the By JUAN CARLOS COTO Herald Entertainment Writer Lalu a young woman who lives with her nomadic family in northern China is shattered when her father sells her for profit But nothing can prepare her for the fear and humiliation in Old West where she is auctioned as a slave and sent to a tiny Gold Rush town in the northern Rockies Thousand Pieces of Gold starring Rosalind Chao (Slam Dance) as Lalu and Chris Cooper (Lonesome Dove) as Charlie Bemis an American who befriends her in her new home could be described as a feminist western Lalu must stand her ground early one of the first English-language phrases she learns is The debut feature by San Francisco-based documentary maker Nancy Kelly Thousand Pieces is also a thoughtful study of bigotry J3 ro to co MOVIE REVIEW THE MAN INSIDE (U) Cash Jurgen Prochnow Peter Coyote Nathalie Baye Director: Bobby Roth Producer Philippe Diaz Screenwriter: Bobby Roth Cinematographer Ricardo Aronovitch Music: Tangerine Dream A New Line Cinema release Running time: 100 minutes Brief sexual situations violence The Man Inside plays Sunday night at 655 at the AMC Coral Ridge and Monday night at 8 40 at the Oceanwalk as part of the Fort Lauderdale Rim Festival It opens commercially Nov 9 at the Intracoastal in Dade MOVIE REVIEW THE LAST WINTER (U) Cast: Gerard Parkes Joshua Murray David Ferry Wanda Cannon Director: Aaron Kim Johnston Producers: Jack Clements Ken Rodeck Screenwriter Aaron Kim Johnston Cinematographer Ian Elkin Music: Victor Davies Running time: 103 minutes Uncontroversial content The Last Winter plays Saturday night at 9 15 at the Oceanwalk Theater in Hollywood Sunday afternoon at 5 at the Coral Ridge and Sunday night at 7 at the Ridge Plaza as part of the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival 1 2 2 I 3) r- the immigrant experience and how everyone harbors a.