Adams Movie Reviews

Serial arson is haphazardly dramatized in Point of Origin, a fact-based HBO production that's more flashy than effective. A respected cinematographer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) making his directorial debut, Newton Thomas Sigel turns this pyrotechnic mystery into a showcase for rampant visual trickery, employing digital effects, various film speeds, and Hong Kong-like stunt fantasies to the outbreak of arson in Glendale, California, in 1987. Ray Liotta plays the arson investigator whose behavior draws the suspicion of his colleagues, but his guilt or innocence (and a really obvious make-up disguise) take a back seat to Sigel's visual treatment of fire, which borders on fetishism as it runs forward and backward in time. The effects are undeniably fascinating, suggesting the scary possibility that real arsonists might find this film inspiring. Obviously that's not Sigel's intention, but he's too busy showing off to fulfill the story's untapped potential. --Jeff Shannon

The Southern-gothic psychodrama of old secrets, longtime rivalries, and ancient wounds reopened at a family funeral gets a warm reworking in W. Blake Heron's A Texas Funeral, a gentle variation on the melodramatic standby directed at the easy pace of a Texas drawl. Martin Sheen is at his paternal, gentle best as the deceased patriarch Sparta Whit, who returns in the visions of his grandson and namesake Little Sparta to introduce the boy to the proud and sometimes bizarre history of the Whit family. Robert Patrick and Joanne Whalley costar as Sparta's struggling he-man son and crazy oversexed daughter, respectively, and Chris Noth is the rich cousin quietly shouldering a financial crisis. Heron has a gentle touch with his characters, and his whimsical obsession with camels (the braying "noble steed of the desert warrior") and "the awesome power of the male Whit ear" (which drives members of the opposite sex mad with uncontrollable passion) lightens the family melodrama. It ultimately plays like a too-tidy stage play, where simmering conflicts are swept away with the dawn, but Heron refreshingly discards the traditional screaming confrontations and dish-throwing tantrums for a quietly intimate celebration of family heritage, blood ties, and forgiveness. --Sean Axmaker

The Efficiency Expert (released in theaters as Spotswood), a warm-hearted, wacky comedy with a social conscience, takes place in Australia in the "Swinging '60s," and its character, substance, music, and design are so authentic one nearly forgets that it was made in 1991. Sir Anthony Hopkins is wonderful as Errol Wallace, the efficiency expert of the title, who devises painful belt-tightening measures for struggling companies. Wallace is hired to modernize the dotty, antiquated Ball Moccasin Factory, and he's stunned at the impossibility of the task. The cutting room resembles a workshop full of Santa's elves; the men literally dance jigs while they work. Still, Wallace takes the bull by the horns and deputizes a young man, Carey (the winning Ben Mendelsohn), to help him downsize the factory. It's like trying to disband a tribe; many of the employees have been there for 30 years; romances blossom there. Homely Wendy (Toni Colette, of Muriel's Wedding and The Sixth Sense) loves Ben, but he lusts after tarty Cheryl (Rebecca Rigg), whose nasty shark of a boyfriend, Kim, is played by a young Russell Crowe. Wallace thinks he's teaching these factory workers how business works, but it's he who learns a lesson. "Work isn't just about money," declares old Mr. Ball, the factory's owner (the exceedingly touching Alwyn Kurts). "It's about dignity, about treating people with respect. People need to make things." The movie's message has timeless resonance, as job security and pride in manufacturing vanishes from large industrialized nations. --Laura Mirsky

It takes place during the Russian-Chechen war, but House of Fools has the aura of the 1960s about it, specifically the anti-war picture of the King of Hearts variety. Set in a mental hospital near the front lines, the movie poses the age-old question: what happens when the inmates take over the asylum? The doctors have fled from the fighting, so the patients create their own society. Julia Vysotsky, a livewire actress, plays the central role, a blissfully unbalanced woman convinced she is the girlfriend of the singer Bryan Adams (and, game for the challenge, Adams plays himself, endlessly crooning his hit "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman"). Director Andrei Konchalovsky (Runaway Train) finds suspense here, and also absurdity, but it's hard to see what the film adds to the roster of "war is hell" movies. The conflict in Chechnya deserves attention, but Konchalovsky overstates his case. --Robert Horton