Pack up your troubles and head to the movies
JAKARTA (JP): The charmed world of the movies, always safe refuge from our troubles, may be your ticket this weekend to brief escape from unrelenting gloom on the sliding rupiah.
Red Corner. Cast: Richard Gere, Bai Ling, Bradley Whitford. Director: John Avnet.
Continuing on from his successful courtroom thriller Primal Fear, Richard Gere is Jack Moore, a brilliant attorney framed for murder while representing a large entertainment business scheduled to close the first satellite communications deal with the Chinese government.
Deserted by his business associates, Jack's hope to elude the death penalty in a foreign land, notable for a completely different judicial system from his own, lies in the hands of a court-appointed defense attorney, Shen Yuelin (Bai Ling).
Together they bridge cultural differences and unearth a conspiracy at the highest levels of the government.
Excess Baggage. Cast: Alicia Silverstone, Benicio Del Toro, Christopher Walken. Director: Marco Brambilla.
After failing to get her father's attention despite several self-destructive acts, Emily (Silverstone) fakes her own kidnapping by locking herself inside the trunk of her BMW and demanding a ransom.
Instead, she is thrown together with an international car thief, Vincent Roche (Del Toro), when he steals the car.
The crook is none too happy when Emily sets fire to the warehouse where he stores his booty.
She's So Lovely. Cast: Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn, John Travolta. Director: Nick Cassavetes.
Insight into the gentler side of Penn, whose violent exploits were weekly tabloid fare during his union with Madonna, promises to be interesting, especially as Wright Penn is his new wife.
Maureen (Wright Penn in a critically acclaimed turn) finally has to kiss goodbye the drunken and crazy Eddie (Penn) behind bars and set off to start a new life.
Ten years later, Maureen is happily remarried with three daughters, two from her new husband (Travolta). But Eddie is already out on the streets, and he wants Maureen back. (ste)