Get your own Free Home Page
You don’t go looking for subtlety in a movie whose opening titles turn every “t” into a stylized little crucifix while gargoyles stare out from the screen. Especially when it’s another supernatural thriller set in New York. Why not simply title the movie Subway Satanists at American Catholic Headquarters and drop all designs of suspense from the outset?
Bless the Child makes two howlers in a row for Kim Basinger. Following up the greatest misuse of beautiful landscape in a long time, I Dreamed of Africa, she plays Maggie O’Connor, a psychiatric nurse who at Christmas 1993 takes custody of her drug-addicted sister’s abandoned newborn daughter as a weird star appears in the heavens. Six years later, little Cody’s withdrawn behavior leads doctors to believe she’s autistic, but we know it’s something much worse because Maggie’s apartment is infested with eerie noises that to any intelligent person sound exactly like the entire Mormon Tabernacle Choir whispering “satan satan satan.” (I don’t know why the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would ever whisper “satan satan satan,” but until Satanists get their own world-renowned vocal ensemble, it’s the only comparison I can think of.)
Plus, when nobody’s looking, Cody manifests telekinetic control over Tupperware.
Plus, Maggie is having visions of hordes of computer-generated rats.
Plus, children who share Cody’s birthdate are falling victim to a ritualistic serial killer/tattoo artist.
Plus, the sister reappears married to an asymmetrically goggle-eyed self-help guru (Rufus Sewell, who has done some excellent movies, but is very distracting here because I can’t figure out if he’s always looked like that and I just never noticed, or if he’s wearing a big white contact lens in his left eye) with an overpowering interest in turning Cody over to a gorgonic uber-nanny.
Plus, Christina Ricci shows up (did she need a little extra money for the orthodontist this week?) with dire warnings of a terrible conspiracy.
Plus, apparently the angels’ union is in town for a convention, because they keep happening along to lend a hand at crucial junctures.
Plus, the FBI agent (Jimmy Smits) investigating the killings is a former Catholic seminary student who majored in Satanic tattoo-cults.
You know, just once I’d like to see a movie where somebody other than Catholics gets to the fight the devil. I’d pay full price to watch a good Unitarian exorcism: “In the name of Jesus, who is not really a separate being but whose name seems to carry some weight in these circles, we call on what- or whomever may or may not be possessing this person, to go back to wherever he or she came from whenever it’s convenient, although we’re probably wasting our time since we don’t really believe in this stuff anyway, but who knows, just in case, it couldn’t hurt. Amen, or something...”
Maybe when the turn of the Millennium is ten years behind us these movies will finally stop piling up like so many junk-mail pizza coupons. Until then the bigger mystery isn’t why they keep happening (look for Winona Ryder’s long-delayed Lost Souls to finally get released on October 13) so much as why Kim Basinger thought anything so mundane, by the director of Eraser, could help resuscitate her career from the three-year layoff following L. A. Confidential. What she needs to do, like her equally low-talking husband Alec Baldwin recently did (is there a darvocet mine perilously close to the well on their Georgia farm?) with Thomas and the Magic Railroad, is star in a children’s movie. Preferably something that has an equally adult subtext, such as Elmo’s 9 Weeks in Grouchland. C-
Get your own Free Home Page