Word: costner
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BLACK ROBE. Sometimes you dance with the wolf; sometimes the wolf eats you. Bruce Beresford's dark drama, about a white priest among some truly savage savages, tops Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning 1990 romance by being anthropologically, if not politically, correct. It embraces ambiguity and is all the more powerful...
Anybody want to see this movie? Warner Bros. hopes so; the studio (whose parent company also owns TIME) helped foot JFK's $40 million tab. It is also counting on Kevin Costner, America's No. 1 homegrown movie star, to lure audiences to what is at heart a high-voltage civics quiz. Though he doesn't necessarily agree with every notion floated in the film, Costner is happy to play front man for Stone. "Oliver's a patriot," he says. "And I believe with him that the impact of this movie will be liberating. Any part of the truth...
Well, so what? Before Kevin Costner's smash Dances with Wolves opened, the town's grumble bunnies were calling it Kevin's Gate. Which is not to predict that Billy B. will be a hit; it lacks, by design, the grapefruit-in-your-face impact of most gangster classics. But this is superior filmmaking, as handsomely conceived and realized as Dick Tracy, but darker, more resonant. It has a grace and a gravity rare just now in American films. Oh, and Willis, as a high-living hoodlum, is one dandy dandy...
...even Costner can suffer a total eclipse of the star. Last year Columbia Pictures sent him to Mexico, gave him a pretty woman and a passion to ride after and called the movie Revenge. For Columbia, the only revenge was Montezuma's: the picture went down the commode in a flash. It stumbled to a $15 million gross, less than a tenth of what Dances with Wolves or Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves will have earned in North American theatrical release...
This summer's films offer support for both truisms. The two megahits are from the two biggest stars: Costner's Robin Hood ($140 million so far) and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator 2: Judgment Day ($160 million). With City Slickers ($105 million), Billy Crystal has demonstrated that a comedian, savvily shaping projects to suit both him and a large audience, can share the spotlight with two cranky studs. But the season's major flop is Dying Young (a pitiful $32 million), from the former Miss Can't-Miss, Julia Roberts. "They said Julia Roberts could open any film," notes Martin Grove...