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Three reasons to stay home on the weekend

Stargate

Written by Dean Devlin & Roland Emmerich

Directed by Roland Emmerich

Starring Kurt Russell, James Spader and Jaye Davidson

There's a scene in the beginning of Stargate where James Spader's character Dr. Daniel Jackson explains his drunken sci-fi theories on the creation of the Great Pyramid. One by one, and then en masse, the scientific community shuffles out of the auditorium.

Stargate should face a similar dilemma. This film is so unexciting, so poorly drafted, and so unspectacular that even sci-fi fans will forget to come back after buying popcorn.

The first 20 or so minutes aren't ridiculously poor. The characters, or lack thereof, are established and the situation is laid out economically. Jackson is a scientific outcast and a master of ancient Egyptian studies. Colonel Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell) is a distraught military man whose son shot himself to avoid being written into the film. The two poor conversationalists are quickly linked in a top-secret government project to journey through the "Stargate" to a mystery world. Once there, O'Neil and his undeveloped military buddies demand that Jackson get them back to Earth. No such luck. No one thought that far ahead.

Co-writers Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich (Emmerich also directed, so blame him even more!) probably have a difficult time divvying up the worst of this melee. There's almost a joy in this film's B-movie feel, from a hairy monster dragging Jackson across the desert to the obligatory romance between Jackson and the only woman in the universe, Mili Avital.

That's if you don't count Jaye Davidson, who walks through his million-dollar cameo as Ra the sun god. It's tough to make an intergalactic ruler dull, but Stargate's creators have done just that.

Also notice the lack of interesting O'Neil anecdotes. Russell's got such a one-dimensional character with no humor, distinction, or merit that Brian Bosworth could have pulled this off.

Sure, the special effects will wow, but we've seen better and nothing can prop up a dud like Stargate. Never before have such bland characters traveled so far to be so boring.

Michael Horowitz

Silent Fall

Written by Akiva Goldsman

Directed by Bruce Beresford

Starring Richard Dreyfuss, Linda Hamilton, John Lithgow and J.T. Walsh

Silent Fall is an awful feature film that would have made a slightly less-awful TV movie. The story of an autistic boy who witnesses a murder and the psychiatrist who tries to get him to open up, Silent Fall is a misguided attempt to deal with a serious issue.

The usually strong Richard Dreyfuss plays Jake Rainer, the psychiatrist who attempts to draw young Tim Warden (Ben Faulkner) out of his autistic coccoon when it seems that Tim was the only witness to his parents' murder. Along the way, Jake must contend with a series of obstacles and red herrings: rival psychiatrist René Harlinger (John Lithgow), who advocates controversial drug therapy for Tim, Sheriff Mitch Rivers (J.T. Walsh), who had more than a passing interest in the murdered couple, and the Wardens' comely daughter Sylvie (Liv Tyler), who soon demonstrates more than a passing interest in Jake.

The biggest problem with Silent Fall is that the producers couldn't decide what kind of movie they wanted to make. Is it a murder mystery, a psycho-drama, a suspense thriller, or a social commentary? One thing seems clear: the filmmakers did not intend to make a comedy, yet that is exactly what they produced. The script is so full of clichés and the dialogue so corny that the audience will find it laughable.

Silent Fall asks you to sit through lines like "Get me a murderer, Jake, or I'm going to have to use Harlinger's magic potion on that boy" and "I saw Rain Man, Jake. I know what autistics are capable of."

If the dialogue were the movie's only problem, Silent Fall might have been redeemable. But the film sinks under the weight of spotty acting and a convoluted plot. In two central roles, Ben Faulkner and Liv Tyler are simply not credible. Faulkner seems to be doing an imitation of an autistic child and Tyler, the daughter of Aerosmith's Steven Tyler, is pretty, but she can't act. Worse still, the talented Linda Hamilton, as Jake's wife, and Lithgow are totally wasted.

Silent Fall has a ridiculously contrived concluding sequence that is drawn from a hundred other thrillers and a final scene that misrepresents autism as curable. It's a shame to see so much talent go to waste, but filmgoers should be cautioned not to take this Fall.

Lael Loewenstein

Squanto: A Warrior's Tale

Written by Darlene Gravioto

Directed by Xavier Coller

Starring Adam Beach, Eric Shweig, Michael Gambon

It is not enough to say that Squanto is neuron-deadening pap that falls short of the standards even of the eight-year-olds for the putative benefit of whom it was no doubt contrived. Squanto deserves censure in ways that elude the powers of language to suggest. Well, it's not that awful ­ Paul Veerhoven did not direct it. At its most heinous, Squanto merely crystallizes the present interpretation of filmdom's most hackneyed narrative, photographic, and dramatic conventions; at best, we see the stuff that earned Stuart Pankin his five Cable Ace Award nominations.

The historical Squanto helped the Pilgrims endure their first winter in the New World, teaching them both hunting and agricultural techniques, a kindness which the Puritans graciously repaid by infecting his tribe with syphilis (which the realism-hounds at Disney refused to overlook). He did in fact speak perfect English and did broker a peace between English and Patuxet which lasted some fifty years.

The wacky Squanto (played with impassioned vacuousness by Adam Beach) around which this film centers gets captured by conniving fur-trappers, one of whom, Thomas Dermer (Nathaniel Parker, late of the Royal Shakespeare Company), objects strenuously. He is overruled by the cruel Captain Harding (Alex Norton, late of Shakespeare repertory theater), and Squanto is wisked away to England, and into the clutches of the nefarious Sir George (Michael Gambon, late of Shakespeare repertory theater). In one exciting sequence, Squanto sets Sir George's own trained bear against him (hats off to Erez Gudes, bear-trainer) and escapes to the rooftops of Plymouth, then ends up unconscious on a beach where he is rescued by monks (Pankin, and the usually respectable Messieurs Mandy Patinkin and Donal Donnelly, all late of Shakespeare repertory theater). To make a non-story short, Squanto teaches the brothers lacrosse and how to make popcorn, and they help him escape back to Connecticut, where strife and historical figures await, as well as a startling conclusion! (Hint: it involves turkey and cornbread.)

Director Xavier Coller has imbued Squanto with the pace and insight of a CPR training film. UCLA alum Darlene Craviotto does not increase the glory of the Blue and Gold with the script, which suffers from polyanna moralizing and in all respects extreme banality. Squanto is dull, even for kids, and shamelessly fake-looking, and mangles history only to the further stultification of its actors and legatees. But here's the kicker: DISNEY HAS BEEN MAKING THESE MOVIES FOR YEARS!

William O'Hara

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