Notable movies for the week of May 4
Chattahoochee (R)
An institutionalized Korean War veteran (Gary Oldman) endures
every imaginable form of squalor and cruelty to become the hippie
Christ of the psycho ward in director Mick Jackson's lurid yet
dramatically inert film. British actor Oldman does an ace
impersonation of a drawling American redneck, but it isn't enough to
salvage this sluggishly written and directed ''expose.'' Dennis Hopper
is surprisingly understated and touching as Oldman's looney-bin
cohort. D+
The First Power (R)
Swiping an idea from Wes Craven's Shocker (which in turn lifted it
from The Hidden), this thriller is yet another story of an evil force
that leaps from body to body. Starring Lou Diamond Phillips (who
looks way too skinny to be a cop), the movie is just a low-grade
spectacular with occult cliches, but it's enough to get you wondering:
Will we someday look back with nostalgia at an era when monsters
could actually be killed? D
The Gods Must Be Crazy II (R)
It's no great shock that Jamie Uys' Bushman sequel doesn't feel
nearly as fresh as the original. The surprise is that it's a
disaster — witless and crude, and patently offensive. The nifty
silent-comedy routines of the first movie have given way to
relentless sound effects and fast motion (it's like watching South
Africa's Unfunniest Home Videos), and Uys' patronization of the
Bushmen can no longer be regarded as innocent folly. It is, quite
simply, a beguiling form of racism. F
I Love You to Death (R)
Kevin Kline's likable ham performance as a pizza-shop Casanova
who — quite literally — cannot be killed isn't enough to save Lawrence
Kasdan's laborious marital-revenge comedy. The film is supposedly
based on an actual incident, but when Kline starts demonstrating his
near-bionic survival abilities, it turns into a leaden supernatural
sitcom. D+
Monsieur Hire (R)
Movies about voyeurs should be nothing if not titillating, and
this French entry certainly qualifies — though in a ''tasteful'' way.
Michel Blanc plays a middle-aged Peeping Tom who's less a pervert
than a soulful, Victorian obsessive; gradually, he becomes aware that
his sexual fixations are, in fact, romantic. The plot, which hinges
on the murder of a young woman, is involving in a conventional way,
yet isn't tricky enough to work on the mystery-thriller level. Still,
Blanc's sad, severe performance holds you — as does Sandrine Bonnaire's
as his ravishing 'cross-the-courtyard muse. B
Q&A (R)
Sidney Lumet's new police movie is an epic portrait of an urban
bureaucratic nightmare — it's about a criminal-justice system so
saturated with cronyism and rancor that it's beginning to strangle
itself. Nick Nolte gives a performance of venomous brilliance as Mike
Brennan, a treacherous NYPD rogue at the heart of a homicide
cover-up. The movie has its flaws, but it's a superbly complex
vision of racism and corruption — Lumet's darkest, most labyrinthine
drama yet. A-
Vital Signs (R)
Here is a youth-schlock soap opera that plays like some
junior-high fantasy of what it would be like to go to med school.
Still, director Marisa Silver has staged the stock romantic
shenanigans with considerable zip; the movie never strays far from
camp, but on its own shameless terms it delivers. Jimmy Smits is
terrific as a hipster surgeon dispensing suave lessons in medical
ethics. B-
