Screen Tests

The smirky Baltimore director John Waters is slowly (very slowly) cleaning up his act, and his civil-rights soap operetta, Hairspray, is his squeakiest movie yet—it's even politically correct. Waters' evocation of the fifties is funny (though familiar), but the loopy subversiveness of his best film, Female Trouble, is long gone. And those shriekingly inept performances, by people like Sonny Bono and Debbie Harry (below), now feel less campyfunny than campy-excruciating. • At once austere and wonderfully sensuous, Feast is that rarity, a message movie that earns its message. Director Gabriel Axel dares to link artistic creation and holiness but without the usual awestruck sentimentality. His movie is tart, balanced, entertaining, and, in the end, powerfully moving. • One hears that Spike Lee is sick of people calling him "the black Woody Allen." After School Don he shouldn't have to worry. Despite his own winsome performance, his movie is puerile and pretentious—and worse, a bore. • Dominick 9t Eugone is a schmaltzarama about a saintly retarded kid and his loving brother (the doctor). It has the kind of heroic bad acting that sets your teeth on edge—and sometimes wins Oscars.

STEPHEN SCHIFF