Fort Worth Star-Telegram from Fort Worth, Texas • 96

MbAitwA01POPVIIIIM0 the reel thing MOVIE REVIEW TOP MOVIES The essence of fear comes alive Last weekend Total Movie Income Screens Income Weeks 1 What About Bob? $92 million 1463 $92 million 1 2 FX 2 $38 million 1502 $112 million 2 3 Truth or Dare $34 million 538 $43 million 2 4 Switch $3 million 1013 $83 million 2 Stone Cold $28 million 1729 $28 million 1 6 Oscar $21 million 1373 $181 million 4 7 The Silence of the Lambs $19 million 1296 $1178 million 14 8 Mannequin 2: On the Move $17 million 1099 $17 million 1 9 A Kiss Before Dying $158 million 1245 $137 million 4 10 One Good Cop $157 million 1327 $3 million 3 Source: Entertainment Data Backdraft Rating: 8 on a scale of 1 to 10 Director: Ron Howard Featuring: Kurt Russell Donald Sutherland William Baldwin Scott Glenn Rated: (violence language one tastefully erotic sequence) By PACHAEL PRICE HAT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM The formidable impact of flame is so difficult to capture convincingly on film that even an incidental fire sequence can undo a perfectly good movie A preview audience 22 years ago sat enthralled through a Ray Harryhausen fantasy called The Valley of Gwangi until the climactic fire scene prompted a chorus of "Fake!" throughout the auditorium Actually Gwangi's fire was no fake It was rather a genuine blaze superimposed with footage of flammable vapors instead of materials whose combustion might have made the scene convincing The script called for a spectacular outpouring of flame but the pinch-penny budget allowed only a wispy real and the result diminished an otherwise valid film A generation later it remains "more difficult to shoot fire scenes than fantasy" as the major new director Ron Howard told film journalist William Schmidt last winter Howard should know about the comparison he has ranged from the science fiction of Cocoon to the fairy-tale business of Willow and he clearly has done his fire-effects homework for a new arrival called Backdraft Backdrall accomplishes eine once lost a partner to the explosive phenomenon called a backdraft locates the heart of the menace in this line from his screenplay: "Fire does what it does not because of the physics of flammable liquids but because it wants to" Intellectually the observation leaves a lot to be desired but it works powerfully on an emotional level Strong casting helps Scott Glenn lends helpful support as a veteran firefighter Ditto the undeservedly obscure Jason Gedrick as a rookie Russell and Baldwin are fine as the battling brothers Baldwin's unassuming screen presence points up Russell's more commanding approach Jennifer Jason Leigh and Rebecca De Mornay have little to do but do it well as the women in the brothers' lives Lesser pivotal roles are handled pleasingly by Robert DeNiro as an arson investigator and Donald Sutherland in an unnerving turn as an arsonist The setting is Chicago where firefighters pursue a guts-and-glory tradition of battling blazes at close range rather than dousing them from a distance The trickery that makes Backdrall work includes such effects as filming in upside-down rooms to make the flames appear to be tearing across ceilings It's all artifice in the service of realism Nobody can shout "Fake!" at this gem matic wonders with fire It also tells quite a good bit of human drama built around two firefighter brothers (Kurt Russell and William Baldwin) attempting to live up to the heroic standards of their father's career while coming to grips with his line-of-duty death The fire steals the show of course but that's not for want of trying on the part of the ensemble cast These are not the sparkly translucent flames that engulf miniature skyscrapers in some Irwin Allen disaster movie Backdraft's smoke hangs leaden in the air cloaking a 2000- degree blaze that does not spread so much as it seems to lurk and pounce In an age of moviemaldng where audiences have grown to seem incapable of feeling where monsters and maniacs provoke laughter and body-count tallies seem more like statistics than tragedies Ron Howard and screenwriter Steve Widen have distilled an essence of fear Widen a former firefighter who Tim Roth left is Guildenstem and Gat) Oldman is Rosencrantz MOVIE REVIEW Shakespearean buffoons get MOVIE REVIEW An old friend pays a visit to fix things 4( oij It 1 a substantial fleshing-out By MICHAEL PRICE FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM Where Shakespeare left Rosencrantz and Guildenstem vague and expendable Tom Stoppard built a splendid play around them Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstem Are Dead which became a stage hit in 1968 re-examines Shakespeare through the perceptions of two marginal characters from Hamlet Rosencrantz and Stoppard's passion for wordplay Outicte' nstern compares favorably with Shake- speare's although Shakespeare nev- Are Dead er felt the influence of Rating: 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 Marx or Samuel Beckett Writer-director: Tom Stoppard For his new movie version Stop- Featuring: Richard Dreyfuss Gary Old pard has made Rosencrantz (Gary man Tim Roth Oldman) and Guildenstem (Tim Rated: PG (partial nudity) Roth) somewhat more active than their stage-bound origins The characters remain befuddled stooges all the same Rosencrantz and Guildenstem are old pals of Hamlet summoned to help cheer the sour prince They serve only to stir up trouble and finally are ordered to escort Hamlet out of the country Shakespeare wrote them with the sketchiest of characterization Stoppard renders the bumblers as disoriented nobodies unable to comprehend their circumstances and thus eminently qualified to size up what's going on The language is rich and sweeping and the speeches belong almost entirely to Stoppard with only a few hundred lines drawn from Shakespeare Stoppard's great inspiration is to incorporate the traveling theatrical troupe that figures so strongly in Hamlet The bunch's leader an oily trickster known as the Player (Richard Dreyfuss) proves a more winning character than even the title buffoons If the screen version has telling faults they are that its pictorial realism seems at odds with the stagey lingo and that Rosencrantz and Guildenstem indulge too much in philosophical pronouncements and not enough in low comedy Stoppard's ear for language is in fine sensitive form but many viewers will find the abundance of puns multiple meanings and general verbal fireworks too intense The parts are enthusiastically acted especially Dreyfuss' Player Devotees of Shakespeare will enjoy counting the inside references and scholarly witticisms This is not a film for the cheap-thrills and easy-laughs audience By TODD CAMP FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM For the parents out there who are going through the "imaginary friend" phase pray that your son or daughter's make-believe pal is nothing like Drop Dead Fred In the New Line Cinema comedy DropDead Fred British comedian Rik Mayall stars as the title character a rowdy troublemaking childhood "invisible friend" who returns to cheer up a depressed chum Phoebe Cates is Elizabeth Cronin a mousy introvert who in the span of a few hours manages to lose her husband (Tim Matheson) her job her car and her purse And as if matters weren't bad enough she receives a visit from an old friend Using mud pies food fights and whatever other embarrassing incidents he can conjure Fred vows to fix Elizabeth's problems whether she wants them fixed or not Dutch director Ate de Jong known most for his foreign-language films A Flight of Rainbirds and A Shadow of Victory as well as his first American film Highway to Hell weaves incidents of rude humor with bizarre dreamlike images to create a cross between Monty Python and Tim Burton Phoebe Cates and Rik Maya 11 star in Drop Dead Fred Drop Dead Fred Rating: 6 on a scale of 1 to 10 Director Ate de Jong Featuring: Rik Mayall Phoebe Cates Marsha Mason Tim Matheson and Carrie Fisher Rated: PG-13 (language adult situations lots of rude humor) home turf in Great Britain nice special effects a good moral at the supporting performances from Tim Marsha Mason as Elizabeth's overbearing and Carrie Fisher as Elizabeth's best friend Dead Fred well worth a look Fans of Mayall's wild characters on British come- star on hi dies such as The YoungOnes and BlackAdder won't But sor be disappointed with his portrayal of Fred end gre Drop Dead Fred may prove hard to take and a Mathesor little tiresome for people unfamiliar with the loud mother a rude style of comedy that has made Mayall a major make Do Page 8 STU Foil Worth Star-Telegram Friday May 24 1991 star on his But some end great Matheson mother make Drop.