Gina Gershon

Gina Gershon is so rock-and-roll. She survived Showgirls, and her role as a butch ex-con in Bound made her a lesbian icon. She's floored Bob Dylan in a boxing ring, dated Beck, and put Guns N' Roses to work as her band. And right now, the actress-turned-rocker is in full hellcat mode at the North Star Bar, belting out Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" as documentary cameras roll and Nicolas Cage, Adrien Brody and Joaquin Phoenix look on. It's the last night of a recent promotional tour for Prey for Rock and Roll, in which Gershon plays the leader of an all-female Los Angeles band who's just turned 40 and is going through a mid-rock crisis.

"One Tough Cop" is based on a former New York cop named Bo Dietl, by all accounts a colorful character. But not colorful enough. Though Stephen Baldwin is brought in to ape Dietl's mannerisms and accent and habit of beating people up, the movie's story is largely fictionalized. At least we assume it is, because it's not possible that the life of an actual person could contain so many cliches. In place of biography, we get a Hollywood cops-and-robbers melodrama so stale it dates back to Bogart and Cagney - two neighborhood chums, one becomes a mobster, the other a cop. All that's missing is Pat O'Brien as the priest who knew them both as kids.

'All my life, all I've ever wanted to be was a rock-and-roll star," says Gina Gershon, the bombshell thespian, playing a tattooed tough girl about to turn 40 in the three-chord melodrama Prey for Rock and Roll. A hokey tale about pursuing your dreams, adapted from a musical by real-life struggling punk-rocker Cheri Lovedog, Prey rings with a certain authenticity. Gershon, with her curled lip and domineering stance, is a convincing front woman in an all-girl band that's clearing $13.50 each in the diviest of L.A. dives.

Hilary Swank owns two best-actress Oscars - for the transgender tragedy Boys Don't Cry , and for Clint Eastwood's distaff boxing pic Million Dollar Baby - and in my mind she deserves them both. But put her in a frilly dress, set her loose in a chick flick and something goes terribly wrong. And in the grief-drenched romantic comedy P.S. I Love You , things are excruciatingly amiss, start to finish. In the morose, mopey vein of Ghost and Truly, Madly, Deeply , but with none of the charm and less of the magic, P.S. I Love You is about a tightly wound New Yorker - Swank's Holly Kennedy - whose glinty-eyed Irishman husband dies just after the opening credits.

A police drama that tries - and fails - to rise above the routine tops this week's list of new movies on video. One Tough Cop 1/2 (1998) (Columbia Tri- Star) 94 minutes. Stephen Baldwin, Chris Penn, Gina Gershon, Mike McGlone, Frank Pellegrino, Amy Irving. Not even the proven talent of Brazilian director Bruno Barreto can lift this drama of a street cop and his conflicting loyalties above routine. R (sex, violence, language). DVD available. (CC) Apt Pupil (1998) (Columbia TriStar)

For our Showgirls watching pleasure, the folks at MGM now bring us a selection of drinking games, complete with a set of shot glasses. What, did they think we've been watching this movie sober? For a slim $39.98, you get the party essentials, plus the 1995 cult-favorite brainchild of director Paul Verhoeven and writer Joe Eszterhas. Hot off the sensual whodunit Basic Instinct, Verhoeven and Eszterhas planned to make a big-budget, NC-17 morality tale. Instead viewers got a bunch of amoral women showing a lot of tail.

While TV lesbians wrestle with the issue of coming out of the closet, the female lead in the movie "Bound" does not equivocate. Beaten, bound, gagged and literally locked in a closet, Corky (Gina Gershon) - a declared lesbian with tattoos and a pickup truck and everything - cuts her bonds and bursts out with a triumphant karate kick. It's a wildly campy moment, typical of the movie's smarty-pants approach to the gritty crime drama it aims to tell, making "Bound" the latest independent caper film to pay homage to the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino.

An Oscar-winning drama tops this week's list of new movies on video. Good Will Hunting 1/2 (1997) (Miramax) 126 minutes. Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver. A troubled young genius (Damon) struggles to come to terms with the world outside his South Boston neighborhood, and with his own dark flaws. Williams, as a keen, caring therapist, gives his best performance in years in this smart, extremely likable picture about a smart, extremely volatile guy. R (adult themes, profanity, sexual situations)

The title "Palmetto" has an award-show ring to it. The Golden Palm. The Clio. The Palmetto. So, in recognition of how bad this movie is, I propose that the Palmetto be awarded each year to the worst film noir, a category that gets more crowded all the time. Winners will be announced annually by the Academy of Bad Noir Arts and Sciences during a ceremony at the Keyser Soze Pavilion. "Ladies and gentleman . . . Quentin Tarantino. " (He's wearing a tuxedo and a Kangol cap.)

Hilary Swank owns two best-actress Oscars - for the transgender tragedy Boys Don't Cry, and for Clint Eastwood's distaff boxing pic Million Dollar Baby - and in my mind she deserves them both. But put her in a frilly dress, set her loose in a chick flick and something goes terribly wrong. And in the grief-drenched romantic comedy P.S. I Love You, things are excruciatingly amiss, start to finish. In the morose, mopey vein of Ghost and Truly, Madly, Deeply, but with none of the charm and less of the magic, P.S. I Love You is about a tightly wound New Yorker - Swank's Holly Kennedy - whose glinty-eyed Irishman husband dies just after the opening credits.

For our Showgirls watching pleasure, the folks at MGM now bring us a selection of drinking games, complete with a set of shot glasses. What, did they think we've been watching this movie sober? For a slim $39.98, you get the party essentials, plus the 1995 cult-favorite brainchild of director Paul Verhoeven and writer Joe Eszterhas. Hot off the sensual whodunit Basic Instinct, Verhoeven and Eszterhas planned to make a big-budget, NC-17 morality tale. Instead viewers got a bunch of amoral women showing a lot of tail.

'All my life, all I've ever wanted to be was a rock-and-roll star," says Gina Gershon, the bombshell thespian, playing a tattooed tough girl about to turn 40 in the three-chord melodrama Prey for Rock and Roll. A hokey tale about pursuing your dreams, adapted from a musical by real-life struggling punk-rocker Cheri Lovedog, Prey rings with a certain authenticity. Gershon, with her curled lip and domineering stance, is a convincing front woman in an all-girl band that's clearing $13.50 each in the diviest of L.A. dives.

Gina Gershon is so rock-and-roll. She survived Showgirls, and her role as a butch ex-con in Bound made her a lesbian icon. She's floored Bob Dylan in a boxing ring, dated Beck, and put Guns N' Roses to work as her band. And right now, the actress-turned-rocker is in full hellcat mode at the North Star Bar, belting out Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" as documentary cameras roll and Nicolas Cage, Adrien Brody and Joaquin Phoenix look on. It's the last night of a recent promotional tour for Prey for Rock and Roll, in which Gershon plays the leader of an all-female Los Angeles band who's just turned 40 and is going through a mid-rock crisis.

A police drama that tries - and fails - to rise above the routine tops this week's list of new movies on video. One Tough Cop 1/2 (1998) (Columbia Tri- Star) 94 minutes. Stephen Baldwin, Chris Penn, Gina Gershon, Mike McGlone, Frank Pellegrino, Amy Irving. Not even the proven talent of Brazilian director Bruno Barreto can lift this drama of a street cop and his conflicting loyalties above routine. R (sex, violence, language). DVD available. (CC) Apt Pupil (1998) (Columbia TriStar)

"One Tough Cop" is based on a former New York cop named Bo Dietl, by all accounts a colorful character. But not colorful enough. Though Stephen Baldwin is brought in to ape Dietl's mannerisms and accent and habit of beating people up, the movie's story is largely fictionalized. At least we assume it is, because it's not possible that the life of an actual person could contain so many cliches. In place of biography, we get a Hollywood cops-and-robbers melodrama so stale it dates back to Bogart and Cagney - two neighborhood chums, one becomes a mobster, the other a cop. All that's missing is Pat O'Brien as the priest who knew them both as kids.

An Oscar-winning drama tops this week's list of new movies on video. Good Will Hunting 1/2 (1997) (Miramax) 126 minutes. Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver. A troubled young genius (Damon) struggles to come to terms with the world outside his South Boston neighborhood, and with his own dark flaws. Williams, as a keen, caring therapist, gives his best performance in years in this smart, extremely likable picture about a smart, extremely volatile guy. R (adult themes, profanity, sexual situations)

The title "Palmetto" has an award-show ring to it. The Golden Palm. The Clio. The Palmetto. So, in recognition of how bad this movie is, I propose that the Palmetto be awarded each year to the worst film noir, a category that gets more crowded all the time. Winners will be announced annually by the Academy of Bad Noir Arts and Sciences during a ceremony at the Keyser Soze Pavilion. "Ladies and gentleman . . . Quentin Tarantino. " (He's wearing a tuxedo and a Kangol cap.)

While TV lesbians wrestle with the issue of coming out of the closet, the female lead in the movie "Bound" does not equivocate. Beaten, bound, gagged and literally locked in a closet, Corky (Gina Gershon) - a declared lesbian with tattoos and a pickup truck and everything - cuts her bonds and bursts out with a triumphant karate kick. It's a wildly campy moment, typical of the movie's smarty-pants approach to the gritty crime drama it aims to tell, making "Bound" the latest independent caper film to pay homage to the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino.