A L S O_.T O D A Y Blue Glow "Homicide": Kellerman returns; "Behind the Music": All about R.E.M. "Psycho" Reviewed by Mary Elizabeth Williams Gus Van Sant's retelling of a Hitchcock classic may not be anything new, but it's still just as shocking   R E C E N T_. M O V I E S Jerry Springer: Ringmaster Reviewed by Gary Kaufman The movie is every bit as loud and raunchy as the television show -- so what's not to like? (12/02/98) Home Movies By Charles Taylor "Matilda": A smart, funny fantasy for bookworms of all ages (11/30/98) "A Bug's Life" Reviewed by Janelle Brown With it's much-anticipated follow-up to "Toy Story," Pixar conquers in the animated bug battle (11/25/98) "Home Fries" Reviewed by Charles Taylor Drew Barrymore is sweet as cherry pie as a pregnant burger-joint clerk in this charming screwball comedy (11/25/98) "Storefront Hitchcock" Reviewed by Mark Athitakis Jonathan Demme's mesmerizing documentary brings an unlikely pop singer to the silver screen (11/25/98)   BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES COLUMNS FEATURES REVIEWS INTERVIEWS S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

I FEEL A SONG COMING ON | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Herman's idea of working-class realism appears to be to set his characters in the shabbiest surroundings his production team can muster and then get them screaming at each other. He can't allow a scene to end on a quiet note, as when the small-time promoter Ray (Michael Caine) talks LV into performing in a local club, without punching it up. As Mari, Brenda Blethyn appears to feel the need to punch up every line. She dissipates all the good will she earned for "Secrets and Lies" in about two minutes. To be fair, the role isn't written so that the audience will sympathize with Mari's desperation, the fear she feels when she realizes that Ray is more interested in profiting from LV's talents than he is in her. But Blethyn plays the character as a screeching shrew. It's like watching a stage performance that hasn't been modulated for the screen, though even on stage Blethyn would be disastrously over the top. Mari is grotesquely bawdy, but every howl of strained laughter, every overemphasis Blethyn puts on Mari's terrible jokes and bad puns ("electrickery") -- all choices encouraged by Herman -- is directed right at the audience. There's no inner life to the character, just a catalog of mannered effects. Blethyn nearly takes Caine down with her. In their scenes together, he's broad and coarse in a way I wouldn't have thought possible. He regains his usual warm subtlety in his scenes with Horrocks. Ray is written as a schemer who's interested in LV only for the money she can earn him. Caine subverts that. As much as possible, within the confines of the script and Herman's direction, Caine plays Ray as a man truly amazed by LV. Even when he's using it to get what he wants, the gentleness Ray shows her feels genuine. When he listens to her sing, he seems to be rediscovering what those singers meant to him, the ability of pop music to transport you. And we're invited to rediscover it, too. Cartwright wrote the role for Horrocks because he knew of her amazing abilities as a mimic. When I first heard her singing "Over the Rainbow" here, I was certain she was lip-synching. Her impressions of Garland, Dietrich, Billie Holiday and Marilyn are so uncannily accurate they're eerie. What she does, though, goes far beyond mimicry. She's not just impersonating those singers, she's impersonating them in character, as LV. Watching LV kneel in her bedroom before her little portable record player, poring over the covers of her dad's records as if they were talismans, calls up the wonderfully fetishistic nature of pop fandom. At one time or another, we've all had that relationship with the records we love. And when Horrocks performs in the voices of the singers LV adores, we're watching someone live out the inevitable fantasies pop-music fans have of making that sound themselves, of spilling out everything that's bottled up inside them and being loved for doing so. It's impossible to take the familiar songs and personas for granted as Horrocks performs them. She makes them seem fresh by getting down to their essence. We can hear that what attracts LV to Judy Garland is Garland's tremulous, nearly apologetic overemotionalism, that what endears Marilyn Monroe to her is the neediness beneath Marilyn's cuddly naughtiness. To point up Cartwright's central metaphor, Herman makes LV even more monosyllabic than she is in the play. I wished he'd given Horrocks more to do in her scenes with Ewan McGregor as the telephone repairman's apprentice who falls for LV. (It's a nothing role, but McGregor's sweetness, as when he tenderly kisses the head of one of his ailing carrier pigeons, is undeniable. He seems to show another side of himself in each new performance.) I don't know when I've seen such a bad movie with a performance as sensational as the one Horrocks gives here. The most frustrating thing about "Little Voice" is that Horrocks' performance doesn't have the presentation -- and thus the shape -- it might have if she'd been working with a director who didn't feel the need to create such a ruckus around her, who didn't consistently cut away from her at the crucial moments. Herman lands Horrocks in a predicament perilously close to LV's: She has to make herself heard while all sorts of flapdoodle threatens to drown her out. That she manages to do so is just one more marvel in a performance rich with them. SALON | Dec. 4, 1998