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Show V ' . ' . . - r -1 ; m&r N xx v. - iff ? " jl , a . ; LI 11 lci V vx Ml fNy --rCl Iff n - '.r-1 il HVtv - 1 .f-v-r v . , r- -" " fr ,s : A 1 l I. iwIStftriaM 8 ,rva mi i iJfc ,.iytiinr i i ii mil " - School chums Nicholas Rowe (left), as the budding sleuth Holmes, and Alan Cox, as his sidekick, Watson, experiment with the pleasure of pipe smoking in "Young Sherlock Holmes." 'Young Sherlock Holmes' is a brilliant deduction of sleuth's boyhood history Ult! and Robin Moench , m His wife Adrian (Talia Shire) doesn't want him to fight (see "Rocky H"), but he trains ferociously ferocious-ly and conquers the long odds (see any "Rocky" movie). From "Rambo," he borrows the Commie-bashing theme and the idea that technology can't defeat the man who is at one with nature. In this movie, Drago is pumped with steroids, strapped into space-age exercise ex-ercise machines and tested with computers that measure his punch quotient. Rocky steels himself for the fight by training in the harsh Russian countryside. There's surprisingly little plot here, and the movie is padded with rock video-style sequences one includes in-cludes several nostalgic peeks backward at other "Rocky" films. sort of Soviet attack dog. He's not really detestable. The audience is encouraged to hiss instead at the Politburo nasty who manages Drago (Michael Pataki), and Drago's wife (Stallone's real-life bride, Brigitte Nielsen), who smirks as Drago annihilates an-nihilates opponents. The boxing scenes carry the movie with their usual hard-slamming effectiveness. ef-fectiveness. But the familiar "Rocky" characters go through their paces. Maybe the most enduring impre-sion impre-sion is left by Carl Weathers' Creed, . who takes on the fight with Drago because he can't think of anything else to do with his life. "Where do we go from here, Stallion?" he asks. The answer, from Stallone as a filmmaker, is disheartening. He just gets back in the ring. RB Young Sherlock Holmes It's gratifying in "Young Sherlock Holmes" to see that the young actors could believably grow into the famous characters of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Nicholas Rowe as young Sherlock has the air of cold intellect and vague loneliness. And Alan Cox as Watson has a weary, resigned look that already suggests a middle-aged man. The film, written by Chris Columbus Colum-bus and Barry Levinson, wonders what would have happened if the two had met as youths in boarding school. Holmes is a shrewd young man, but a little shakey on the violin and with his deductions. As Inspector Inspec-tor Lestrade reminds him, he was, wrong when he suspected the French ambassador was embezzling money. It was the Russian ambassador. am-bassador. Watson wants to be a doctor doc-tor and has a weakness for French pastry. Holmes is beginning to acquire his trademarks, like the deerstalker cap and pipe. But he is primarily occupied oc-cupied with a rash of mysterious suicides which are not suicides at all. A cloaked figure with a blowgun is Londoners with an hallucinogenic drug. The resulting delusions drive them to jump out of windows or throw themselves under carriages. One victim is Holmes' teacher and the uncle of his young love Elizabeth (Sophie Ward). Sherlock traces the attacks to an Eastern cult and their mysterious temple, which takes the movie back to Indiana Jones country and exposes ex-poses the influence of producer Steven Spielberg. The drug-induced delusions seen by the victims tiny gargoyles and monster hat racks also are an opportunity for the special effects house, Industrial Light and Magic, to show its stuff. The movie, however, doesn't lose the Holmes touch. The eerie Victorian Vic-torian , atmosphere can accommodate accom-modate the strange and supernatural super-natural and the fear of the exotic East. "Young Sherlock" is a charming, charm-ing, fast-moving thriller though you won't need Holmes' deductive Now Showing b At the Holiday Village Cinemas: I Rocky IV '-.Spies Like Us r Vt White Nights . Young Sherlock Holmes powers to spot the villains before they are revealed. Une important note: Don't leave the theater before the credits are over or you'll miss one of the key points of the movie. RB Jewel of the Nile About a half-hour into "Jewel of the Nile," you get the feeling that everything in the picture is going to be familiar, as Joan Wilder (Kathleen Turner) and Jack Colton (Michael Douglas) are drawn into a Middle-Eastern civil war after their adventure in "Romancing the Stone." Joan, tired of slow,, romantic cruising around Europe, jumps at the chance to write the biography of an Arab general, Omar . (Spiros Focas), who is about to be proclaimed proclaim-ed head of his country. But shrewd movie audiences can soon pick up clues that all is not right with this fellow witness his submachine-gun-toting guards, his sinister-looking jet armed with rockets, and his lush palace, where distant screams bounce off the walls. "Cats," he explains to Joan. Meanwhile, Jack has been shanghaied by the local rebels, who say they want him to recover their sacred religious symbol, the Jewel of the Nile. This is interesting to Jack, but the "jewel," unbeknownst to him, is the country's holy man. The plot perks up when Jack and Joan get together and have a chance to swashbuckle and bicker their way across the Sahara. Also good is Avner Eisenberg as the Jewel, who does a nice version of the cute-old-guru stereotype. When they run away from the tanks and guns of Omar, he inquires brightly, "Are we jogging?" The movie also follows Ralph (Danny DeVito), who has pursued Jack with plans either to skin him alive or nab his booty, whichever opportunity op-portunity comes first. Ralph is snatched snat-ched up by the Sufi rebels, and surprisingly, sur-prisingly, he doesn't make out too badly as an adopted member of the tribe. This movie gives us more of DeVito's sputtery tirades than "Romancing," which was disap-. disap-. pointing in that department, ,ilu tll :i f "Jewel of the Nile" manages to be pleasant, thanks to the characters, but the action is ordinary Indiana Jones stuff, with a few nice touches. Best idea: The villain tries to appeal to the masses as a man of miracles by staging a big light-and-smoke show. His producer is a man who does effects for outdoor rock concerts! con-certs! RB Rocky IV Sylvester Stallone deftly squeezes the old emotions out of you, but he really went too far trying to do a fourth Rocky film. He has nothing new to present here. The villain here, as in "Rocky III," is a hulk who causes the death of one of Rocky's friends. Soviet boxer box-er Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) comes to the United States and pummels pum-mels Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) to death. Preparing himself for the fight, Apollo surrounds himself with showgirls and glitter, which is no substitute for brawn. Remember Rocky making the same mistake against Clubber Lang in the third movie? After Creed's death, Rocky accepts ac-cepts "a match that puts the entire Western Judaeo-Christian tradition at stake: He fights the Russian in Moscow on Christmas Day. A Classic I Recommended Good double feature material Time-killer For masochists only |
