Potassium-Argon Dating Movie Reviews

A botanist before he was a doctor, Andrew Weil thinks a lot about plants and the nature of nature when he considers human health. Drawn from his popular book of the same name, this 82-minute lecture (given at the New York Botanical Garden) touches on diet fads, the carbs vs. protein controversy, vitamin supplements, and fast food. Much of his advice is common sense: Eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, don't fall for extreme diets, pay attention to the kind of fats you eat, and increase your activity. But he complements these well-known principles with studies and examples, delivered in an entertaining way. The Australian study on fast-food fat he cites will send you speeding away from the local drive-through window, and the cultural observations he shares about the Japanese and French diets may convince you to finally try soy and eat smaller portions less frequently. Much of his advice is boiled down in concise screen graphics for easy note-taking. The only annoying thing about this tape is the frequent interruption by applause. Weil's delivery is charismatic without the distracting bursts of clapping to tell us so. --Kimberly Heinrichs

This is the movie that Leonardo DiCaprio received an Oscar nomination for, five years before Titanic. And, in fact, this is the movie that should have made him a star, he's so good in it. Based on the novel by Peter Hedges (who adapted his own book) and directed by Lasse Hallström (My Life as a Dog), this is the funny, moody tale of a young man named Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) who lives at home in a small town with his 500-pound Momma (beautifully played by nonpro Darlene Cates), his mentally retarded younger brother Arnie (DiCaprio, utterly convincing), and his sisters. Not a lot happens--Arnie keeps climbing a water tower and getting stuck; Gilbert is involved with a married woman (Mary Steenburgen), then meets a nice new girl in town who's closer to his age (Juliette Lewis). And that's exactly what makes this movie so much more than your run-of-the-mill Hollywood product: it's not about some mechanical, formulaic plot; it's about these characters, and it allows you to spend some time with them and get to know them. Depp may have started out as a TV teen idol on 21 Jump Street, but his feature film choices since then--in such wonderfully offbeat and diverse movies as Cry-Baby, Edward Scissorhands, Benny & Joon, Donnie Brasco--have made him one of the most interesting, unpredictable, and risk-taking young actors in American movies. --Jim Emerson