MOVIES . . . WHEN WE WERE KINGS: As Spike Lee says of Muhammad Ali in this enthralling new documentary, 'He fused politics and sport.' Alis conversion to the Black Muslims tested white America's fondness for him. His refusal to serve in the Army made him the Vietnam Wars most famous conscientious objector and deprived him of work for three years at the peak of his craft. Then Ali returned to lose the heavyweight belt to Joe Frazier. Leon Gast's documentary details the next step in Ali's career: Act III of a great and poignant pageant. This was the Rumble in the Jungle, the 1974 fight with George Foreman in Zaire. "Ali's charisma makes the film," says TIME's Richard Corliss. He hectors in poetry: 'If you think the world was surprised when Nixon resigned,/ Just wait till I kick Foremans behind.' Some reporters, like George Plimpton, suspected that Alis smiles camouflaged his fear of the big, punishing champ. The film's title is rueful, notes Corliss. "Ali proved that athletes could be kings then; today they are often multimillionaires who behave like kids with a mean streak of attention deficit disorder. Some are naughty and nuts, like Dennis Rodman, and are rewarded with fat contracts by sneaker companies. Even the best pros display their worth mostly by avoiding trouble. Ali was different; he found a gospel and lived by it, whatever the cost to his reputation or to the job that he so loved. 'When We Were Kings' recalls a time, not so long ago, when an athlete could be a renegade hero, not of the self but of the soul."
Weekend Entertainment Guide
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MOVIES . . . . DANTE'S PEAK: "Disaster movies are our millennial No plays, totally stylized, totally predictable, but comforting in their familiarity," says TIME's Richard Schickel. "Whether the threat to domestic tranquillity is a ferocious shark, invading spacemen or a rogue volcano (as in Dante's Peak), it reassures us that nice people, if they are smart, brave and quick on their feet, will somehow survive." Writer Leslie Bohem and director Roger Donaldson brush briskly through the standard scientific and romantic blather. They know that in movies like this, complexity is the province of the special-effects people. Its the same with the actors. Cool Pierce Brosnan and warm Linda Hamilton understand that their job is mainly to provide human scale for the lava flows and firestorms, the lake that turns to acid (the better to eat their boat) and the blizzard of volcanic ash that eventually buries a small town. "We want to feel for them," Schickel notes. "But not too much. We want our doomsdays to be thrilling. But not scarily final."