Short Takes: Jan. 25, 1993

CINEMA

Avalanche Is Better Than None

SAY THIS FOR ALIVE, DIRECTOR FRANK Marshall's version of the Piers Paul Read best seller about a 1972 Andes plane crash that forced its surviving passengers to cannibalism: early on, the movie has a great avalanche. After that, it's all downhill. The acting (Ethan Hawke and Vincent Spano are the stars) starts at a pitch of whiny hysteria and rarely lets up. The dialogue, by ace playwright John Patrick Shanley, sounds as if poorly translated from the Spanish: "What have we done that God now asks us to eat the bodies of our own dead...

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