PLEASANTVILLE (M)
Director: Gary Ross
Bugs: Two and a half out of five.

PLEASANTVILLE could have been a very pleasant way for writer-first time director Gary Ross to make some telling – and very funny – comparisons between the lifestyles of the liberated 90s and the apple-pie squeaky-clean 50s as depicted in the American sitcoms of that era.
That he fails is due largely to his decision to portray the 50s not as those famous weekly TV shows saw it but as a sanitised, sexless facade – a production set where people's knowledge and props are just sufficient to get through a 30 minute episodic storyline.
For you see, Ross's Pleasantville is not just a place where father knows best.
George and Betty (William H Macy and Joan Allen) live in separate single beds and there is no knowledge of or need for sex.
Public toilets have doors but no pedestals. School libraries have book covers, but blank pages.
Firemen have fire hoses but no need for them for there are no fires in Pleasantville, only stuck cats to rescue from tree-tops. The mercury's also stuck – on 72 deg F – and umbrellas don't exist because rain is unheard of.
In other words, things might happen in Pleasantville, but shit certainly isn't one of them.
Ross (co-creator of Dave and Big) milks these images to give Pleasantville most of its meagre laughs, but it's a decision that severely limits the potential for any meaningful dialogue on what the events of the past 40 years have meant to the day-to-day lives of everyday people.
Children do arrive in Pleasantville families, but "Honey I'm Home" men like George apparently have no input. Such things, it would appear, are entirely left to beaver, if Joan has one, that is.
Under Ross's black and white view of 50s suburbia, the good citizens of Pleasantville have no need either for shitting or sex holes.
Teenagers still date and drive up to Lover's Lane, but what the hell for?
Into this fartless, burpless, bleedingless utopia are thrust our two modern-day adolescent heroes, David and Jennifer (Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon) as George and Betty's perfect offspring.
Products of a broken marriage, geek David liked to lie about watching reruns of his favourite 50s sitcom - yes, Pleasantville – while worldly wise Jennifer just wanted to get laid. That was all before the mysterious TV repair man (Don Knotts) sends them back in time.
Our two cynical time travellers can't agree on whether to tell the good folk of Pleasantville a few home truths – like the road out of town does in fact lead to somewhere, perhaps even a life, albeit angst or AIDS ridden.
Jennifer wants to have some fun, but David has seen Back to the Future on cable enough times to know the dangers that altering states can do to their hopes of ever getting out in one piece.
Jennifer takes one of the town's leading crew-cuts up to Lover's Lane for some new-fashioned loving and surprise, surprise, the school sports hero experiences an unforgettable explosion – of colour that is.
Jennifer tells Betty about the new goings-on at Lover's Lane, and as Betty finally gets a grip on reality during a hot bath, a tree outside explodes in a fireball of living colour. Exactly what it is between her legs is indeed puzzling, because, as stated before, the only holes in Pleasantville are supposedly in Ross's script.
It's the dawn of a new, less perfect age, and people everywhere start to marvel at the beautiful colours, although how they knew about particular colours in the first place is puzzling as well.
And where do all those colourful umbrellas come from as soon as it starts to rain on Pleasantville's parade.
David realises that it's too late to hold back the truth, so shows soda jerk and would-be artist Mr Johnson (Jeff Daniels) a big book of modern art. Johnson turns his shop wall into a post-modernist mural, which offends the steadfastly grey matter of the town's civil leaders, led by mayor J.T. Walsh in presumably his last screen outing.
Within this messy and ill-conceived concept, Ross attempts to make some points about racial tolerance (the coloureds versus the non-coloureds) and human aversion to change that threatens their way of life.
The failure to deliver any worthwhile message is compounded by giving the computer wizards too much freedom as they set out to impress with their spot colour treatment as Pleasantville comes of age. Frankly, it's all a bit mono-tone-ous.
It all goes on for 15 to 20 minutes too long, so that by the end it's not only David and Jennifer who are desperate to get out of town.

- Don Gordon-Brown

RUSHMORE (M)
Director: Wes Anderson
Bugs: Four out of five.

Perhaps the strangest relationship between an adolescent and an adult since Harold and Maude way back when is at the heart of the quirky and very enjoyable Rushmore.
Newcomer Jason Schwartzman is the nerdy teenager Max Fischer who plays his exclusive college, Rushmore, on a very taut string.
The bookish-looking Max is into anything but the books – he's founder of the school's bee-keeping society, fencing and lacrosse teams and model plane flying club, to name but a few, and director/writer/producer of bizarre plays that mirror his resourceful if immature mind.
Max wants to spend the rest of his life organising Rushmore, with the help of his equally weird sidekick/company secretary played by Mason Gamble (Dennis the Menace).
Very rich school benefactor Max Blume (Bill Murray) sees something of his younger self in the ever-organising but never swatting Max.
In mid-life crisis with two sons of his own who are the Beagle Boys reincarnated, Blume finances Max's latest scheme – to build a massive aquarium over what Rushmore's administrators think should remain the school's footy oval.
Max is interested in fish alright, but the aquarium is only a means to an end. He's fallen in pimply puppy love with the school's grade one teacher Miss Cross (the very English Olivia Williams).
The older dog Blume falls for Miss Cross too, leading to a tit-for- tat, Laurel and Hardy exchange of physical insults - with potential deadly consequences - that nearly tips Rushmore into the realms of very black comedy.
No major gaffaws, sure, but there there are visual and verbal chuckles aplenty as director Wes Anderson and scriptwriter Owen Wilson develop this unusual relationship between Max and Blume.
What power does such a young man hold that Max can sit, Godfather like in the back seat of Blume's limo, and make the businessman sweat during an interrogation to uncover his designs on Miss Cross?
Or convince Blume to part with a much bigger slice of his wealth to turn the aquarium into reality after Miss Cross fails to take the bait by turning up at the aquarium's first sod-laying ceremony, a little bit of Max-inspired vandalism for which he gets expelled?
From the film's opening sequence – where Max's rather dreamy view of his role at Rushmore unfolds – any viewer who isn't hanging out for the release of the next film in the Lethal Die Hard Payback Meteor Weapon Impact series with a cameo from Sean Joe Pesci Harvey Penn-Keitel should know they are in for something different – and deliciously special.

- Don Gordon-Brown

RONIN (M)
Director: John Frankenheimer
Rating: Wallet

You probably noticed in the summary above that we've given Ronin a Wallet rating.
That's right: a Wallet. Our former rating system of one to five bugs and various half claws is now out. Finished. Kaput. Stupid system anyway.
Wallet is all that Ronin was worth, really. Had tossed around the idea of giving it a The Plot or even an Interest rating, but it's not as good as either of those.
Better, mind, than being grouped in either the Virginity or Consciousness categories.
Our new rating system is based on what the critic loses while reviewing any particular movie.
We think it's a goer and strongly urge the nation's other top fillum review publications who use similar outdated methods to Bugs, such as stars or bullets, to follow suit.
We gave Ronin a Wallet rating because that is precisely what your humble reviewer lost when he saw it at the moderately new Stafford City Multiplex the other week.
The wallet was lost because this reviewer's bum went to sleep not far into Ronin, and your humble columnist was obviously squirming around a bit trying to wake it up.
The arse nodded off mainly because it got sick and tired of Robert de Niro's character, Sam, mumbling inane comments which Robert de Niro's character obviously thought were funny because he did that little smirky thing Robert de Niro himself does so well.
The arse also nodded off while watching John Reno's character, Vincent, prove he was just tres, tres French by calling himself Jean in the end credits. You can put your own funny little mark above the e in those tres.
The arse slept on blissfully for the most part because Ronin managed like a lot of modern films by getting the best part of halfway through without relying all that much on a script or plot or character development. By then, all we knew was that a group of crooks had been assembled by an Irish lass, Deirdre (Natascha McElhone), to steal a briefcase from some other group of thugs who didn't want it stolen. Robert de Niro's character wanted to know what was in the briefcase. He was probably the only one.
Director John Frankenheimer must also take much of the blame for the Wallet rating, because he's thrown a couple of quite reasonable car chases into the quagmire that is Ronin's storyline.
It was these noisy and well-constructed travelogues through pretty mountain roads and narrow city rues, accompanied by much drum-beating, that obviously woke up your reviewer's sad and sorry arse, if only momentarily.
Sitting bolt upright and then slowly lapsing back into a deep sleep was clearly what caused your reviewer's arse to dislodge the wallet that was in the trousers around it.
On a positive note, it took so long to wake his arse after the lights had thankfully come up to end Ronin's run that your reviewer was the last person to leave the cinema.
This meant that the cleaning staff found the wallet – and not a departing patron hellbent on recouping his outlay on such folly by pocketing what passes for money in your humble reviewer's wallet.
That staff member made sure the wallet found its way intact to the office safe, from which it was gratefully recovered several days later.
The Bug appreciates the honesty of the cinema staff. This reviewer and his arse which, by the way, is currently wide awake and rearing to go if you must know, both want to wish the honest folk at Stafford City complex all the best financially, including the fervent hope that their future product will be of a better quality than Ronin.

- Don Gordon-Brown

PAYBACK (MA)
Director: Assorted
Bugs: Two out of five.

Megastar Mel Gibson risks his life in almost every scene in the troubled production of Payback, a.k.a. Drawback.
The tobacco companies should be very proud indeed.

- Don Gordon-Brown