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From: Gene Ehrich <gene@ehrich.com> Subject: [MV] Is the list dead. Have not received a message for a long time. Date: 03 May 2002 16:14:45 -0400 Is the list dead. Have not received a message for a long time. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Wade Snider <wsnider@brazoselectric.com> Subject: RE: [MV] Is the list dead. Have not received a message for a long Date: 03 May 2002 15:47:22 -0500 This message is in MIME format. Since your mail reader does not understand this format, some or all of this message may not be legible. ------_=_NextPart_001_01C1F2E3.B975D610 Content-Type: text/plain Hey! Guess it's not completely dead... > -----Original Message----- > From: Gene Ehrich [SMTP:gene@ehrich.com] > Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 3:15 PM > To: movies@lists.xmission.com > Subject: [MV] Is the list dead. Have not received a message for a > long time. > > Is the list dead. Have not received a message for a long time. > > > [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] > [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------_=_NextPart_001_01C1F2E3.B975D610 Content-Type: text/html Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV=3D"Content-Type" CONTENT=3D"text/html; = charset=3Dus-ascii"> <META NAME=3D"Generator" CONTENT=3D"MS Exchange Server version = 5.5.2653.12"> <TITLE>RE: [MV] Is the list dead. Have not received a message for a = long time.</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> Hey! Guess it's not = completely dead... <UL> -----Original Message----- From: Gene Ehrich [SMTP:gene@ehrich.com] Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 3:15 PM To: movies@lists.xmission.com Subject: = [MV] Is the list dead. Have not = received a message for a long time. Is the list dead. Have not received a = message for a long time. [ To leave the movies mailing list, = send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) = to = majordomo@xmission.com &n= bsp; ] </UL> </BODY> </HTML> ------_=_NextPart_001_01C1F2E3.B975D610-- [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gene Ehrich <gehrich@tampabay.rr.com> Subject: RE: [MV] Is the list dead. Have not received a message for a Date: 03 May 2002 16:57:50 -0400 At 03:47 PM 5/3/02 -0500, you wrote: >Hey! > >Guess it's not completely dead... We just saw Harold & Maude for the first time last night. Great movie. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Vi On <vi@cs.bu.edu> Subject: [MV] SpiderMan Date: 04 May 2002 00:11:11 -0400 (EDT) Awesome movie. Must see if you liked batman, superman, xmen type movie. -Vi [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Vi On <vi@cs.bu.edu> Subject: [MV] spiderman breaks records Date: 06 May 2002 15:06:33 -0400 (EDT) So what does everyone think about Spiderman destroying the record for weekend box office hits. $114, I thought that was impossible. How will StarWars 2 do with a 5 day weekend? how much did part 1 make on the 5 day weekend? -Vi [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: MrMovie008@aol.com Subject: Re: [MV] spiderman breaks records Date: 06 May 2002 16:26:21 EDT --part1_18f.78563d9.2a0840ed_boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Episode 1 made $105,661,237 on it's five day weekend. - JT --part1_18f.78563d9.2a0840ed_boundary Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit <HTML>Episode 1 made $105,661,237 on it's five day weekend. - JT</HTML> --part1_18f.78563d9.2a0840ed_boundary-- [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:06:57 GMT THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG) May 17, 2002 Ganesh: Aasif Mandvi Ramlogan: Om Puri Mr. Stewart: James Fox Beharry: Sanjeev Bhaskar Leela: Ayesha Dharker THINKFilm presents a film directed by Ismail Merchant. Written by Caryl Phillips, based on the novel by V.S. Naipaul. Running time: 117 minutes. Rated PG.(for mild language). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston CineArts. BY ROGER EBERT The West Indies were a footnote to the British Empire, and the Indian community of Trinidad was a footnote to the footnote. After slavery was abolished and the Caribbean still needed cheap labor, thousands of Indians were brought from one corner of the Empire to another to supply it. They formed an insular community, treasuring traditional Hindu customs, importing their dress styles and recipes, recreating India far from home on an island where it seemed irrelevant to white colonial rulers and the black majority. The great man produced by these exiles was V.S. Naipaul, the 2001 Nobel laureate for literature, whose father was a newspaperman with a great respect for books and ideas. A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) is Naipaul's novel about his father and his own childhood, and one of the best books of the century. But Naipaul's career began in 1957 with The Mystic Masseur, a novel casting a fond but dubious light on the Indian community of Trinidad. It is now the first of Naipaul's novels to be filmed, directed by Ismail Merchant, himself an Indian, usually the producing partner for director James Ivory. "The Mystic Masseur" is a wry, affectionate delight, a human comedy about a man who thinks he has had greatness thrust upon him when in fact he has merely thrust himself in the general direction of greatness. It tells the story of Ganesh, a schoolteacher with an exaggerated awe for books, who is inspired by a dotty Englishman to write some of his own. Abandoning the city for a rural backwater, he begins to compose short philosophical tomes, which, published by the local printer on a foot-powered flat-bed press, give him a not quite deserved reputation for profundity. If Ganesh allowed his success to go to his head, he would be insufferable. Instead, he is played by Aasif Mandvi as a man so sincere he really does believe in his mission. Does he have the power to cure with his touch, and advise troubled people on their lives? Many think he does, and soon he has become married to the pretty daughter of a canny businessman, who runs taxis from the city to bring believers to Ganesh's rural retreat. There is rich humor in the love-hate relationship many Indians have with their customs, which they leaven with a decided streak of practicality. In no area is this more true than marriage, as you can see in Mira Nair's wonderful comedy "Monsoon Wedding." The events leading up to Ganesh's marriage to the beautiful Leela (Ayesha Dharker) are hilarious, as the ambitious businessman Ramlogan positions his daughter to capture the rising young star. Played by the great Indian actor Om Puri with lip-smacking satisfaction, Ramlogan makes sure Ganesh appreciates Leela's dark-eyed charm, and then demonstrates her learning by producing a large wooden sign she has lettered, with a bright red punctuation mark after every word. "Leela know a lot of punctuation marks," he boasts proudly, and soon she has Ganesh within her parentheses. The wedding brings a showdown between the two men; custom dictates that the father-in-law must toss bills onto a plate as long as the new husband is still eating his kedgeree, and Ganesh, angered that Ramlogan has stiffed him with the wedding bill, dines slowly. The humor in "The Mystic Masseur" is generated by Ganesh's good-hearted willingness to believe in his ideas and destiny, both of which are slight. Like a thrift shop Gandhi, he sits on his veranda writing pamphlets and advising supplicants on health, wealth and marriage. Leela meanwhile quietly takes charge, managing the family business, as Ganesh becomes the best-known Indian on Trinidad. Eventually he forms a Hindu Association, collects some political power, and is elected to parliament, which is the beginning of his end. Transplanted from his rural base to the capital, he finds his party outnumbered by Afro-Caribbeans and condescended to by the British governors; he has traded his stature for a meaningless title, and is correctly seen by other Indians as a stooge. The masseur's public career has lasted only from 1943 to 1954. The mistake would be to assign too much significance to Ganesh. His lack of significance is the whole point. He rises to visibility as a home-grown guru, is co-opted by the British colonial government, and by the end of the film is a nonentity shipped safely out of sight to Oxford on a cultural exchange. Critics of the film have criticized Ganesh for being a pointless man leading a marginal life; they don't sense the anger and hurt seething just below the genial surface of the novel. The young Trinidadian Indian studying at Oxford, who meets Ganesh at the train station in the opening scene, surely represents Naipaul, observing the wreck of a man who loomed large in his childhood. Movies are rarely about inconsequential characters. They favor characters who are sensational winners or losers. But Ganesh, one senses, is precisely the character Naipaul needed to express his feelings about being an Indian in Trinidad. He has written elsewhere about the peculiarity of being raised in an Indian community thousands of miles from "home," attempting to reflect a land none of its members had ever seen. The Empire created generations of such displaced communities, not least the British exiles in India, sipping Earl Grey, reading the Times and saluting "God Save the Queen" in blissful oblivion to the world around them. Ganesh gets about as far as he could get, given the world he was born into, and he is such an innocent that many of his illusions persist. Shown around the Bodleian Library in Oxford by his young guide, the retired statesman looks at the walls of books, and says, "Boy, this the center of the world! Everything begin here, everything lead back to this place." Naipaul's whole career would be about his struggle with that theory. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE SALTON SEA / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:07:06 GMT THE SALTON SEA / *** (R) May 17, 2002 Danny/Tom: Val Kilmer Pooh-Bear: Vincent D'Onofrio Kujo: Adam Goldberg Quincy: Luis Guzman Morgan: Doug Hutchison Garcetti: Anthony LaPaglia Bobby: Glenn Plummer Jimmy the Finn: Peter Sarsgaard Colette: Deborah Kara Unger Castle Rock Entertainment presents a film directed by D.J. Caruso. Written by Tony Gayton. Running time: 103 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, drug use, language and some sexuality). Opening today at Pipers Alley and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT "The Salton Sea" is a lowlife black comedy drawing inspiration from "Memento," "Pulp Fiction" and those trendy British thrillers about drug lads. It contains one element of startling originality: its bad guy, nicknamed Pooh-Bear and played by Vincent D'Onofrio in a great weird demented giggle of a performance; imagine a Batman villain cycled through the hallucinations of "Requiem for a Dream." The movie opens with what looks like a crash at the intersection of film and noir: Val Kilmer sits on the floor and plays a trumpet, surrounded by cash, photos and flames. He narrates the film, and makes a laundry list of biblical figures (Judas, the Prodigal Son) he can be compared with. As we learn about the murder of his wife and the destruction of his life, I was also reminded of Job. Kilmer plays Danny Parker, also known as Tom Van Allen; his double identity spans a life in which he is both a jazz musician and a meth middleman, doing speed himself, inhabiting the dangerous world of speed freaks ("tweakers") and acting as an undercover agent for the cops. His life is so arduous we wonder, not for the first time, why people go to such extraordinary efforts to get and use the drugs that make them so unhappy. He doesn't use to get high, but to get from low back to bearable. The plot involves the usual assortment of lowlifes, scum, killers, bodyguards, dealers, pathetic women, two-timing cops and strung-out addicts, all employing Tarantinian dialogue about the flotsam of consumer society (you'd be surprised to learn what you might find under Bob Hope on eBay). Towering over them, like a bloated float in a nightmarish Thanksgiving Day parade, is Pooh-Bear, a drug dealer who lives in a fortified retreat in the desert and brags about the guy who shorted him $11 and got his head clamped in a vise while his brains were removed with a handsaw. D'Onofrio is a gifted actor and his character performances have ranged from Orson Welles to Abbie Hoffman to the twisted killer with the bizarre murder devices in "The Cell." Nothing he has done quite approaches Pooh-Bear, an overweight good ol' boy who uses his folksy accent to explain novel ways of punishing the disloyal, such as having their genitals eaten off by a rabid badger. He comes by his nickname because cocaine abuse has destroyed his nose, and he wears a little plastic job that makes him look like Pooh. "The Salton Sea" is two movies fighting inside one screenplay. Val Kilmer's movie is about memory and revenge, and tenderness for the abused woman (Deborah Kara Unger) who lives across the hall in his fleabag hotel. Kilmer plays a fairly standard middleman between dealers who might kill him and cops who might betray him. But he sometimes visits a world that is essentially the second movie, a nightmarish comedy. Director D.J. Caruso and writer Tony Gayton ("Murder by Numbers") introduce scenes with images so weird they're funny to begin with, and then funnier when they're explained. Consider Pooh-Bear's hobby of restaging the Kennedy assassination with pet pigeons in model cars. Note the little details like the pink pillbox hat. Then listen to his driver/bodyguard ask what "JFK" stands for. On the basis of this film, meth addiction is such a debilitating illness that it's a wonder its victims have the energy for the strange things the screenplay puts them up to. We meet, for example, a dealer named Bobby (Glenn Plummer) whose girlfriend's writhing legs extend frantically from beneath the mattress he sits on, while he toys with a compressed-air spear gun. Bobby looks like a man who has earned that good night's sleep. "The Salton Sea" is all pieces and no coherent whole. Maybe life on meth is like that. The plot does finally explain itself, like a dislocated shoulder popping back into place, but then the plot is off the shelf; only the characters and details set the movie aside from its stablemates. I liked it because it was so endlessly, grotesquely, inventive: Watching it, I pictured Tarantino throwing a stick into a swamp, and the movie swimming out through the muck, retrieving it, and bringing it back with its tail wagging. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] Started up ReviewChecker at Mon May 20 17:06:32 MDT 2002 Date: 20 May 2002 23:06:35 GMT Started up ReviewChecker at Mon May 20 17:06:32 MDT 2002 [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:06:46 GMT ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13) May 17, 2002 Will: Hugh Grant Marcus: Nicholas Hoult Rachel: Rachel Weisz Fiona: Toni Collette Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz. Written by Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz. Based on the book by Nick Hornby. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for brief strong language and some thematic elements). BY ROGER EBERT Hugh Grant, who has a good line in charm, has never been more charming than in "About a Boy." Or perhaps that's not quite what he is. Charming in the Grant stylebook refers to something he does as a conscious act, and what is remarkable here is that Grant is--well, likable. Yes, the cad has developed a heart. There are times, toward the end of the film, where he speaks sincerely and we can actually believe him. In "About a Boy," he plays Will, a 38-year-old bachelor who has never had a job, or a relationship that has lasted longer than two months. He is content with this lifestyle. "I was the star of the Will Show," he explains. "It was not an ensemble drama." His purpose in life is to date pretty girls. When they ask him what he does, he smiles that self-deprecating Hugh Grant smile and confesses that, well, he does--nothing. Not a single blessed thing. In 1958 his late father wrote a hit song titled "Santa's Super Sleigh," and he lives rather handsomely off the royalties. His London flat looks like a showroom for Toys for Big Boys. Will is the creation of Nick Hornby, who wrote the original novel. This is the same Hornby who wrote High Fidelity, which was made into the wonderful John Cusack movie. Hornby depicts a certain kind of immature but latently sincere man who loves Women as a less demanding alternative to loving a woman. Will's error, or perhaps it is his salvation, is that he starts dating single mothers, thinking they will be less demanding and easier to dump than single girls. The strategy is flawed: Single mothers invariably have children, and what Will discovers is that while he would make a lousy husband, he might make a wonderful father. Of course it takes a child to teach an adult how to be a parent, and that is how Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) comes into Will's life. Will is dating a single mom named Suzie, who he meets at a support group named Single Parents, Alone Together (SPAT). He shamelessly claims that his wife abandoned him and their 2-year-old son, "Ned." Suzie has a friend named Fiona (Toni Collette), whose son, Marcus, comes along one day to the park. We've already met Marcus, who is round-faced and sad-eyed and has the kind of bangs that get him teased in the school playground. His mother suffers from depression, and this has made Marcus mature and solemn beyond his years. When Fiona tries to overdose one day, Will finds himself involved in a trip to the emergency room and other events during which Marcus decides that Will belongs in his life whether Will realizes it or not. The heart of the movie involves the relationship between Will and Marcus--who begins by shadowing Will, finds out there is no "Ned," and ends by coming over on a regular basis to watch TV. Will has had nothing but trouble with his fictional child, and now finds that a real child is an unwieldy addition to the bachelor life. Nor is Fiona a dating possibility. Marcus tried fixing them up, but they're obviously not intended for each another--not Will with his cool bachelor aura and Fiona with her Goodwill hippie look and her "health bread," which is so inedible that little Marcus barely has the strength to tear a bite from the loaf. (There is an unfortunate incident in the park when Marcus attempts to throw the loaf into a pond to feed the ducks, and kills one.) Will finds to his horror that authentic emotions are forming. He likes Marcus. He doesn't admit this for a long time, but he's a good enough bloke to buy Marcus a pair of trendy sneakers, and to advise Fiona that since Marcus is already mocked at school, it is a bad idea, by definition, for him to sing "Killing Me Softly" at a school assembly. Meanwhile, Will starts dating Rachel (Rachel Weisz), who turns out to be a much nicer woman than he deserves (she also has a son much nastier than she deserves). This plot outline, as it stands, could supply the materials for a film of complacent stupidity--a formula sitcom with one of the Culkin offspring blinking cutely. It is much more than that; it's one of the year's most entertaining films, not only because Grant is so good but because young Nicholas Hoult has a kind of appeal that cannot be faked. He isn't a conventionally cute movie child, seems old beyond his years, can never be caught in an inauthentic moment, and helps us understand why Will likes him--he likes Marcus because Marcus is so clearly in need of being liked, and so deserving of it. The movie has been directed by the Weitz brothers, Paul and Chris, who directed "American Pie"--which was better than its countless imitators--and now give us a comedy of confidence and grace. They deserve some of the credit for this flowering of Grant's star appeal. There is a scene where Grant does a double-take when he learns that he has been dumped (usually it is the other way around). The way he handles it--the way he handles the role in general--shows how hard it is to do light romantic comedy, and how easily it comes to him. We have all the action heroes and Method script-chewers we need right now, but the Cary Grant department is understaffed, and Hugh Grant shows here that he is more than a star, he is a resource. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:07:23 GMT DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13) May 10, 2002 Featuring Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Bob Biniak, Paul Constantineau, Shogo Kubo, Jim Muir, Peggy Oki, Stacy Peralta.Sony Pictures Classics presents a documentary directed by Stacy Peralta. Written by Peralta and Craig Stecyk. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language and some drug references). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston CineArts. BY ROGER EBERT "Dogtown and Z-Boys," a documentary about how the humble skateboard became the launch pad for aerial gymnastics, answers a question I have long been curious about: How and why was the first skateboarder inspired to go aerial, to break contact with any surface and do acrobatics in mid-air? Consider that the pioneer was doing this for the very first time over a vertical drop of perhaps 15 feet to a concrete surface. It's not the sort of thing you try out of idle curiosity. The movie answers this and other questions in its history of a sport that grew out of idle time and boundless energy in the oceanfront neighborhood between Santa Monica and Venice in California. Today the area contains expensive condos and trendy restaurants, but circa 1975, it was the last remaining "beachfront slum" in the Los Angeles area. Druggies and hippies lived in cheap rentals and supported themselves by working in hot dog stands, tattoo parlors, head shops and saloons. Surfing was the definitive lifestyle, the Beach Boys supplied the soundtrack and tough surfer gangs staked out waves as their turf. In the afternoon, after the waves died down, they turned to skateboards, which at first were used as a variation of roller skates. But the members of the Zephyr Team, we learn, devised a new style of skateboarding, defying gravity, adding acrobatics, devising stunts. When a drought struck the area and thousands of swimming pools were drained, they invented vertical skateboarding on the walls of the empty pools. Sometimes they'd glide so close to the edge that only one of their four wheels still had a purchase on the lip. One day a Z-Boy went airborne, and a new style was born--a style reflected today in Olympic ski acrobatics. I am not sure whether the members of the Zephyr Team were solely responsible for all significant advances in the sport, or whether they only think they were. "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is directed by Stacy Peralta, an original and gifted team member, still a legend in the sport. Like many of the other Z-Boys (and one Z-girl), he marketed himself, his name, his image, his products, and became a successful businessman and filmmaker while still surfing concrete. His film describes the evolution of skateboarding almost entirely in terms of the experience of himself and his friends. It's like the vet who thinks World War II centered around his platoon. The Southern California lifestyle in general, and surfing and skateboarding in particular, are insular and narcissistic. People who live indoors have ideas. People who live outdoors have style. Here is an entire movie about looking cool while not wiping out. Call it a metaphor for life. There comes a point when sensible viewers will tire of being told how astonishing and unique each and every Z-Boy was, while looking at repetitive still photos and home footage of skateboarders, but the film has an infectious enthusiasm and we're touched by the film's conviction that all life centered on that place, that time and that sport. One question goes unanswered: Was anyone ever killed? Maimed? Crippled? There is a brief shot of someone on crutches, and a few shots showing skateboarders falling off their boards, but since aerial gymnastics high over hard surfaces are clearly dangerous and the Z-Boys wear little or no protective gear, what's the story? That most of them survived is made clear by info over the end credits, revealing that although one Zephyr Team member is in prison and another was "last seen in Mexico," the others all seem to have married, produced an average of two children, and found success in business. To the amazement no doubt of their parents. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:07:34 GMT GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R) May 10, 2002 Don: Bob Jay Mills Donatella: Petra Westen Marion: Tacey Adams Joe: Al Schuermann Chuck: Zia Don Jr.: Andrew Eichner Mike: Jerry O'Conner Barry: Scooter Stephan Universal Focus presents a film written and directed by Frank Novak. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R (for pervasive language, domestic violence and drug content). Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center. BY ROGER EBERT I watch the guests on "Jerry Springer" with the fascination of an ambulance driver at Demo Derby. Where do these people come from? Their dialogue may be "suggested" but their lives are all too evidently real, and they have tumbled right through the safety net of taste and self-respect and gone spiraling down, down into the pit of amoral vulgarity. Now comes "Good Housekeeping," a film about how the people on Springer live when they're not on camera. No, it's not a documentary. It was written and directed by Frank Novak, otherwise a trendy Los Angeles furniture manufacturer, who regards his white trash characters with deadpan neutrality. How is the audience expected to react? Consider this dialogue: Don: "Maybe if we cut her in half we could get her in there." Chuck: "We can't cut her in half!" Don: "So what are you? Mr. Politically Correct?" Don and Chuck are brothers. Don (Bob Jay Mills) uneasily shares his house with his wife Donatella (Petra Westen), while Chuck (credited only as Zia) sleeps with his girlfriend Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan) in Don's car. Things are not good between Don and Donatella, and he uses 2x4s and plasterboard to build a wall that cuts the house in two ("She got way more square feet than I got," he tells the cops during one of their frequent visits). Realizing he has forgotten something, Don cuts a crawl hole in the wall so that Don Jr. (Andrew Eichner) can commute between parents. Soon Donatella's new lesbian lover Marion (Tacey Adams) is poking her head through the hole to discuss the "parameters" Don is setting for his son. Donatella is a forklift operator. Don is self-employed as a trader of action figures, with a specialty in Pinhead and other Hellraiser characters. When Chuck tries to sell him a Sad-Eye Doll, he responds like a pro: "Couldn't you Swap-Meet it? I'm not gonna put that on my table and drag down my other merch." Don Jr. has less respect for action figures and occasionally saws off their heads. Terrible things happen to the many cars in this extended family, both by accident and on purpose. One of the funniest sequences shows a big blond family friend, desperately hung-over, methodically crunching into every other car in the driveway before she runs over the mailbox. Don lives in fear of Donatella running him down, and at one point discusses his defense with a gun-show trader (Al Schuermann), who scoffs, "You would use a .38 to defend yourself?" He comes back with real protection against vehicular manslaughter: a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Marion, the well-mannered lesbian lover, is the source of many of the film's biggest laughs because of the incongruity of her crush on Donatella. She watches Donatella smoke, eat, talk and blow her nose all at the same time, and her only reaction is to eat all the more politely, in the hope of setting an example. Marion is an accountant at the factory where Donatella works; she dresses in chic business suits, has smart horn-rim glasses and a stylish haircut, and plunges into Springerland with an arsenal of liberal cliches. At one point, after a nasty domestic disturbance, she tries to make peace by inviting Don out to brunch. "There's no way the cops can make you go to brunch," Don's beer-bellied buddies reassure him. It is perhaps a warning signal of incipient alcoholism when the family car has a Breathalyzer permanently attached to the dashboard. Yet Don is not without standards, and warns his brother against making love in the car because "I drive Mom to church in it." Family life follows a familiar pattern. Most evenings end with a fight in the yard, and Novak and his cinematographer, Alex Vendler, are skilled at getting convincing, spontaneous performances out of their unknown actors; many scenes, including the free-for-alls, play with the authenticity of a documentary. Just as mainstream filmmakers are fascinated by the rich and famous, so independent filmmakers are drawn to society's hairy underbelly. "Good Housekeeping" plunges far beneath Todd Solondz's territory and enters the suburbs of John Waters' universe in its fascination for people who live without benefit of education, taste, standards, hygiene and shame. Indeed, all they have enough of are cigarettes, used cars, controlled substances and four-letter words. The movie is, however, very funny as you peek at it through the fingers in front of your eyes. Note: "Good Housekeeping" has had its ups and downs. It won the grand jury prize at Slamdance 2000, was the only U.S. film chosen for Critic's Week at Cannes that year, and was picked up for distribution by the Shooting Gallery--which, alas, went out of business, leaving the film orphaned. "Good Housekeeping" has its U.S. premiere today through Thursday at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:07:46 GMT NINE QUEENS / *** (R) May 10, 2002 Marcos: Ricardo Darin Juan: Gaston Pauls Valeria: Leticia Bredice Gandolfo: Ignasi Abadal Aunt: Pochi Ducasse Federico: Tomas Fonzi Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by Fabian Bielinsky. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (for language). Opening today at the Music Box Theatre. BY ROGER EBERT Fabian Bielinsky's "Nine Queens" is a con within a con within a con. There comes a time when we think we've gotten to the bottom, and then the floor gets pulled out again and we fall another level. Since nothing is as it seems (it doesn't even seem as it seems), watching the film is like observing a chess game in which all of the pieces are in plain view but one player has figured out a way to cheat. "David Mamet might kill for a script as good," Todd McCarthy writes in Variety. True, although Mamet might also reasonably claim to have inspired it; the set-up owes something to his "House of Games," although familiarity with that film will not help you figure out this one. The film starts with a seemingly chance meeting. Indeed, almost everything in the film is "seemingly." A young would-be con man named Juan (Gaston Pauls) is doing the $20 bill switch with a naive cashier--the switch I have never been able to figure out, where you end up with $39 while seemingly doing the cashier a favor. Juan succeeds. The cashier goes off duty. Juan is greedy and tries the same trick on her replacement. The first cashier comes back with the manager, screaming that she was robbed. At this point Marcos (Ricardo Darin), a stranger in the store, flashes his gun, identifies himself as a cop, arrests the thief and hauls him off. Of course Marcos is only seemingly a cop. He lectures Juan on the dangers of excessive greed and buys him breakfast, and then the two of them seemingly happen upon an opportunity to pull a big swindle involving the "nine queens," a rare sheet of stamps. This happens when Valeria (Leticia Bredice), seemingly Marcos' sister, berates him because one of his old criminal associates tried to con a client in the hotel where she seemingly works. The old con seemingly had a heart attack, and now the field is seemingly open for Marcos and Juan to bilk the seemingly rich and drunk Gandolfo (Ignasi Abadal). Now before you think I've given away the game with all those "seeminglys," let me point out that they may only seemingly be seeminglys. They may in fact be as they seem. Or seemingly otherwise. As Juan and Marcos try to work out their scheme, which involves counterfeit stamps, we wonder if in fact the whole game may be a pigeon drop with Juan as the pigeon. But, no, the fake stamps are stolen, seemingly by complete strangers, requiring Marcos and Juan to try to con the owner of the real nine queens out of stamps they can sell Gandolfo. (Since they have no plans to really pay for these stamps, their profit would be the same in either case.) And on and on, around and around, in an elegant and sly deadpan comedy. A plot, however clever, is only the clockwork; what matters is what kind of time a movie tells. "Nine Queens" is blessed with a gallery of well-drawn character roles, including the alcoholic mark and his two bodyguards; the avaricious widow who owns the "nine queens" and her much younger bleached-blond boyfriend, and Valeria the sister, who opposes Marcos' seamy friends and life of crime but might be willing to sleep with Gandolfo if she can share in the spoils. Juan meanwhile falls for Valeria himself, and then there are perfectly timed hiccups in the plot where the characters (and we) apparently see through a deception, only to find that deeper reality explains everything--maybe. The story plays out in modern-day Buenos Aires, a city that looks sometimes Latin, sometimes American, sometimes Spanish, sometimes German, sometimes modern, sometimes ancient. Is it possible the city itself is pulling a con on its inhabitants, and that some underlying reality will deceive everyone? The ultimate joke of course would be if the Argentine economy collapsed, so that everyone's gains, ill-gotten or not, would evaporate. But that is surely too much to hope for. Note:"Nine Queens" is like a South American version of "Stolen Summer," the movie that won the contest sponsored by HBO, Miramax, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. According to Variety, some 350 screenplays were submitted in an Argentine competition, Bielinsky's won, and he was given funds to film. It's illuminating that in both cases such competitions yielded more literate and interesting screenplays than the studios are usually able to find through their own best efforts. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] Started up ReviewChecker at Mon May 20 17:08:04 MDT 2002 Date: 20 May 2002 23:08:07 GMT Started up ReviewChecker at Mon May 20 17:08:04 MDT 2002 [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:08:24 GMT ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13) May 17, 2002 Will: Hugh Grant Marcus: Nicholas Hoult Rachel: Rachel Weisz Fiona: Toni Collette Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz. Written by Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz. Based on the book by Nick Hornby. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for brief strong language and some thematic elements). BY ROGER EBERT Hugh Grant, who has a good line in charm, has never been more charming than in "About a Boy." Or perhaps that's not quite what he is. Charming in the Grant stylebook refers to something he does as a conscious act, and what is remarkable here is that Grant is--well, likable. Yes, the cad has developed a heart. There are times, toward the end of the film, where he speaks sincerely and we can actually believe him. In "About a Boy," he plays Will, a 38-year-old bachelor who has never had a job, or a relationship that has lasted longer than two months. He is content with this lifestyle. "I was the star of the Will Show," he explains. "It was not an ensemble drama." His purpose in life is to date pretty girls. When they ask him what he does, he smiles that self-deprecating Hugh Grant smile and confesses that, well, he does--nothing. Not a single blessed thing. In 1958 his late father wrote a hit song titled "Santa's Super Sleigh," and he lives rather handsomely off the royalties. His London flat looks like a showroom for Toys for Big Boys. Will is the creation of Nick Hornby, who wrote the original novel. This is the same Hornby who wrote High Fidelity, which was made into the wonderful John Cusack movie. Hornby depicts a certain kind of immature but latently sincere man who loves Women as a less demanding alternative to loving a woman. Will's error, or perhaps it is his salvation, is that he starts dating single mothers, thinking they will be less demanding and easier to dump than single girls. The strategy is flawed: Single mothers invariably have children, and what Will discovers is that while he would make a lousy husband, he might make a wonderful father. Of course it takes a child to teach an adult how to be a parent, and that is how Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) comes into Will's life. Will is dating a single mom named Suzie, who he meets at a support group named Single Parents, Alone Together (SPAT). He shamelessly claims that his wife abandoned him and their 2-year-old son, "Ned." Suzie has a friend named Fiona (Toni Collette), whose son, Marcus, comes along one day to the park. We've already met Marcus, who is round-faced and sad-eyed and has the kind of bangs that get him teased in the school playground. His mother suffers from depression, and this has made Marcus mature and solemn beyond his years. When Fiona tries to overdose one day, Will finds himself involved in a trip to the emergency room and other events during which Marcus decides that Will belongs in his life whether Will realizes it or not. The heart of the movie involves the relationship between Will and Marcus--who begins by shadowing Will, finds out there is no "Ned," and ends by coming over on a regular basis to watch TV. Will has had nothing but trouble with his fictional child, and now finds that a real child is an unwieldy addition to the bachelor life. Nor is Fiona a dating possibility. Marcus tried fixing them up, but they're obviously not intended for each another--not Will with his cool bachelor aura and Fiona with her Goodwill hippie look and her "health bread," which is so inedible that little Marcus barely has the strength to tear a bite from the loaf. (There is an unfortunate incident in the park when Marcus attempts to throw the loaf into a pond to feed the ducks, and kills one.) Will finds to his horror that authentic emotions are forming. He likes Marcus. He doesn't admit this for a long time, but he's a good enough bloke to buy Marcus a pair of trendy sneakers, and to advise Fiona that since Marcus is already mocked at school, it is a bad idea, by definition, for him to sing "Killing Me Softly" at a school assembly. Meanwhile, Will starts dating Rachel (Rachel Weisz), who turns out to be a much nicer woman than he deserves (she also has a son much nastier than she deserves). This plot outline, as it stands, could supply the materials for a film of complacent stupidity--a formula sitcom with one of the Culkin offspring blinking cutely. It is much more than that; it's one of the year's most entertaining films, not only because Grant is so good but because young Nicholas Hoult has a kind of appeal that cannot be faked. He isn't a conventionally cute movie child, seems old beyond his years, can never be caught in an inauthentic moment, and helps us understand why Will likes him--he likes Marcus because Marcus is so clearly in need of being liked, and so deserving of it. The movie has been directed by the Weitz brothers, Paul and Chris, who directed "American Pie"--which was better than its countless imitators--and now give us a comedy of confidence and grace. They deserve some of the credit for this flowering of Grant's star appeal. There is a scene where Grant does a double-take when he learns that he has been dumped (usually it is the other way around). The way he handles it--the way he handles the role in general--shows how hard it is to do light romantic comedy, and how easily it comes to him. We have all the action heroes and Method script-chewers we need right now, but the Cary Grant department is understaffed, and Hugh Grant shows here that he is more than a star, he is a resource. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:08:32 GMT THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG) May 17, 2002 Ganesh: Aasif Mandvi Ramlogan: Om Puri Mr. Stewart: James Fox Beharry: Sanjeev Bhaskar Leela: Ayesha Dharker THINKFilm presents a film directed by Ismail Merchant. Written by Caryl Phillips, based on the novel by V.S. Naipaul. Running time: 117 minutes. Rated PG.(for mild language). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston CineArts. BY ROGER EBERT The West Indies were a footnote to the British Empire, and the Indian community of Trinidad was a footnote to the footnote. After slavery was abolished and the Caribbean still needed cheap labor, thousands of Indians were brought from one corner of the Empire to another to supply it. They formed an insular community, treasuring traditional Hindu customs, importing their dress styles and recipes, recreating India far from home on an island where it seemed irrelevant to white colonial rulers and the black majority. The great man produced by these exiles was V.S. Naipaul, the 2001 Nobel laureate for literature, whose father was a newspaperman with a great respect for books and ideas. A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) is Naipaul's novel about his father and his own childhood, and one of the best books of the century. But Naipaul's career began in 1957 with The Mystic Masseur, a novel casting a fond but dubious light on the Indian community of Trinidad. It is now the first of Naipaul's novels to be filmed, directed by Ismail Merchant, himself an Indian, usually the producing partner for director James Ivory. "The Mystic Masseur" is a wry, affectionate delight, a human comedy about a man who thinks he has had greatness thrust upon him when in fact he has merely thrust himself in the general direction of greatness. It tells the story of Ganesh, a schoolteacher with an exaggerated awe for books, who is inspired by a dotty Englishman to write some of his own. Abandoning the city for a rural backwater, he begins to compose short philosophical tomes, which, published by the local printer on a foot-powered flat-bed press, give him a not quite deserved reputation for profundity. If Ganesh allowed his success to go to his head, he would be insufferable. Instead, he is played by Aasif Mandvi as a man so sincere he really does believe in his mission. Does he have the power to cure with his touch, and advise troubled people on their lives? Many think he does, and soon he has become married to the pretty daughter of a canny businessman, who runs taxis from the city to bring believers to Ganesh's rural retreat. There is rich humor in the love-hate relationship many Indians have with their customs, which they leaven with a decided streak of practicality. In no area is this more true than marriage, as you can see in Mira Nair's wonderful comedy "Monsoon Wedding." The events leading up to Ganesh's marriage to the beautiful Leela (Ayesha Dharker) are hilarious, as the ambitious businessman Ramlogan positions his daughter to capture the rising young star. Played by the great Indian actor Om Puri with lip-smacking satisfaction, Ramlogan makes sure Ganesh appreciates Leela's dark-eyed charm, and then demonstrates her learning by producing a large wooden sign she has lettered, with a bright red punctuation mark after every word. "Leela know a lot of punctuation marks," he boasts proudly, and soon she has Ganesh within her parentheses. The wedding brings a showdown between the two men; custom dictates that the father-in-law must toss bills onto a plate as long as the new husband is still eating his kedgeree, and Ganesh, angered that Ramlogan has stiffed him with the wedding bill, dines slowly. The humor in "The Mystic Masseur" is generated by Ganesh's good-hearted willingness to believe in his ideas and destiny, both of which are slight. Like a thrift shop Gandhi, he sits on his veranda writing pamphlets and advising supplicants on health, wealth and marriage. Leela meanwhile quietly takes charge, managing the family business, as Ganesh becomes the best-known Indian on Trinidad. Eventually he forms a Hindu Association, collects some political power, and is elected to parliament, which is the beginning of his end. Transplanted from his rural base to the capital, he finds his party outnumbered by Afro-Caribbeans and condescended to by the British governors; he has traded his stature for a meaningless title, and is correctly seen by other Indians as a stooge. The masseur's public career has lasted only from 1943 to 1954. The mistake would be to assign too much significance to Ganesh. His lack of significance is the whole point. He rises to visibility as a home-grown guru, is co-opted by the British colonial government, and by the end of the film is a nonentity shipped safely out of sight to Oxford on a cultural exchange. Critics of the film have criticized Ganesh for being a pointless man leading a marginal life; they don't sense the anger and hurt seething just below the genial surface of the novel. The young Trinidadian Indian studying at Oxford, who meets Ganesh at the train station in the opening scene, surely represents Naipaul, observing the wreck of a man who loomed large in his childhood. Movies are rarely about inconsequential characters. They favor characters who are sensational winners or losers. But Ganesh, one senses, is precisely the character Naipaul needed to express his feelings about being an Indian in Trinidad. He has written elsewhere about the peculiarity of being raised in an Indian community thousands of miles from "home," attempting to reflect a land none of its members had ever seen. The Empire created generations of such displaced communities, not least the British exiles in India, sipping Earl Grey, reading the Times and saluting "God Save the Queen" in blissful oblivion to the world around them. Ganesh gets about as far as he could get, given the world he was born into, and he is such an innocent that many of his illusions persist. Shown around the Bodleian Library in Oxford by his young guide, the retired statesman looks at the walls of books, and says, "Boy, this the center of the world! Everything begin here, everything lead back to this place." Naipaul's whole career would be about his struggle with that theory. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE SALTON SEA / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:08:40 GMT THE SALTON SEA / *** (R) May 17, 2002 Danny/Tom: Val Kilmer Pooh-Bear: Vincent D'Onofrio Kujo: Adam Goldberg Quincy: Luis Guzman Morgan: Doug Hutchison Garcetti: Anthony LaPaglia Bobby: Glenn Plummer Jimmy the Finn: Peter Sarsgaard Colette: Deborah Kara Unger Castle Rock Entertainment presents a film directed by D.J. Caruso. Written by Tony Gayton. Running time: 103 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, drug use, language and some sexuality). Opening today at Pipers Alley and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT "The Salton Sea" is a lowlife black comedy drawing inspiration from "Memento," "Pulp Fiction" and those trendy British thrillers about drug lads. It contains one element of startling originality: its bad guy, nicknamed Pooh-Bear and played by Vincent D'Onofrio in a great weird demented giggle of a performance; imagine a Batman villain cycled through the hallucinations of "Requiem for a Dream." The movie opens with what looks like a crash at the intersection of film and noir: Val Kilmer sits on the floor and plays a trumpet, surrounded by cash, photos and flames. He narrates the film, and makes a laundry list of biblical figures (Judas, the Prodigal Son) he can be compared with. As we learn about the murder of his wife and the destruction of his life, I was also reminded of Job. Kilmer plays Danny Parker, also known as Tom Van Allen; his double identity spans a life in which he is both a jazz musician and a meth middleman, doing speed himself, inhabiting the dangerous world of speed freaks ("tweakers") and acting as an undercover agent for the cops. His life is so arduous we wonder, not for the first time, why people go to such extraordinary efforts to get and use the drugs that make them so unhappy. He doesn't use to get high, but to get from low back to bearable. The plot involves the usual assortment of lowlifes, scum, killers, bodyguards, dealers, pathetic women, two-timing cops and strung-out addicts, all employing Tarantinian dialogue about the flotsam of consumer society (you'd be surprised to learn what you might find under Bob Hope on eBay). Towering over them, like a bloated float in a nightmarish Thanksgiving Day parade, is Pooh-Bear, a drug dealer who lives in a fortified retreat in the desert and brags about the guy who shorted him $11 and got his head clamped in a vise while his brains were removed with a handsaw. D'Onofrio is a gifted actor and his character performances have ranged from Orson Welles to Abbie Hoffman to the twisted killer with the bizarre murder devices in "The Cell." Nothing he has done quite approaches Pooh-Bear, an overweight good ol' boy who uses his folksy accent to explain novel ways of punishing the disloyal, such as having their genitals eaten off by a rabid badger. He comes by his nickname because cocaine abuse has destroyed his nose, and he wears a little plastic job that makes him look like Pooh. "The Salton Sea" is two movies fighting inside one screenplay. Val Kilmer's movie is about memory and revenge, and tenderness for the abused woman (Deborah Kara Unger) who lives across the hall in his fleabag hotel. Kilmer plays a fairly standard middleman between dealers who might kill him and cops who might betray him. But he sometimes visits a world that is essentially the second movie, a nightmarish comedy. Director D.J. Caruso and writer Tony Gayton ("Murder by Numbers") introduce scenes with images so weird they're funny to begin with, and then funnier when they're explained. Consider Pooh-Bear's hobby of restaging the Kennedy assassination with pet pigeons in model cars. Note the little details like the pink pillbox hat. Then listen to his driver/bodyguard ask what "JFK" stands for. On the basis of this film, meth addiction is such a debilitating illness that it's a wonder its victims have the energy for the strange things the screenplay puts them up to. We meet, for example, a dealer named Bobby (Glenn Plummer) whose girlfriend's writhing legs extend frantically from beneath the mattress he sits on, while he toys with a compressed-air spear gun. Bobby looks like a man who has earned that good night's sleep. "The Salton Sea" is all pieces and no coherent whole. Maybe life on meth is like that. The plot does finally explain itself, like a dislocated shoulder popping back into place, but then the plot is off the shelf; only the characters and details set the movie aside from its stablemates. I liked it because it was so endlessly, grotesquely, inventive: Watching it, I pictured Tarantino throwing a stick into a swamp, and the movie swimming out through the muck, retrieving it, and bringing it back with its tail wagging. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:08:48 GMT DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13) May 10, 2002 Featuring Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Bob Biniak, Paul Constantineau, Shogo Kubo, Jim Muir, Peggy Oki, Stacy Peralta.Sony Pictures Classics presents a documentary directed by Stacy Peralta. Written by Peralta and Craig Stecyk. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language and some drug references). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston CineArts. BY ROGER EBERT "Dogtown and Z-Boys," a documentary about how the humble skateboard became the launch pad for aerial gymnastics, answers a question I have long been curious about: How and why was the first skateboarder inspired to go aerial, to break contact with any surface and do acrobatics in mid-air? Consider that the pioneer was doing this for the very first time over a vertical drop of perhaps 15 feet to a concrete surface. It's not the sort of thing you try out of idle curiosity. The movie answers this and other questions in its history of a sport that grew out of idle time and boundless energy in the oceanfront neighborhood between Santa Monica and Venice in California. Today the area contains expensive condos and trendy restaurants, but circa 1975, it was the last remaining "beachfront slum" in the Los Angeles area. Druggies and hippies lived in cheap rentals and supported themselves by working in hot dog stands, tattoo parlors, head shops and saloons. Surfing was the definitive lifestyle, the Beach Boys supplied the soundtrack and tough surfer gangs staked out waves as their turf. In the afternoon, after the waves died down, they turned to skateboards, which at first were used as a variation of roller skates. But the members of the Zephyr Team, we learn, devised a new style of skateboarding, defying gravity, adding acrobatics, devising stunts. When a drought struck the area and thousands of swimming pools were drained, they invented vertical skateboarding on the walls of the empty pools. Sometimes they'd glide so close to the edge that only one of their four wheels still had a purchase on the lip. One day a Z-Boy went airborne, and a new style was born--a style reflected today in Olympic ski acrobatics. I am not sure whether the members of the Zephyr Team were solely responsible for all significant advances in the sport, or whether they only think they were. "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is directed by Stacy Peralta, an original and gifted team member, still a legend in the sport. Like many of the other Z-Boys (and one Z-girl), he marketed himself, his name, his image, his products, and became a successful businessman and filmmaker while still surfing concrete. His film describes the evolution of skateboarding almost entirely in terms of the experience of himself and his friends. It's like the vet who thinks World War II centered around his platoon. The Southern California lifestyle in general, and surfing and skateboarding in particular, are insular and narcissistic. People who live indoors have ideas. People who live outdoors have style. Here is an entire movie about looking cool while not wiping out. Call it a metaphor for life. There comes a point when sensible viewers will tire of being told how astonishing and unique each and every Z-Boy was, while looking at repetitive still photos and home footage of skateboarders, but the film has an infectious enthusiasm and we're touched by the film's conviction that all life centered on that place, that time and that sport. One question goes unanswered: Was anyone ever killed? Maimed? Crippled? There is a brief shot of someone on crutches, and a few shots showing skateboarders falling off their boards, but since aerial gymnastics high over hard surfaces are clearly dangerous and the Z-Boys wear little or no protective gear, what's the story? That most of them survived is made clear by info over the end credits, revealing that although one Zephyr Team member is in prison and another was "last seen in Mexico," the others all seem to have married, produced an average of two children, and found success in business. To the amazement no doubt of their parents. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:08:56 GMT GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R) May 10, 2002 Don: Bob Jay Mills Donatella: Petra Westen Marion: Tacey Adams Joe: Al Schuermann Chuck: Zia Don Jr.: Andrew Eichner Mike: Jerry O'Conner Barry: Scooter Stephan Universal Focus presents a film written and directed by Frank Novak. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R (for pervasive language, domestic violence and drug content). Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center. BY ROGER EBERT I watch the guests on "Jerry Springer" with the fascination of an ambulance driver at Demo Derby. Where do these people come from? Their dialogue may be "suggested" but their lives are all too evidently real, and they have tumbled right through the safety net of taste and self-respect and gone spiraling down, down into the pit of amoral vulgarity. Now comes "Good Housekeeping," a film about how the people on Springer live when they're not on camera. No, it's not a documentary. It was written and directed by Frank Novak, otherwise a trendy Los Angeles furniture manufacturer, who regards his white trash characters with deadpan neutrality. How is the audience expected to react? Consider this dialogue: Don: "Maybe if we cut her in half we could get her in there." Chuck: "We can't cut her in half!" Don: "So what are you? Mr. Politically Correct?" Don and Chuck are brothers. Don (Bob Jay Mills) uneasily shares his house with his wife Donatella (Petra Westen), while Chuck (credited only as Zia) sleeps with his girlfriend Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan) in Don's car. Things are not good between Don and Donatella, and he uses 2x4s and plasterboard to build a wall that cuts the house in two ("She got way more square feet than I got," he tells the cops during one of their frequent visits). Realizing he has forgotten something, Don cuts a crawl hole in the wall so that Don Jr. (Andrew Eichner) can commute between parents. Soon Donatella's new lesbian lover Marion (Tacey Adams) is poking her head through the hole to discuss the "parameters" Don is setting for his son. Donatella is a forklift operator. Don is self-employed as a trader of action figures, with a specialty in Pinhead and other Hellraiser characters. When Chuck tries to sell him a Sad-Eye Doll, he responds like a pro: "Couldn't you Swap-Meet it? I'm not gonna put that on my table and drag down my other merch." Don Jr. has less respect for action figures and occasionally saws off their heads. Terrible things happen to the many cars in this extended family, both by accident and on purpose. One of the funniest sequences shows a big blond family friend, desperately hung-over, methodically crunching into every other car in the driveway before she runs over the mailbox. Don lives in fear of Donatella running him down, and at one point discusses his defense with a gun-show trader (Al Schuermann), who scoffs, "You would use a .38 to defend yourself?" He comes back with real protection against vehicular manslaughter: a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Marion, the well-mannered lesbian lover, is the source of many of the film's biggest laughs because of the incongruity of her crush on Donatella. She watches Donatella smoke, eat, talk and blow her nose all at the same time, and her only reaction is to eat all the more politely, in the hope of setting an example. Marion is an accountant at the factory where Donatella works; she dresses in chic business suits, has smart horn-rim glasses and a stylish haircut, and plunges into Springerland with an arsenal of liberal cliches. At one point, after a nasty domestic disturbance, she tries to make peace by inviting Don out to brunch. "There's no way the cops can make you go to brunch," Don's beer-bellied buddies reassure him. It is perhaps a warning signal of incipient alcoholism when the family car has a Breathalyzer permanently attached to the dashboard. Yet Don is not without standards, and warns his brother against making love in the car because "I drive Mom to church in it." Family life follows a familiar pattern. Most evenings end with a fight in the yard, and Novak and his cinematographer, Alex Vendler, are skilled at getting convincing, spontaneous performances out of their unknown actors; many scenes, including the free-for-alls, play with the authenticity of a documentary. Just as mainstream filmmakers are fascinated by the rich and famous, so independent filmmakers are drawn to society's hairy underbelly. "Good Housekeeping" plunges far beneath Todd Solondz's territory and enters the suburbs of John Waters' universe in its fascination for people who live without benefit of education, taste, standards, hygiene and shame. Indeed, all they have enough of are cigarettes, used cars, controlled substances and four-letter words. The movie is, however, very funny as you peek at it through the fingers in front of your eyes. Note: "Good Housekeeping" has had its ups and downs. It won the grand jury prize at Slamdance 2000, was the only U.S. film chosen for Critic's Week at Cannes that year, and was picked up for distribution by the Shooting Gallery--which, alas, went out of business, leaving the film orphaned. "Good Housekeeping" has its U.S. premiere today through Thursday at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:09:06 GMT NINE QUEENS / *** (R) May 10, 2002 Marcos: Ricardo Darin Juan: Gaston Pauls Valeria: Leticia Bredice Gandolfo: Ignasi Abadal Aunt: Pochi Ducasse Federico: Tomas Fonzi Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by Fabian Bielinsky. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (for language). Opening today at the Music Box Theatre. BY ROGER EBERT Fabian Bielinsky's "Nine Queens" is a con within a con within a con. There comes a time when we think we've gotten to the bottom, and then the floor gets pulled out again and we fall another level. Since nothing is as it seems (it doesn't even seem as it seems), watching the film is like observing a chess game in which all of the pieces are in plain view but one player has figured out a way to cheat. "David Mamet might kill for a script as good," Todd McCarthy writes in Variety. True, although Mamet might also reasonably claim to have inspired it; the set-up owes something to his "House of Games," although familiarity with that film will not help you figure out this one. The film starts with a seemingly chance meeting. Indeed, almost everything in the film is "seemingly." A young would-be con man named Juan (Gaston Pauls) is doing the $20 bill switch with a naive cashier--the switch I have never been able to figure out, where you end up with $39 while seemingly doing the cashier a favor. Juan succeeds. The cashier goes off duty. Juan is greedy and tries the same trick on her replacement. The first cashier comes back with the manager, screaming that she was robbed. At this point Marcos (Ricardo Darin), a stranger in the store, flashes his gun, identifies himself as a cop, arrests the thief and hauls him off. Of course Marcos is only seemingly a cop. He lectures Juan on the dangers of excessive greed and buys him breakfast, and then the two of them seemingly happen upon an opportunity to pull a big swindle involving the "nine queens," a rare sheet of stamps. This happens when Valeria (Leticia Bredice), seemingly Marcos' sister, berates him because one of his old criminal associates tried to con a client in the hotel where she seemingly works. The old con seemingly had a heart attack, and now the field is seemingly open for Marcos and Juan to bilk the seemingly rich and drunk Gandolfo (Ignasi Abadal). Now before you think I've given away the game with all those "seeminglys," let me point out that they may only seemingly be seeminglys. They may in fact be as they seem. Or seemingly otherwise. As Juan and Marcos try to work out their scheme, which involves counterfeit stamps, we wonder if in fact the whole game may be a pigeon drop with Juan as the pigeon. But, no, the fake stamps are stolen, seemingly by complete strangers, requiring Marcos and Juan to try to con the owner of the real nine queens out of stamps they can sell Gandolfo. (Since they have no plans to really pay for these stamps, their profit would be the same in either case.) And on and on, around and around, in an elegant and sly deadpan comedy. A plot, however clever, is only the clockwork; what matters is what kind of time a movie tells. "Nine Queens" is blessed with a gallery of well-drawn character roles, including the alcoholic mark and his two bodyguards; the avaricious widow who owns the "nine queens" and her much younger bleached-blond boyfriend, and Valeria the sister, who opposes Marcos' seamy friends and life of crime but might be willing to sleep with Gandolfo if she can share in the spoils. Juan meanwhile falls for Valeria himself, and then there are perfectly timed hiccups in the plot where the characters (and we) apparently see through a deception, only to find that deeper reality explains everything--maybe. The story plays out in modern-day Buenos Aires, a city that looks sometimes Latin, sometimes American, sometimes Spanish, sometimes German, sometimes modern, sometimes ancient. Is it possible the city itself is pulling a con on its inhabitants, and that some underlying reality will deceive everyone? The ultimate joke of course would be if the Argentine economy collapsed, so that everyone's gains, ill-gotten or not, would evaporate. But that is surely too much to hope for. Note:"Nine Queens" is like a South American version of "Stolen Summer," the movie that won the contest sponsored by HBO, Miramax, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. According to Variety, some 350 screenplays were submitted in an Argentine competition, Bielinsky's won, and he was given funds to film. It's illuminating that in both cases such competitions yielded more literate and interesting screenplays than the studios are usually able to find through their own best efforts. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:02 GMT ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13) May 17, 2002 Will: Hugh Grant Marcus: Nicholas Hoult Rachel: Rachel Weisz Fiona: Toni Collette Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz. Written by Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz. Based on the book by Nick Hornby. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for brief strong language and some thematic elements). BY ROGER EBERT Hugh Grant, who has a good line in charm, has never been more charming than in "About a Boy." Or perhaps that's not quite what he is. Charming in the Grant stylebook refers to something he does as a conscious act, and what is remarkable here is that Grant is--well, likable. Yes, the cad has developed a heart. There are times, toward the end of the film, where he speaks sincerely and we can actually believe him. In "About a Boy," he plays Will, a 38-year-old bachelor who has never had a job, or a relationship that has lasted longer than two months. He is content with this lifestyle. "I was the star of the Will Show," he explains. "It was not an ensemble drama." His purpose in life is to date pretty girls. When they ask him what he does, he smiles that self-deprecating Hugh Grant smile and confesses that, well, he does--nothing. Not a single blessed thing. In 1958 his late father wrote a hit song titled "Santa's Super Sleigh," and he lives rather handsomely off the royalties. His London flat looks like a showroom for Toys for Big Boys. Will is the creation of Nick Hornby, who wrote the original novel. This is the same Hornby who wrote High Fidelity, which was made into the wonderful John Cusack movie. Hornby depicts a certain kind of immature but latently sincere man who loves Women as a less demanding alternative to loving a woman. Will's error, or perhaps it is his salvation, is that he starts dating single mothers, thinking they will be less demanding and easier to dump than single girls. The strategy is flawed: Single mothers invariably have children, and what Will discovers is that while he would make a lousy husband, he might make a wonderful father. Of course it takes a child to teach an adult how to be a parent, and that is how Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) comes into Will's life. Will is dating a single mom named Suzie, who he meets at a support group named Single Parents, Alone Together (SPAT). He shamelessly claims that his wife abandoned him and their 2-year-old son, "Ned." Suzie has a friend named Fiona (Toni Collette), whose son, Marcus, comes along one day to the park. We've already met Marcus, who is round-faced and sad-eyed and has the kind of bangs that get him teased in the school playground. His mother suffers from depression, and this has made Marcus mature and solemn beyond his years. When Fiona tries to overdose one day, Will finds himself involved in a trip to the emergency room and other events during which Marcus decides that Will belongs in his life whether Will realizes it or not. The heart of the movie involves the relationship between Will and Marcus--who begins by shadowing Will, finds out there is no "Ned," and ends by coming over on a regular basis to watch TV. Will has had nothing but trouble with his fictional child, and now finds that a real child is an unwieldy addition to the bachelor life. Nor is Fiona a dating possibility. Marcus tried fixing them up, but they're obviously not intended for each another--not Will with his cool bachelor aura and Fiona with her Goodwill hippie look and her "health bread," which is so inedible that little Marcus barely has the strength to tear a bite from the loaf. (There is an unfortunate incident in the park when Marcus attempts to throw the loaf into a pond to feed the ducks, and kills one.) Will finds to his horror that authentic emotions are forming. He likes Marcus. He doesn't admit this for a long time, but he's a good enough bloke to buy Marcus a pair of trendy sneakers, and to advise Fiona that since Marcus is already mocked at school, it is a bad idea, by definition, for him to sing "Killing Me Softly" at a school assembly. Meanwhile, Will starts dating Rachel (Rachel Weisz), who turns out to be a much nicer woman than he deserves (she also has a son much nastier than she deserves). This plot outline, as it stands, could supply the materials for a film of complacent stupidity--a formula sitcom with one of the Culkin offspring blinking cutely. It is much more than that; it's one of the year's most entertaining films, not only because Grant is so good but because young Nicholas Hoult has a kind of appeal that cannot be faked. He isn't a conventionally cute movie child, seems old beyond his years, can never be caught in an inauthentic moment, and helps us understand why Will likes him--he likes Marcus because Marcus is so clearly in need of being liked, and so deserving of it. The movie has been directed by the Weitz brothers, Paul and Chris, who directed "American Pie"--which was better than its countless imitators--and now give us a comedy of confidence and grace. They deserve some of the credit for this flowering of Grant's star appeal. There is a scene where Grant does a double-take when he learns that he has been dumped (usually it is the other way around). The way he handles it--the way he handles the role in general--shows how hard it is to do light romantic comedy, and how easily it comes to him. We have all the action heroes and Method script-chewers we need right now, but the Cary Grant department is understaffed, and Hugh Grant shows here that he is more than a star, he is a resource. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:16 GMT THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG) May 17, 2002 Ganesh: Aasif Mandvi Ramlogan: Om Puri Mr. Stewart: James Fox Beharry: Sanjeev Bhaskar Leela: Ayesha Dharker THINKFilm presents a film directed by Ismail Merchant. Written by Caryl Phillips, based on the novel by V.S. Naipaul. Running time: 117 minutes. Rated PG.(for mild language). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston CineArts. BY ROGER EBERT The West Indies were a footnote to the British Empire, and the Indian community of Trinidad was a footnote to the footnote. After slavery was abolished and the Caribbean still needed cheap labor, thousands of Indians were brought from one corner of the Empire to another to supply it. They formed an insular community, treasuring traditional Hindu customs, importing their dress styles and recipes, recreating India far from home on an island where it seemed irrelevant to white colonial rulers and the black majority. The great man produced by these exiles was V.S. Naipaul, the 2001 Nobel laureate for literature, whose father was a newspaperman with a great respect for books and ideas. A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) is Naipaul's novel about his father and his own childhood, and one of the best books of the century. But Naipaul's career began in 1957 with The Mystic Masseur, a novel casting a fond but dubious light on the Indian community of Trinidad. It is now the first of Naipaul's novels to be filmed, directed by Ismail Merchant, himself an Indian, usually the producing partner for director James Ivory. "The Mystic Masseur" is a wry, affectionate delight, a human comedy about a man who thinks he has had greatness thrust upon him when in fact he has merely thrust himself in the general direction of greatness. It tells the story of Ganesh, a schoolteacher with an exaggerated awe for books, who is inspired by a dotty Englishman to write some of his own. Abandoning the city for a rural backwater, he begins to compose short philosophical tomes, which, published by the local printer on a foot-powered flat-bed press, give him a not quite deserved reputation for profundity. If Ganesh allowed his success to go to his head, he would be insufferable. Instead, he is played by Aasif Mandvi as a man so sincere he really does believe in his mission. Does he have the power to cure with his touch, and advise troubled people on their lives? Many think he does, and soon he has become married to the pretty daughter of a canny businessman, who runs taxis from the city to bring believers to Ganesh's rural retreat. There is rich humor in the love-hate relationship many Indians have with their customs, which they leaven with a decided streak of practicality. In no area is this more true than marriage, as you can see in Mira Nair's wonderful comedy "Monsoon Wedding." The events leading up to Ganesh's marriage to the beautiful Leela (Ayesha Dharker) are hilarious, as the ambitious businessman Ramlogan positions his daughter to capture the rising young star. Played by the great Indian actor Om Puri with lip-smacking satisfaction, Ramlogan makes sure Ganesh appreciates Leela's dark-eyed charm, and then demonstrates her learning by producing a large wooden sign she has lettered, with a bright red punctuation mark after every word. "Leela know a lot of punctuation marks," he boasts proudly, and soon she has Ganesh within her parentheses. The wedding brings a showdown between the two men; custom dictates that the father-in-law must toss bills onto a plate as long as the new husband is still eating his kedgeree, and Ganesh, angered that Ramlogan has stiffed him with the wedding bill, dines slowly. The humor in "The Mystic Masseur" is generated by Ganesh's good-hearted willingness to believe in his ideas and destiny, both of which are slight. Like a thrift shop Gandhi, he sits on his veranda writing pamphlets and advising supplicants on health, wealth and marriage. Leela meanwhile quietly takes charge, managing the family business, as Ganesh becomes the best-known Indian on Trinidad. Eventually he forms a Hindu Association, collects some political power, and is elected to parliament, which is the beginning of his end. Transplanted from his rural base to the capital, he finds his party outnumbered by Afro-Caribbeans and condescended to by the British governors; he has traded his stature for a meaningless title, and is correctly seen by other Indians as a stooge. The masseur's public career has lasted only from 1943 to 1954. The mistake would be to assign too much significance to Ganesh. His lack of significance is the whole point. He rises to visibility as a home-grown guru, is co-opted by the British colonial government, and by the end of the film is a nonentity shipped safely out of sight to Oxford on a cultural exchange. Critics of the film have criticized Ganesh for being a pointless man leading a marginal life; they don't sense the anger and hurt seething just below the genial surface of the novel. The young Trinidadian Indian studying at Oxford, who meets Ganesh at the train station in the opening scene, surely represents Naipaul, observing the wreck of a man who loomed large in his childhood. Movies are rarely about inconsequential characters. They favor characters who are sensational winners or losers. But Ganesh, one senses, is precisely the character Naipaul needed to express his feelings about being an Indian in Trinidad. He has written elsewhere about the peculiarity of being raised in an Indian community thousands of miles from "home," attempting to reflect a land none of its members had ever seen. The Empire created generations of such displaced communities, not least the British exiles in India, sipping Earl Grey, reading the Times and saluting "God Save the Queen" in blissful oblivion to the world around them. Ganesh gets about as far as he could get, given the world he was born into, and he is such an innocent that many of his illusions persist. Shown around the Bodleian Library in Oxford by his young guide, the retired statesman looks at the walls of books, and says, "Boy, this the center of the world! Everything begin here, everything lead back to this place." Naipaul's whole career would be about his struggle with that theory. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE SALTON SEA / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:27 GMT THE SALTON SEA / *** (R) May 17, 2002 Danny/Tom: Val Kilmer Pooh-Bear: Vincent D'Onofrio Kujo: Adam Goldberg Quincy: Luis Guzman Morgan: Doug Hutchison Garcetti: Anthony LaPaglia Bobby: Glenn Plummer Jimmy the Finn: Peter Sarsgaard Colette: Deborah Kara Unger Castle Rock Entertainment presents a film directed by D.J. Caruso. Written by Tony Gayton. Running time: 103 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, drug use, language and some sexuality). Opening today at Pipers Alley and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT "The Salton Sea" is a lowlife black comedy drawing inspiration from "Memento," "Pulp Fiction" and those trendy British thrillers about drug lads. It contains one element of startling originality: its bad guy, nicknamed Pooh-Bear and played by Vincent D'Onofrio in a great weird demented giggle of a performance; imagine a Batman villain cycled through the hallucinations of "Requiem for a Dream." The movie opens with what looks like a crash at the intersection of film and noir: Val Kilmer sits on the floor and plays a trumpet, surrounded by cash, photos and flames. He narrates the film, and makes a laundry list of biblical figures (Judas, the Prodigal Son) he can be compared with. As we learn about the murder of his wife and the destruction of his life, I was also reminded of Job. Kilmer plays Danny Parker, also known as Tom Van Allen; his double identity spans a life in which he is both a jazz musician and a meth middleman, doing speed himself, inhabiting the dangerous world of speed freaks ("tweakers") and acting as an undercover agent for the cops. His life is so arduous we wonder, not for the first time, why people go to such extraordinary efforts to get and use the drugs that make them so unhappy. He doesn't use to get high, but to get from low back to bearable. The plot involves the usual assortment of lowlifes, scum, killers, bodyguards, dealers, pathetic women, two-timing cops and strung-out addicts, all employing Tarantinian dialogue about the flotsam of consumer society (you'd be surprised to learn what you might find under Bob Hope on eBay). Towering over them, like a bloated float in a nightmarish Thanksgiving Day parade, is Pooh-Bear, a drug dealer who lives in a fortified retreat in the desert and brags about the guy who shorted him $11 and got his head clamped in a vise while his brains were removed with a handsaw. D'Onofrio is a gifted actor and his character performances have ranged from Orson Welles to Abbie Hoffman to the twisted killer with the bizarre murder devices in "The Cell." Nothing he has done quite approaches Pooh-Bear, an overweight good ol' boy who uses his folksy accent to explain novel ways of punishing the disloyal, such as having their genitals eaten off by a rabid badger. He comes by his nickname because cocaine abuse has destroyed his nose, and he wears a little plastic job that makes him look like Pooh. "The Salton Sea" is two movies fighting inside one screenplay. Val Kilmer's movie is about memory and revenge, and tenderness for the abused woman (Deborah Kara Unger) who lives across the hall in his fleabag hotel. Kilmer plays a fairly standard middleman between dealers who might kill him and cops who might betray him. But he sometimes visits a world that is essentially the second movie, a nightmarish comedy. Director D.J. Caruso and writer Tony Gayton ("Murder by Numbers") introduce scenes with images so weird they're funny to begin with, and then funnier when they're explained. Consider Pooh-Bear's hobby of restaging the Kennedy assassination with pet pigeons in model cars. Note the little details like the pink pillbox hat. Then listen to his driver/bodyguard ask what "JFK" stands for. On the basis of this film, meth addiction is such a debilitating illness that it's a wonder its victims have the energy for the strange things the screenplay puts them up to. We meet, for example, a dealer named Bobby (Glenn Plummer) whose girlfriend's writhing legs extend frantically from beneath the mattress he sits on, while he toys with a compressed-air spear gun. Bobby looks like a man who has earned that good night's sleep. "The Salton Sea" is all pieces and no coherent whole. Maybe life on meth is like that. The plot does finally explain itself, like a dislocated shoulder popping back into place, but then the plot is off the shelf; only the characters and details set the movie aside from its stablemates. I liked it because it was so endlessly, grotesquely, inventive: Watching it, I pictured Tarantino throwing a stick into a swamp, and the movie swimming out through the muck, retrieving it, and bringing it back with its tail wagging. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:38 GMT DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13) May 10, 2002 Featuring Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Bob Biniak, Paul Constantineau, Shogo Kubo, Jim Muir, Peggy Oki, Stacy Peralta.Sony Pictures Classics presents a documentary directed by Stacy Peralta. Written by Peralta and Craig Stecyk. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language and some drug references). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston CineArts. BY ROGER EBERT "Dogtown and Z-Boys," a documentary about how the humble skateboard became the launch pad for aerial gymnastics, answers a question I have long been curious about: How and why was the first skateboarder inspired to go aerial, to break contact with any surface and do acrobatics in mid-air? Consider that the pioneer was doing this for the very first time over a vertical drop of perhaps 15 feet to a concrete surface. It's not the sort of thing you try out of idle curiosity. The movie answers this and other questions in its history of a sport that grew out of idle time and boundless energy in the oceanfront neighborhood between Santa Monica and Venice in California. Today the area contains expensive condos and trendy restaurants, but circa 1975, it was the last remaining "beachfront slum" in the Los Angeles area. Druggies and hippies lived in cheap rentals and supported themselves by working in hot dog stands, tattoo parlors, head shops and saloons. Surfing was the definitive lifestyle, the Beach Boys supplied the soundtrack and tough surfer gangs staked out waves as their turf. In the afternoon, after the waves died down, they turned to skateboards, which at first were used as a variation of roller skates. But the members of the Zephyr Team, we learn, devised a new style of skateboarding, defying gravity, adding acrobatics, devising stunts. When a drought struck the area and thousands of swimming pools were drained, they invented vertical skateboarding on the walls of the empty pools. Sometimes they'd glide so close to the edge that only one of their four wheels still had a purchase on the lip. One day a Z-Boy went airborne, and a new style was born--a style reflected today in Olympic ski acrobatics. I am not sure whether the members of the Zephyr Team were solely responsible for all significant advances in the sport, or whether they only think they were. "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is directed by Stacy Peralta, an original and gifted team member, still a legend in the sport. Like many of the other Z-Boys (and one Z-girl), he marketed himself, his name, his image, his products, and became a successful businessman and filmmaker while still surfing concrete. His film describes the evolution of skateboarding almost entirely in terms of the experience of himself and his friends. It's like the vet who thinks World War II centered around his platoon. The Southern California lifestyle in general, and surfing and skateboarding in particular, are insular and narcissistic. People who live indoors have ideas. People who live outdoors have style. Here is an entire movie about looking cool while not wiping out. Call it a metaphor for life. There comes a point when sensible viewers will tire of being told how astonishing and unique each and every Z-Boy was, while looking at repetitive still photos and home footage of skateboarders, but the film has an infectious enthusiasm and we're touched by the film's conviction that all life centered on that place, that time and that sport. One question goes unanswered: Was anyone ever killed? Maimed? Crippled? There is a brief shot of someone on crutches, and a few shots showing skateboarders falling off their boards, but since aerial gymnastics high over hard surfaces are clearly dangerous and the Z-Boys wear little or no protective gear, what's the story? That most of them survived is made clear by info over the end credits, revealing that although one Zephyr Team member is in prison and another was "last seen in Mexico," the others all seem to have married, produced an average of two children, and found success in business. To the amazement no doubt of their parents. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:46 GMT GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R) May 10, 2002 Don: Bob Jay Mills Donatella: Petra Westen Marion: Tacey Adams Joe: Al Schuermann Chuck: Zia Don Jr.: Andrew Eichner Mike: Jerry O'Conner Barry: Scooter Stephan Universal Focus presents a film written and directed by Frank Novak. Running time: 90 minutes. Rated R (for pervasive language, domestic violence and drug content). Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center. BY ROGER EBERT I watch the guests on "Jerry Springer" with the fascination of an ambulance driver at Demo Derby. Where do these people come from? Their dialogue may be "suggested" but their lives are all too evidently real, and they have tumbled right through the safety net of taste and self-respect and gone spiraling down, down into the pit of amoral vulgarity. Now comes "Good Housekeeping," a film about how the people on Springer live when they're not on camera. No, it's not a documentary. It was written and directed by Frank Novak, otherwise a trendy Los Angeles furniture manufacturer, who regards his white trash characters with deadpan neutrality. How is the audience expected to react? Consider this dialogue: Don: "Maybe if we cut her in half we could get her in there." Chuck: "We can't cut her in half!" Don: "So what are you? Mr. Politically Correct?" Don and Chuck are brothers. Don (Bob Jay Mills) uneasily shares his house with his wife Donatella (Petra Westen), while Chuck (credited only as Zia) sleeps with his girlfriend Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan) in Don's car. Things are not good between Don and Donatella, and he uses 2x4s and plasterboard to build a wall that cuts the house in two ("She got way more square feet than I got," he tells the cops during one of their frequent visits). Realizing he has forgotten something, Don cuts a crawl hole in the wall so that Don Jr. (Andrew Eichner) can commute between parents. Soon Donatella's new lesbian lover Marion (Tacey Adams) is poking her head through the hole to discuss the "parameters" Don is setting for his son. Donatella is a forklift operator. Don is self-employed as a trader of action figures, with a specialty in Pinhead and other Hellraiser characters. When Chuck tries to sell him a Sad-Eye Doll, he responds like a pro: "Couldn't you Swap-Meet it? I'm not gonna put that on my table and drag down my other merch." Don Jr. has less respect for action figures and occasionally saws off their heads. Terrible things happen to the many cars in this extended family, both by accident and on purpose. One of the funniest sequences shows a big blond family friend, desperately hung-over, methodically crunching into every other car in the driveway before she runs over the mailbox. Don lives in fear of Donatella running him down, and at one point discusses his defense with a gun-show trader (Al Schuermann), who scoffs, "You would use a .38 to defend yourself?" He comes back with real protection against vehicular manslaughter: a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Marion, the well-mannered lesbian lover, is the source of many of the film's biggest laughs because of the incongruity of her crush on Donatella. She watches Donatella smoke, eat, talk and blow her nose all at the same time, and her only reaction is to eat all the more politely, in the hope of setting an example. Marion is an accountant at the factory where Donatella works; she dresses in chic business suits, has smart horn-rim glasses and a stylish haircut, and plunges into Springerland with an arsenal of liberal cliches. At one point, after a nasty domestic disturbance, she tries to make peace by inviting Don out to brunch. "There's no way the cops can make you go to brunch," Don's beer-bellied buddies reassure him. It is perhaps a warning signal of incipient alcoholism when the family car has a Breathalyzer permanently attached to the dashboard. Yet Don is not without standards, and warns his brother against making love in the car because "I drive Mom to church in it." Family life follows a familiar pattern. Most evenings end with a fight in the yard, and Novak and his cinematographer, Alex Vendler, are skilled at getting convincing, spontaneous performances out of their unknown actors; many scenes, including the free-for-alls, play with the authenticity of a documentary. Just as mainstream filmmakers are fascinated by the rich and famous, so independent filmmakers are drawn to society's hairy underbelly. "Good Housekeeping" plunges far beneath Todd Solondz's territory and enters the suburbs of John Waters' universe in its fascination for people who live without benefit of education, taste, standards, hygiene and shame. Indeed, all they have enough of are cigarettes, used cars, controlled substances and four-letter words. The movie is, however, very funny as you peek at it through the fingers in front of your eyes. Note: "Good Housekeeping" has had its ups and downs. It won the grand jury prize at Slamdance 2000, was the only U.S. film chosen for Critic's Week at Cannes that year, and was picked up for distribution by the Shooting Gallery--which, alas, went out of business, leaving the film orphaned. "Good Housekeeping" has its U.S. premiere today through Thursday at the Gene Siskel Film Center. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:56 GMT NINE QUEENS / *** (R) May 10, 2002 Marcos: Ricardo Darin Juan: Gaston Pauls Valeria: Leticia Bredice Gandolfo: Ignasi Abadal Aunt: Pochi Ducasse Federico: Tomas Fonzi Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by Fabian Bielinsky. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (for language). Opening today at the Music Box Theatre. BY ROGER EBERT Fabian Bielinsky's "Nine Queens" is a con within a con within a con. There comes a time when we think we've gotten to the bottom, and then the floor gets pulled out again and we fall another level. Since nothing is as it seems (it doesn't even seem as it seems), watching the film is like observing a chess game in which all of the pieces are in plain view but one player has figured out a way to cheat. "David Mamet might kill for a script as good," Todd McCarthy writes in Variety. True, although Mamet might also reasonably claim to have inspired it; the set-up owes something to his "House of Games," although familiarity with that film will not help you figure out this one. The film starts with a seemingly chance meeting. Indeed, almost everything in the film is "seemingly." A young would-be con man named Juan (Gaston Pauls) is doing the $20 bill switch with a naive cashier--the switch I have never been able to figure out, where you end up with $39 while seemingly doing the cashier a favor. Juan succeeds. The cashier goes off duty. Juan is greedy and tries the same trick on her replacement. The first cashier comes back with the manager, screaming that she was robbed. At this point Marcos (Ricardo Darin), a stranger in the store, flashes his gun, identifies himself as a cop, arrests the thief and hauls him off. Of course Marcos is only seemingly a cop. He lectures Juan on the dangers of excessive greed and buys him breakfast, and then the two of them seemingly happen upon an opportunity to pull a big swindle involving the "nine queens," a rare sheet of stamps. This happens when Valeria (Leticia Bredice), seemingly Marcos' sister, berates him because one of his old criminal associates tried to con a client in the hotel where she seemingly works. The old con seemingly had a heart attack, and now the field is seemingly open for Marcos and Juan to bilk the seemingly rich and drunk Gandolfo (Ignasi Abadal). Now before you think I've given away the game with all those "seeminglys," let me point out that they may only seemingly be seeminglys. They may in fact be as they seem. Or seemingly otherwise. As Juan and Marcos try to work out their scheme, which involves counterfeit stamps, we wonder if in fact the whole game may be a pigeon drop with Juan as the pigeon. But, no, the fake stamps are stolen, seemingly by complete strangers, requiring Marcos and Juan to try to con the owner of the real nine queens out of stamps they can sell Gandolfo. (Since they have no plans to really pay for these stamps, their profit would be the same in either case.) And on and on, around and around, in an elegant and sly deadpan comedy. A plot, however clever, is only the clockwork; what matters is what kind of time a movie tells. "Nine Queens" is blessed with a gallery of well-drawn character roles, including the alcoholic mark and his two bodyguards; the avaricious widow who owns the "nine queens" and her much younger bleached-blond boyfriend, and Valeria the sister, who opposes Marcos' seamy friends and life of crime but might be willing to sleep with Gandolfo if she can share in the spoils. Juan meanwhile falls for Valeria himself, and then there are perfectly timed hiccups in the plot where the characters (and we) apparently see through a deception, only to find that deeper reality explains everything--maybe. The story plays out in modern-day Buenos Aires, a city that looks sometimes Latin, sometimes American, sometimes Spanish, sometimes German, sometimes modern, sometimes ancient. Is it possible the city itself is pulling a con on its inhabitants, and that some underlying reality will deceive everyone? The ultimate joke of course would be if the Argentine economy collapsed, so that everyone's gains, ill-gotten or not, would evaporate. But that is surely too much to hope for. Note:"Nine Queens" is like a South American version of "Stolen Summer," the movie that won the contest sponsored by HBO, Miramax, and Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. According to Variety, some 350 screenplays were submitted in an Argentine competition, Bielinsky's won, and he was given funds to film. It's illuminating that in both cases such competitions yielded more literate and interesting screenplays than the studios are usually able to find through their own best efforts. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] STAR WARS -- EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES / ** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:04 GMT STAR WARS -- EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES / ** (PG) May 10, 2002 Obi-Wan Kenobi: Ewan McGregor Senator Padme Amidala: Natalie Portman Anakin Skywalker: Hayden Christensen Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by George Lucas. Produced by Rick McGallum. Written by George Lucas and Jonathan Hales. Photographed by David Tattersall. Edited by Ben Burtt. Music by John Williams. Running time: 124 minutes. Classified PG (for sustained sequences of sci-fi action/violence). BY ROGER EBERT It is not what's there on the screen that disappoints me, but what's not there. It is easy to hail the imaginative computer images that George Lucas brings to "Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones." To marvel at his strange new aliens and towering cities and sights such as thousands of clones all marching in perfect ranks into a huge spaceship. To see the beginnings of the dark side in young Anakin Skywalker. All of those experiences are there to be cheered by fans of the "Star Wars" series, and for them this movie will affirm their faith. But what about the agnostic viewer? The hopeful ticket buyer walking in not as a cultist, but as a moviegoer hoping for a great experience? Is this "Star Wars" critic-proof and scoff-resistant? Yes, probably, at the box office. But as someone who admired the freshness and energy of the earlier films, I was amazed, at the end of "Episode II," to realize that I had not heard one line of quotable, memorable dialogue. And the images, however magnificently conceived, did not have the impact they deserved. I'll get to them in a moment. The first hour of "Episode II" contains a sensational chase through the skyscraper canyons of a city, and assorted briefer shots of space ships and planets. But most of that first hour consists of dialogue, as the characters establish plot points, update viewers on what has happened since "Episode I," and debate the political crisis facing the Republic. They talk and talk and talk. And their talk is in a flat utilitarian style: They seem more like lawyers than the heroes of a romantic fantasy. In the classic movie adventures that inspired "Star Wars," dialogue was often colorful, energetic, witty and memorable. The dialogue in "Episode II" exists primarily to advance the plot, provide necessary information, and give a little screen time to continuing characters who are back for a new episode. The only characters in this stretch of the film who have inimitable personal styles are the beloved Yoda and the hated Jar-Jar Binks, whose idiosyncrasies turned off audiences for "Phantom Menace." Yes, Jar-Jar's accent may be odd and his mannerisms irritating, but at least he's a unique individual and not a bland cipher. The other characters--Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padme Amidala, Anakin Skywalker--seem so strangely stiff and formal in their speech that an unwary viewer might be excused for thinking they were the clones, soon to be exposed. Too much of the rest of the film is given over to a romance between Padme and Anakin in which they're incapable of uttering anything other than the most basic and weary romantic cliches, while regarding each other as if love was something to be endured rather than cherished. There is not a romantic word they exchange that has not long since been reduced to cliche. No, wait: Anakin tells Padme at one point: "I don't like the sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating--not like you. You're soft and smooth." I hadn't heard that before. When it comes to the computer-generated images, I feel that I cannot entirely trust the screening experience I had. I could see that in conception many of these sequences were thrilling and inventive. I liked the planet of rain, and the vast coliseum in which the heroes battle strange alien beasts, and the towering Senate chamber, and the secret factory where clones were being manufactured. But I felt like I had to lean with my eyes toward the screen in order to see what I was being shown. The images didn't pop out and smack me with delight, the way they did in earlier films. There was a certain fuzziness, an indistinctness that seemed to undermine their potential power. Later I went on the Web to look at the trailers for the movie, and was startled to see how much brighter, crisper and more colorful they seemed on my computer screen than in the theater. Although I know that video images are routinely timed to be brighter than movie images, I suspect another reason for this. "Episode II" was shot entirely on digital video. It is being projected in digital video on 19 screens, but on some 3,000 others, audiences will see it as I did, transferred to film. How it looks in digital projection I cannot say, although I hope to get a chance to see it that way. I know Lucas believes it looks better than film, but then he has cast his lot with digital. My guess is that the film version of "Episode II" might jump more sharply from the screen in a small multiplex theater. But I saw it on the largest screen in Chicago, and my suspicion is, the density and saturation of the image were not adequate to imprint the image there in a forceful way. Digital images contain less information than 35mm film images, and the more you test their limits, the more you see that. Two weeks ago I saw "Patton" shown in 70mm Dimension 150, and it was the most astonishing projection I had ever seen--absolute detail on a giant screen, which was 6,000 times larger than a frame of the 70mm film. That's what large-format film can do, but it's a standard Hollywood has abandoned (except for IMAX), and we are being asked to forget how good screen images can look--to accept the compromises. I am sure I will hear from countless fans who assure me that "Episode II" looks terrific, but it does not. At least, what I saw did not. It may look great in digital projection on multiplex-size screens, and I'm sure it will look great on DVD, but on a big screen it lacks the authority it needs. I have to see the film again to do it justice. I'm sure I will greatly enjoy its visionary sequences on DVD; I like stuff like that. The dialogue is another matter. Perhaps because a movie like this opens everywhere in the world on the same day, the dialogue has to be dumbed down for easier dubbing or subtitling. Wit, poetry and imagination are specific to the languages where they originate, and although translators can work wonders, sometimes you get the words but not the music. So it's safer to avoid the music. But in a film with a built-in audience, why not go for the high notes? Why not allow the dialogue to be inventive, stylish and expressive? There is a certain lifelessness in some of the acting, perhaps because the actors were often filmed in front of blue screens so their environments could be added later by computer. Actors speak more slowly than they might--flatly, factually, formally, as if reciting. Sometimes that reflects the ponderous load of the mythology they represent. At other times it simply shows that what they have to say is banal. "Episode II-- Attack of the Clones" is a technological exercise that lacks juice and delight. The title is more appropriate than it should be. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:13 GMT THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13) May 10, 2002 Dizzy/Gil: DJ Qualls Bear Harrison: Lyle Lovett Luther: Eddie Griffin Danielle: Eliza Dushku Nora: Zooey Deschanel Columbia Pictures/Revolution Studios presents a film directed by Ed Decter. Written by David Kendall. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexual content, language, vulgarity, crude humor and mild drug references). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT DJ Qualls stars in "The New Guy" as a high school misfit who switches schools and gets a fresh start. At Rocky Creek, he was the target of cruel jokes almost daily (sample: being tied to a chair while wearing false breasts), but now, at Eastland High and with a new haircut, he is seen as a cool hero. The point is, he explains with relief, "today nobody stuffed me in my locker or singed off my ass hairs." The movie made from this material is quirkier than I would have expected, considering that the building blocks have been scavenged from the trash heap of earlier teenage comedies. Much of the credit goes to Qualls (from "Road Trip"), who not only plays the son of Lyle Lovett in this movie but looks biologically descended from him, no mean feat. He has a goofy grin and an offhand way with dialogue that make him much more likable than your usual teenage comedy hero. Known at one school by his nickname Dizzy and at the other by his first name Gil, D/G does not approach the dating game with high expectations. Here's how he asks a popular girl out on a date: "Maybe sometime if you would like to drink coffee near me, I would pay." There is a school scandal at Rocky Creek when a librarian does something painful and embarrassing I cannot describe here to that part of his anatomy I cannot name, and he ends up in prison. (His condition or crime--I am not sure--is described as Tourette's syndrome, which is either a misdiagnosis, a mispronunciation, or an example of Tourette's in action.) Yes, prison. The movie begins with a direct-to-camera narration by Luther (Eddie Griffin), who is in prison for undisclosed reasons and is the narrator of this film for reasons even more deeply concealed. Perhaps my attention strayed, but I was unable to discern any connection between Luther and the other characters, and was baffled by how Dizzy/Gil was in prison whenever he needed to get advice from Luther, and then out again whenever it was necessary for him to rejoin the story in progress. Perhaps a subplot, or even a whole movie, is missing from the middle. In any event, Dizzy/Gil is seen as a neat guy at the new school, especially after he unfurls a giant American flag at football practice and stands in front of it dressed as George C. Scott in "Patton" and delivers a speech so rousing that the team wins for the first time in five years. He also steals a horse and rides around on it more than is necessary. The movie has all the shots you would expect in a movie of this sort: cheerleaders, football heroics, pratfalls. Some of them are cruel, as when a bully stuffs a midget in a trash can and rolls it downhill. Others are predictably vulgar, as when Dizzy snatches a surveillance camera from the wall and (aided by its extension cord of infinite length) uses it to send a live broadcast into every classroom of a hated teacher struggling with a particularly difficult bowel movement. Sometimes even verbal humor is attempted, as when a high school counselor (Illeana Douglas) tells our hero he is in denial, and helpfully explains, "Denial is not just a river in Egypt.'' I don't know why this movie was made or who it was made for. It is however not assembly-line fodder, and seems occasionally to be the work of inmates who have escaped from the Hollywood High School Movie Asylum. It makes little sense, fails as often as it succeeds, and yet is not hateful and is sometimes quite cheerfully original. And DJ Qualls is a kid you can't help but like--a statement I do not believe I have ever before made about the hero of a teenage vulgarian movie. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] UNFAITHFUL / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:20 GMT UNFAITHFUL / *** (R) May 10, 2002 Connie Sumner: Diane Lane Edward Sumner: Richard Gere Paul Martel: Olivier Martinez Charlie Sumner: Erik Per Sullivan Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Adrian Lyne. Written by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr, based on a script by Claude Chabrol. Running time: 123 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality, partial nudity, language and a scene of violence). BY ROGER EBERT The heart has its reasons, said the French philosopher Pascal, quoted by the American philosopher Woody Allen. It is a useful insight when no other reasons seem apparent. Connie Sumner's heart and other organs have their reasons for straying outside a happy marriage in "Unfaithful,'' but the movie doesn't say what they are. This is not necessarily a bad thing, sparing us tortured Freudian explanations and labored plot points. It is almost always more interesting to observe behavior than to listen to reasons. Connie (Diane Lane) and her husband, Edward (Richard Gere), live with their 9-year-old son, Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan), in one of those Westchester County houses that has a room for every mood. They are happy together, or at least the movie supplies us with no reasons why they are unhappy. One windy day she drives into New York City, is literally blown down on top of a rare book dealer named Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), and is invited upstairs for Band-Aids and a cup of tea. He occupies a large flat filled with shelves of books and art objects. Martel is your average Calvin Klein model as a bibliophile. He has the Spanish looks, the French accent, the permanent three-day beard, and the strength to suspend a woman indefinitely in any position while making love. He is also cool in his seduction methods. Instead of making a crude pass, he asks her to accept a book as a gift from him, and directs her down an aisle to the last book on the end of the second shelf from the top, where he tells her what page to turn to, and then joins her in reciting the words there: Be happy for this moment, for this moment is your life. Does it occur to Connie that Martel planted that book for just such an occasion as this? No, because she likes to be treated in such a way, and soon she's on the phone with a transparent ruse to get up to his apartment again, where Martel overcomes her temporary stall in bed by commanding her: Hit me! That breaks the logjam, and soon they're involved in a passionate affair that involves arduous sex in his apartment and quick sex in restrooms, movie theaters and corridors. (The movie they go to see is Tati's "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday,'' which, despite its stature on my list of The Great Movies, fails to compete with furtive experiments that would no doubt have Hulot puffing furiously at his pipe.) Edward senses that something is wrong. There are clues, but mostly he picks up on her mood, and eventually hires a man to shadow her. Discovering where Martel lives, he visits there one day, and what happens then I will not reveal. What does not happen then, I am happy to reveal, is that the movie doesn't turn into a standard thriller in which death stalks Westchester County and the wife and husband fear murder by each other, or by Martel. That's what's intriguing about the film: Instead of pumping up the plot with recycled manufactured thrills, it's content to contemplate two reasonably sane adults who get themselves into an almost insoluble dilemma. "Unfaithful" contains, as all movies involving suburban families are required to contain, a scene where the parents sit proudly in the audience while their child performs bravely in a school play. But there are no detectives lurking in the shadows to arrest them, and no killers skulking in the parking lot with knives or tire-irons. No, the meaning of the scene is simply, movingly, that these two people in desperate trouble are nevertheless able to smile at their son on the stage. The movie was directed by Adrian Lyne, best known for higher-voltage films like "Fatal Attraction" and "Indecent Proposal.'' This film is based on "La Femme Infidele" (1969) by Claude Chabrol, which itself is an update of Madame Bovary. Lyne's film is juicier and more passionate than Chabrol's, but both share the fairly daring idea of showing a plot that is entirely about illicit passion and its consequences in a happy marriage. Although cops turn up from time to time in "Unfaithful," this is not a crime story, but a marital tragedy. Richard Gere and Diane Lane are well-suited to the roles, exuding a kind of serene materialism that seems happily settled in suburbia. It is all the more shocking when Lane revisits Martel's apartment because there is no suggestion that she is unhappy with Gere, starved for sex, or especially impulsive. She goes back up there because--well, because she wants to. He's quite a guy. On one visit he shows her The Joy of Cooking in Braille. And then his fingers brush hers as if he's reading The Joy of Sex on her skin. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BARAN / ***1/2 (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:28 GMT BARAN / ***1/2 (PG) May 3, 2002 Lateef: Hossein Abedini Rahmat/Baran: Zahra Bahrami Memar: Mohammad Reza Naji Bric-a-brac trader: Hossein Mahjoub Soltan: Abbas Rahimi Najaf: Gholam Ali Bakhsi Miramax Films presents a film written and directed by Majid Majidi. Running time: 99 minutes. In Farsi and Dari with English subtitles. Rated PG.(for language and brief violence). BY ROGER EBERT What are they like, over there in Iran? Are they all glowering fanatics, stewing in resentment of America? What's your mental image? When a land is distant, unknown and labeled as an enemy, it's easy to think in simple terms. No doubt Iranians are as quick to think evil about us as we are to think evil about them. The intriguing thing about an Iranian movie like "Baran" is that it gives human faces to these strangers. It could be a useful learning tool for those who have not traveled widely, who never see foreign films, who reduce whole nations to labels. The movie is a romantic fable about a construction worker. His name is Lateef (Hossein Abedini), and he labors on a building site not far from the border with Afghanistan. All of the labor here is manual, including hauling 50-pound bags of cement up a series of ramps. Lateef doesn't actually work very hard, since he is Iranian and most of the labor is being done by underpaid refugees from Afghanistan. Lateef is the tea boy, bringing hot cups to the workers and drinking more than his own share. We learn at the beginning of the movie that millions of Afghanis have poured into Iran as refugees. Since it is illegal to hire them, they work secretly for low wages, like undocumented Mexicans in America. Many are fleeing the Taliban for the comparatively greater freedom and prosperity of Iran, a distinction that may seem small to us, but not to them. (The title cards carrying this information were already in place when the film debuted at the 2001 Montreal and Toronto festivals, and were not added post-9/11.) One day there is an accident on the site. A man named Najaf injures his leg, and that is a catastrophe, because he has five children to feed in the squatters' camp where his family lives. Najaf sends his son Rahmat (Zahra Bahrami) to take his place, but the son is small, slight and young, and staggers under the burden of the concrete sacks. So Memar, the construction boss, who pays low wages but is not unkind, gives Rahmat the job of tea boy and reassigns Lateef to real work. Lateef is lazy, immature, resentful. He trashes the kitchen in revenge, and makes things hard for Rahmat. Yet at the same time he finds something intriguing about the new tea boy, and eventually Lateef discovers the secret: The boy is a girl. So desperate for money was Rahmat's family that in a society where women are strictly forbidden from mixing with men on a job like this, a deception was planned. In keeping the secret, Lateef begins his journey to manhood and tolerance. The outlines of "Baran," as they emerge, seem as much like an ancient fable as a modern story. Middle Eastern society, so insistent on the division between men and women, has a literature filled with stories about men and women in disguise, passing through each other's worlds. The vast gulf between Lateef and Rahmat is dramatized by the way they essentially fall in love without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, watching conditions on the work site and seeing raids by government agents looking for illegal workers, we get an idea of Iran's ground-level economy. My description perhaps makes the film sound grim and gray, covered with a silt of concrete dust. Not at all. It is the latest work by Majid Majidi, whose "The Children of Heaven" (1997) was a heartwarming fable about a brother and sister who lose a pair of shoes and try to hide this calamity from their parents. The director uses natural colors and painterly compositions to make even the most spartan locations look beautiful, and as Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com observes: "Majidi uses sunlight, a completely free resource if you can time your filmmaking around it, as a dazzling special effect." What happens between Rahmat and Lateef I will leave you to discover. There are many surprises along the way, one of the best involving a man Lateef meets during a long journey--an itinerant shoemaker, who has thoughtful observations about life. "Baran" is the latest in a flowering of good films from Iran, and gives voice to the moderates there. It shows people existing and growing in the cracks of their society's inflexible walls. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:40 GMT HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13) May 3, 2002 Val Waxman: Woody Allen Ellie: Tea Leoni Ed: George Hamilton Lori: Debra Messing Al Hack: Mark Rydell Hal: Treat Williams DreamWorks presents a film written and directed by Woody Allen. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some drug references and sexual material). BY ROGER EBERT Val Waxman is a movie director going through a slow period in his career. Maybe it's more like a slow decade. He left his last movie project, explaining, "I quit over a big thing." What was that? "They fired me." Then he gets a big break, Galaxie Studios has just green-lighted "The City that Never Sleeps," and his ex-wife has convinced the studio head that Val, despite his laundry list of psychosomatic anxieties and neurotic tics, is the right guy to direct it. Woody Allen's new comedy "Hollywood Ending" quickly adds a complication to this setup: Waxman goes blind. It may all be in his mind, but he can't see a thing. For his ever-smiling agent Al Hack (Mark Rydell), this is insufficient cause to leave the project. Al says he will glide through the picture at Waxman's elbow, and no one will ever notice. When the studio demurs at the agent being on the set, Al and Val recruit another seeing-eye man: The business student (Barney Cheng) who has been hired as the translator for the Chinese cinematographer. The translator says he'll blend right in: "I will practice casual banter." Further complications: Waxman's ex-wife Ellie (Tea Leoni) is now engaged to Hal (Treat Williams), the head of Galaxie Studios. Waxman casts his current squeeze, Lori (Debra Messing), for a supporting role in the movie, but while Lori is away at a spa getting in shape, co-star Sharon (Tiffani Thiessen) moves on Waxman. In his dressing room, she removes her robe while explaining that she is eager to perform sexual favors for all of her directors (Waxman, who cannot see her abundant cleavage, helpfully suggests she advertise this willingness in the Directors' Guild magazine). What is Val Waxman's movie about? We have no idea. Neither does Waxman, who agrees with every suggestion so he won't have to make any decisions. He's not only blind but apparently has ears that don't work in stereo, since he can't tell where people are standing by the sound of their voices, and spends much of his time gazing into space. No one notices this, maybe because directors are such gods on movies that they can get away with anything. The situation is funny and Allen of course populates it with zingy one-liners, orchestrated with much waving of the hands (he's a virtuoso of body language). But somehow the movie doesn't get over the top. It uses the blindness gimmick in fairly obvious ways, and doesn't bring it to another level--to build on the blindness instead of just depending on it. When Waxman confesses his handicap to the wrong woman--a celebrity journalist--because he thinks he's sitting next to someone he can trust, that's very funny. But too often he's just seen with a vacant stare, trying to bluff his way through conversations. Why not use the realities of a movie set to suggest predicaments for the secretly blind? Would Val always need to take his translator into the honey wagon with him? Could there be tragic misunderstandings in the catering line? Would he wander unknowingly into a shot? How about the cinematographer offering him a choice of lenses, and he chooses the lens cap? David Mamet's "State and Main" does a better job of twisting the realities of a movie into the materials of comedy. Because Allen is a great verbal wit and because he's effortlessly ingratiating, I had a good time at the movie even while not really buying it. I enjoyed Tea Leoni's sunny disposition, although she spends too much time being the peacemaker between the two men in her life and not enough time playing a character who is funny in herself. George Hamilton, as a tanned studio flunky, suggests a familiar Hollywood type, the guy who is drawing a big salary for being on the set without anybody being quite sure what he's there for (he carries a golf club to give himself an identity--the guy who carries the golf club). And Mark Rydell smiles and smiles and smiles, as an agent who reasons that anything he has 10 percent of must be an unqualified good thing. As Waxman's seeing eyes, Barney Cheng adds a nice element: Not only is Waxman blind, but he is being given an inexact description of the world through the translator's English, which is always slightly off-track. I liked the movie without loving it. It's not great Woody Allen, like "Sweet and Lowdown" or "Bullets Over Broadway," but it's smart and sly, and the blindness is an audacious idea. It also has moments when you can hear Allen editorializing in the dialogue. My favorite is this exchange: "He has made some very financially successful American films." "That should tell you everything you need to know about him." Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:54 GMT SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13) May 3, 2002 Spider-Man/Peter Parker: Tobey Maguire Green Goblin/ Norman Osborn: Willem Dafoe Mary Jane: Kirsten Dunst Harry Osborn: James Franco Ben Parker: Cliff Robertson May Parker: Rosemary Harris Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Sam Raimi. Written by David Koepp. Based on the Marvel comic by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Running time: 121 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for stylized violence and action). BY ROGER EBERT Imagine "Superman" with a Clark Kent more charismatic than the Man of Steel, and you'll understand how "Spider-Man" goes wrong. Tobey Maguire is pitch-perfect as the socially retarded Peter Parker, but when he becomes Spider-Man, the film turns to action sequences that zip along like perfunctory cartoons. Not even during Spidey's first experimental outings do we feel that flesh and blood are contending with gravity. Spidey soars too quickly through the skies of Manhattan; he's as convincing as Mighty Mouse. The appeal of the best sequences in the Superman and Batman movies is that they lend weight and importance to comic-book images. Within the ground rules set by each movie, they even have plausibility. As a reader of the Spider-Man comics, I admired the vertiginous frames showing Spidey dangling from terrifying heights. He had the powers of a spider and the instincts of a human being, but the movie is split between a plausible Peter Parker and an inconsequential superhero. Consider a sequence early in the film, after Peter Parker is bitten by a mutant spider and discovers his new powers. His hand is sticky. He doesn't need glasses anymore. He was scrawny yesterday, but today he's got muscles. The movie shows him becoming aware of these facts, but insufficiently amazed (or frightened) by them. He learns how to spin and toss webbing, and finds that he can make enormous leaps. And then there's a scene where he's like a kid with a new toy, jumping from one rooftop to another, making giant leaps, whooping with joy. Remember the first time you saw the characters defy gravity in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? They transcended gravity, but they didn't dismiss it: They seemed to possess weight, dimension and presence. Spider-Man as he leaps across the rooftops is landing too lightly, rebounding too much like a bouncing ball. He looks like a video game figure, not like a person having an amazing experience. The other super-being in the movie is the Green Goblin, who surfs the skies in jet-shoes. He, too, looks like a drawing being moved quickly around a frame, instead of like a character who has mastered a daring form of locomotion. He's handicapped, too, by his face, which looks like a high-tech action figure with a mouth that doesn't move. I understand why it's immobile (we're looking at a mask), but I'm not persuaded; the movie could simply ordain that the Green Goblin's exterior shell has a face that's mobile, and the character would become more interesting. (True, Spider-Man has no mouth, and Peter Parker barely opens his--the words slip out through a reluctant slit.) The film tells Spidey's origin story--who Peter Parker is, who Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) are, how Peter's an outcast at school, how he burns with unrequited love for Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), how he peddles photos of Spider-Man to cigar-chomping editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons). Peter Parker was crucial in the evolution of Marvel comics because he was fallible and had recognizable human traits. He was a nerd, a loner, socially inept, insecure, a poor kid being raised by relatives. Maguire gets all of that just right, and I enjoyed the way Dunst is able to modulate her gradually increasing interest in this loser who begins to seem attractive to her. I also liked the complexity of the villain, who in his Dr. Jekyll manifestation is brilliant tycoon Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) and in his Mr. Hyde persona is a cackling psychopath. Osborn's son Harry (James Franco) is a rich kid, embarrassed by his dad's wealth, who is Peter's best and only friend, and Norman is affectionate toward Peter even while their alter-egos are deadly enemies. That works, and there's an effective scene where Osborn has a conversation with his invisible dark side. The origin story is well told, and the characters will not disappoint anyone who values the original comic books. It's in the action scenes that things fall apart. Consider the scene where Spider-Man is given a cruel choice between saving Mary Jane or a cable car full of school kids. He tries to save both, so that everyone dangles from webbing that seems about to pull loose. The visuals here could have given an impression of the enormous weights and tensions involved, but instead the scene seems more like a bloodless storyboard of the idea. In other CGI scenes, Spidey swoops from great heights to street level and soars back up among the skyscrapers again with such dizzying speed that it seems less like a stunt than like a fast-forward version of a stunt. I have one question about the Peter Parker character: Does the movie go too far with his extreme social paralysis? Peter tells Mary Jane he just wants to be friends. "Only a friend?" she repeats. "That's all I have to give," he says. How so? Impotent? Spidey-sense has skewed his sexual instincts? Afraid his hands will get stuck? Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated) Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:07 GMT THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated) April 26, 2002 Erika Kohut: Isabelle Huppert The Mother: Annie Girardot Walter Klemmer: Benoit Magimel Mrs. Schober: Susanne Lothar Dr. Blonskij: Udo Samel Anna Schober: Anna Sigalevitch Mme Blonskij: Cornelia Kondgen Baritone: Thomas Weinhappel Kino International presents a film written and directed by Michael Haneke. Based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek. Running time: 130 minutes. No MPAA rating (intended for adults). In French with English subtitles. Opening today at Landmark Century. BY ROGER EBERT There is a self-assurance in Isabelle Huppert that defies all explanation. I interviewed her in 1977, asking her how she got her start in the movies. She knocked on the door of a Paris studio, she said, and announced, "I am here." Was she kidding? I peered at her. I thought not. In Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," which won three awards at Cannes 2001 (best actress, actor and film), she plays a bold woman with a secret wound. She is Erika Kohut, 40ish, a respected instructor at a conservatory of music in Vienna. Demanding, severe, distant, unsmiling, she leads a secret life of self-mutilation. That she sleeps in the same bed with her domineering mother is no doubt a clue--but to what? Erika is fascinated with the sexual weaknesses and tastes of men. There is a scene where she visits a porn shop in Vienna, creating an uncomfortable tension by her very presence. The male clients are presumably there to indulge their fantasies about women, but faced with a real one, they look away, disturbed or ashamed. If she were obviously a prostitute, they could handle that, but she's apparently there to indulge her own tastes, and that takes all the fun out of it, for them. She returns their furtive glances with a shriveling gaze. She has a handsome young student named Walter (Benoit Magimel). She notices him in a particular way. They have a clash of wills. He makes it clear he is interested in her. Not long after, in one of the school's restrooms, they have a sexual encounter--all the more electrifying because while she shocks him with her brazen behavior, she refuses to actually have sex with him. She wants the upper hand. What games does she want to play? A detailed and subtle plan of revenge against her mother is involved, and Walter, who is not really into sadomasochism, allows himself to be enlisted out of curiosity, or perhaps because he hopes she will yield to him at the end of the scenario. Does it work out that way? Some audience members will dislike the ending, but with a film like this any conventional ending would be a cop-out. Most sexual relationships in the movies have a limited number of possible outcomes, but this one is a mystery. Another mystery is, what's wrong with Erika? She is not simply an adventuress, a sexual experimenter, a risk-taker. Some buried pathology is at work. Walter's idle thoughts about an experienced older woman have turned into nightmares about experiences he doesn't even want to know about. Huppert often plays repressed, closed-off, sexually alert women. At 47, she looks curiously as she did at 22; she is thin, with fine, freckled skin that does not seem to weather, and seems destined to be one of those women who was never really young and then never really ages. Many of her roles involve women it is not safe to scorn. Magimel won his best actor award for standing up to her force. He doesn't play the standard movie character we'd expect in this role (the immature twentysomething boy who flowers under the tutelage of an older woman). Instead, he's a capable, confident young man who thinks he has met hidden wildness and then finds it is madness. The movie seems even more highly charged because it is wrapped in an elegant package. These are smart people. They talk about music as if they understand it, they duel with their minds as well as their bodies, and Haneke photographs them in two kinds of spaces: Sometimes they're in elegant, formal conservatory settings, and at other times in frankly vulgar places where quick release can be snatched from strangers. There is an old saying: Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. "The Piano Teacher" has a more ominous lesson: Be especially careful with someone who has asked for you. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] JASON X / 1/2* (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:19 GMT JASON X / 1/2* (R) April 26, 2002 Jason Voorhees: Kane Hodder Rowan: Lexa Doig Kay-Em 14: Lisa Ryder Tsunaron: Chuck Campbell Professor Lowe: Jonathan Potts Sergeant Brodski: Peter Mensah New Line Cinema presents a film directed by Jim Isaac. Written by Todd Farmer. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for strong horror violence, language and some sexuality). BY ROGER EBERT This sucks on so many levels. --Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. Only its title works. And I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the name "Jason X" is Copyrighted (c)2002, World Wrestling Federation, and that Jason's real name is Dwayne Johnson. No, wait, that was last week's movie. "Jason X" is technically "Friday the 13th, Part 10." It takes place centuries in the future, when Earth is a wasteland and a spaceship from Earth II has returned to the Camp Crystal Lake Research Facility and discovered two cryogenically frozen bodies, one of them holding a machete and wearing a hockey mask. The other body belongs to Rowan (Lexa Doig), a researcher who is thawed out and told it is now the year 2455: "That's 455 years in the future!" Assuming that the opening scenes take place now, you do the math and come up with 453 years in the future. The missing two years are easily explained: I learn from the Classic Horror Reviews Web site that the movie was originally scheduled to be released on Halloween 2000, and was then bumped to March 2001, summer 2001 and Halloween 2001 before finally opening on the 16th anniversary of Chernobyl, another famous meltdown. The movie is a low-rent retread of the "Alien" pictures, with a monster attacking a spaceship crew; one of the characters, Dallas, is even named in homage to the earlier series. The movie's premise: Jason, who has a "unique ability to regenerate lost and damaged tissue," comes back to life and goes on a rampage, killing the ship's plentiful supply of sex-crazed students and staff members. Once you know that the ship contains many dark corners and that the crew members wander off alone as stupidly as the campers as Camp Crystal Lake did summer after summer, you know as much about the plot as the writers do. With "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" opening in mid-May, there's been a lot of talk lately about how good computer-generated special effects have become. On the basis of the effects in "Jason X" and the (much more entertaining) "Scorpion King," we could also chat about how bad they are getting. Perhaps audiences do not require realistic illusions, but simply the illusion of realistic illusions. Shabby special effects can have their own charm. Consider a scene where the space ship is about to dock with Solaris, a gigantic mother ship, or a city in space, or whatever. Various controls go haywire because Jason has thrown people through them, and the ship fails to find its landing slot and instead crashes into Solaris, slicing off the top of a geodesic dome and crunching the sides of skyscrapers (why Solaris has a city-style skyline in outer space I do not presume to ask). This sequence is hilariously unconvincing. But never mind. Consider this optimistic dialogue by Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts), the greedy top scientist who wants to cash in on Jason: "Everyone OK? We just over-shot it. We'll turn around." Uh, huh. We're waiting for the reaction from Solaris Air Traffic Control, when a dull thud echoes through the ship, and the characters realize Solaris has just exploded. Fine, but how could they hear it? Students of "Alien" will know that in space, no one can hear you blow up. The characters follow the usual rules from Camp Crystal Lake, which require the crew members to split up, go down dark corridors by themselves, and call out each other's names with the sickening certainty that they will not reply. Characters are skewered on giant screws, cut in half, punctured by swords, get their heads torn off, and worse. A veteran pilot remains calm: "You weren't alive during the Microsoft conflict. We were beating each other with our own severed limbs." There is one good effects shot, in which a scientist's face is held in super-cooled liquid until it freezes and then smashed into smithereens against a wall. There is also an interesting transformation, as the on-board regenerator restores Jason and even supplies him with superhero armor and a new face to replace his hockey mask and ratty Army surplus duds. I left the movie knowing one thing for sure: There will be a "Jason XI"--or, given the IQ level of the series, "Jason X, Part 2." Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:35 GMT LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13) April 26, 2002 Lanie Kerrigan: Angelina Jolie Deborah Connors: Stockard Channing Pete: Edward Burns Andrea: Melissa Errico Prophet Jack: Tony Shalhoub Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Stephen Herek. Written John Scott Shepherd and Dana Stevens. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexual content, brief violence and language). BY ROGER EBERT Someone once said, live every day as if it will be your last. Not just someone once said that. Everyone once said it, over and over again, although "Life or Something Like It" thinks it's a fresh insight. This is an ungainly movie, ill-fitting, with its elbows sticking out where the knees should be. To quote another ancient proverb, A camel is a horse designed by a committee. "Life or Something Like It" is the movie designed by the camel. The movie stars Angelina Jolie as Lanie Kerrigan, a bubbly blond Seattle TV reporter whose ignorance of TV is equaled only by the movie's. I don't know how the filmmakers got their start, but they obviously didn't come up through television. Even a viewer knows more than this. Example: Sexy Pete the cameraman (Edward Burns) wants to play a trick on Lanie, so he fiddles with her microphone during a stand-up report from the street, and her voice comes out like Mickey Mouse's squeak--like when you talk with helium in your mouth. Everybody laughs at her. Except, see, your voice comes out of your body, and when it goes through the air, it sounds like your voice to the people standing around. When it goes into the microphone, it kind of stays inside there, and is recorded on videotape, which is not simultaneously played back live to a street crowd. Lanie dreams of going to New York to work on "AM USA," the network show. She gets her big invitation after attracting "national attention" by covering a strike and leading the workers in singing "Can't Get No Satisfaction" while she dances in front of them, during a tiny lapse in journalistic objectivity. Meanwhile, she is afraid she will die, because a mad street person named Prophet Jack has predicted the Seattle team will win, there will be a hailstorm tomorrow morning, and Lanie will die next Thursday. They win, it hails, Lanie believes she will die. This leads to a romantic crisis. She is engaged to Cal Cooper (Christian Kane), a pitcher with the Seattle Mariners. He's in the field, he looks lovingly at her, she smiles encouragingly, the pitch is thrown, the opposing team batter hits a home run, and she jumps up and applauds. If he sees that, she may not last until Thursday. Meanwhile, she apparently hates Pete the sexy cameraman, although when Cal is out of town and she thinks she's going to die, they make love, and then we find out, belatedly, they've made love before. The screenplay keeps doubling back to add overlooked info. Cal comes back to town and she wants a heart-to-heart, but instead he takes her to the ballpark, where the friendly groundskeeper (who hangs around all night in every baseball movie for just such an opportunity) turns on the lights so Cal can throw her a few pitches. Is she moved by this loving gesture? Nope: "Your cure for my emotional crisis is batting practice?" This is the only turning-on-the-lights-in-the-empty-ballpark scene in history that ends unhappily. Lanie and Pete the sexy cameraman become lovers, until Pete whipsaws overnight into an insulted, wounded man who is hurt because she wants to go to New York instead of stay in Seattle with him and his young son. This about-face exists only so they can break up so they can get back together again later. It also inspires a scene in the station's equipment room, where Jolie tests the theoretical limits of hysterical overacting. Lanie's "AM USA" debut involves interviewing the network's biggest star, a Barbara Walters-type (Stockard Channing), on the star's 25th anniversary. So earth-shaking is this interview, the "AM USA" anchor breathlessly announces, "We welcome our viewers on the West Coast for this special live edition!" It's 7 a.m. in New York. That makes it 4 a.m. on the West Coast. If you lived in Seattle, would you set your alarm to 4 a.m. to see Barbara Walters plugging her network special? Lanie begins the interview, pauses, and is silent for 30 seconds while deeply thinking. She finally asks, "Was it worth everything?" What? "Giving up marriage and children for a career?" Tears roll down Channing's cheeks. Pandemonium. Great interview. Network president wants to hire Lanie on the spot. Has never before heard anyone asked, "Was it worth it?" The question of whether a woman can have both a career and a family is controversial in "Life or Something Like It"--even when posed by Ms. Jolie, who successfully combines tomb-raiding with Billy Bob Thornton. I want to close with the mystery of Lanie's father, who is always found stationed in an easy chair in his living room, where he receives visits from his daughters, who feel guilty because since Mom died they have not been able to communicate with Dad, who, apparently as a result, just sits there waiting for his daughters to come back and feel guilty some more. Eventually there's an uptick in his mood, and he admits he has always been proud of Lanie and will "call in sick" so he can watch Lanie on "AM USA." Until then I thought he was sick. Maybe he's just tired because he's on the night shift, which is why he would be at work at 4 a.m. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:43 GMT THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13) April 26, 2002 Marion Davies: Kirsten Dunst William Randolph Hearst: Edward Herrmann Thomas Ince: Cary Elwes Charlie Chaplin: Eddie Izzard Louella Parsons: Jennifer Tilly Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Written by Steven Peros. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexuality, a scene of violence and brief drug use). BY ROGER EBERT William Randolph Hearst did, or did not, get away with murder on board his private yacht Oneida on Nov. 15, 1924. If he did, there is no question he was powerful enough to cover it up. Hearst was the carnivorous media tycoon of the age, proprietor of newspapers, magazines, radio stations, wire services, movie production companies, a private castle, and his mistress, Marion Davies, an actress of great but perhaps not exclusive charms. He was above the law not so much because of clout or bribery but because of awe; the law enforcement officials of the day were so keenly aware of their inferior social status that they lacked the nerve to approach him. The silent movies of the time are filled with scenes in which cops arrest a millionaire, discover who he is, respectfully tip their hats to him, and apologize. On that day in 1924, the Hollywood producer Thomas Ince possibly died, or was murdered, on board the Oneida. Or perhaps not. According to one story, he was shot dead by Hearst through an unfortunate misunderstanding; Hearst mistook him for Charlie Chaplin, and thought Chaplin was having an affair with Davies. Other theories say Hearst accidentally stuck Ince with a hat pin, precipitating a heart attack. Or that Ince drank some bad rotgut. There is even the possibility that Ince died at home. There was no autopsy, so the official cause of death was never determined. No guests on the yacht were ever questioned; indeed, no one can agree about who was on the yacht during its cruise. In Hollywood at the time, whispers about Ince's death and Hearst's involvement were easily heard, and the story told in Peter Bogdanovich's "The Cat's Meow" is, the film tells us, "the whisper heard most often." Bogdanovich is not much interested in the scandal as a scandal. He uses it more as a prism through which to view Hollywood in the 1920s, when the new medium had generated such wealth and power that its giants, like Chaplin, were gods in a way no later stars could ever be. Hearst (Edward Herrmann) liked to act the beneficent host, and on the Oneida for that cruise were the studio head Ince (Cary Elwes), the stars Davies (Kirsten Dunst) and Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), the British wit Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley), and an ambitious young gossip columnist named Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly). There were also various stuffed shirts and their wives, and a tame society doctor. In this company Hearst is an insecure loner, an innocent barely the equal of the life of sin he has chosen for himself. He has the Oneida bugged with hidden microphones, and scarcely has time to join his guests because he needs to hurry away and eavesdrop on what they say about him in his absence. Davies knows about the microphones and knows all about Willie; she was a loyal mistress who loved her man and stood by him to the end. Whether she did have an affair with Chaplin is often speculated. According to this scenario, she may have, and Willie finds one of her brooches in Chaplin's stateroom (after tearing it apart in a scene mirroring Charles Foster Kane's famous destruction of Susan's bedroom in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane"). Bogdanovich has an exact way of conveying the forced and metronomic gaiety on the yacht, where guests are theoretically limited to one drink before dinner, Davies has to order the band to play the Charleston to cover awkward silences, every guest has a personal agenda, and at night, as guests creep from one stateroom to another and deck planks creak, they seem to be living in an English country house mystery--"Gosford Yacht." Apart from its theory about the mistaken death of Ince and its cover-up, the movie's most intriguing theory is that Parsons witnessed it, which might explain her lifetime contract with the Hearst papers. In the exquisite wording of a veiled blackmail threat, she tells the tycoon: "We're at the point in our careers where we both need real security." Since she was making peanuts and he was one of the richest men in the world, one can only admire the nuance of "our careers." The film is darkly atmospheric, with Herrmann quietly suggesting the sadness and obsession beneath Hearst's forced avuncular chortles. Dunst is as good, in her way, as Dorothy Comingore in "Citizen Kane" in showing a woman who is more loyal and affectionate than her lover deserves. Lumley's zingers as Glyn cut right through the hypocritical grease. Tilly, we suspect, has the right angle on Parsons' chutzpah. There is a detail easy to miss toward the end of the film that suggests as well as anything what power Hearst had. After the society doctor ascertains that Ince, still alive, has a bullet in his brain, Hearst orders the yacht to moor at San Diego, and then dispatches the dying producer by private ambulance--not to a local hospital, but to his home in Los Angeles! Hearst is on the phone to the future widow, suggesting a cover story, long before the pathetic victim arrives home. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:50 GMT WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R) April 26, 2002 Cal: Billy Crudup Dulcie: Julianne Moore Carl: Cleavant Derricks Richard: David Keith Jack: James LeGros ThinkFilm presents a film written and directed by Bart Freundlich. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated R (for language and some sexuality). BY ROGER EBERT Cal drags a woman out of a bar to look at the stars and listen to his rants about the universe. She pulls loose and asks, "Do you get away with this crap because you look like that?" Later in the film two kids will ask him if he's a movie star. He's good-looking, in a morose, tormented way, but it's more than that; Cal is charismatic, and strangers are fascinated by his aura of doom and emptiness. There is another new movie, "About a Boy," with a hero who complains that he's a "blank." The dialogue is needed in "World Traveler." Although others are fascinated by Cal's loneliness, with his drinking, his lack of a plan, his superficial charm, he is a blank. Early in the film he walks out on his marriage, on the third birthday of his son. Taking the family station wagon, he drives west across the United States and into the emptiness of his soul. Cal is played by Billy Crudup, one of the best actors in the movies, but there needs to be something there for an actor to play, and Cal is like a moony poet who embraces angst as its own reward. Throwing back Jack Daniels in the saloons of the night, he doesn't have a complaint so much as celebrate one. When we discover that his own father walked out on Cal and his mother, that reads like a motivation but doesn't play like one. It seems too neat--the Creative Writing explanation for his misery. The film, written and directed by Bart Freundlich, is a road picture, with Cal meeting and leaving a series of other lonely souls without ever achieving closure. It's as if he glimpses them through the windows of his passing car. There's a young hitchhiker who implies an offer of sex, which he doesn't accept. A construction worker named Carl (Cleavant Derricks) who wants friendship and thinks Cal offers it, but is mistaken. A high school classmate (James LeGros, bitingly effective) who provides us with evidence that Cal has been an emotional hit-and-run artist for a long time. Finally there is Dulcie (Julianne Moore), who is drunk and passed out in a bar. Cal throws her over his shoulder and hauls her back to his motel room, to save her from arrest. She involves him in her own madness. Both sense they're acting out interior dramas from obscure emotional needs, and there is a slo-mo scene on a carnival ride that plays like a parody of a good time. Nelson Algren advised, "Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are greater than your own," and Cal would be wise to heed him. There are moments of sudden truth in the film; Freundlich, who also made "The Myth of Fingerprints" (1997), about an almost heroically depressed family at Thanksgiving, can create and write characters, even if he doesn't always know where to take them. The construction buddy Carl and his wife (Mary McCormack) spring into focus with a few lines of dialogue. Cal persuades Carl, a recovering alcoholic, to get drunk with him, and help him pick up two women in a bar. The next day Carl says his wife is angry at him, and brings her to life with one line of dialogue: "She's mad about the drinking--and the objectification of women." Later, drunk again, Cal meets Carl's wife, who says, "In all the years I've been married to Carl, I've never heard him talk about anyone the way he talks about you." She loves Carl, we see, so much she is moved that he has found a friend. But then Cal tries to make a pass, and the wife looks cold and level at him: "You're not his friend." Cal isn't anybody's friend. Near the end of his journey, in the Western mountains, he meets his father (David Keith). The role is thankless, but Keith does everything possible, and more, to keep the father from being as much a cipher as the son. One senses in "World Traveler" and in his earlier film that Freundlich bears a grievous but obscure complaint against fathers, and circles it obsessively, without making contact. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BEHIND THE SUN / ** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:58 GMT BEHIND THE SUN / ** (PG-13) April 19, 2002 Father: Jose Dumont Tonio: Rodrigo Santoro Mother: Rita Assemany Pacu: Ravi Ramos Lacerda Salustiano: Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos Miramax Films presents a film directed by Walter Salles. Written by Salles, Karim Ainouz and Sergio Machado. Based on the book Broken April by Ismail Kadare. Running time: 91 minutes. In Portuguese with English subtitles. Rated PG-13 (for some violence and a scene of sexuality). Opening today at Landmark Century. BY ROGER EBERT 'B ehind the Sun" describes a blood feud elevated to the dignity of tragedy. It takes place in a rural area of Brazil, but it could be set instead in the Middle East, in Bosnia, in India, in Africa, in any of those places where people kill each other because of who their parents were. Religion, which is often cited as a justification for these killings, is just a smoke screen for tribalism. The killings spring out of a universal human tendency to dislike anyone who is not like we are. The movie takes place in 1910. Two families live on either side of a cane field. The Ferreiras are richer, live in a sprawling villa, have an extended family. The Breves family is poorer, humble, hard-working. Since time immemorial there has been a feud between these two families, springing from some long-forgotten disagreement over land. Over time a set of ground rules has grown up: First a Ferreira man (or a Breves man) kills a Breves (or a Ferreira) man, and then the tables are turned. If it only amounted to that, all the Breves and Ferreiras would be dead, or one side would have won. Certain customs somewhat slow the pace of the killing. When someone has been killed, his blood-stained shirt is left out in the sun to dry, and there is a truce until the red has turned yellow. Despite the predictable timetable that would seem to operate, the next victim is somehow always unprepared, as we see when a young Breves stalks his quarry one night after a shirt has turned yellow. We meet Pacu, "the Kid" (Ravi Ramos Lacerda), youngest son of the Breves family, who knows that since his adored older brother Tonio (Rodrigo Santoro) has killed a Ferreira, it is only a matter of time until the blood fades and Tonio is killed. While the ominous waiting period continues, a troupe of itinerant circus performers passes through, and the Kid meets the ringmaster and his sultry fire-eating star. They give him a picture book about the sea, which, wouldn't you know, encourages him to dream about a world different from the one he knows. The circus itself offers an alternative vision, not that the cheerless sugar cane feud doesn't make anything look preferable. Tonio meets the fire-breather and is thunderstruck by love, and there is the possibility that, yes, he might run away with the circus. More than this I dare not reveal, except to hint that the age-old fate of the two families must play out under the implacable sun. "Behind the Sun" is a good-looking movie, directed by Walter Salles, who was much praised for his 1999 Oscar-nominated "Central Station," also about a young boy whose life is scarred by the cruelty of his elders. It has some of the simplicity and starkness of classical tragedy, but what made me impatient was its fascination with the macho bloodlust of the two families. Since neither family has evolved to the point where it can see the futility of killing and the pointlessness of their deadly ritual, it was hard for me to keep from feeling they were getting what they deserved. Sure, I hoped Tonio would get the girl and the Kid would see the ocean, but these are limited people and we can care about them only if we buy into their endless cycle of revenge and reprisal. After a certain point, no one is right and no one is wrong, both sides have boundless grievances, and it's the audience that wants to run away with the circus. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] ENIGMA / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:22:06 GMT ENIGMA / *** (R) April 19, 2002 Tom Jericho: Dougray Scott Hester Wallace: Kate Winslet Wigram: Jeremy Northam Claire Romilly: Saffron Burrows "Puck" Pukowski: Nikolaj Coster Waldau Logie: Tom Hollander Admiral Trowbridge: Corin Redgrave Cave: Matthew MacFadyen Manhattan Pictures International presents a film directed by Michael Apted. Written by Tom Stoppard, based on the novel by Robert Harris. Running time: 117 minutes. Rated R (for a sex scene and language). Opening today at Landmark Century. BY ROGER EBERT World War II may have been won by our side because of what British code-breakers accomplished at a countryside retreat named Bletchley Park. There they broke, and broke again, the German code named "Enigma," which was thought to be unbreakable, and was used by the Nazis to direct their submarine convoys in the North Atlantic. Enigma was decoded with the help of a machine, and the British had captured one, but the machine alone was not enough. My notes, scribbled in the dark, indicate the machine had 4,000 million trillion different positions--a whole lot, anyway--and the mathematicians and cryptologists at Bletchley used educated guesses and primitive early computers to try to penetrate a message to the point where it could be tested on Enigma. For those who get their history from the movies, "Enigma" will be puzzling, since "U-571" (2000) indicates Americans captured an Enigma machine from a German submarine in 1944. That sub is on display here at the Museum of Science and Industry, but no Enigma machine was involved. An Enigma machine was obtained, not by Americans but by the British ship HMS Bulldog, when it captured U-110 on May 9, 1941. Purists about historical accuracy in films will nevertheless notice that "Enigma" is not blameless; it makes no mention of Alan Turing, the genius of British code-breaking and a key theoretician of computers, who was as responsible as anyone for breaking the Enigma code. Turing was a homosexual, eventually hounded into suicide by British laws, and is replaced here by a fictional and resolutely heterosexual hero named Tom Jericho (Dougray Scott). And just as well, since the hounds of full disclosure who dogged "A Beautiful Mind" would no doubt be asking why "Enigma" contained no details about Turing's sex life. The movie, directed by the superb Michael Apted, is based on a literate, absorbing thriller by Robert Harris, who portrays Bletchley as a hothouse of intrigue in which Britain's most brilliant mathematicians worked against the clock to break German codes and warn North Atlantic convoys. As the film opens, the Germans have changed their code again, making it even more fiendishly difficult to break (from my notes: "150 million million million ways of doing it," but alas I did not note what "it" was). Tom Jericho, sent home from Bletchley after a nervous breakdown, has been summoned back to the enclave because even if he is a wreck, maybe his brilliance can be of help. Why did Jericho have a breakdown? Not because of a mathematical stalemate, but because he was overthrown by Claire Romilly (Saffron Burrows), the beautiful Bletchley colleague he loved, who disappeared mysteriously without saying goodbye. Back on the job, he grows chummy with Claire's former roommate Hester Wallace (Kate Winslet), who may have clues about Claire even though she doesn't realize it. Then, in a subtle, oblique way, Tom and Hester begin to get more than chummy. All the time Wigram (Jeremy Northam), an intelligence operative, is keeping an eye on Tom and Hester, because he thinks they may know more than they admit about Claire--and because Claire may have been passing secrets to the Germans. Whether any of these speculations are fruitful, I will allow you to discover. What I like about the movie is its combination of suspense and intelligence. If it does not quite explain exactly how decryption works (how could it?), it at least gives us a good idea of how decrypters work, and we understand how crucial Bletchley was--so crucial its existence was kept a secret for 30 years. When the fact that the British had broken Enigma finally became known, histories of the war had to be rewritten; a recent biography of Churchill suggests, for example, that when he strode boldly on the rooftop of the Admiralty in London, it was because secret Enigma messages assured him there would be no air raids that night. The British have a way of not wanting to seem to care very much. It seasons their thrillers. American heroes are stalwart, forthright and focused; Brits like understatement and sly digs. The tension between Tom Jericho and Wigram is all the more interesting because both characters seem to be acting in their own little play some of the time, and are as interested in the verbal fencing as in the underlying disagreement. It is a battle of style. You can see similar fencing personalities in the world of Graham Greene, and of course it is the key to James Bond. Kate Winslet is very good here, plucky, wearing sensible shoes, with the wrong haircut--and then, seen in the right light, as a little proletarian sex bomb. She moves between dowdy and sexy so easily, it must mystify even her. Claire, when she is seen, is portrayed by Saffron Burrows as the kind of woman any sensible man knows cannot be kept in his net--which is why she attracts a masochistic romantic like Tom Jericho, who sets himself up for his own betrayal. If it is true (and it is) that "Pearl Harbor" is the story of how the Japanese staged a sneak attack on an American love triangle, at least "Enigma" is not about how the Nazis devised their code to undermine a British love triangle. That is true not least because the British place puzzle-solving at least on a par with sex, and like to conduct their affairs while on (not as a substitute for) duty. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] LUCKY BREAK / *** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:22:18 GMT LUCKY BREAK / *** (PG-13) April 19, 2002 Jimmy: James Nesbitt Annabel: Olivia Williams Cliff: Timothy Spall Roger: Bill Nighy Rudy: Lennie James Graham Mortimer: Christopher Plummer Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Peter Cattaneo. Written by Ronan Bennett. Running time: 109 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for brief strong language and some sexual references). BY ROGER EBERT "Lucky Break" is the new film by Peter Cattaneo, whose "The Full Monty" is the little British comedy that added a useful expression to the language. This movie is set in prison but uses much the same formula: A group of guys without much hope decide to band together and put on a show. This time they stage a musical comedy written by the prison warden, which means that instead of stripping, they perform in costume. I am not sure if this is the half monty, or no monty at all. British prisons are no doubt depressing and violent places in real life, but in "Lucky Break," the recent "Borstal Boy" and the summer 2001 movie "Greenfingers," they are not only benign places with benevolent governors, but provide remarkable access to attractive young women. Jimmy, the hero of "Lucky Break," finds abundant time to fall in love with Annabel (Olivia Williams), the prison anger-management counselor. Brendan Behan, the hero of the biopic "Borstal Boy," has a youthful romance with Liz, the warden's daughter. And in "Greenfingers," which is about a prize-winning team of prison gardeners, one of the green-thumbsmen falls in love with the daughter of a famous TV garden lady. Only in these movies is prison a great place for a wayward lad to go in order to meet the right girl. "Lucky Break" stars James Nesbitt and Lennie James as Jimmy and Rudy, partners in an ill-conceived bank robbery that lands them both in prison. The prison governor (Christopher Plummer) is an amateur playwright who has written a musical based on the life of Admiral Nelson, whose statue provides a congenial resting place for pigeons in Trafalgar Square. The lads agree to join in a prison production of the musical after learning that the play will be staged in the old prison chapel--which they consider the ideal place from which to launch a prison break. Much of the humor of the film comes from the production of "Nelson, the Musical," with book and lyrics by the invaluable actor and comic writer Stephen Fry; we hear a lot of the songs, see enough of scenes to get an idea of the awfulness, and hardly notice as the prison break segues into a movie about opening night and backstage romance. I am not sure that the average prisoner has unlimited opportunities to spend time alone with beautiful young anger-management counselors, warden's daughters or assistant TV gardeners, but in "Lucky Break," so generous is the private time that Jimmy and Annabel even share a candlelight dinner. To be sure, a can of sardines is all that's served, but it's the thought that counts. The key supporting role is by Timothy Spall, sort of a plump, British Steve Buscemi--a sad sack with a mournful face and the air of always trying to cheer himself up. What keeps him going is his love for his young son; this whole subplot is more serious and touching than the rest of the film, although it leads to a scene perhaps more depressing than a comedy should be asked to sustain. The climax of the film, as in "The Full Monty," is the long-awaited stage performance, which goes on as various subplots solve themselves, or not, backstage. There is not much here that comes as a blinding plot revelation, but the movie has a raffish charm and good-hearted characters, and like "The Full Monty" it makes good use of the desperation beneath the comedy. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] MURDER BY NUMBERS / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:22:31 GMT MURDER BY NUMBERS / *** (R) April 19, 2002 Cassie Mayweather: Sandra Bullock Richard Haywood: Ryan Gosling Justin Pendleton: Michael Pitt Sam Kennedy: Ben Chaplin Lisa: Agnes Bruckner Ray: Chris Penn Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Barbet Schroeder. Written by Tony Gayton. Running time: 119 minutes. Rated R (for violence, language, a sex scene and brief drug use). BY ROGER EBERT Richard and Justin, the high school killers in "Murder by Numbers," may not have heard of Leopold and Loeb, or seen Hitchcock's "Rope," or studied any of the other fictional versions ("Compulsion," "Swoon") of the infamous murder pact between two brainy and amoral young men. But they're channeling it. "Murder by Numbers" crosses Leopold/Loeb with a police procedural and adds an interesting touch: Instead of toying with the audience, it toys with the characters. We have information they desperately desire, and we watch them dueling in misdirection. The movie stars Sandra Bullock as Cassie Mayweather, a veteran detective, experienced enough to trust her hunches and resist the obvious answers. Ben Chaplin is Sam Kennedy, her by-the-book partner, the kind of cop who gets an A for every step of his investigation but ends up with the wrong conclusion. Paired against them are Richard Haywood and Justin Pendleton (Ryan Gosling, from "The Believer," and Michael Pitt, from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch"). These are two brainy high school kids, fascinated as Leopold and Loeb were by the possibility of proving their superiority by committing the perfect murder. Their plan: Pick a victim completely at random, so that there is no link between corpse and killers, and leave behind no clues. The film opens with the suggestion of a suicide pact between the two teenagers, who face each other, holding revolvers to their heads, in a crumbling gothic building so improbably close to the edge of a seaside cliff that we intuit someone is going to be dangling over it by the end of the film. Bullock's Cassie is the central character, a good cop but a damaged human being, whose past holds some kind of fearsome grip on her present. Cassie and Sam are assigned to a creepy case; the body of a middle-aged female has been found in a wooded area, and close analysis of clues (hair, strands from a rug) seems to lead back to a suspect. Sam is happy to follow the clues to their logical conclusion. Cassie isn't so sure, and a chance meeting with one of the young sociopaths leads to a suspicion: "Something's not right with that kid." We learn a lot about police work in "Murder by Numbers," and there's a kind of fascination in seeing the jigsaw puzzle fall into place, especially since the audience holds some (but not all) of the key pieces. Many of the best scenes involve an intellectual and emotional duel between the two young men, who seem to have paused on the brink of becoming lovers and decided to sublimate that passion into an arrogant crime. Richard and Justin are smart--Justin smarter in an intellectual way, Richard better at manipulating others. The movie wisely reserves details of who did what in the killing, and why. These are affluent kids with absent parents, who are their own worst enemies because their arrogance leads them to play games with the cops to show how smart they are. They'd be better off posing as vacant-headed slackers. It is Cassie's intuition that the boys are inviting her attention, are turned on by the nearness of capture. Meanwhile, of course, her partner and the brass at the station are eager for a quick solution. A janitor is the obvious suspect? Arrest the janitor. The movie has been directed by the versatile Barbet Schroeder, who alternates between powerful personal films ("Our Lady of the Assassins") and skillful thrillers ("Single White Female"). When the two strands cross you get one-of-a-kind films like "Reversal of Fortune" and "Barfly." After the semi-documentary freedom and scary Colombian locations of "Our Lady of the Assassins," here's a movie which he directs as an exercise in craft--only occasionally letting his mordant humor peer through, as in an inexplicable scene where Cassie is bitten by a monkey. Bullock does a good job here of working against her natural likability, creating a character you'd like to like, and could like, if she weren't so sad, strange and turned in upon herself. She throws herself into police work not so much because she's dedicated as because she needs the distraction, needs to keep busy and be good to assure herself of her worth. As she draws the net closer, and runs into more danger and more official opposition, the movie more or less helplessly starts thinking to itself about that cliff above the sea, but at least the climax shows us that Bullock can stay in character no matter what. @photo.caption:Ben Chaplin and Sandra Bullock play detectives investigating the seemingly inexplicable death of a middle-age woman in Barbet Schroeder's "Murder by Numbers.'' -- Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING / *** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:22:43 GMT MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING / *** (PG) April 19, 2002 Toula Portokalos: Nia Vardalos Ian Miller: John Corbett Maria: Lainie Kazan Gus: Michael Constantine Nikki: Gia Carides Nick: Louis Mandylor Angelo: Joey Fatone Rodney Miller: Bruce Gray Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Joel Zwick. Written by Nia Vardalos. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG.(for sensuality and language). BY ROGER EBERT Everyone in this movie looks like they could be a real person. The romance involves not impossibly attractive people, but a 30-year-old woman who looks OK when she pulls herself out of her Frump Phase, and a vegetarian high school teacher who urgently needs the services of Supercuts. Five minutes into the film, I relaxed, knowing it was set in the real world, and not in the Hollywood alternative universe where Julia Roberts can't get a date. "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is narrated by Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos), who, like all Greek women, she says, was put upon this earth for three purposes: to marry a Greek man, to have Greek children, and to feed everyone until the day she dies. Toula is still single, and works in the family restaurant (Dancing Zorbas), where, as she explains, she is not a waitress, but a "seating hostess." One day a guy with the spectacularly non-Greek name of Ian Miller (John Corbett) walks in, and she knows instinctively that marriage is thinkable. The movie is warm-hearted in the way a movie can be when it knows its people inside out. Watching it, I was reminded of Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding," about an Indian wedding. Both cultures place great emphasis on enormous extended families, enormous extended weddings, and enormous extended wedding feasts. Nia Vardalos, who not only stars but based the screenplay on her own one-woman play, obviously has great affection for her big Greek family, and a little exasperation, too--and who wouldn't, with a father who walks around with a spray jar of Windex because he is convinced it will cure anything? Or a mother who explains, "When I was your age, we didn't have food." Vardalos was an actress at Chicago's Second City when she wrote the play. The way the story goes, it was seen by Rita Wilson, a Greek-American herself, and she convinced her husband, Tom Hanks, that they had to produce it. So they did, making a small treasure of human comedy. The movie is set in Chicago but was filmed in Toronto--too bad, because the dating couple therefore doesn't have a cheezeborger at the Billy Goat. As the film opens, Toula the heroine is single at 30 and therefore a failure. Ian Miller causes her heart to leap up in love and desire, and Ian likes her, too. Really likes her. This isn't one of those formula pictures where it looks like he's going to dump her. There's enough to worry about when the families meet. "No one in our family has ever gone out with a non-Greek," Toula warns him uneasily, and indeed her parents (Lainie Kazan and Michael Constantine) regard Ian like a lesser life form. The movie is pretty straightforward: Ian and Toula meet, they date, they bashfully discover they like one another, the families uneasily coexist, the wedding becomes inevitable, and it takes place (when Ian's mother brings a Bundt cake to the wedding, no one has the slightest idea what it is). One key shot shows the church, with the bride's side jammed, and the groom's handful of WASP relatives making a pathetic show in their first four rows. Toula explains to Ian that she has 27 first cousins, and at a pre-nuptial party, she even introduces some of them: "Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nicky--and Gus." The underlying story of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" has been played out countless times as America's immigrants have intermarried. If the lovers have understanding (or at least reluctantly flexible) parents, love wins the day and the melting pot bubbles. This is nicely illustrated by Toula's father, Gus. He specializes in finding the Greek root for any word (even "kimono"), and delivers a toast in which he explains that "Miller" goes back to the Greek word for apple, and "Portokalos" is based on the Greek word for oranges, and so, he concludes triumphantly, "in the end, we're all fruits." Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE LAST WALTZ / *** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:22:52 GMT THE LAST WALTZ / *** (PG) April 19, 2002 FeaturingThe Band, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Robbie Robertson, the Staples, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Wood, Neil Young and Martin Scorsese.United Artists presents a concert documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. Running time: 117 minutes. Rated PG. BY ROGER EBERT I wonder if the sadness comes across on the CD. The music probably sounds happy. But the performers, seen on screen, seem curiously morose, exhausted, played out. Recently, I was at a memorial concert for the late tenor sax man Spike Robinson, and the musicians--jazz and big band veterans--were cheerful, filled with joy, happy to be there. Most of the musicians in "The Last Waltz" are, on average, 25 years younger than Spike's friends, but they drag themselves onstage like exhausted veterans of wrong wars. The rock documentary was filmed by Martin Scorsese at a farewell concert given on Thanksgiving Day 1976 by The Band, which had been performing since 1960, in recent years as the backup band for Bob Dylan. Now the film is back in a 25th anniversary restoration. "Sixteen years on the road is long enough," says Robbie Robertson, the group's leader. "Twenty years is unthinkable." There is a weight and gravity in his words that suggests he seriously doubts if he could survive four more years. Drugs are possibly involved. Memoirs recalling the filming report that cocaine was everywhere backstage. The overall tenor of the documentary suggests survivors at the ends of their ropes. They dress in dark, cheerless clothes, hide behind beards, hats and shades, pound out rote performances of old hits, don't seem to smile much at their music or each other. There is the whole pointless road warrior mystique, of hard-living men whose daily duty it is to play music and get wasted. They look tired of it. Not all of them. The women (Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris) seem immune, although what Mitchell's song is about I have no clue, and Harris is filmed in another time and place. Visitors like the Staple Singers are open-faced and happy. Eric Clapton is in the right place and time. Muddy Waters is on sublime autopilot. Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads a bad poem, badly, but seems pleased to be reading it. Neil Diamond seems puzzled to find himself in this company, grateful to be invited. But then look at the faces of Neil Young or Van Morrison. Study Robertson, whose face is kind and whose smile comes easily, but who does not project a feeling of celebration for the past or anticipation of the future. These are not musicians at the top of their art, but laborers on the last day of the job. Look in their eyes. Read their body language. "The Last Waltz" has inexplicably been called the greatest rock documentary of all time. Certainly that would be "Woodstock," which heralds the beginning of the era which The Band gathered to bury. Among 1970s contemporaries of The Band, one senses joy in the various Rolling Stones documentaries, in Chuck Berry's "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll" and in concert films by the Temptations or Rod Stewart. Not here. In "The Last Waltz," we have musicians who seem to have bad memories. Who are hanging on. Scorsese's direction is mostly limited to closeups and medium shots of performances; he ignores the audience. The movie was made at the end of a difficult period in his own life, and at a particularly hard time (the filming coincided with his work on "New York, New York"). This is not a record of serene men, filled with nostalgia, happy to be among friends. At the end, Bob Dylan himself comes on. One senses little connection between Dylan and The Band. One also wonders what he was thinking as he chose that oversized white cowboy hat, a hat so absurd that during his entire performance I could scarcely think of anything else. It is the haberdashery equivalent of an uplifted middle finger. The music probably sounds fine on a CD. Certainly it is well-rehearsed. But the overall sense of the film is of good riddance to a bad time. Even references to groupies inspire creases of pain on the faces of the rememberers: The sex must have been as bad as anything else. Watching this film, the viewer with mercy will be content to allow the musicians to embrace closure, and will not demand an encore. Yet I give it three stars? Yes, because the film is such a revealing document of a time. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE SCORPION KING / **1/2 (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:06 GMT THE SCORPION KING / **1/2 (PG-13) April 19, 2002 Mathayus: The Rock Memnon: Steven Brand Balthazar: Michael Clarke Duncan The Sorceress: Kelly Hu Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Chuck Russell. Written by Stephen Sommers, William Osborne and David Hayter. Running time: 94 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of action violence and some sensuality). BY ROGER EBERT Where do you think you are going with my horse? To Gomorrah. Nothing we can say will stop him. --Dialogue in "The Scorpion King" A nd a wise move, too, because "The Scorpion King" is set "thousands of years before the Pyramids," so property values in Gomorrah were a good value for anyone willing to buy and hold. Here is a movie that embraces its goofiness like a Get Out of Jail Free card. The plot is recycled out of previous recycling jobs, the special effects are bad enough that you can grin at them, and the dialogue sounds like the pre-Pyramidal desert warriors are channeling a Fox sitcom (the hero refers to his camel as "my ride"). The film stars The Rock, famous as a WWF wrestling star (Vince McMahon takes a producer's credit), and on the basis of this movie, he can definitely star in movies like this. This story takes place so long ago in prehistory that The Rock was a hero and had not yet turned into the villain of "The Mummy Returns" (2001), and we can clearly see his face and muscular physique--an improvement over the earlier film, in which his scenes mostly consisted of his face being attached to a scorpion so large it looked like a giant lobster. How gigantic was the lobster? It would take a buffalo to play the Turf. The story: An evil Scorpion King named Memnon (Steven Brand) uses the talents of a sorceress (Kelly Hu) to map his battle plans, and has conquered most of his enemies. Then we meet three Arkadians, professional assassins who have been "trained for generations in the deadly art," which indicates their training began even before they were born. The Arkadian leader Mathayus, played by The Rock, is such a powerful man that early in the film he shoots a guy with an arrow and the force of the arrow sends the guy crashing through a wall and flying through the air. (No wonder he warns, "Don't touch the bow.") How The Rock morphs from this character into the "Mummy Returns" character is a mystery to me, and, I am sure, to him. Along the trail Mathayus loses some allies and gains others, including a Nubian giant (Michael Clarke Duncan), a scientist who has invented gunpowder, a clever kid and a wisecracking horse thief. The scene where they vow to kill the Scorpion King is especially impressive, as Mathayus intones, "As long as one of us still breathes, the sorcerer will die!" See if you can spot the logical loophole. Mathayus and his team invade the desert stronghold of Memnon, where the sorceress, who comes from or perhaps is the first in a long line of James Bond heroines, sets eyes on him and wonders why she's bothering with the scrawny king. Special effects send Mathayus and others catapulting into harems, falling from castle walls and narrowly missing death by fire, scorpion, poisonous cobra, swordplay, arrows, explosion and being buried up to the neck in the sand near colonies of fire ants. And that's not even counting the Valley of the Death, which inspires the neo-Mametian dialogue: "No one goes to the Valley of the Death. That's why it's called the Valley of the Death." Of all the special effects in the movie, the most impressive are the ones that keep the breasts of the many nubile maidens covered to within one centimeter of the PG-13 guidelines. Hu, a beautiful woman who looks as if she is trying to remember the good things her agent told her would happen if she took this role, has especially clever long, flowing hair, which cascades down over her breasts instead of up over her head, even when she is descending a waterfall. Did I enjoy this movie? Yeah, I did, although not quite enough to recommend it. Because it tries too hard to be hyper and not hard enough to be clever. It is what it is, though, and pretty good at it. Those who would dislike the movie are unlikely to attend it (does anybody go to see The Rock in "The Scorpion King" by accident?). For its target audience, looking for a few laughs, martial arts and stuff that blows up real good, it will be exactly what they expected. It has high energy, the action never stops, the dialogue knows it's funny, and The Rock has the authority to play the role and the fortitude to keep a straight face. I expect him to become a durable action star. There's something about the way he eats those fire ants that lets you know he's thinking, "If I ever escape from this predicament, I'm gonna come back here and fix me up a real mess of fire ants, instead of just chewing on a few at a time." Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] TIME OUT / *** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:15 GMT TIME OUT / *** (PG-13) April 19, 2002 Vincent: Aurelien Recoing Muriel: Karin Viard Jean-Michel: Serge Livrozet THINKFilm presents a film directed by Laurent Cantet. Written by Cantet and Robin Campillo. Running time: 132 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sensuality). In French with English subtitles. Opening today at the Music Box Theatre. BY ROGER EBERT Vincent loses his job. He cannot bear to confess this to his wife and children, so he invents another one, and the fictional job takes up more of his time than his family does. It is hard work to spend all day producing the illusion of accomplishment out of thin air. Ask anyone from Enron. The new film "Time Out" is about modern forms of work that exist only because we say they do. Those best-sellers about modern management techniques are hilarious because the only things that many managers actually manage are their techniques. Free from his job, Vincent is seduced by the pleasure of getting in his car and just driving around. He lives in France, near the Swiss border, and one day he wanders into an office building in Switzerland, eavesdrops on some of the employees, picks up a brochure, and tells his relatives he works in a place like this. It's an agency associated with the United Nations, and as nearly as I can tell, its purpose is to train managers who can go to Africa and train managers. This is about right. The best way to get a job through a program designed to find you a job is to get a job with the program. Vincent, played by the sad-eyed, sincere Aurelien Recoing, is not a con man so much as a pragmatist who realizes that since his job exists mostly in his mind anyway, he might as well eliminate the middleman, his employer. He begins taking long overnight trips, sleeping in his car, finding his breakfast at cold, lonely roadside diners at daybreak. He calls his wife frequently with progress reports: the meeting went well, the client needs more time, the pro-ject team is assembling tomorrow, he has a new assignment. Since he has not figured out how to live without money, he persuades friends and relatives to invest in his fictional company, and uses that money to live on. You would think the movie would be about how this life of deception, these lonely weeks on the road, wear him down. Actually, he seems more worn out by the experience of interacting with his family during his visits at home. His wife, Muriel (Karin Viard), a schoolteacher, suspects that something is not quite convincing about this new job. What throws her off is that there was something not quite convincing about his old job, too. Vincent's father is the kind of man who, because he can never be pleased, does not distinguish between one form of displeasure and another. Vincent's children are not much interested in their dad's work. In his travels Vincent encounters Jean-Michel (Serge Livrozet), who spots him for a phony and might have a place in his organization for the right kind of phony. Jean-Michel imports fake brand-name items. What he does is not legal, but it does involve the sale and delivery of actual physical goods. He is more honest than those who simply exchange theoretical goods; Jean-Michel sells fake Guccis, Enron sells fake dollars. "Time Out" is the second film by Laurent Cantet, whose first was "Human Resources" (2000), about a young man from a working-class family who goes off to college and returns as the human resources manager at the factory where his father has worked all of his life as a punch-press operator. One of the son's tasks is to lay off many employees, including his father. The father heartbreakingly returns to his machine even after being fired, because he cannot imagine his life without a job. Vincent in a way is worse off. His job is irrelevant to his life. I admire the closing scenes of the film, which seem to ask whether our civilization offers a cure for Vincent's complaint. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] TRIUMPH OF LOVE / *** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:24 GMT TRIUMPH OF LOVE / *** (PG-13) April 19, 2002 Princess/Phocion/Aspasie: Mira Sorvino Hermocrates: Ben Kingsley Agis: Jay Rodan Leontine: Fiona Shaw Harlequin: Ignazio Oliva Paramount Classics presents a film directed by Clare Peploe. Written by Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci, based on Pierre Marivaux's 18th century play. Running time: 107 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some nudity and sensuality). Opening today at Pipers Alley, Landmark Renaissance and Evanston CineArts 6. BY ROGER EBERT Mira Sorvino has a little teasing smile that is invaluable in "Triumph of Love," a movie where she plays a boy who does not look the slightest thing like a boy, but looks exactly like Mira Sorvino playing a boy with a teasing smile. The story, based on an 18th century French play by Pierre Marivaux, is the sort of thing that inspired operas and Shakespeare comedies: It's all premise, no plausibility, and so what? Sorvino plays a princess who goes for a stroll in the woods one day and happens upon the inspiring sight of a handsome young man named Agis (Jay Rodan) emerging naked from a swim. She knows she must have him. She also knows that he is the true possessor of her throne, that she is an usurper, and that her chances of meeting him are slim. That's because he lives as the virtual prisoner of a brother and sister, a philosopher named Hermocrates (Ben Kingsley) and a scientist named Leontine (Fiona Shaw.) Hermocrates is a scholar of the sort who, in tales of this sort, spends much time in his study pondering over quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore. He wears one of those skullcaps with stars and moons on it, and a long robe, and is obsessed, although not without method. His sister, past the second bloom of her youth, is ferociously dedicated to him, and together they raise the young Agis to think rationally of all things, and to avoid the distractions of women, sex, romance, and worldly things. The scheme of the princess: She and her maid Hermidas (Rachael Stirling) will disguise themselves as young men, penetrate Hermocrates' enclave, and insinuate themselves into the good graces of the brother and sister. Then nature will take its course. This is the sort of plot, like that of "The Scorpion King," that you either accept or do not accept; if it contained martial arts, skewerings and explosions, no one would raise an eyebrow. Because it is elegant, mannered and teasing, some audiences will not want to go along with the joke. Your choice. "Triumph of Love," as a title, is literally true. Love does conquer Hermocrates, Leontine and finally Agis. Of course it is not true love in the tiresome modern sense, but romantic love as a plot device. To win Agis, the cross-dressing princess must inveigle herself into the good graces of his guardians by seducing Leontine and Hermocrates. The scene between Sorvino and Shaw is one of the most delightful in the movie, as the prim spinster allows herself reluctantly to believe that she might be irresistible--that this handsome youth might indeed have penetrated the compound hoping to seduce her. The director, Clare Peploe, stages this scene among trees and shrubbery, as the "boy" pursues the bashful sister from sun to shade to sun again. Now comes the challenge of Hermocrates. Although there are possibilities in the notion that the philosopher might be attracted to a comely young lad, the movie departs from tradition and allows Hermocrates to see through the deception at once: He knows this visitor is a girl, accuses her of it, and is told she disguised herself as a boy only to gain access to his overwhelmingly attractive presence. Hermocrates insists she only wants access to Agis. "He is not the one my heart beats for," she says shyly, and watch Ben Kingsley's face as he understands the implications. Strange, how universal is the human notion that others should find us attractive. Kingsley is the most versatile of actors, able to suggest, with a slant of the gaze, a cast of the mouth, emotional states that other actors could not achieve with cartwheels. There is a twinkle in his eye. He is as easily convinced as his sister that this visitor loves him. But is it not cruel that the ripe young impostor deceives both the brother and sister, stealing their hearts as stepping-stones for her own? Not at all, because the ending, in admirable 18th century style, tidies all loose ends, restores order to the kingdom, and allows everyone to live happily ever after, although it is in the nature of things that some will live happier than others. Clare Peploe, the wife of the great Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, was born in Tanzania, raised in Britain, educated at the Sorbonne and in Italy, began with her brother Mark as a writer on Antonioni's "Zabriskie Point," and in addition to co-writing many of Bertolucci's films, has directed three of her own. The sleeper is "High Season" (1988), a comedy set on a Greek island and involving romance, art, spies and a statue to the Unknown Tourist. If you know the John Huston movie "Beat the Devil," you will have seen its first cousin. With this film once again she shows a light-hearted playfulness. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] CHANGING LANES / **** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:32 GMT CHANGING LANES / **** (R) April 12, 2002 Gavin Banek: Ben Affleck Doyle Gipson: Samuel L. Jackson Michelle: Toni Collette Delano: Sydney Pollack Cynthia Banek: Amanda Peet Valerie Gipson: Kim Staunton Gavin's sponsor: William Hurt Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Roger Michell. Written by Chap Taylor and Michael Tolkin. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for language). BY ROGER EBERT "One wrong turn deserves another," say the ads for "Changing Lanes." Yes, both of the movie's dueling hotheads are in the wrong--but they are also both in the right. The story involves two flawed men, both prey to anger, who get involved in a fender-bender that brings out all of their worst qualities. And their best. This is not a dumb formula film about revenge. It doesn't use rubber-stamp lines like "it's payback time." It is about adults who have minds as well as emotions, and can express themselves with uncommon clarity. And it's not just about the quarrel between these two men, but about the ways they have been living their lives. The story begins with two men who need to be in court on time. A lawyer, Gavin Banek (Ben Affleck), needs to file a signed form proving that an elderly millionaire turned over control of his foundation to Banek's law firm. Doyle Gipson (Samuel L. Jackson) needs to show that he has loan approval to buy a house for his family; he hopes that will convince his fed-up wife to stay in New York and not move with the kids to Oregon. Banek and Gipson get into a fender bender. It's not really anybody's fault. Of course they are polite when it happens: "You hurt?" Nobody is. Banek, who is rich and has been taught that money is a solution to human needs, doesn't want to take time to exchange insurance cards and file a report. He hands Gipson a signed blank check. Gipson, who wants to handle this the right way, doesn't want a check. Banek gets in his car and drives away, shouting, "Better luck next time!" over his shoulder, and leaving Gipson stranded in the middle of the expressway with a flat tire. Gipson gets to court 20 minutes late. The case has already been settled. In his absence, he has lost. The judge isn't interested in his story. Banek gets to court in time, but discovers that he is missing the crucial file folder with the old man's signature. Who has it? Gipson. At this point, in a film less intelligent and ambitious, the vile Banek would pull strings to make life miserable for the blameless Gipson. But "Changing Lanes" doesn't settle for the formula. Gipson responds to Banek's rudeness by faxing a page from the crucial file to Banek with Better luck next time! scrawled on it. Banek turns to his sometime mistress (Toni Collette), who knows a guy who "fixes" things. The guy (Dylan Baker) screws with Gipson's credit rating, so his home mortgage falls through. Gipson finds an ingenious way to counter-attack. And so begins a daylong struggle between two angry men. Ah, but that's far from all. "Changing Lanes" is a thoughtful film that by its very existence shames studio movies that have been dumbed down into cat-and-mouse cartoons. The screenplay is by Chap Taylor, who has previously worked as a production assistant for Woody Allen, and by Michael Tolkin, who wrote the novel and screenplay "The Player" and wrote and directed two extraordinary films, "The Rapture" and "The New Age." The writers, rookie and veteran, want to know who these men are, how they got to this day in their lives, what their values are, what kinds of worlds they live in. A dumb film would be about settling scores after the fender bender. This film, which breathes, which challenges, which is excitingly alive, wants to see these men hit their emotional bottoms. Will they learn anything? Doyle Gipson is a recovering alcoholic. His AA meetings and his AA sponsor (William Hurt) are depicted in realistic, not stereotyped, terms. Gipson is sober, but still at the mercy of his emotions. As he stands in the wreckage of his plans to save his marriage, his wife (Kim Staunton) tells him, "This is the sort of thing that always happens to you--and never happens to me unless I am in your field of gravity." And his sponsor tells him, "Booze isn't really your drug of choice. You're addicted to chaos." At one point, seething with rage, Gipson walks into a bar and orders a shot of bourbon. Then he stares at it. Then he gets into a fight that he deliberately provokes, and we realize that at some level he walked into the bar not for the drink but for the fight. Gavin Banek leads a rich and privileged life. His boss, Delano (Sydney Pollack), has just made him a partner in their Wall Street law firm. It doesn't hurt that Banek married the boss' daughter. It also doesn't hurt that he was willing to obtain the signature of a confused old man who might not have known what he was signing, and that the firm will make millions as a result. His wife (Amanda Peet) sees her husband with blinding clarity. After Banek has second thoughts about the tainted document, Pollack asks his daughter to get him into line, and at lunch she has an extraordinary speech. "Did you know my father has been cheating on my mother for 20 years?" she asks Banek. He says no, and then sheepishly adds, "Well, I didn't know it was for 20 years." Her mother knew all along, his wife says, "but she thought it would be unethical to leave a man for cheating on his marriage, after she has an enjoyed an expensive lifestyle that depends on a man who makes his money by cheating at work." She looks across the table at her husband. "I could have married an honest man," she tells him. She did not, choosing instead a man who would go right to the edge to make money. You don't work on Wall Street if you're not prepared to do that, she says. And what, for that matter, about the poor old millionaire whose foundation is being plundered? "How do you think he got his money?" Delano asks Banek. "You think those factories in Malaysia have day-care centers?" He helpfully points out that the foundation was set up in the first place as a tax dodge. Such speeches are thunderbolts in "Changing Lanes." They show the movie digging right down into the depths of the souls, of the values, of these two men. The director, Roger Michell, has made good movies including "Persuasion" and "Notting Hill," but this one seems more like Neil LaBute's "In the Company of Men," or Tolkin's work. It lays these guys out and X-rays them, and by the end of the day, each man's own anger scares him more than the other guy's. This is one of the best movies of the year. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] CRUSH / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:41 GMT CRUSH / *** (R) April 12, 2002 Kate: Andie MacDowell Janine: Imelda Staunton Molly: Anna Chancellor Jed: Kenny Doughty Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by John McKay. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality and language). BY ROGER EBERT If I were reviewing "Crush" in England, I would work the name of Joanna Trollope into the first sentence, and my readers would immediately be able to identify the terrain. Trollope, a best-seller who is often quite perceptive and touching, writes at the upper range of the category just below serious fiction. She is a good read for those, like myself, who fantasize about living prosperously in the Cotswolds in an old but comfortably remodeled cottage not far from the village green, the churchyard, the tea shop, the bookstore and the rail line to London, while meanwhile growing involved in a web of imprudent adulterous sex. (As a happily married man, you understand, I do not want to perform adulterous imprudent sex, only to be involved in a web with such entertaining neighbors.) This is not England. Few North Americans read Joanna Trollope, and fewer still respond to key words in her vocabulary such as Aga. An Aga cooker-stove is so expensive and versatile, it does everything but peel the potatoes, and its presence in a kitchen tells you so much about the occupants that in the Brit book review pages, the phrase "Aga romance" perfectly categorizes a novel. "Crush" is an Aga romance crossed with modern retro-feminist soft porn, in which liberated women discuss lust as if it were a topic and not a fact. We begin by meeting the three heroines, who are fortysomething professionals and meet once a week to (1) drink gin, (2) smoke cigarettes, (3) eat caramels, and (4) discuss their lousy love lives. My advice to these women: Stop after (3). The characters: Kate (Andie MacDowell) is the American headmistress of the local upscale school, Janine (Imelda Staunton) is a physician, and Molly (Anna Chancellor) is the police chief. That these three professional women at their age would all still be smoking can be explained only by a movie that does not give them enough to do with their hands. One day Kate goes to a funeral, is immeasurably moved by the music, and meets the organist. His name is Jed (Kenny Doughty), and he was once a student of hers. She is between 15 and 18 years older, but their conversation drifts out of the church and into the churchyard, and soon they are performing the old rumpy-pumpy behind a tombstone while the mourners are still stifling their sobs. This is, you will agree, an example of lust. In a rabbit, it would be simple lust. In a headmistress, it is reckless lust. (In a 25-year-old organist, it is what comes from pumping the foot pedals for 30 minutes while observing Andie MacDowell). The movie cannot leave it at lust, however, because then it would be a different movie. So it elevates it into a Love That Was Meant to Be, in which the two lovers overcome differences of age, class and grooming, and determine to spend their lives together. Because they are attractive people and we like them, of course we identify with their foolishness and feel good when romance triumphs. A sixth sense tells us, however, that romance has triumphed a little too early in the movie. The only way for "Crush" to get from its romantic triumph to the end of the film is to supply setbacks, and does it ever. I will not reveal what episodes of bad judgment, bad karma and plain bad luck lead to the ultimate bittersweet denouement, and will distract myself from the temptation by telling you that the pastor of the local church is named the Rev. Gerald Farquar-Marsden, a name to rival Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright. The movie does its best to work us over, with second helpings of love, romance, tragedy, false dawns, real dawns, comic relief, two separate crises during marriage ceremonies, and the lush scenery of the Cotswolds (or, as the Web site refers to the district, "Cotswold"). It's the kind of world where romance begins in tombs among the headstones, or vice versa, and almost immediately requires engraved invitations. Jed is described as being 25 years old and Kate is described as being 40 (cough), but Andie MacDowell is the definition of a dish, and Jed, just by being a church organist, is mature for his age. Besides, what is an age difference of 15 or even 18 years, when my old friend Betty Dodson, at 72, is in the third year of a steamy romance with a 25-year-old? You can look it up at Salon.com, under "sex." Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] FRAILTY / **** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:54 GMT FRAILTY / **** (R) April 12, 2002 Dad: Bill Paxton Fenton Meiks: Matthew McConaughey Agent Wesley Doyle: Powers Boothe Young Fenton Meiks: Matthew O'Leary Young Adam Meiks: Jeremy Sumpter Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Bill Paxton. Written by Brent Hanley. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for violence and some language). BY ROGER EBERT Heaven protect us from people who believe they can impose their will on us in this world because of what they think they know about the next. "Frailty" is about such a man, a kind and gentle father who is visited by an angel who assigns him to murder demons in human form. We are reminded that Andrea Yates believed she was possessed by Satan and could save her children by drowning them. "Frailty" is as chilling: The father enlists his two sons, who are about 7 and 10, to join him in the murders of victims he brings home. This is not, you understand, an abusive father. He loves his children. He is only following God's instructions: "This is our job now, son. We've got to do this." When the older son, terrified and convinced his father has gone mad, says he'll report him to the police, his father explains, "If you do that, son, I'll die. The angel was clear on this." The pressure that the children are under is unbearable, and tragic, and warps their entire lives. "Frailty" is an extraordinary work, concealing in its depths not only unexpected story turns but also implications, hidden at first, that make it even deeper and more sad. It is the first film directed by the actor Bill Paxton, who also plays the father and succeeds in making "Dad" not a villain but a sincere man lost within his delusions. Matthew McConaughey plays one of his sons as a grown man, and Powers Boothe is the FBI agent who is investigating the "God's Hand" serial murders in Texas when the son comes to him one night, with the body of his brother parked outside in a stolen ambulance. The movie works in so many different ways that it continues to surprise us right until the end. It begins as a police procedural, seems for a time to be a puzzle like "The Usual Suspects," reveals itself as a domestic terror film, evokes pity as well as horror, and reminded me of "The Rapture," another film about a parent who is willing to sacrifice a child in order to follow the literal instructions of her faith. As the film opens, McConaughey appears in the office of FBI agent Wesley Doyle (Boothe), introduces himself as Fenton Meiks, and says he knows who committed the serial killings that have haunted the area for years. His story becomes the narration of two long flashbacks in which we see Paxton as the elder Meiks, and Matthew O'Leary and Jeremy Sumpter as young Fenton and Adam. Their mother is dead; they live in a frame house near the community rose garden, happy and serene, until the night their father wakes them with the news that he has been visited by an angel. The film neither shies away from its horrifying events, nor dwells on them. There is a series of ax murders, but they occur offscreen; this is not a movie about blood, but about obsession. The truly disturbing material involves the two boys, who are played by O'Leary and Sumpter as ordinary, happy kids whose lives turn into nightmares. Young Adam simply believes everything his father tells him. Fenton is old enough to know it's wrong: "Dad's brainwashed you," he tells Adam. "It's all a big lie. He murders people and you help him." The construction of the story circles around the angel's "instructions" in several ways. The sons and father are trapped in a household seemingly ruled by fanaticism. There is, however, the intriguing fact that when Dad touches his victims, he has graphic visions of their sins--he can see vividly why they need to be killed. Are these visions accurate? We see them, too, but it's unclear whether through Dad's eyes or the movie's narrator--if that makes a difference. Whether they are objectively true is something I, at least, believe no man can know for sure about another. Not just by touching them, anyway. But the movie contains one shot, sure to be debated, that suggests God's hand really is directing Dad's murders. Perhaps only a first-time director, an actor who does not depend on directing for his next job, would have had the nerve to make this movie. It is uncompromised. It follows its logic right down into hell. We love movies that play and toy with the supernatural, but are we prepared for one that is an unblinking look at where the logic of the true believer can lead? There was just a glimpse of this mentality on the day after 9/11, when certain TV preachers described it as God's punishment for our sins, before backpedaling when they found such frankness eroded their popularity base. On the basis of this film, Paxton is a gifted director; he and his collaborators, writer Brent Hanley, cinematographer Bill Butler and editor Arnold Glassman, have made a complex film that grips us with the intensity of a simple one. We're with it every step of the way, and discover we hardly suspect where it is going. Note: Watching the film, I was reminded again of the "West Memphis Three" (www.wm3.org), those three Arkansas teenagers convicted of the brutal murder of three children. One faces death and the other two long sentences. The documentaries "Paradise Lost" (1992) and "Paradise Lost 2: Revelations" (2000) make it clear they are probably innocent (a prime suspect all but confesses onscreen), but the three are still in jail because they wore black, listened to heavy metal music, and were railroaded by courts and a community convinced they were Satanists--which must have been evidence enough, since there wasn't much else, and the boys could prove they were elsewhere. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] HUMAN NATURE / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:07 GMT HUMAN NATURE / *** (R) April 12, 2002 Nathan Bronfman: Tim Robbins Lila Jute: Patricia Arquette Puff: Rhys Ifans Gabrielle: Miranda Otto Nathan's Father: Robert Forster Nathan's Mother: Mary Kay Place Wendall the Therapist: Miguel Sandoval Puff's Father: Toby Huss Fine Line Features presents a film directed by Michel Gondry. Written by Charlie Kaufman. Running time: 96 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality/nudity and language). BY ROGER EBERT Is human life entirely based on sex, or is that only what it seems like on cable television? "Human Nature," a comedy written and produced by the writer and director who made us the great gift of "Being John Malkovich," is a study of three characters in war against their sexual natures. Lila (Patricia Arquette) fled to the woods at the age of 20, after hair entirely covered her body. She becomes a famous reclusive nature writer, a very hairy Annie Dillard, but finally returns to civilization because she's so horny. Puff (Rhys Ifans) is a man who was raised as an ape, thinks he's an ape, and is cheerfully eager on all occasions to act out an ape's sexual desires. And Nathan (Tim Robbins) was a boy raised by parents so strict that his entire sexual drive was sublimated into the desire to train others as mercilessly as he was trained. With these three characters as subjects for investigation, "Human Nature" asks if there is a happy medium between natural impulses and the inhibitions of civilization--or if it is true, as Nathan instructs Puff, "When in doubt, don't ever do what you really want to do." The movie involves these three in a menage a trois that is (as you can imagine) very complicated, and just in order to be comprehensive in its study of human sexual behavior, throws in a cute French lab assistant (Miranda Otto). None of which gives you the slightest idea of the movie's screwball charm. The writer, Charlie Kaufman, must be one madcap kinda guy. I imagine him seeming to wear a funny hat even when he's not. His inventions here lead us down strange comic byways, including Disneyesque song-and-dance numbers in which the hairy Arquette dances nude with the cute little animals of the forest. (Her hair, like Salome's veil, prevents us from seeing quite what we think we're seeing, but the MPAA's eyeballs must have been popping out under the strain.) Early scenes show poor Nathan as a boy, at the dinner table with his parents (Robert Forster and Mary Kay Place), where every meal involves as much cutlery as a diplomatic feast, and using the wrong fork gets the child sent to his room without eating. As an adult, Nathan dedicates his life to training white mice to eat with the right silver, after the male mouse politely pulls out the female mouse's chair for her. Then he gets a really big challenge, when the ape-man (Ifans) comes into his clutches. Nicknaming him Puff, Nathan keeps him in a Plexiglas cage in his lab, and fits Puff with an electrified collar that jolts him with enough juice to send him leaping spasmodically into the air every time he engages in sexual behavior, which is constantly. Lila the hairy girl, meanwhile, has turned herself over to a sympathetic electrologist (Rosie Perez), who fixes her up with Nathan--who does not know she is covered with hair and, if he did, would be sure it was bad manners. The movie has nowhere much to go and nothing much to prove, except that Stephen King is correct and if you can devise the right characters and the right situation, the plot will take care of itself--or not, as the case may be. Ifans is so dogged in the determination of his sex drive, despite the electrical shocks, that when the professor sets his final examination at a Hooters-type place, we're grinning before he gets inside the door. The movie is the feature debut of Michel Gondry, who directed a lot of Bjork's videos and therefore in a sense has worked with characters like these before. His movie is slight without being negligible. If it tried to do anything more, it would fail and perhaps explode, but at this level of manic whimsy, it is just about right. You had better go alone, because in any crowd of four, there will be three who find it over their heads, or under their radar. They would really be better off attending "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," unless you want to go to the trouble of having them fitted with electric collars. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] MARYAM / ***1/2 (Not rated) Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:19 GMT MARYAM / ***1/2 (Not rated) April 12, 2002 Maryk Armin: Mariam Parris Ali Armin: David Ackert Darius Armin: Shaun Toub Homa Armin: Shohreh Aghdashloo Reza: Maziyar Jobrani Jamie: Victor Jory Streetlight Films presents a film written and directed by Ramin Serry. Running time: 90 minutes. No MPAA rating (suitable for teens). Opening today at the Music Box. BY ROGER EBERT Girls just want to have fun, says Cyndi Lauper, and Maryam, a high school senior, is one of them. Yes, she's an honor student and anchors the news on the in-school TV program, but she also likes to hang out at the roller rink with her slacker boyfriend, and pot and booze are not unknown to her. In New Jersey in 1979, she is a typical teenage girl--until the Iran hostage crisis slaps her with an ethnic label that makes her an outsider at school and a rebel in her own home. Maryam (Mariam Parris) is Iranian-American--or Persian, her father would say. Her parents emigrated from Iran before the fall of the shah, and settled comfortably into suburbia; her father is a doctor, her mother a warm, chatty neighbor, and Maryam (or "Mary," as she calls herself at school) doesn't think much about her Iranian or Muslim heritage. Then two things happen to force her to confront her history. The hostage crisis inspires knee-jerk hostility from her classmates (whose families also come from somewhere else), and her radical cousin Ali arrives from Tehran. Ramin Serry's "Maryam," a film that cares too deeply for its characters to simplify them, doesn't indulge in tired cliches about the generation gap. Maryam's home life is strict but not unreasonable. Her father doesn't want her to date, places great emphasis on her grades, doesn't know about her boyfriend. He is not a cruel or domineering man, and Maryam, to her credit, knows her parents love her. She's caught between trying to be a good daughter and a typical teenager, and has found a workable middle ground before Ali arrives. With Ali comes a history of family tension she knows nothing about. Ali is an orphan, the son of Mary's uncle, and so he must be taken in. It is more complicated than that. Her father, we learn, turned his brother in to the shah's secret police; he felt he had no choice, but is consumed by guilt. The blood-stained backgammon board Ali brings as a "gift" is an ominous reminder of times past. Ali is such an observant Muslim that he cannot touch his cousin Maryam, even to shake her hand. Pressed into service as a chaperone, he finds himself plunged into teenage culture that offends and attracts him. He calls Maryam a "whore" to her mother, but subtly flirts with her. More disturbing is his alliance with a campus radical, and his obsession with the deposed shah, who has just entered a New York hospital for cancer treatment. (Maryam's take on this: "He calls the U.S. the Great Satan. I mean, the guy could lighten up a little.") "Maryam" was made before 9/11, and indeed I first saw it at the 2000 Hawaii Film Festival and invited it to my own Overlooked Film Festival in April 2001. It is, I learned, the somewhat autobiographical story of writer-director Ramin Serry, who grew up in Chicago and was made sharply aware of his Iranian heritage during the 1979 hostage crisis. In the film, Maryam's neighbors put a yellow ribbon around the tree in their front yard, and discontinue their friendly chats and visits. Maryam's boyfriend drops her like a hot potato. She is deposed from her TV show (she suggests her newly arrived cousin might make a good interview; the other students prefer to cover a homecoming controversy). A brick comes through the front window. A public demonstration turns into shouts of "Iranians, go home." Through all of this, the gifted actress Mariam Parris (British, but seamlessly playing American) finds the right notes: wounded, sad, angry, but more balanced than distraught. Whatever hostility Serry felt in 1979 is no doubt much worse today for Arab-Americans, who have, like most immigrants since the Pilgrims, left a native land to seek the American dream. Strange how many Americans, themselves members of groups that were hated a few generations ago, now turn against newcomers. (I could hear the pain in my German-American father's voice as he recalled being yanked out of Lutheran school during World War I and forbidden by his immigrant parents ever to speak German again.) "Maryam" is more timely now than ever. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE SWEETEST THING / *1/2 (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:29 GMT THE SWEETEST THING / *1/2 (R) April 12, 2002 Christina: Cameron Diaz Courtney: Christina Applegate Peter: Thomas Jane Jane: Selma Blair Roger: Jason Bateman Judy: Parker Posey Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Roger Kumble. Written by Nancy M. Pimental. Running time: 84 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT I like Cameron Diaz. I just plain like her. She's able to convey bubble-brained zaniness about as well as anyone in the movies right now, and then she can switch gears and give you a scary dramatic performance in something like "Vanilla Sky." She's a beauty, but apparently without vanity; how else to account for her appearance in "Being John Malkovich," or her adventures in "There's Something About Mary"? I don't think she gets halfway enough praise for her talent. Consider her in "The Sweetest Thing." This is not a good movie. It's deep-sixed by a compulsion to catalog every bodily fluids gag in "There's Something About Mary" and devise a parallel clone-gag. It knows the words but not the music; while the Farrelly brothers got away with murder, "The Sweetest Thing" commits suicide. And yet there were whole long stretches of it when I didn't much care how bad it was--at least, I wasn't brooding in anger about the film--because Cameron Diaz and her co-stars had thrown themselves into it with such heedless abandon. They don't walk the plank, they tap dance. The movie is about three girls who just wanna have fun. They hang out in clubs, they troll for cute guys, they dress like Maxim cover girls, they study paperback best-sellers on the rules of relationships, and frequently (this comes as no surprise), they end up weeping in one other's arms. Diaz's running-mates, played by Christina Applegate and Selma Blair, are pals and confidantes, and a crisis for one is a crisis for all. The movie's romance involves Diaz meeting Thomas Jane in a dance club; the chemistry is right but he doesn't quite accurately convey that the wedding he is attending on the weekend is his own. This leads to Diaz's ill-fated expedition into the wedding chapel, many misunderstandings, and the kind of Idiot Plot dialogue in which all problems could be instantly solved if the characters were not studiously avoiding stating the obvious. The plot is merely the excuse, however, for an astonishing array of sex and body-plumbing jokes, nearly all of which dream of hitting a home run like "There's Something About Mary," but do not. Consider "Mary's" scene where Diaz has what she thinks is gel in her hair. Funny--because she doesn't know what it really is, and we do. Now consider the scene in this movie where the girls go into a men's room and do not understand that in a men's room a hole in the wall is almost never merely an architectural detail. The pay-off is sad, sticky, and depressing. Or consider a scene where one of the roommates gets "stuck" while performing oral sex. This is intended as a ripoff of the "franks and beans" scene in "Mary," but gets it all wrong. You simply cannot (I am pretty sure about this) get stuck in the way the movie suggests--no, not even if you've got piercings. More to the point, in "Mary" the victim is unseen, and we picture his dilemma. In "Sweetest Thing," the dilemma is seen, sort of (careful framing preserves the R rating), and the image isn't funny. Then we get several dozen neighbors, all singing to inspire the girl to extricate herself; this might have looked good on the page, but it just plain doesn't work, especially not when embellished with the sobbing cop on the doorstep, the gay cop, and other flat notes. More details. Sometimes it is funny when people do not know they may be consuming semen (as in "American Pie") and sometimes it is not, as in the scene at the dry cleaners in this movie. How can you laugh when what you really want to do is hurl? And what about the scene in the ladies' room, where the other girls are curious about Applegate's boobs and she tells them she paid for them and invites them to have a feel, and they do, like shoppers at Kmart? Again, a funny concept. Again, destroyed by bad timing, bad framing and overkill. Because the director, Roger Kumble, doesn't know how to set it up and pay it off with surgical precision, he simply has women pawing Applegate while the scene dies. An unfunny scene only grows worse by pounding in the concept as if we didn't get it. So, as I say, I like Cameron Diaz. I like everyone in this movie (I must not neglect the invaluable Parker Posey, as a terrified bride). I like their energy. I like their willingness. I like the opening shot when Diaz comes sashaying up a San Francisco hill like a dancer from "In Living Color" who thinks she's still on the air. I like her mobile, comic face--she's smart in the way she plays dumb. But the movie I cannot like, because the movie doesn't know how to be liked. It doesn't even know how to be a movie. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BIG TROUBLE / **1/2 (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:41 GMT BIG TROUBLE / **1/2 (PG-13) April 5, 2002 Eliot Arnold: Tim Allen Anna Herk: Rene Russo Pat Greer: Omar Epps Henry Algott: Dennis Farina Matt Arnold: Ben Foster Monica Ramiro: Janeane Garofalo Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Written by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone. Based on the novel by Dave Barry. Running time: 84 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language, crude humor and sex-related material). BY ROGER EBERT "Big Trouble" is based on a novel by Dave Barry, and I have no trouble believing that. The genius of Dave Barry is that he applies a logical and helpful analysis to a situation that can only be worsened by such intervention. It is impossible, for example, to explain to a policeman why he is wasting his time on your illegal left turn while real criminals go free. Or to the IRS agent that Enron is robbing billions from widows and orphans while he ponders your business-related need to buy lots of CDs. Or to your wife why it is pointless to do the dishes on a daily basis when you can save hot water by letting them accumulate for a week in the dishwasher--which, being airtight, will not stink up the kitchen if you slam it right after adding more dishes. All of these positions, which make perfect sense, only infuriate the cop, tax man, spouse, etc., by applying logic to a situation they have invested with irrational passion. As a sane voice in a world gone mad, Barry alone sees clearly. The Dave Barry figure in "Big Trouble," I think, is Puggy (Jason Lee), a man who when he first addresses the camera seems to be Jesus, until he starts munching Fritos between his words of wisdom, observing, "You really can't beat these when they're fresh." Puggy is a homeless man who was living in the rainy north inside a cardboard box, when an article in Martha Stewart Living inspired him to move to sunny southern Florida. He is the film's omniscient narrator, not because he knows everything in a godlike way, but because he lives outdoors and happens to be ideally positioned during an evening when most of the film's other characters meet at the luxury home of Arthur Herk (Stanley Tucci), who is "one of the few Floridians who actually did vote for Pat Buchanan." (Saddened by the inability of many Republicans to express even token pity about the Jewish senior citizens whose mistaken votes for the Great Foamer tilted the election, I am always happy to have this event recalled.) Arthur Herk is ... ah, but if I begin a plot synopsis, we will be here all day, and I have already squandered three paragraphs with fancy writing. There is a plot in "Big Trouble," quite a logical one actually, with all the threads tied into neat knots at the end, but to explain it would leave you banging your forehead against the newspaper and crying "Why must I know this?" It might be simpler to describe the characters, and let you discover their interactions for yourself. Herk is a rich man who owes money to the wrong people and wants to buy a bomb. Rene Russo is his wife Anna, who no longer remembers why she married this jerk. Zooey Deschanel is their daughter Jenny, who is the target of Matt Arnold (Ben Foster), a school classmate who needs to squirt her with a one-gallon water gun. Tim Allen is Eliot Arnold, Matt's father, who was the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of the Miami Herald until he kicked in the computer screen of an editor who gave him idiotic assignments while refusing to meet his eyes. (It would seem to the casual moviegoer that Eliot Arnold is the Dave Barry figure in the movie, since he closely resembles the author, but, no, it's Puggy.) Then there are Dennis Farina and Jack Kehler as two bit men assigned to kill Arthur Herk. And Janeane Garofalo and Patrick Warburton as two cops who answer a call to the Herk home. And Lars Arenta-Hansen and Daniel London, who have a nuclear bomb they can sell to Arthur Herk. And Omar Epps and Heavy D as FBI agents on the trail of the bomb-sellers. And Sofia Vergara as Nina, the Herks' maid, who Arthur wants to have sex with. She despises Herk but instantly lusts for Puggy--another clue he is the Dave Barry character. And Tom Sizemore and Johnny Knoxville as Snake and Eddie, who try to stick up the bar where the bomb dealers meet Arthur Herk while the FBI stakes it out. (Sample dialogue: "Snake, let's get the hell out of here. I think I hear one of them silent alarms.") There is also a toad whose spit is hallucinogenic. The film has been directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who made "Get Shorty." It's not in that class--indeed, it seems so crowded that it sometimes feels like the casting call for an eventual picture not yet made--but it has its charms. It's the kind of movie you can't quite recommend because it is all windup and not much of a pitch, yet you can't bring yourself to dislike it. A video or airplane or cable movie. Originally scheduled for an autumn opening, it was pulled from the release schedule after 9/11 because it involves terrorists and a nuclear bomb. But these are terrorists and bombs from a simpler and more innocent time. The movie is a reminder of an age when such plots were obviously not to be taken seriously. It's nice to be reminded of that time. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] HIGH CRIMES / *** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:49 GMT HIGH CRIMES / *** (PG-13) April 5, 2002 Claire Kubik: Ashley Judd Charlie Grimes: Morgan Freeman Tom: James Caviezel Lt. Embry: Adam Scott Jackie: Amanda Peet Major Waldron: Michael Gaston Brig. Gen. Marks: Bruce Davison Agent Mullins: Tom Bower Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Carl Franklin. Written by Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley. Based on the novel by Joseph Finder. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence, sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT Although I believe Ashley Judd could thrive in more challenging roles, and offer "Normal Life" (1996) as an example, her career seems to tilt toward thrillers, with the occasional comedy. She often plays a strong, smart woman who is in more danger than she realizes. Although her characters are eventually screaming as they flee brutal killers in the long tradition of Women in Danger movies, the set-ups show her as competent, resourceful, independent. "High Crimes" is a movie like that. Judd plays Claire Kubik, a high-profile defense attorney for a big firm. When her ex-Army husband (Jim Caviezel) is arrested by the FBI, charged with murder and arraigned before a military tribunal, she defiantly says she will defend him herself. And because she doesn't know her way around military justice, she enlists a lawyer named Grimes (Morgan Freeman) as co-counsel. Grimes is that dependable character, a drunk who is on the wagon but may (i.e., will) fall off under stress. This is the second movie Judd and Freeman have made together (after "Kiss the Girls" in 1997). They're both good at projecting a kind of Southern intelligence that knows its way around the frailties of human nature. Although Freeman refers to himself as the "wild card" in the movie, actually that role belongs to Caviezel, whose very identity is called into question by the military charges. "Is your name Tom Chapman?" Claire asks her husband at one point. She no longer knows the answer. The plot involves a massacre in a Latin American village and a subsequent cover-up. Did Claire's husband gun down innocent civilians, or was he framed by a scary Army vet and his straight-arrow superior? Does the military want justice or a cover-up? We are not given much reason to trust military tribunals--evidence the screenplay was written before 9/11--and the Freeman character intones the familiar refrain, "Military justice is to justice as military music is to music." And yet ... well, maybe there's more to the story. I wouldn't dream of revealing crucial details. I do like the way director Carl Franklin and writers Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley, working from Joseph Finder's novel, play both ends against the middle, so that the audience has abundant evidence to believe two completely conflicting theories of what actually happened. In the very season of the DVD release of "Rashomon," which is the template for stories with more than one convincing explanation, here's another example of how Kurosawa's masterpiece continues to inspire movie plots. "High Crimes" works to keep us involved and make us care. Although Freeman's character may indeed start drinking again, it won't be for reasons we can anticipate (of course, like all heroic movie drunks, he retains the exquisite timing to sober up on demand). The unfolding of various versions of the long-ago massacre is handled by Franklin in flashbacks that show how one camera angle can refute what another angle seems to prove. And if we feel, toward the end, a little whiplashed by the plot manipulations, well, that's what the movie promises and that's what the movie delivers. As for Ms. Judd, from the first time I saw her, in "Ruby in Paradise" (1993), I thought she had a unique sympathy with the camera, an ability that cannot be learned but only exercised. In the years, she has often been better than her material--or do her advisers choose mainstream commercial roles for her as the safest course? When she strays out of genre, as she did in "Smoke," "Heat," "Normal Life" and "Simon Birch," she shows how good she is. Of course, she's good in "High Crimes," too, and involves us more than the material really deserves. But this is the kind of movie any studio executive would green-light without a moment's hesitation--always an ominous sign. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER / * (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:57 GMT NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER / * (R) April 5, 2002 Van Wilder: Ryan Reynolds Gwen: Tara Reid Taj: Kal Penn Vance Wilder Sr.: Tim Matheson Casey: Kim Smith Richard Bagg: Daniel Cosgrove Elliot Grebb: Tom Everett Scott Timmy (The Jumper): Chris Owen Artisan Entertainment presents a film directed by Walt Becker. Written by Brent Goldberg and David Wagner. Running time: 92 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexual content, gross humor, language and some drug use). BY ROGER EBERT Watching "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," I grew nostalgic for the lost innocence of a movie like "American Pie," in which human semen found itself in a pie. In "NatLampVW," dog semen is baked in a pastry. Is it only a matter of time until the heroes of teenage grossout comedies are injecting turtle semen directly through their stomach walls? "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," a pale shadow of "National Lampoon's Animal House," tells the story of Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds), who has been the Biggest Man on Campus for seven glorious undergraduate years. He doesn't want to graduate, and why should he, since he has clout, fame, babes and the adulation of the entire campus (except, of course, for the professor whose parking space he swipes, and the vile fraternity boy who is his sworn enemy). Van Wilder is essentially a nice guy, which is a big risk for a movie like this to take; he raises funds for the swimming team, tries to restrain suicidal students and throws legendary keg parties. Ryan Reynolds is, I suppose, the correct casting choice for Van Wilder, since the character is not a devious slacker but merely a Permanent Student. That makes him, alas, a little boring, and Reynolds (from ABC's "Two Guys and a Girl") brings along no zing: He's a standard leading man when the movie cries out for a manic character actor. Jack Black in this role would have been a home run. Is Van Wilder too good to be true? That's what Gwen (Tara Reid) wonders. She's a journ student who wants to do an in-depth piece about Van for the campus paper. Of course she's the girlfriend of the vile frat boy, and of course her investigation inspires her to admire the real Van Wilder while deploring his public image. Tara Reid is remarkably attractive, as you may remember from "Josie and the Pussycats" and "American Pie 2," but much of the time, she simply seems to be imitating still photos of Renee Zellweger smiling. That leaves, let's see, Kal Penn as Taj, the Indian-American student who lands the job as Van Wilder's assistant, and spends much of his time using a stereotyped accent while reciting lists of synonyms for oral sex. I cannot complain, since the hero's buddy in every movie in this genre is always a sex-crazed zealot, and at least this film uses non-traditional casting. (Casting directors face a Catch-22: They cast a white guy, and everybody wants to know why he had to be white. So they cast an ethnic guy, and everybody complains about the negative stereotype. Maybe the way out is to cast the ethnic guy as the hero and the white guy as the horny doofus.) The movie is a barfathon that takes full advantage of the apparent MPAA guidelines in which you can do pretty much anything with bodily functions except involve them in healthy sex. The movie contains semen, bare breasts and butts, epic flatulence, bizarre forms of masturbation, public nudity, projectile vomiting and an extended scene of explosive defecation with sound effects that resemble the daily duties of the Port-a-Loo serviceman, in reverse. There are also graphic shots of enormous testicles, which are allowed under the National Geographic loophole, since they belong to Van Wilder's pet bulldog. Presumably the MPAA would not permit this if it had reason to believe there were dogs in the audience. "On a scale of 1-10 shots of bourbon needed to make a pledge ralph," writes Bob Patterson of the Web site Delusions of Adequacy, "this film will get a very strong five from most college age film fans who are not offended by vulgar humor. Older filmgoers who might be offended by such offerings are encouraged to do something that is physically impossible (i.e., lift yourself up by your bootstraps)." Although this is obviously the review the movie deserves, I confess the rating scale baffles me. Is it better or worse if a film makes you ralph? Patterson implies that older filmgoers might be offended by vulgar humor. There is a flaw in this reasoning: It is not age but humor that is the variable. Laughter for me was such a physical impossibility during "National Lampoon's Van Wilder" that had I not been pledged to sit through the film, I would have lifted myself up by my bootstraps and fled. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN / **** (Not Rated) Date: 20 May 2002 23:25:05 GMT Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN / **** (Not Rated) April 5, 2002 Luisa: Maribel Verdu Julio: Gael Garcia Bernal Tenoch: Diego Luna IFC Films presents a film directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Written by Alfonso Cuaron and Carlos Cuaron. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 105 minutes. No MPAA rating. BY ROGER EBERT "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is described on its Web site as a "teen drama," which is like describing "Moulin Rouge" as a musical. The description is technically true but sidesteps all of the reasons to see the movie. Yes, it's about two teenage boys and an impulsive journey with an older woman that involves sexual discoveries. But it is also about the two Mexicos. And it is about the fragility of life and the finality of death. Beneath the carefree road movie that the movie is happy to advertise is a more serious level--and below that, a dead serious level. The movie, whose title translates as "And Your Mama, Too," is another trumpet blast that there may be a New Mexican Cinema a-bornin'. Like "Amores Perros," which also stars Gael Garcia Bernal, it is an exuberant exercise in interlocking stories. But these interlock not in space and time, but in what is revealed, what is concealed, and in the parallel world of poverty through which the rich characters move. The surface is described in a flash: Two Mexican teenagers named Tenoch and Julio, one from a rich family, one middle class, are free for the summer when their girlfriends go to Europe. At a wedding they meet Luisa, 10 years older, the wife of a distant cousin; she's sexy and playful. They suggest a weekend trip to the legendary beach named Heaven's Mouth. When her husband cheats on her, she unexpectedly agrees, and they set out together on a lark. This level could have been conventional but is anything but, as directed by Alfonso Cuaron, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Carlos. Luisa kids them about their sex lives in a lighthearted but tenacious way, until they have few secrets left, and at the same time she teases them with erotic possibilities. The movie is realistic about sex, which is to say, franker and healthier than the smutty evasions forced on American movies by the R rating. We feel a shock of recognition: This is what real people do and how they do it, sexually, and the MPAA has perverted a generation of American movies into puerile masturbatory snickering. Whether Luisa will have sex with one or both of her new friends is not for me to reveal. More to the point is what she wants to teach them, which is that men and women learn to share sex as a treasure they must carry together without something spilling--that women are not prizes, conquests or targets, but the other half of a precarious unity. This is news to the boys, who are obsessed with orgasms (needless to say, their own). The progress of that story provides the surface arc of the movie. Next to it, in a kind of parallel world, is the Mexico they are driving through. They pass police checkpoints, see drug busts and traffic accidents, drive past shanty towns, and are stopped at a roadblock of flowers by villagers demanding a donation for their queen--a girl in bridal white, representing the Virgin. "You have a beautiful queen," Luisa tells them. Yes, but the roadblock is genteel extortion. The queen has a sizable court that quietly hints a donation is in order. At times during this journey the soundtrack goes silent and we hear a narrator who comments from outside the action, pointing out the village where Tenoch's nanny was born and left at 13 to seek work. Or a stretch of road where, two years earlier, there was a deadly accident. The narration and the roadside images are a reminder that in Mexico and many other countries a prosperous economy has left an uneducated and penniless peasantry behind. They arrive at the beach. They are greeted by a fisherman and his family, who have lived here for four generations, sell them fried fish, rent them a place to stay. This is an unspoiled paradise. (The narrator informs us the beach will be purchased for a tourist hotel, and the fisherman will abandon his way of life, go to the city in search of a job and finally come back here to work as a janitor.) Here the sexual intrigues which have been developing all along will find their conclusion. Beneath these two levels (the coming-of-age journey, the two Mexicos) is hidden a third. I will say nothing about it, except to observe there are only two shots in the entire movie that reflect the inner reality of one of the characters. At the end, finally knowing everything, you think back through the film--or, as I was able to do, see it again. Alfonso Cuaron is Mexican but his second and third features were big-budget American films. I thought "Great Expectations" (1998), with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anne Bancroft, brought a freshness and visual excitement to the updated story. I liked "A Little Princess" (1995) even more. It is clear Cuaron is a gifted director, and here he does his best work to date. Why did he return to Mexico to make it? Because he has something to say about Mexico, obviously, and also because Jack Valenti and the MPAA have made it impossible for a movie like this to be produced in America. It is a perfect illustration of the need for a workable adult rating: too mature, thoughtful and frank for the R, but not in any sense pornographic. Why do serious film people not rise up in rage and tear down the rating system that infantilizes their work? The key performance is by Maribel Verdu as Luisa. She is the engine that drives every scene she's in, as she teases, quizzes, analyzes and lectures the boys, as if impatient with the task of turning them into beings fit to associate with an adult woman. In a sense she fills the standard role of the sexy older woman, so familiar from countless Hollywood comedies, but her character is so much more than that--wiser, sexier, more complex, happier, sadder. It is true, as some critics have observed, that "Y Tu Mama" is one of those movies where "after that summer, nothing would ever be the same again." Yes, but it redefines "nothing." Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] CLOCKSTOPPERS / **1/2 (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:25:12 GMT CLOCKSTOPPERS / **1/2 (PG) March 29, 2002 Zak: Jesse Bradford Dr. Earl Dopler: French Stewart Francesca: Paula Garces Henry Gate: Michael Biehn Dr. George Gibbs: Robin Thomas Jay: Linda Kim Mom: Julia Sweeney Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Frakes. Written by Rob Hedden, Andy Hedden, J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. Running time: approximately 90 minutes. Rated PG.(for action violence and mild language). BY ROGER EBERT In an early scene of "Clockstoppers," a student in a college physics class is unable to complete the sentence, "Einstein's Theory of ..." And just as well, too, since any time-manipulation movie has to exist in blissful ignorance of Einstein's theory. Not that it can't be done, at least in the movies. "Clockstoppers" has a new twist: The traveler doesn't travel through time but stays right where he is, and lives faster. This is closer to Einstein's Theory of Amphetamines. Dr. George Gibbs (Robin Thomas) has invented a way for a subject to live much faster than those around him, so that they seem to stand in place while he whizzes around. He is like the mayfly, which lives a lifetime in a day--and that is precisely the trouble. The system works well, but experimenters age so quickly that they return looking worn and wrinkled, like Keir Dullea in "2001," who checks into that alien bedroom, and doesn't check out. Gibbs needs to iron out a few kinks. Before he can perfect his discovery, intrigue strikes. His teenage son Zak (Jesse Bradford) is informed by the friendly Dr. Earl Dopler (French Stewart) that Gibbs had been kidnapped into hyperspace by the evil and scheming millionaire Henry Gates. Dopler is named after the Effect. I have no idea how they came up with the name of Gates. Zak has just met the beautiful Francesca (Paula Garces) a pretty student from Venezuela, at his high school, and they find themselves teamed on a mission to venture into hyperspace, rescue his father, outsmart Gates, and return without becoming senior citizens. (That's if hyperspace is the same place as speeded-up-time-space, and frankly the movie lost me there.) To assist in their mission they use a gun which fires marbles filled with liquid nitrogen, which burst on impact and instantly freeze their targets. That this gun is not fatal is a fact the movie wisely makes no attempt to explain. "Clockstoppers" has high energy, bright colors, neat sets, and intriguing effects as the speeded-up characters zip around. There is a time when Zak outsmarts characters who are merely speeded-up by speeding up while in speedspace, or whatever it's called, so that he whizzes around the whizzers while emitting a kind of pulsing glow. The movie has been produced by Nickelodeon, and will no doubt satisfy its intended audience enormously. It does not cross over into the post-Nickelodeon universe. Unlike "Spy Kids" or "Big Fat Liar," it offers few consolations for parents and older brothers and sisters. It is what it is, efficiently and skillfully, and I salute it for hitting a double or maybe a triple. I also like the dialogue of Dr. ("Don't blow your RAM") Dopler. No one can be altogether uninteresting who makes a verb out of "Ginzu." Note: At one point, the characters pass a high-security check point and have to submit to a retinal scan. In a subtle bow to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the retinal scan device is at waist level. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] DEATH TO SMOOCHY / 1/2* (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:25:26 GMT DEATH TO SMOOCHY / 1/2* (R) March 29, 2002 Rainbow Randolph: Robin Williams Smoochy: Edward Norton Burke: Danny DeVito Stokes: Jon Stewart Nora: Catherine Keener Merv Green: Harvey Fierstein Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Danny DeVito. Written by Adam Resnick. Running time: 109 minutes. Rated R (for language and sexual references). BY ROGER EBERT Only enormously talented people could have made "Death to Smoochy." Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience. To make a film this awful, you have to have enormous ambition and confidence, and dream big dreams. The movie, directed by Danny DeVito (!), is about two clowns. That violates a cardinal rule of modern mass entertainment, which is that everyone hates clowns almost as much as they hate mimes. ("Big Fat Liar," a much better recent showbiz comedy, got this right. When the clown arrives at a birthday party, the kids joyfully shouts, "Hey, it's the clown! Let's hurt him!") Most clowns are simply tiresome (I exempt Bozo). There are however two dread categories of clowns: clowns who are secretly vile and evil, and clowns who are guileless and good. "Death to Smoochy" takes no half-measures and provides us with one of each. We begin with Rainbow Randolph, played by Robin Williams, an actor who should never, ever, play a clown of any description, because the role writes a license for him to indulge in those very mannerisms he should be striving to purge from his repertory. Rainbow is a corrupt drunk who takes bribes to put kids on his show. The show itself is what kiddie TV would look like if kids wanted to see an Ann Miller musical starring midgets. The good clown is Smoochy (Edward Norton), a soul so cheerful, earnest, honest and uncomplicated, you want to slap him and bring him back to his senses. Sample helpful Smoochy song for kids: "My Stepdad's Not Bad, He's Just Adjusting." Both of these clowns wear the kinds of costumes seen at the openings of used car lots in states that doubt the possibility of evolution. Rainbow is convoluted, but Smoochy is so boring that the film explains why, on a long bus ride, you should always choose to sit next to Mrs. Robinson, for example, rather than Benjamin. Enter the film's most engaging character, a TV producer named Nora (Catherine Keener), who, like Rachel Griffiths, cannot play dumb and is smart enough never to try. She's taking instructions from the network boss (Jon Stewart, who might have been more interesting as one of the clowns). They're trapped in an inane subplot involving two bad guys, Burke (DeVito) and Merv Green (played by the gravel-voiced Harvey Fierstein, who, as he puts on weight, is becoming boulder-voiced). There is also Vincent Schiavelli as a former child star, now a crackhead. The drama of the two clowns and their battle for the time slot is complicated by Rainbow Randolph's attempts to smear Smoochy by tricking him into appearing at a neo-Nazi rally. One wonders idly: Are there enough neo-Nazis to fill a thundering convention center? Do they usually book clowns? The answer to the second question may be yes. The movie ends by crossing an ice show with elements of "The Manchurian Candidate." It involves an odd sexual predilection: Keener has a fetish for kiddie show hosts. It has a lesbian hit-squad leader with a thick Irish brogue. It uses four-letter language as if being paid by the word. In all the annals of the movies, few films have been this odd, inexplicable and unpleasant. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] NO SUCH THING / * (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:25:40 GMT NO SUCH THING / * (R) March 29, 2002 Beatrice: Sarah Polley Monster: Robert John Burke TV Producer: Helen Mirren Doctor: Julie Christie Dr. Artaud: Baltasar Kormakur MGM presents a film written and directed by Hal Hartley. Running time: 111 minutes. Rated R (for language and brief violence). Opening today at Pipers Alley. BY ROGER EBERT Hal Hartley has always marched in the avant garde, but this time he marches alone. Followers will have to be drafted. "No Such Thing" is inexplicable, shapeless, dull. It doesn't even rise to entertaining badness. Coming four years after his intriguing if unsuccessful "Henry Fool," and filmed mostly on location in Iceland with Icelandic money, it suggests a film that was made primarily because he couldn't get anything else off the ground. The film's original title was "Monster." That this is a better title than "No Such Thing" is beyond debate. The story involves a monstrous beast who lives in an island off the Icelandic coast, and is immortal, short-tempered and alcoholic. As the film opens, the Monster (Robert John Burke) has killed a TV news crew, which inspires a cynical New York network executive (Helen Mirren) to dispatch a young reporter (Sarah Polley) to interview him. Polley's fiance was among the Monster's victims. Her plane crashes in the ocean, she is the sole survivor and therefore makes good news herself, and is nursed back to life by Julie Christie, in a role no more thankless than the others in this film. Since the filming, Christie had a facelift and Mirren won an Oscar nomination. Life moves on. We seek in vain for shreds of recognizable human motivation. By the time she meets the Monster, Polley seems to have forgotten he killed her fiance. By the time she returns with the Monster to New York, the world seems to have forgotten. The Monster wants to go to New York to enlist the services of Dr. Artaud (Baltasar Kormakur), a scientist who can destroy matter and therefore perhaps can bring an end to the misery of the immortal beast. We are praying that in the case of this movie, matter includes celluloid. Elements of the movie seem not merely half-baked, but never to have seen the inside of an oven. Helen Mirren's TV news program and its cynical values are treated with the satirical insights of callow undergraduates who will be happy with a C-plus in film class. Characterizations are so shallow they consist only of mannerisms; Mirren chain-smokes cigarettes, Dr. Artaud chain-smokes cigars, the Monster swings from a bottle. At a social reception late in the film, Sarah Polley turns up in a leather bondage dress with a push-up bra. Why, oh, why? Hal Hartley, still only 42, has proudly marched to his own drummer since I first met him at Sundance 1990 with "The Unbelievable Truth," a good film that introduced two of his favorite actors, Adrienne Shelley and Robert Burke (now Robert John Burke, as the Monster). Since then, his titles have included "Trust" (1991), "Simple Men" (1992), "Amateur" (1994), "Flirt" (1995) and "Henry Fool." My star ratings have wavered around two or two and a half, and my reviews have mostly expressed interest and hope--hope that he will define what he's looking for, and share it with us. Now I'm beginning to wonder how long the wait will be. A Hartley film can be analyzed and justified, and a review can try to mold the intractable material into a more comprehensible form. But why does Hartley make us do all the heavy lifting? Can he consider a film that is self-evident and forthcoming? One that doesn't require us to plunder the quarterly film magazines for deconstruction? I don't mind heavy lifting when a film is challenging or fun, like "Mulholland Drive." But not when all the weight is in the packing materials. In "No Such Thing" we have promising elements. The relationship between the Monster and the TV reporter suggests "Beauty and the Beast" (more the Cocteau than the Disney version), but that vein is not mined, and the TV news satire is too callow to connect in any way with real targets. Many of the characters, like Dr. Artaud, seem like house guests given a costume and appearing in the host's play just to be good sports. That gifted actors appear here shows how desperate they are for challenging parts, and how willing to take chances. Hartley has let them down. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] PANIC ROOM / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:25:56 GMT PANIC ROOM / *** (R) March 29, 2002 Meg Altman: Jodie Foster Sarah Altman: Kristen Stewart Burnham: Forest Whitaker Junior: Jared Leto Raoul: Dwight Yoakam Stephen: Patrick Bauchau Evan: Ian Buchanan Lydia Lynch: Ann Magnuson Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by David Fincher. Written by David Koepp. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated R (for violence and language). BY ROGER EBERT As a critic I indulge myself by scoffing at loopholes in thrillers that could not exist without them. I guess I'm seeking the ideal of a thriller existing entirely in a world of physical and psychological plausibility. "Panic Room" is about as close as I'm likely to get. Yes, there are moments when I want to shout advice at the screen, but just as often the characters are ahead of me. They also ask the same questions I'm asking, of which the most heartfelt, in a thriller, is "why didn't we do that?" The movie, directed by David Fincher and written by David Koepp, embraces realism almost as a challenge. The movie resembles a chess game; the board and all of the pieces are in full view, both sides know the rules, and the winner will simply be the better strategist. Once we sense "Panic Room" isn't going to cheat, it gathers in tension, because the characters are operating out of their own resources, and that makes them the players, not the pawns. Jodie Foster and Forest Whitaker star as the chessmasters. She's Meg, a rich woman, recently divorced, who is spending her first night in a big Manhattan brownstone with her teenage daughter, Sarah (Kristen Stewart). He's Burnham, a home invader lured by tales of millions hidden in the house by its former owner. The house includes a "panic room" on the third of four stories--a reinforced retreat with independent supplies of air, electricity and water, which can be locked indefinitely to keep the occupants safe. Burnham's day job: "I spent the last 12 years of my life building rooms like this specifically to keep out people like us." He's talking to his partners Junior (Jared Leto) and Raoul (Dwight Yoakam). Junior brought Burnham and Raoul onto the job, and Burnham hates it that Raoul brought along a gun. Their plan is to get in, find the money, and get out. According to Junior's information, the house is empty. It is not, and soon Meg and Sarah are locked in the safe room, the three men are outside, and it looks like a stalemate except that neither side can afford to concede. We already know the layout of the house. We got the tour when the real-estate agent showed the women through the rooms, and again in a vertiginous shot that begins in the upstairs bedroom, swoops down two floors, zooms into the keyhole, pulls back, and careens upstairs again. The shot combines physical and virtual camera moves, a reminder that Fincher ("Seven," "The Game," "Fight Club") is a visual virtuoso. He's also a master of psychological gamesmanship, and most of the movie will bypass fancy camerawork for classical intercutting between the cats and the mice (who sometimes trade sides of the board). I have deliberately not described much of the strategy itself. That would be cheating. Once you know what everyone wants and how the safe room works, the plot should be allowed to simply unfold. There is a neat twist in the fund of knowledge about the room; Burnham, who builds them, knows a lot more about how they work, their strengths and limitations, than Meg and Sarah, who start out basically knowing only how to run inside and lock the door. The role of Meg was originally filled by Nicole Kidman. I learn from Variety that she had to drop out after a knee injury and was replaced by Foster. I have no idea if Foster is better or worse than Kidman would have been. I only know she is spellbinding. She has the gutsy, brainy resilience of a stubborn scrapper, and when all other resources fail her she can still think fast--and obliquely, like a chessmaster hiding one line of attack inside another. The intruders are ill-matched, which is the idea. Burnham has the knowledge, Junior has the plan, and Raoul has the gun. Once they are all inside the house and know the plan, therefore, Junior is not entirely necessary, unless the others are positively determined to split the loot three ways. On the other hand, Burnham hates violence, and Raoul is such a wild card he may shoot himself in the foot. The end game in chess, for the student of the sport, is its most intriguing aspect. The loss of pieces has destroyed the initial symmetry and created a skewed board--unfamiliar terrain in which specialized pieces are required to do jobs for which they were not designed. There is less clutter; strategy must run deeper because there are fewer alternative lines. Sacrifices may be brilliant, or they may be blunders, or only apparent blunders. Every additional move limits the options, and the prospect of defeat, swift and unforeseen, hangs over the board. That is exactly the way "Panic Room" unfolds, right down to the detail that even at the end the same rules apply, and all the choices that were made earlier limit the choices that can be made now. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE ROOKIE / ** (G) Date: 20 May 2002 23:26:08 GMT THE ROOKIE / ** (G) March 29, 2002 Jim Morris: Dennis Quaid Lorri Morris: Rachel Griffiths 'Wack' Campos: Jay Hernandez Hunter: Angus T. Jones Jim Sr.: Brian Cox Walt Disney Pictures presents a film directed by John Lee Hancock. Written by Mike Rich. Running time: 129 minutes. Rated G. BY ROGER EBERT "The Rookie" combines two reliable formulas: The Little Team That Goes to State, and the Old-Timer Who Realizes His Youthful Dream. When two genres approach exhaustion, sometimes it works if they prop each other up. Not this time, not when we also get the Dad Who Can't Be Pleased However Hard His Son Tries, and the Wife Who Wants Her Husband to Have His Dream But Has a Family to Raise. The movie is so resolutely cobbled together out of older movies that it even uses a totally unnecessary prologue, just because it seems obligatory. I know, it's based on a true story, but a true story that seems based on old movies.. We begin in the wide-open spaces of West Texas, where wildcat oil prospectors have a strike in the 1920s. The little town of Big Lake springs up, and in the shadow of one of the rickety old derricks, a baseball diamond is scratched out of the dust. Supporting this enterprise, we're told, is St. Rita, "patron saint of hopeless causes." I thought that was St. Jude, but no, the two saints share the same billing. Certainly St. Rita is powerful enough to deal with baseball, but it would take both saints in harness to save this movie. The story leaps forward in time to the recent past, as we follow a Navy career chief (Brian Cox) who moves with his family from town to town while his son, little Jimmy, pounds his baseball mitt and is always getting yanked off his latest team just when it starts to win. Now it's the present and the Little Leaguer has grown up into big Jimmy (Dennis Quaid), coach of the Big Lake High School baseball team. He's married to Lorri (Rachel Griffiths), they have an 8-year-old, and he has all but forgotten his teenage dream of pitching in the majors. By my calculations 30 years have passed, but his dad, Jim Senior, looks exactly the same age as he did when Jimmy was 8, except for some gray hair, of course. Brian Cox is one of those actors like Walter Matthau who has always been about the same age. I was so misled by the prologue I thought maybe Jim and Jim Sr. were connected in some way with the wildcatters and St. Rita, but apparently the entire laborious prologue is meant simply to establish that baseball was played in Big Lake before Jimmy and Lorri moved there. All movies of this sort are huggable. They're about nice people, played by actors we like, striving for goals we can identify with. Dennis Quaid is just plain one of the nicest men in the movies, with that big goofy smile, but boy, can he look mean when he narrows his eyes and squints down over his shoulder from the pitching mound. Faithful readers will know that I have a special regard for Rachel Griffiths, that most intelligent and sexy actress, but what a price she has had to pay for her stardom on HBO's "Six Feet Under." Instead of starring roles in small, good movies ("My Son the Fanatic," "Hilary and Jackie," "Me Myself I"), she now gets the big bucks on TV but her work schedule requires her to take supporting roles in movies that can be slotted into her free time. So here she plays the hero's faithful wife, stirring a pot and buttoning the little boy's shirt, her scenes basically limited to pillow talk, telephone conversations, sitting in the stands and, of course, presenting the hero with his the Choice of His Dream or His Family. The high school team comes from such a small school that, as nearly as I can see, they have only nine members and no subs (Jimmy's 8-year-old is the batboy). It's captained by "Wack" Campos (Jay Hernandez), who is good in the standard role of coach's alter ego. Every single game in the movie, without exception, goes according to the obvious demands of the screenplay, but there is a surprise development when Jimmy pitches batting practice and they're amazed by the speed he still has on his fastball. They make him a deal: If they get to district finals or even state, Jimmy has to try out for the majors again. Is there anyone alive who can hear these lines and not predict what will happen between then and the end of the movie? "The Rookie" is comforting, even soothing, to those who like the old songs best. It may confuse those who, because they like the characters, think it is good. It is not good. It is skillful. Learning the difference between good movies and skillful ones is an early step in becoming a moviegoer. "The Rookie" demonstrates that a skillful movie need not be good. It is also true that a good movie need not be skillful, but it takes a heap of moviegoing to figure that one out. And pray to St. Rita. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL / **** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:26:24 GMT E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL / **** (PG) March 22, 2002 Mary: Dee Wallace Elliott: Henry Thomas Keys: Peter Coyote Michael: Robert MacNaughton Gertie: Drew Barrymore Greg: K.C. Martel Steve: Sean Frye Tyler: Tom Howell Universal Studios presents a film directed by Steven Spielberg. Produced by Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy. Written by Melissa Mathison. Photographed by Allen Daviau. Edited by Carol Littleton. Music by John Williams. Running time: 120 minutes. Rated PG (for language and mild thematic elements). Roger Ebert's original review of "E.T." ran in 1982. BY ROGER EBERT This movie made my heart glad. It is filled with innocence, hope, and good cheer. It is also wickedly funny and exciting as hell. "E.T The Extra-Terrestrial" is a movie like "The Wizard of Oz," that you can grow up with and grow old with, and it won't let you down. It tells a story about friendship and love. Some people are a little baffled when they hear it described: It's about a relationship between a little boy and a creature from outer space that becomes his best friend. That makes it sound like a cross between "The Thing" and "National Velvet." It works as science fiction, it's sometimes as scary as a monster movie, and at the end, when the lights go up, there's not a dry eye in the house. The Great Movies Read Ebert's essay on what makes "E.T." one of the great movies. "E.T." is a movie of surprises, and I will not spoil any of them for you. But I can suggest some of the film's wonders. The movie takes place in and around a big American suburban development. The split-level houses march up and down the curved drives, carved out of hills that turn into forest a few blocks beyond the backyard. In this forest one night, a spaceship lands, and queer-looking little creatures hobble out of it and go snuffling through the night, looking for plant specimens, I guess. Humans arrive-authorities with flashlights and big stomping boots. They close in on the spaceship, and it is forced to take off and abandon one of its crew members. This forlorn little creature, the E.T. of the title, is left behind on Earth--abandoned to a horrendous world of dogs, raccoons, automobile exhausts and curious little boys. The movie's hero is one particular little boy named Elliott. He is played by Henry Thomas in what has to be the best little boy performance I've ever seen in an American film. He doesn't come across as an overcoached professional kid; he's natural, defiant, easily touched, conniving, brave and childlike. He just knows there's something living out there in the backyard, and he sits up all night with his flashlight, trying to coax the creature out of hiding with a nearly irresistible bait: Reese's Pieces. The creature, which looks a little like Snoopy but is very, very wise, approaches the boy. They become friends. The E.T. moves into the house, and the center section of the film is an endless invention on the theme of an extra-terrestrial's introduction to bedrooms, televisions, telephones, refrigerators and six-packs of beer. The creature has the powers of telepathy and telekinesis, and one of the ways it communicates is to share its emotions with Elliott. That's how Elliott knows that the E.T. wants to go home. And from here on out, I'd better not describe what happens. Let me just say that the movie has moments of sheer ingenuity, moments of high comedy, some scary moments and a very sad sequence that has everybody blowing their noses. What is especially wonderful about all of those moments is that Steven Spielberg, who made this film, creates them out of legitimate and fascinating plot developments. At every moment from its beginning to its end, "E.T." is really about something. The story is quite a narrative accomplishment. It reveals facts about the E.T.'s nature; it develops the personalities of Elliott, his mother, brother and sister; it involves the federal space agencies; it touches on extra-terrestrial medicine, biology and communication, and still it inspires genuine laughter and tears. A lot of those achievements rest on the very peculiar shoulders of the E.T. itself. With its odd little walk, its high-pitched squeals of surprise, its tentative imitations of human speech, and its catlike but definitely alien purring, E.T. becomes one of the most intriguing fictional creatures I've ever seen on a screen. The E.T. is a triumph of special effects, certainly; the craftsmen who made this little being have extended the boundaries of their art. But it's also a triumph of imagination, because the filmmakers had to imagine E.T., had to see through its eyes, hear with its ears, and experience this world of ours through its utterly alien experience in order to make a creature so absolutely convincing. The word for what they exercised is empathy. "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" is a reminder of what movies are for. Most movies are not for any one thing, of course. Some are to make us think, some to make us feel, some to take us away from our problems, some to help us examine them. What is enchanting about "E.T." is that, in some measure, it does all of those things. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BLADE II / ***1/2 (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:26:37 GMT BLADE II / ***1/2 (R) March 22, 2002 Blade: Wesley Snipes Whistler: Kris Kristofferson Rienhardt: Ron Perlman Nomak: Luke Goss Nyssa: Leonor Varela New Line Cinema presents a film directed by Guillermo del Toro. Written by Mary Wolfman, Gene Colan and David S. Goyer. Running time: 128 minutes. Rated R (for strong pervasive violence, language, some drug use and sexual content). BY ROGER EBERT "Blade II" is a really rather brilliant vomitorium of viscera, a comic book with dreams of becoming a textbook for mad surgeons. There are shots here of the insides of vampires that make your average autopsy look like a slow afternoon at Supercuts. The movie has been directed by Guillermo del Toro, whose work is dominated by two obsessions: War between implacable ancient enemies, and sickening things that bite you and aren't even designed to let go. The movie is an improvement on "Blade" (1998), which was pretty good. Once again it stars Wesley Snipes as the Marvel Comics hero who is half-man, half-vampire. He was raised from childhood by Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), a vampire hunter who kept Blade's vampirism in check, and trained him to fight the Nosferatus. Time has passed, Whistler has been captured by vampires and floats unconscious in a storage tank while his blood is harvested, and Blade prowls the streets in his lonely war. One night acrobatic creatures with glowing red eyes invade Blade's space and engage in a violent battle that turns out to be entirely gratuitous, because after they remove their masks to reveal themselves as vampires--a ferocious warrior and a foxy babe--they only want to deliver a message: "You have been our worst enemy. But now there is something else on the streets worse than you!" This reminded me of the night in O'Rourke's when McHugh asked this guy why he carried a gun and the guy said he lived in a dangerous neighborhood and McHugh said it would be safer if he moved. The Vampire Nation is under attack by a new breed of vampires named Reapers, who drink the blood of both humans and vampires, and are insatiable. Blade, who is both human and vampire, is like a balanced meal. If the Reapers are not destroyed, both races will die. This news is conveyed by a vampire leader whose brain can be dimly seen through a light blue translucent plastic shell, more evidence of the design influence of the original iMac. Blade and Whistler (now rescued from the tank and revived with a "retro-virus injection") join the vampires in this war, which is not without risk, because of course if the Reapers are destroyed, the vampires will turn on them. There is a story line, however quickly sketched, to support the passages of pure action, including computer-aided fight scenes of astonishing pacing and agility. Snipes once again plays Blade not as a confident superhero, but as a once-confused kid who has been raised to be good at his work and uncertain about his identity. He is attracted to the vampire Nyssa (Leonor Varela), but we sense a relationship between a creature of the night and Blade, known as the Daywalker, is sooner or later going to result in arguments over their work schedules. The Reapers are the masterpieces of this movie. They all have what looks like a scar down the center of their chins. The first time we see one, it belongs to a donor who has turned up at a blood bank in Prague. This is not the kind of blood bank you want to get your next transfusion from. It has a bug zapper hanging from the wall, and an old drunk who says you can even bring in cups of blood from outside and they'll buy them. The chin scar, it turns out, is not a scar but a cleft. These Reapers are nasty. They have mouths that unfold into tripartite jaws. Remember the claws on the steam shovels in those prize games at the carnival, where you manipulated the wheels and tried to pick up valuable prizes? Now put them on a vampire and make them big and bloody, with fangs and mucus and viscous black saliva. And then imagine a tongue coiled inside with an eating and sucking mechanism on the end of it that looks like the organ evolution forgot--the sort of thing diseased livers have nightmares about. Later they slice open a Reaper's chest cavity and Blade and Whistler look inside. Blade: The heart is surrounded in bone! Whistler: Good luck getting a stake through it! Del Toro's early film "Cronos" (1993) was about an ancient golden beetle that sank its claws into the flesh of its victims and injected an immortality serum. His "Mimic" (1997) was about a designer insect, half-mantis, half-termite, that escapes into the subway system and mutates into a very big bug. Characters would stick their hands into dark places and I would slide down in my seat. His "Devil's Backbone" (2001), set in an orphanage at the time of the Spanish Civil War, is a ghost story, not a horror picture, but does have a body floating in a tank. Still in his 30s, the Mexican-born director doesn't depend on computers to get him through a movie and impress the kids with fancy fight scenes. He brings his creepy phobias along with him. You can sense the difference between a movie that's a technical exercise ("Resident Evil") and one steamed in the dread cauldrons of the filmmaker's imagination. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BORSTAL BOY / ** (Not rated) Date: 20 May 2002 23:26:49 GMT BORSTAL BOY / ** (Not rated) March 22, 2002 Brendan Behan: Shawn Hatosy Charlie Millwall: Danny Dyer Liz: Eva Birthistle Warden: Michael York Jock: Robin Laing Strand Releasing presents a film directed by Peter Sheridan. Written by Sheridan, Brendan Behan and Nye Heron. Running time: 91 minutes. No MPAA rating. BY ROGER EBERT For a dozen years of my life, I gazed into the face of Brendan Behan almost nightly. There was an enormous photograph of him on the wall of O'Rourke's Pub on North Avenue, and it didn't take a lip-reader to guess which word began with his upper teeth posed on his lower lip. Drunk and disheveled, he must have been in a late stage of his brief and noisy progress through life. He wrote that to be drunk in Ireland in his youth was not a disgrace but a sign of status, because it showed you had enough money to pay for the drink. By that measurement, Behan was a millionaire. Still beloved and read by those who remember him, the boy-o has long since faded from his time of great celebrity, when he enlightened talk shows with his boisterous proletarian philosophy. The recent equivalent of his risky performances as a late-night chat star would be Farrah Fawcett crossed with Andrew Dice Clay. He also wrote some good plays and the classic memoir Borstal Boy, and died at 41--which was old age, considering how he lived. That is the Behan I remember. The Behan of "Borstal Boy" (Shawn Hatosy) is another person altogether, an idealistic young lad who naively goes to England on a mission for the IRA, is arrested, is sent to juvenile prison ("borstal") and there learns to love those he thinks he hates, including the English (through the warden's daughter) and "queers" (through his prison pal Charlie). After being discharged as a presumably pacified bisexual, he returns to Ireland and the movie ends quickly, before having to deal with the facts that he once again took up arms for the IRA, shot a cop, was sent back to prison, and (despite marriage to the saintly Beatrice) found love most reliably in the arms of the bottle. Is the Brendan Behan of "Borstal Boy" simply the young man before alcoholism rewrote his script? I haven't read the book in years, but my strongest memory is of Behan's defiance--of his unshakable belief that carrying bombs to Liverpool and shooting cops was not criminal because he was a soldier at war. That has been the policy of the IRA from the beginning, that they are not terrorists but soldiers or prisoners of war. It is the same today with terrorists, with the difference that things were ever so much more innocent in the 1950s, so that the borstal warden (Michael York) could see Brendan as a lad with good heart who just needed a chance to settle down and think things through. The story hinges on parallel love affairs, both depending on a permissiveness one is a little startled to find in an English juvenile prison in the 1950s. Young Brendan makes best friends with his fellow prisoner Charlie (Danny Dyer), a young sailor who is "openly gay" (says Stephen Holden of the New York Times), although I believe being openly gay in those days, when it was against the law, was more a matter of sending signals to those who knew them and staying prudently in the closet otherwise. Certainly Brendan is slow to catch on, both to Charlie's homosexuality and to the promptings of his own heart. He is more obviously attracted to Liz (Eva Birthistle), the warden's daughter. My guess is that the likelihood of a borstal boy being allowed to spend quality time with the warden's daughter is approximately the same as his chances of making friends with an "openly gay" prisoner, which is to say, less likely than being invited to tea with the Queen. Of course, Liz and Charlie may come directly from the pages of the book and I have simply forgotten them. But my problem with "Borstal Boy" isn't so much with the facts as with the tone. If this is an accurate portrait of Brendan Behan at 16, then "Borstal Boy" makes the same mistake "Iris" does--it gives us these writers before (and in the case of "Iris," after) the years in which they were the people they became famous for being. Yes, Behan's book is about that period in his life, but written with a gusto and rudeness that's lacking in Peter Sheridan's well-mannered film. Yes, I know I've defended "A Beautiful Mind" against charges that it left out seamy details from the earlier years of John Forbes Nash, but the difference is, "A Beautiful Mind" focused intently on the central story, which is that he was a schizophrenic whose work won the Nobel Prize. Does anyone much think the central story of Brendan Behan is that he was a bisexual sweetheart before he took to drink? The photo on the wall at O'Rourke's shows him forming the first letter of the first word of his response to that theory. Borstal Boy. -- Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] SORORITY BOYS / 1/2* (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:27:04 GMT SORORITY BOYS / 1/2* (R) March 22, 2002 Dave/Daisy: Barry Watson Doofer/Roberta: Harland Williams Adam/Adina: Michael Rosenbaum Leah Melissa Sagemiller Katie: Heather Matarazzo Patty: Kathryn Stockwood Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Wally Wolodarsky. Written by Joe Jarvis and Greg Coolidge. Running time: 94 minutes. Rated R (for crude sexual content, nudity, strong language and some drug use). BY ROGER EBERT One element of "Sorority Boys" is undeniably good, and that is the title. Pause by the poster on the way into the theater. That will be your high point. It has all you need for a brainless autopilot sitcom ripoff: a high concept that is right there in the title, easily grasped at the pitch meeting. The title suggests the poster art, the poster art gives you the movie, and story details can be sketched in by study of "Bosom Buddies," "National Lampoon's Animal House" and the shower scenes in any movie involving girls' dorms or sports teams. What is unusual about "Sorority Boys" is how it caves in to the homophobia of the audience by not even trying to make its cross-dressing heroes look like halfway, even one-tenth-of-the-way, plausible girls. They look like college boys wearing cheap wigs and dresses they bought at Goodwill. They usually need a shave. One keeps his retro forward-thrusting sideburns and just combs a couple of locks of his wig forward to "cover" them. They look as feminine as the sailors wearing coconut brassieres in "South Pacific." Their absolute inability to pass as women leads to another curiosity about the movie, which is that all of the other characters are obviously mentally impaired. How else to explain fraternity brothers who don't recognize their own friends in drag? Sorority sisters who think these are real women and want to pledge them on first sight? A father who doesn't realize that's his own son he's trying to pick up? I know. I'm being too literal. I should be a good sport and go along with the joke. But the joke is not funny. The movie is not funny. If it's this easy to get a screenplay filmed in Hollywood, why did they bother with that Project Greenlight contest? Why not ship all the entries directly to Larry Brezner, Michael Fottrell and Walter Hamada, the producers of "Sorority Boys," who must wear Santa suits to work? The plot begins with three members of Kappa Omicron Kappa fraternity, who are thrown out of the KOK house for allegedly stealing party funds. Homeless and forlorn, they decide to pledge the Delta Omicron Gamma house after learning that the DOGs need new members. Dave (Barry Watson) becomes Daisy and is soon feeling chemistry with the DOG president, Leah (Melissa Sagemiller), who is supposed to be an intellectual feminist but can shower nude with him and not catch on he's a man. Harland Williams and Michael Rosenbaum play the other two fugitive KOKs--roles that, should they become stars, will be invaluable as a source of clips at roasts in their honor. Among the DOGs is the invaluable Heather Matarazzo, who now has a lock on the geeky plain girl roles, even though she is in actual fact sweet and pretty. Just as Latina actresses have risen up in arms against Jennifer Connelly for taking the role of John Forbes Nash's Salvadoran wife in "A Beautiful Mind," so ugly girls should picket Heather Matarazzo. Because the intelligence level of the characters must be low, very low, very very low, for the masquerade to work, the movie contains no wit, only labored gags involving falsies, lipstick, unruly erections and straight guys who don't realize they're trying to pick up a man. (I imagine yokels in the audience responding with the Gradually Gathering Guffaw as they catch on. "Hey, Jethro! He don't know she's a guy! Haw! Haw! Haw!") The entire movie, times ten, lacks the humor of a single line in the Bob Gibson song "Mendocino" ("She was a he, but what the hell, honey/Since you've already got my money..."). I'm curious about who would go to see this movie. Obviously moviegoers with a low opinion of their own taste. It's so obviously what it is that you would require a positive desire to throw away money in order to lose two hours of your life. "Sorority Boys" will be the worst movie playing in any multiplex in America this weekend, and, yes, I realize "Crossroads" is still out there. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] STOLEN SUMMER / *** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:27:21 GMT STOLEN SUMMER / *** (PG) March 22, 2002 Joe O'Malley: Aidan Quinn Margaret O'Malley: Bonnie Hunt Pete O'Malley: Adi Stein Rabbi Jacobson: Kevin Pollak Danny Jacobson: Mike Weinberg Father Kelly: Brian Dennehy Patrick O'Malley: Eddie Kay Thomas Miramax Films presents a film written and directed by Pete Jones. Running time: 94 minutes. Rated PG.(for thematic elements and language). BY ROGER EBERT Gene Siskel proposed an acid test for a movie: Is this film as good as a documentary of the same people having lunch? At last, with "Stolen Summer," we get a chance to decide for ourselves. The making of the film has been documented in the HBO series "Project Greenlight," where we saw the actors and filmmakers having lunch, contract disputes, story conferences, personal vendettas, location emergencies and even glimpses of hope. Movies are collisions between egos and compromises. With some there are no survivors. "Stolen Summer" is a delightful surprise because despite all the backstage drama, this is a movie that tells stories that work--is charming, is moving, is funny and looks professional. That last point is crucial, because as everyone knows, director Pete Jones and his screenplay were chosen in a contest sponsored by Miramax and actors Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Miramax gave them a break with their screenplay "Good Will Hunting," and they wanted to return the favor. "Stolen Summer" takes place on the North Side of Chicago in the summer of 1976, when an earnest second-grader named Pete O'Malley (Adi Stein) listens in Catholic school and believes every word about working his way into heaven. Seeking advice from a slightly older brother about how to guarantee his passage to paradise, Pete is startled to learn that the Jews are not seeking to be saved through Jesus. So Pete sets up a free lemonade stand in front of the local synagogue, hoping to convert some Jews and pay for his passage. There is already a link between Pete's family and that of Rabbi Jacobson (Kevin Pollak). Pete's dad, Joe (Aidan Quinn), is a fireman who dashed into a burning home and rescued the Jacobson's young son Danny (Mike Weinberg), who is about Pete's age. Pete has already met the rabbi and now becomes best friends with his son, although Danny is not much interested in the theology involved, he joins Pete's "quest" to get them both into the Roman Catholic version of heaven. Is Pete's obsession with church rules and heaven plausible for a second-grader? Having been there, done that, I can state that this was not an unknown stage for Catholic school kids to go through, and that I personally knelt in prayer on behalf of my Protestant playmates, which they found enormously entertaining. The touchier question of "converting the Jews" is handled by the movie so tactfully that it is impossible not to be charmed. The key performance here is by Pollak, as a rabbi whose counterpoint to Pete's quest involves understated reaction shots and instinctive sympathy and humor. When the Jacobsons invite Pete over for lunch, he makes the sign of the cross and when the rabbi asks why he's doing it (the unstated words are "at our table"), Pete explains solemnly, "It's like picking up the phone and being sure God is there." Earlier, during his first visit inside the synagogue, Pete is surprised to find no crucifix hanging from the ceiling, and confides to the rabbi: "Sometimes I think of climbing up and loosening the screws and letting him go." The movie cuts between Pete's quest, which is admittedly a little cutesy, and the completely convincing marriage of his parents, Joe and Margaret (Bonnie Hunt). These are (I know) actors who grew up in Chicago neighborhoods and were raised (I believe) as Catholics, and they are pitch-perfect. Note the scene where Hunt is driving most of her eight kids to mass and the troublesome Seamus is making too much noise in the back seat. Still driving, she reaches out to him and beckons him closer, saying, "Come closer...come on, come on, I won't hit you," and then smacks him up alongside the head. Every once in a while a movie gives you a moment of absolute truth. Danny has leukemia, which he explains solemnly to Pete, who is fascinated. Danny's mother is worried about her young son spending so much time with Pete, but the rabbi observes it may be Danny's last chance to act like a normal kid. The "quest" involves such tests as swimming out to a buoy in Lake Michigan, and while we doubt that, even in innocent 1976, second-graders were going to the beach by themselves, we understand the dramatic purpose. The most fraught scenes in the movie involve the synagogue's decision to thank the O'Malley family after Joe risked his life to save Danny. They settle on a scholarship for Patrick, the oldest O'Malley boy, and the rabbi is startled when Joe turns it down in anger. Joe tells his wife: "It's about the Jews helping out some poor Roman Catholic family so they can go on TV and get free publicity." Is this anti-Semitism? No, I think it's tribalism, and Joe O'Malley would say the same thing about the Episcopalians, the Buddhists or the Rotary Club. Bonnie Hunt's response is magnificent: If Joe doesn't let his son accept the scholarship, "So help me God, when you come home at night, the only thing colder than your dinner will be your bed." "Stolen Summer" is a film combining broad sentiment with sharp observation, although usually not in the same scenes. I don't know if writer-director Jones came from a large Irish-American family on the North Side, but do I even need to ask? The movie even has Brian Dennehy, patron saint of the Chicago stage, as the parish priest. In a time when so many big-budget mainstream movies are witless and heartless, "Stolen Summer" proves that studios might do just about as well by holding a screenplay contest and filming the winner. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE DEBUT / *** (Not rated) Date: 20 May 2002 23:27:35 GMT THE DEBUT / *** (Not rated) March 22, 2002 Ben Mercado: Dante Basco Rose Mercado: Bernadette Balagtas Roland Mercado (father): Tirso Cruz III Gina Mercado: Gina Alajar Grandfather: Eddie Garcia Annabelle: Joy Bisco Augusto: Darion Basco Rommel: Dion Basco Alice: Fe de Los Reyes Tito Lenny: Ernie Zarate 5 Card Productions and Celestial Pictures presents a film directed by Gene Cajayon. Written by Cajayon and John Manal Castro. Running time: 89 minutes. No MPAA rating. BY ROGER EBERT There is a moment in "The Debut" where a white man, who has married into a Filipino-American family, solemnly informs a dinner party of Filipinos that they are "not considered Asians, but Malays." He doesn't realize how offensive and condescending it is for an outsider to tell people about themselves, but there is another reason to put the dialogue in this first-ever Filipino-American film: Most Americans don't know that. And now, knowing it, they don't know what a Malay is. And unless they've been in the Philippines, they don't have much idea of the heritage of the islands, where the cultures of the Pacific and Spain intersect with America. And they don't know that Tagalog is the national language, coexisting with English. And that the Philippine film industry is one of the few outside the United States and India to possess more than 50 percent of its own market. Given the health of the film industry and the availability of English, it's surprising that it took so long for this first Filipino-American feature to be born. It joins a group of films about second-generation immigrants, standing between the traditions of their parents and their own headlong dive into American culture. "Maryam," also in theaters right now, is about an Iranian-American teenage girl in conflict with strict Iranian parents. "ABCD" and "American Desi" are about Indian Americans. "Real Women Have Curves" is about a Mexican-American teenager whose mother opposes her college plans. "Bread and Roses" is about a Mexican-American strike leader whose sister opposes her. "Mi Familia" is a multigenerational story about Mexican Americans, and "The Joy Luck Club" is a Chinese-American version. For that matter, "Stolen Summer," also opening today, has an Irish-American dad who wants his son to follow him into the fire department instead of going to college. The films have elements in common: a bright young person who dreams of personal fulfillment. Parents who worked hard to support their families in a new land, and now want to dictate the choices of their children. A father who is stern, a mother who is a mediator. And with surprising frequency, a stiff, unyielding older man, a grandfather or "sponsor," who is like the ghost at the family feast. The message of all of the movies: The older generation must bend and let the kids follow their dreams. That's not surprising, since the kids make the films, and all of these filmmakers must have had parents who thought they were crazy to dream of becoming movie directors. "The Debut" is familiar in its story arc, but fresh in its energy and lucky in its choice of actors. Filmed on a low budget, it looks and plays like an assured professional film, and its young leads are potential stars. The story involves a high school student named Ben Mercado (Dante Basco), who works in a comic book store and in the opening scene is selling his comics collection to help pay his way into Cal Arts. He wants to be a graphic artist. His father, Roland (Tirso Cruz III), a postman, has other plans for Ben, who has won a pre-med scholarship to UCLA. The boy will be a doctor, period. Everything comes to a head at the 18th birthday party of Ben's sister Rose (Bernadette Balagtas), the "debut" of the title. Ben has assimilated by always keeping a certain distance between his friends and his family. His best buddies are an Anglo and a Mexican-American, who are curious about Ben's home life, but keep getting shuffled aside. When they mention the inviting cooking aromas, Ben takes that as a criticism of the way his home smells. On the night of Rose's party, Ben has made plans to meet a pretty Anglo girl at a high school party, and is torn between the two events (unlike his friends, who have more fun at Rose's party). The movie involves some melodrama when Ben meets Rose's pretty Filipino-American friend Annabelle (Joy Bisco) and it's love at first sight; Annabelle is breaking up with a tough boyfriend who, in the modern equivalent of male possessiveness, wants her to wear a pager. In a scene at a burger joint, there's casual racism in jibes that Filipinos eat dogs, and Ben is called a "Chink." "I'm not Chinese," he murmurs, and we realize one reason for the white man's gauche line about Malays is to get information into the screenplay that Filipinos would hardly tell one another. The outcome of all of this is not hard to anticipate, but the setting is new, and the birthday party provides an excuse for traditional songs and dances (as well as for a virtuoso performance of hip-hop turntabling, an art where Filipino-Americans often win U.S. contests). In Dante Basco, Bernadette Balagtas and Joy Bisco the movie has likable, convincing young actors with marquee potential, and all of the major roles are filled with capable pros. There is one surprise. In most movies about artists, the artwork never looks as good as the movie thinks it does. But when Ben shows his father his portfolio, we see he does have the talent to realize his dream of writing graphic novels. Or maybe even go into animation and make some real dough. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BIG BAD LOVE / ** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:27:49 GMT BIG BAD LOVE / ** (R) March 15, 2002 Barlow: Arliss Howard Marilyn: Debra Winger Monroe: Paul Le Mat Velma: Rosanna Arquette Mrs. Barlow: Angie Dickinson Mr. Aaron: Michael Parks Deputy: Alex Van Alan: Zach Moody IFC Films presents a film directed by Arliss Howard. Written by James Howard and Arliss Howard. Based on stories by Larry Brown. Running time: 111 minutes. Rated R (for language and some sexuality) BY ROGER EBERT It all comes down to whether you can tolerate Leon Barlow. I can't. "Big Bad Love" can, and is filled with characters who love and accept him, even though he is a full-time, gold-plated pain in the can. Leon is a college graduate (no doubt of creative writing classes) who has adopted a Good Old Drunk persona that wavers between the tiresome and the obnoxious. The movie has patience with his narcissistic self-pity. My diagnosis: Send Barlow to rehab, haul him to some AA meetings, and find out in a year if he has anything worth saying. I know there are people in real life who smoke as much as Barlow (Arliss Howard) does, but at today's cigarette prices, he is spending $400 a month on cigarettes and almost as much on the manuscripts he ships out to literary magazines. His bar bill is beyond all imagining. The first thing you learn as a poor writer is to cut back on the overhead. We could pare $25,000 a year from his costs just by cutting out his bad habits, here at H&R Ebert ("Budget Control for Unpublished Drunks"). Barlow smokes more or less all the time. He becomes a character whose task every morning is to get through 60 to 80 cigarettes that day. Everything else is a parallel activity. He lives in a colorfully rundown house in rural Mississippi--the sort that passes for genteel poverty in the movies and is priced at $300,000 and up, with land, in the real estate ads. He pounds away on his Royal typewriter as if engaged in a mano-a-mano with Robert E. ("Conan the Barbarian") Howard in "The Whole Wide World." Since he is a man without a glimmer of awareness of his own boorishness, one wonders what he writes. Epic fantasy, perhaps? Like many drunks, he is enabled by his loved ones (or, as is often the case, his former loved ones). His ex-wife Marilyn, well-played by Debra Winger (Howard's real-life wife) has divorced him but still has a soft spot for the crazy lug. His buddy Monroe (Paul Le Mat) loves him, maybe because you protect your drinking buddy just like you protect your drinking money. Monroe's old lady Velma (Rosanna Arquette) has a fate that was preordained when she was christened Velma, a name that summons up Raymond Chandler novels and long-suffering girlfriends. Velma sees more than she lets on, but is stuck in her sexpot act. The movie's basic problem is that it has no distance on Barlow--no way to criticize him. The screenplay, written by Howard and Jim Brown, based on stories by the Mississippi writer Larry Brown, lets Barlow get away with murder. We all have a tendency to go easy on ourselves, and "Big Bad Love" is unaware that its hero is a tiresome jerk. Larry Brown writes about "hard-bitten, hard-drinking, hard-living male characters," according to a Web site about his work, and is a "bad boy novelist." One suspects that the movie lacks perspective on Barlow because Brown is, in some respects, Barlow. Because a movie must be about something more than smoking, drinking, and talking as if you are the best-read drunk in town, "Big Bad Love" delivers two tragedies, both foreshadowed, right on time. It also involves some visual touches, such as an indoor rain storm, that may perplex audiences not familiar with the work of Tarkovsky. Arliss Howard is not a bad actor or a bad director, but in this film he shows himself an unreliable judge of character. Leon Barlow could be saved by an emergency transfusion of irony, or even a film that is cheerfully jaundiced about him. But the martyr act doesn't work. Here is a man who wants us to like him because of his marriage that did not work, his stories that do not sell, and his children that he is not doing a very good job of parenting. Then we are asked to pity him because of all the cigarettes he must smoke and all the booze he has to drink, and because they make him feel so awful in the morning. He's a familiar type, imprisoned by self-monitoring: How am I doing? How do I feel? How long can I continue to abuse myself and those around me? In the movie, he's blessed by people who can see through the facade to the really great guy inside. All I could see was a cry for help. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] HARRISON'S FLOWERS / **1/2 (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:28:03 GMT HARRISON'S FLOWERS / **1/2 (R) March 15, 2002 Sarah Lloyd: Andie MacDowell Harrison Lloyd: David Strathairn Yeager: Elias Koteas Kyle Morris: Adrien Brody Stevenson: Brendan Gleeson Samuel Brubeck: Alun Armstrong Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Elie Chouraqui. Written by Chouraqui, Didier Le Pecheur and Isabel Ellsen. Running time: 122 minutes. Rated R (for strong war violence and gruesome images, pervasive language and brief drug use). BY ROGER EBERT I am pleased we have women in our fighting forces, since they are so much better at war than men. "Harrison's Flowers" is about an American wife who journeys to the Balkans to rescue her husband from a hotbed of genocide. Only two months ago, in "Charlotte Gray," a British woman parachuted behind German lines in France to rescue her boyfriend. I can just about believe that Charlotte Gray could deceive the Germans with her perfect French, but that Sarah Lloyd could emerge alive from the Balkans hell is unlikely; much of the movie's fascination is with the way Croatians allow this woman and her new friends to wander through the killing zones intact. I doubt, for that matter, that a Los Angeles fireman could fly to Colombia in "Collateral Damage" and singlehandedly outfight guerrillas and drug empires, but that is an Arnold Schwarzenegger picture and not supposed to be realistic. "Harrison's Flowers" is not based on fact but plays like one of those movies that is, and the scenes of carnage are so well-staged and convincing that they make the movie's story even harder to believe. Strong performances also work to win us over, wear us down and persuade us to accept this movie as plausible. Who we gonna believe, the screenplay or our lyin' eyes? Andie MacDowell stars, in another reminder of her range and skill, in what is essentially an action role. She plays Sarah Lloyd, mother of two, wife of the celebrated war photographer Harrison Lloyd (David Strathairn). In an obligatory scene that triggers an uh-oh reflex among experienced filmgoers, he tells his boss he wants to retire and is persuaded to take One Last Job. Off he flies to the early days of the war in the Balkans, to investigate "ethnic cleansing," which was I think a term not then quite yet in use. He is reported dead, but Sarah knows he's still alive: "Something would have happened inside if he were dead." She watches TV obsessively, hoping for a glimpse of Harrison among POWs, and takes up chain-smoking, which is the movie symbol for grief-stricken obsession, and is dropped as soon as it's no longer needed. Because of a hang-up call in the middle of the night and other signs, she decides to fly to the Balkans to find Harrison. A more reasonable spouse might reason that since (a) her husband is reliably reported dead, and (b) she has no combat zone skills, that (c) she should stay home with her kids so they will not become orphans, but no. The war scenes have undeniable power. Violence springs from nowhere during routine moments and kills supporting characters without warning. Ordinary streets are transformed instantly into warscapes. Sarah joins up with three of Harrison's photographer friends who accompany her quest: pill-popping, wise-cracking Morris (Adrien Brody), shambling, likable Stevenson (Brendan Gleeson), and bitter, existentialist Yeager Pollack (Elias Koteas) (if any of them are killed, can you predict from the character descriptions which order it will happen in?). They commandeer cars and Jeeps and essentially make a tour of the war zone, while bullets whiz past their ears and unspeakable horrors take place on every side. They are protected, allegedly, by white flags and large letters proclaiming "TV" on the sides of their cars. But there is a scene where troops are methodically carrying out an ethnic massacre, and they wander in full view at the other end of the street: Does their status as journalists render them invisible? At one point, Sarah wears fatigues, which (I learn from an article by a war correspondent) is the last thing she should do. Civilian clothes mark her as a non-combatant; camouflage marks her as a target even before her gender is determined. Whether Sarah finds her husband I will leave you to discover. Whether, when she is in a burning building, the flames shoot up everywhere except precisely where she needs to be, you already know. There is a way in which a movie like this works no matter what. Andie MacDowell is a sympathetic actress who finds plausible ways to occupy this implausible role. Brendan Gleeson is a comforting force of nature, and Adrien Brody's work is a tour de force, reminding me of James Woods in "Salvador" in the way he depends on attitude and cockiness to talk his way through touchy situations. Watch the way he walks them all through a roadblock. I don't believe it can be done, but I believe he did it. As for the war itself, the movie exhibits the usual indifference to the issues involved. Although it was written and directed by Elie Chouraqui, a Frenchman, it is comfortably xenophobic. Most Americans have never understood the differences among Croats, Serbs and Bosnians, and this film is no help. (I am among the guilty, actually mislabeling the bad guys in my review of "Behind Enemy Lines," another film set in the region). All we need to know is: The Americans are tourists in a foreign war involving ruthless partisans with fierce mustaches. Why are those people killing one another? Why is the war being fought? With those crazy foreigners, who knows? The New Jersey housewife wants to return her man to the arms of his family and the peace of his greenhouse. The movie's buried message is that domestic order must be restored. Just like in Shakespeare. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] ICE AGE / *** (PG) Date: 20 May 2002 23:28:14 GMT ICE AGE / *** (PG) March 15, 2002 With the voices of: Manny: Ray Romano Sid: John Leguizamo Diego: Denis Leary Soto: Goran Visnjic Zeke: Jack Black 20th Century Fox presents a film directed by Chris Wedge. Written by Peter Ackerman, Michael Berg and Michael J. Wilson. Running time: 85 minutes. Rated PG.(for mild peril). BY ROGER EBERT "Ice Age" is a pleasure to look at and scarcely less fun as a story. I came to scoff and stayed to smile. I confess the premise did not inspire me: A woolly mammoth, a sabertooth tiger and a sloth team up to rescue a human baby and return it to its parents. Uh, huh. But Peter Ackerman's screenplay is sly and literate, and director Chris Wedge's visual style so distinctive and appealing that the movie seduced me. The film takes place during a southward migration of species during a great ice age. Such migrations took place over millennia and were not the pre-Cambrian equivalent of going to Florida for the winter months, but no matter: As the ice packs advance, the animals retreat. There is no time to lose. Baby mammoths, playing in a tar pit, are told by their parents to hurry up: "You can play Extinction later." We meet Manfred the Mammoth (voiced by Ray Romano) and Sid the Sloth (voiced by John Leguizamo). Of course they can speak. (It is the humans, they believe, who have not yet mastered language.) When Sid and Manny come upon a small, helpless human child, they decide to protect it and return it to its parents--even though those same parents, they know, have developed weapons for killing them. Along the trail they are joined by Diego the Sabertooth (voiced by Denis Leary), who has a hidden agenda. They are potentially one another's dinners, and yet through Sid's insouciance and Manny's bravery in saving Diego from certain death, they bond and become friends. It is true that altruism is a positive evolutionary trait; a species with individuals willing to die for the survival of the race is a species that will get somewhere in the Darwinian sweepstakes. But listen closely. When Diego the Sabertooth asks Manfred the Mammoth why he saved him, Manny replies, "That's what you do as a herd." Yes, absolutely. But herds are by definition made up of members of the same species (and tigers are not herd animals, anyway). If Manny's philosophy were to get around in the animal kingdom, evolution would break down, overpopulation would result, there would be starvation among the non-vegetarians, and it would be an ugly picture. Much of the serenity and order of nature depends on eating the neighbors. "Ice Age" does not preach Darwinian orthodoxy, however, but a kinder, gentler world view: Ice Age meets New Age. And the philosophy scarcely matters, anyway, since this is an animated comedy. Enormous advances have been made in animation technology in recent years, as computers have taken over the detail work and freed artists to realize their visions. But few movies have been as painterly as "Ice Age," which begins with good choices of faces for the characters (note the sabertooth's underslung jaw and the sloth's outrigger eyes). The landscape is convincing without being realistic, the color palette is harmonious, the character movements include little twists, jiggles, hesitations and hops that create personality. And the animals blossom as personalities. That's because of the artwork, the dialogue and the voice-over work by the actors; the filmmakers have all worked together to really see and love these characters, who are not "cartoon animals" but as quirky and individual as human actors, and more engaging than most. I would suggest the story sneaks up and eventually wins us over, except it starts the winning process in its very first shots, showing a twitchy squirrel desperately trying to bury an acorn in an icy wilderness. We follow the progress of this squirrel all through the picture, as a counterpoint to the main action, and he is such a distinctive, amusing personality I predict he'll emerge as the hero of a film of his own. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] RESIDENT EVIL / * (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:28:24 GMT RESIDENT EVIL / * (R) March 15, 2002 Alice/Janus Prospero/ Marsha Thompson: Milla Jovovich Rain Ocampo: Michelle Rodriguez Matt: Eric Mabius Spence: James Purefoy Kaplan: Martin Crewes Screen Gems presents a film written and directed by Paul Anderson. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for strong sci-fi/horror violence, language and sexuality/nudity. BY ROGER EBERT "Resident Evil" is a zombie movie set in the 21st century and therefore reflects several advances over 20th century films. For example, in 20th century slasher movies, knife blades make a sharpening noise when being whisked through thin air. In the 21st century, large metallic objects make crashing noises just by being looked at. The vast Umbrella Corporation, whose secret laboratory is the scene of the action, specializes in high-tech weapons and genetic cloning. It can turn a little DNA into a monster with a 9-foot tongue. Reminds me of the young man from Kent. You would think Umbrella could make a door that doesn't make a slamming noise when it closes, but its doors make slamming noises even when they're open. The narration tells us that Umbrella products are in "90 percent of American homes," so it finishes behind Morton Salt. The movie is "Dawn of the Dead" crossed with "John Carpenter's "Ghosts of Mars," with zombies not as ghoulish as the first and trains not as big as the second. The movie does however have Milla Jovovich and Michelle Rodriguez. According to the Internet Movie Database, Jovovich plays "Alice/Janus Prospero/Marsha Thompson," although I don't believe anybody ever calls her anything. I think some of those names came from the original video game. Rodriguez plays "Rain Ocampo," no relation to the Phoenix family. In pairing classical and literary references, the match of Alice and Janus Prospero is certainly the best name combo since Huckleberry P. Jones/Pa Hercules was portrayed by Ugh-Fudge Bwana in "Forbidden Zone" (1980). The plot: Vials of something that looks like toy coils of plastic DNA models are being delicately manipulated behind thick shields in an airtight chamber by remote-controlled robot hands. When one of the coils is dropped, the factory automatically seals its exits and gasses and drowns everyone inside. Umbrella practices Zero Tolerance. We learn that the factory, code-named The Hive, is buried half a mile below the surface. Seven investigators go down to see what happened. Three are killed, but Alice/Janus Prospero/Marsha Thompson, Rain Ocampo, Matt and Spence survive in order to be attacked for 60 minutes by the dead Hive employees, who have turned into zombies. Meanwhile, the monster with the 9-foot tongue is mutating. (Eventually its tongue is nailed to the floor of a train car and it is dragged behind it on the third rail. I hate it when that happens.) These zombies, like the "Dawn of the Dead" zombies, can be killed by shooting them, so there is a lot of zombie shooting, although not with the squishy green-goo effect of George Romero's 1978 film. The zombies are like vampires, since when one bites you, it makes you a zombie. What I don't understand is why zombies are so graceless. They walk with the lurching shuffle of a drunk trying to skate through urped Slurpees to the men's room. There is one neat effect when characters unwisely venture into a corridor and the door slams shut on them. Then a laser beam passes at head level, decapitating one. Another beam whizzes past at waist level, cutting the second in two while the others duck. A third laser pretends to be high but then switches to low, but the third character outsmarts it by jumping at the last minute. Then the fourth laser turns into a grid that dices its victim into pieces the size of a Big Mac. Since the grid is inescapable, what were the earlier lasers about? Does the corridor have a sense of humor? Alice/Janus Prospero/Marsha Thompson and her colleagues are highly trained scientists, which leads to the following exchange when they stare at a pool of zombie blood on the floor. Alice/J.P./M.T. or Rain (I forget which): "It's coagulating!" Matt or Spence (I forget which): "That's not possible!" "Why not?!?" "Because blood doesn't do that until you're dead!" How does the blood on the floor know if you're dead? The answer to this question is so obvious I am surprised you would ask. Because it is zombie blood. The characters have no small talk. Their dialogue consists of commands, explanations, exclamations and ejaculations. Yes, an ejaculation can be dialogue. If you live long enough you may find that happening frequently. Oh, and the film has a Digital Readout. The Hive is set to lock itself forever after 60 minutes have passed, so the characters are racing against time. In other words, after it shuts all of its doors, and gasses and drowns everybody, it waits 60 minutes and really shuts its doors--big time. No wonder the steel doors make those slamming noises. In their imagination, they're practicing. Creative visualization, it's called. I became inspired, and visualized the theater doors slamming behind me. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] SHOWTIME / ** (PG-13) Date: 20 May 2002 23:28:32 GMT SHOWTIME / ** (PG-13) March 15, 2002 Mitch: Robert De Niro Trey: Eddie Murphy Chase Renzi: Rene Russo Himself: William Shatner Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Tom Dey. Written by Keith Sharon, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. Based on a story by Jorge Saralegui. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for action violence, language and some drug content). BY ROGER EBERT The cop buddy comedy is such a familiar genre that a movie can parody it and occupy it at the same time. The characters in "Showtime" do it as a kind of straddle, starting out making fun of cop buddy cliches and ending up trapped in them. The movie's funny in the opening scenes and then forgets why it came to play. We meet two cops: Mitch (Robert De Niro), who never had to choose between a red wire and a green wire, and Trey (Eddie Murphy), who is a cop but would rather play one on TV. You can guess from the casting that the movie will have energy and chemistry, and indeed while I watched it my strongest feeling was affection for the actors. They've been around so long, given so much, are so good at what they do. And Rene Russo, as the TV producer who teams them on a reality show, is great at stalking in high heels as if this is the first time she's ever done it without grinding a body part beneath them. Mitch wants only to do his job. Trey is a hot dog who has learned more from TV than at the police academy. Making a drug bust, he knowledgeably tastes the white power and finds it's cocaine. "What if it's cyanide?" Mitch asks (or anthrax, we're thinking). "There's a reason real cops don't taste drugs." We meet Chase Renzi (Russo), TV producer with a problem: Her report on exploding flammable baby pajamas didn't pan out. She's electrified when she sees TV footage of Mitch get angry with a TV cameraman and shoot his camera. The network sues. Mitch is threatened with suspension, just like in all the Dirty Harry movies, but offered an ultimatum: Star in a new reality show with Trey ("You do the show, they drop the suit"). Mitch grudgingly agrees, and some of the best scenes involve the callow Trey instructing the hard-edged Mitch in the art of acting (this is a flip of Robert Mitchum tutoring James Caan in "El Dorado"). During these scenes we're seeing pure De Niro and Murphy, freed from effects and action, simply acting. They're good at it. Enter a bad guy with a big gun. A gun so big we are surprised not by its power but by the fact that anyone can lift it. An expert testifies: "This gun is like the 50-foot shark. We know it's there, but nobody has ever seen it." Most of the second half of the movie involves Mitch and Trey chasing down the gun and its owners, who use it in a series of daring robberies. This we have seen before. Oh, yes. The movie was directed by Tom Dey, whose only previous film was "Shanghai Noon" (2000), a buddy movie pairing a Chinese martial arts fighter and a train robber. I learn from the Internet Movie Database that he studied film at Brown University, the Centre des Etudes Critiques in Paris, and the American Film Institute. He probably knows what's wrong with this movie more than I do. But making movies is an exercise in compromise no less appalling than the making of the "reality" TV show in "Showtime." My guess: The screenplay ("by Keith Sharon, Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, based on a story by Jorge Saralegui") was funnier and more satirical until the studio began to doubt the intelligence of the potential audience, and decided to shovel in more action as insurance. As we all know, the first rule of action drama is that when a gun as legendary as a 50-foot shark comes onscreen in the first act, somebody eventually finds a spent shell casing the size of a shot glass. Note: Most of the computers in movies for several years have been Macintoshes, maybe because the Mac is the only computer that doesn't look like every other computer and therefore benefits from product placement. But this is the first movie in which an entire iMac commercial runs on TV in the background of a shot. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] KISSING JESSICA STEIN / *** (R) Date: 20 May 2002 23:28:43 GMT KISSING JESSICA STEIN / *** (R) March 13, 2002 Jessica Stein Jennifer Westfeldt Helen Cooper Heather Juergensen Josh Meyers Scott Cohen Judy Stein Tovah Feldshuh Fox Searchlight presents a film directed by Charles Herman-Wurmfeld. Written by Heather Juergensen and Jennifer Westfeldt. Running time: 94 minutes. Rated R (for sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT Same-sex romance, a controversial topic in movies millions now alive can still remember, is a lifestyle choice in "Kissing Jessica Stein." Yes, a "choice"--although that word is non-PC in gay circles--because one of the two women in the movie is nominally straight, and the other so bisexual, she pops into her art gallery office during an opening for a quickie with her boy toy. Helen (Heather Juergensen), the gallery manager, is a lesbian in about the same way she would be a vegetarian who has steak once in a while. Jessica (Jennifer Westfeldt), disillusioned after a series of blind dates with hopeless men, answers Helen's personals ad not because she is a woman but because she quotes the poet Rilke. Jessica is above all a hopeless perfectionist. This places her in contrast with a mother (Tovah Feldshuh) whose idea of an eligible mate for her daughter is any single Jewish male ages 20 to 45 in good enough shape to accept a dinner invitation. Like many perfectionists, Jessica works as a copy editor and fact-checker, finding writers' mistakes with the same zeal she applies to the imperfections of would-be husbands. In a funny montage, she goes through a series of disastrous dates, including one with a man whose word choices would make him a copy editor's nightmare (he uses the phrase "self-defecating"). Helen is more flexible, knowing and wise. She seeks not perfection in a partner, but the mysteries of an intriguing personality. She finds it challenging that Jessica has never had a lesbian experience, and indeed approaches sex with the enthusiasm of a homeowner considering the intricacies of a grease trap. Jessica arrives at their first real date with an armload of how-to manuals, and makes such slow progress that Helen is driven all but mad by weeks of interrupted foreplay. The movie makes of this situation not a sex comedy but more of an upscale sitcom in which both romantic partners happen to be women. Jessica is fluttery and flighty, breathy and skittish; Helen is cool, grounded and amused. Adding spice is Jessica's panic that anyone will find out about her new dating partner. Anyone like Josh (Scott Cohen), her boss and former boyfriend. Or Joan (Jackie Hoffman), her pregnant co-worker. Or especially her mother, who brings single IBM executives to dinner as if they are the Missing Link. There are a couple of serious episodes to give the story weight. One involves Jessica's reluctance to invite Helen to her brother's wedding, thus revealing to the family the sex of the mysterious "person" she has been dating. The other is a heart-to-heart talk between Jessica and her mother, during which Feldshuh takes an ordinary scene and makes it extraordinary by the way she delivers the simple, heartfelt dialogue. What makes the movie a comedy is the way it avoids the more serious emotions involved. A week ago, I reviewed a movie about a man who gives up sex for Lent, and received a reader's letter asking, hey, aren't Catholics supposed to give up extramarital sex all of the time? A theologically excellent question; I am reminded of the priest in "You Can Count on Me," asked about adultery and reluctantly intoning, "that ... would ... be ... wrong." The would-be lovers in "Kissing Jessica Stein" are not having sex, exactly, because of Jessica's skittish approach to the subject, but if they did, it would be a leisure activity like going to the movies. If it really meant anything to either one of them--if it meant as much as it does to the mother--the comedy would be more difficult, or in a different key. We can laugh because nothing really counts for anything. That's all right. But if Jessica Stein ever really gets kissed, it'll be another story. Right now, she's like the grade-school girl at the spin-the-bottle party who changes the rules when the bottle points at her. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BARTLEBY / **1/2 (PG-13) Date: 24 May 2002 09:54:08 GMT BARTLEBY / **1/2 (PG-13) May 24, 2002 The Boss: David Paymer Bartleby: Crispin Glover Vivian: Glenne Headly Rocky: Joe Piscopo Ernie: Maury Chaykin Frank Waxman: Seymour Cassel Book Publisher: Carrie Snodgress Mayor: Dick Martin Outrider Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Parker. Written by Parker and Catherine DiNapoli. Based on the story "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville. Running time: 82 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sexual content). BY ROGER EBERT "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Thoreau The life work of the employees in the Public Record Office can be easily described: They take enormous quantities of printed documents they have no interest in, and they file them. They are surrounded by the monument to their labor: lots of file cabinets. No wonder they go mad. Vivian distracts herself by flirting. Rocky pretends he has the inside line on everything. For Ernie, changing the toner cartridge in a Xerox machine is an invitation to disaster. Their boss patiently oversees their cheerless existence trying not to contemplate the devastating meaningless of the office. One day a new employee is hired. His name is Bartleby. The Boss asks him to do something. "I would prefer not to," Bartleby says. That becomes his reply to every request. He would prefer not to. He would prefer not to work, not to file, not to obey, not to respond, NOT to. What he prefers to do is stand in the center of the office with his neck cocked at an odd angle, staring at the ceiling. The Boss is checkmated. Bartleby is not doing bad work; he isn't working at all. His refusal to work subverts the entire work ethic of the organization. Everyone in the office--Vivian, Rocky, Ernie and the Boss himself--would prefer not to work. But that way madness lies. Our civilization is founded on its ability to get people to do things they would prefer not to do. "Bartleby," is set in the present day in a vast monolithic office building that crouches atop a hill like an Acropolis dedicated to bureaucracy. It is based on "Bartleby the Scrivener," a famous story published in 1856 by Herman Melville, who not only wrote Moby Dick but labored for many empty years as a clerk in a customs house. Although the story is nearly 150 years old, it is correct to observe, as A.O. Scott does in the New York Times, that Melville anticipated Kafka--and Dilbert. This kind of office work exists outside time. David Paymer plays The Boss, a sad-eyed man who has a private office of his own, its prestige undermined by the fact that his window directly overlooks a Dumpster. Glenne Headly is Vivian, who flirts because if a man shows interest in her, that may be evidence that she exists. Joe Piscopo is Rocky, who dresses flamboyantly to imply he is not as colorless as his job. Maury Chaykin is the hopeless nebbish Ernie, who elevates strategic incompetence to an art form. And Crispin Glover is Bartleby. The teen star of the '80s appears here like a ghost, pale and immobile, arrested by some private grief or fear. When he says, "I would prefer not to," it doesn't sound like insubordination, rebellion or resistance, but like a flat statement of fact--a fact so overwhelming it brings all possible alternatives to a dead halt. The film has been directed by Jonathan Parker; he adapted the Melville story with Catherine DiNapoli. It's his first work, and a promising one. I admire it and yet cannot recommend it, because it overstays its natural running time. The Melville short story was short because it needed to be short--to make its point and then stop dead without compromise or consideration. "Bartleby" is short for a feature film, at 82 minutes, but might have been more successful at 50 or 60 minutes. Too bad there seems to be an unbreakable rule against features that short, or short subjects that long. In a perfect world, "Bartleby" would establish the office and its workers, introduce Bartleby, develop response to the work, and stop. Side stories, such as Vivian's attraction to the city manager (Seymour Cassel), would not be necessary. And yet there is a kind of uncompromising, implacable simplicity to "Bartleby" that inspires admiration. In a world where most movies are about exciting people doing thrilling things, here is a film about as job that is living death, and a man who prefers not to do it. My friend McHugh worked his way through college at Acme Pest Control of Bloomington, Ind. One day while he was crawling under a house with a spray gun, a housewife invited him into the kitchen for a lemonade. As he drank it, while covered in cobwebs and mud, she told her son, "Study your lessons hard, Jimmy, or you'll end up like him." Or like Bartleby. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] ENOUGH / *1/2 (PG-13) Date: 24 May 2002 09:54:17 GMT ENOUGH / *1/2 (PG-13) May 24, 2002 Slim: Jennifer Lopez Mitch: Billy Campbell Ginny: Juliette Lewis Gracie: Tessa Allen Joe: Dan Futterman Robbie: Noah Wyle Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Michael Apted. Written by Nicholas Kazan. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for intense scenes of domestic violence, some sensuality and language). BY ROGER EBERT "Enough" is a nasty item masquerading as a feminist revenge picture. It's a step or two above "I Spit On Your Grave," but uses the same structure, in which a man victimizes a woman for the first half of the film, and then the woman turns the tables in an extended sequence of graphic violence. It's surprising to see a director like Michael Apted and an actress like Jennifer Lopez associated with such tacky material. It is possible to imagine this story being told in a good film, but that would involve a different screenplay. Nicholas Kazan's script makes the evil husband (Billy Campbell) such an unlikely caricature of hard-breathing sadistic testosterone that he cannot possibly be a real human being. Of course there are men who beat their wives and torture them with cruel mind games, but do they satirize themselves as the heavy in a B movie? The husband's swings of personality and mood are so sudden, and his motivation makes so little sense, that he has no existence beyond the stereotyped Evil Rich White Male. The fact that he preys on a poor Latino waitress is just one more cynical cliche. The story: Jennifer Lopez plays Slim, a waitress in a diner where she shares obligatory sisterhood and bonding with Ginny (Juliette Lewis), another waitress. A male customer tries to get her to go on a date, and almost succeeds before another customer named Mitch (Campbell) blows the whistle and reveals the first man was only trying to win a bet. In the movie's headlong rush of events, Slim and Mitch are soon married, buy a big house, have a cute child, and then Slim discovers Mitch is having affairs, and he growls at her: "I am, and always will be, a person who gets what he wants." He starts slapping her around. Although their child is now 3 or 4, this is a Mitch she has not seen before in their marriage. Where did this Mitch come from? How did he restrain himself from pounding and strangling her during all of the early years? Why did she think herself happy until now? The answer, of course, is that Mitch turns on a dime when the screenplay requires him to. He even starts talking differently. The plot (spoiler warning) now involves Slim's attempts to hide herself and the child from Mitch. She flees to Michigan and hooks up with a battered-wife group, but Mitch, like the hero of a mad slasher movie, is always able to track her down. Along the way, Slim appeals for help to the father (Fred Ward) who has never acknowledged her, and the father's dialogue is so hilariously over the top in its cruelty that the scene abandons all hope of working seriously and simply functions as haywire dramaturgy. Slim gets discouraging advice from a lawyer ("There is nothing you can do. He will win."). And then she gets training in self-defense from a martial arts instructor. Both of these characters are African-American, following the movie's simplistic moral color-coding. The day when the evil husband is black and the self-defense instructor is white will not arrive in our lifetimes. The last act of the movie consists of Slim outsmarting her husband with a series of clever ploys in which she stage-manages an escape route, sets a booby trap for his SUV, and then lures him into a confrontation where she beats the Shinola out of him, at length, with much blood, lots of stunt work, breakaway furniture, etc. The movie in time-honored horror movie tradition doesn't allow Mitch to really be dead the first time. There is a plot twist showing that Slim can't really kill him--she's the heroine, after all--and then he lurches back into action like the slasher in many an exploitation movie, and is destroyed more or less by accident. During this action scene, Slim finds time for plenty of dialogue explaining that any court will find she was acting in self-defense. All of this would be bad enough without the performance of Tessa Allen as Gracie, the young daughter. She has one of those squeaky itsy-bitsy piped-up voices that combines with babyish dialogue to make her more or less insufferable; after the ninth or 10th scream of "Mommy! Mommy!" we hope that she will be shipped off to an excellent day care center for the rest of the story. Jennifer Lopez is one of my favorite actresses, but not here, where the dialogue requires her to be passionate and overwrought in a way that is simply not believable, maybe because no one could take this cartoon of a story seriously. No doubt she saw "Enough" as an opportunity to play a heavy dramatic role, but there is nothing more dangerous than a heavy role in a lightweight screenplay, and this material is such a melodramatic soap opera that the slick production values seem like a waste of effort. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] INSOMNIA / ***1/2 (R) Date: 24 May 2002 09:54:28 GMT INSOMNIA / ***1/2 (R) May 24, 2002 Will Dormer: Al Pacino Walter Finch: Robin Williams Ellie Burr: Hilary Swank Hap Eckhart: Martin Donovan Rachel Clement: Maura Tierney Randy Stetz: Jonathan Jackson Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Christopher Nolan. Written by Hillary Seitz, based on a screenplay by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjaerg. Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (for language, some violence and brief nudity). BY ROGER EBERT He looks exhausted when he gets off the plane. Troubles are preying on him. An investigation by internal affairs in Los Angeles may end his police career. And now here he is in--where the hell is this?--Nightmute, Alaska, land of the midnight sun, investigating a brutal murder. The fuels driving Detective Will Dormer are fear and exhaustion. They get worse. Al Pacino plays the veteran cop, looking like a man who has lost all hope. His partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) is younger, more resilient and may be prepared to tell the internal affairs investigators what they want to know--information that would bring the older man down. They have been sent up north to help with a local investigation, flying into Nightmute in a two-engine prop plane that skims low over jagged ice ridges. They'll be assisting a local cop named Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank), who is still fresh with the newness of her job. "Insomnia," the first film directed by Christopher Nolan since his famous "Memento" (2001), is a remake of a Norwegian film of the same name, made in 1998 by Erik Skjoldbjaerg. That was a strong, atmospheric, dread-heavy film, and so is this one. Unlike most remakes, the Nolan "Insomnia" is not a pale retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play. Stellan Skarsgard, who starred in the earlier film, took an existential approach to the character; he seemed weighed down by the moral morass he was trapped in. Pacino takes a more physical approach: How much longer can he carry this burden? The story involves an unexpected development a third of the way through, and then the introduction of a character we do not really expect to meet, not like this. The development is the same in both movies; the character is much more important in this new version, adding a dimension I found fascinating. Spoilers will occur in the next paragraph, so be warned. The pivotal event in both films, filmed much alike, is a shoot-out in a thick fog during a stakeout. The Pacino character sets a trap for the killer, but the suspect slips away in the fog, and then Pacino, seeing an indistinct figure loom before him, shoots and kills Hap, his partner from L.A. It is easy enough to pin the murder on the escaping killer, except that one person knows for sure who did it: the escaping killer himself. In the Norwegian film, the local female detective begins to develop a circumstantial case against the veteran cop. In a nice development in the rewrite (credited to original authors Nikolaj Frobenius and Skjoldbjaerg, working with Hillary Seitz), the killer introduces himself into the case as sort of Pacino's self-appointed silent partner. The face of the killer, the first time we see it, comes as a shock, because by now we may have forgotten Robin Williams was even in the film. He plays Walter Finch, who does not really consider himself a murderer, although his killing was cruel and brutal. These things happen. Everyone should be forgiven one lapse. Right, detective? Pacino, sleepless in a land where the sun mercilessly never sets, is trapped: If he arrests Finch, he exposes himself and his own cover-up. And the local detective seems to suspect something. Unusual, for a thriller to hinge on issues of morality and guilt, and Nolan's remake doesn't avoid the obligatory Hollywood requirement that all thrillers must end in a shoot-out. There is also a scene involving a chase across floating logs, and a scene where a character is trapped underwater. These are thrown in as--what? Sops for the cinematically impaired, I suppose. Only a studio executive could explain why we need perfunctory action, just for action's sake, in a film where the psychological suspense is so high. Pacino and Williams are very good together. Their scenes work because Pacino's character, in regarding Williams, is forced to look at a mirror of his own self-deception. The two faces are a study in contrasts. Pacino is lined, weary, dark circles under his eyes, his jaw slack with fatigue. Williams has the smooth, open face of a true believer, a man convinced of his own case. In this film and "One-Hour Photo," which played at Sundance 2002 and will be released later in the year, Williams reminds us that he is a considerable dramatic talent--and that while, over the years, he has chosen to appear in some comedic turkeys ("Death to Smoochy" leaps to mind), his serious films are almost always good ones. Why Nolan took on this remake is easy to understand. "Memento" was one of a kind; the thought of another film based on a similar enigma is exhausting. "Insomnia" is a film with a lot of room for the director, who establishes a distinctive far-north location, a world where the complexities of the big city are smoothed out into clear choices. The fact that it is always daylight is important: The dilemma of this cop is that he feels people are always looking at him, and he has nowhere to hide, not even in his nightmares. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON / *** (G) Date: 24 May 2002 09:54:36 GMT SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON / *** (G) May 24, 2002 Featuring the voices of: Narrator: Matt Damon The Colonel: James Cromwell Little Creek: Daniel Studi DreamWorks Pictures presents a film directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook. Written by John Fusco. Running time: 82 minutes. Rated G. BY ROGER EBERT The animals do not speak in "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron," and I think that's important to the film's success. It elevates the story from a children's fantasy to one wider audiences can enjoy, because although the stallion's adventures are admittedly pumped-up melodrama, the hero is nevertheless a horse and not a human with four legs. There is a whole level of cuteness that the movie avoids, and a kind of narrative strength it gains in the process. The latest animated release from DreamWorks tells the story of Spirit, a wild mustang stallion, who runs free on the great Western plains before he ventures into the domain of man and is captured by U.S. Cavalry troops. They think they can tame him. They are wrong, although the gruff-voiced colonel (voice of James Cromwell) makes the stallion into a personal obsession. Spirit does not want to be broken, shod or inducted into the Army, and his salvation comes through Little Creek (voice of Daniel Studi), an Indian brave who helps him escape and rides him to freedom. The pursuit by the cavalry is one of several sequences in the film where animation frees chase scenes to run wild, as Spirit and his would-be captors careen down canyons and through towering rock walls, dock under obstacles and end up in a river. Watching the film, I was reminded of Jack London's classic novel White Fang, so unfairly categorized as a children's story even though the book (and the excellent 1991 film) used the dog as a character in a parable for adults. White Fang and Spirit represent hold-outs against the taming of the frontier; invaders want to possess them, but they do not see themselves as property. All of which philosophy will no doubt come as news to the cheering kids I saw the movie with, who enjoyed it, I'm sure, on its most basic level, as a big, bold, colorful adventure about a wide-eyed horse with a stubborn streak. That Spirit does not talk (except for some minimal thoughts that we overhear on voice-over) doesn't mean he doesn't communicate, and the animators pay great attention to body language and facial expressions in scenes where Spirit is frightened of a blacksmith, in love with a mare, and the partner of the Indian brave (whom he accepts after a lengthy battle of the wills). There is also a scene of perfect wordless communication between Spirit and a small Indian child who fearlessly approaches the stallion at a time when he feels little but alarm about humans. The two creatures, one giant, one tiny, tentatively reach out to each other, and the child's absolute trust is somehow communicated to the horse. I remembered the great scene in "The Black Stallion" (1979) where the boy and the horse edge together from the far sides of the wide screen. In the absence of much dialogue, the songs by rocker Bryan Adams fill in some of the narrative gaps, and although some of them simply comment on the action (a practice I find annoying), they are in the spirit of the story. The film is short at 82 minutes, but surprisingly moving, and has a couple of really thrilling sequences, one involving a train wreck and the other a daring leap across a chasm. Uncluttered by comic supporting characters and cute sidekicks, "Spirit" is more pure and direct than most of the stories we see in animation--a fable I suspect younger viewers will strongly identify with. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BARTLEBY / **1/2 (PG-13) Date: 24 May 2002 16:32:23 GMT BARTLEBY / **1/2 (PG-13) May 24, 2002 The Boss: David Paymer Bartleby: Crispin Glover Vivian: Glenne Headly Rocky: Joe Piscopo Ernie: Maury Chaykin Frank Waxman: Seymour Cassel Book Publisher: Carrie Snodgress Mayor: Dick Martin Outrider Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Parker. Written by Parker and Catherine DiNapoli. Based on the story "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville. Running time: 82 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sexual content). BY ROGER EBERT "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Thoreau The life work of the employees in the Public Record Office can be easily described: They take enormous quantities of printed documents they have no interest in, and they file them. They are surrounded by the monument to their labor: lots of file cabinets. No wonder they go mad. Vivian distracts herself by flirting. Rocky pretends he has the inside line on everything. For Ernie, changing the toner cartridge in a Xerox machine is an invitation to disaster. Their boss patiently oversees their cheerless existence trying not to contemplate the devastating meaningless of the office. One day a new employee is hired. His name is Bartleby. The Boss asks him to do something. "I would prefer not to," Bartleby says. That becomes his reply to every request. He would prefer not to. He would prefer not to work, not to file, not to obey, not to respond, NOT to. What he prefers to do is stand in the center of the office with his neck cocked at an odd angle, staring at the ceiling. The Boss is checkmated. Bartleby is not doing bad work; he isn't working at all. His refusal to work subverts the entire work ethic of the organization. Everyone in the office--Vivian, Rocky, Ernie and the Boss himself--would prefer not to work. But that way madness lies. Our civilization is founded on its ability to get people to do things they would prefer not to do. "Bartleby," is set in the present day in a vast monolithic office building that crouches atop a hill like an Acropolis dedicated to bureaucracy. It is based on "Bartleby the Scrivener," a famous story published in 1856 by Herman Melville, who not only wrote Moby Dick but labored for many empty years as a clerk in a customs house. Although the story is nearly 150 years old, it is correct to observe, as A.O. Scott does in the New York Times, that Melville anticipated Kafka--and Dilbert. This kind of office work exists outside time. David Paymer plays The Boss, a sad-eyed man who has a private office of his own, its prestige undermined by the fact that his window directly overlooks a Dumpster. Glenne Headly is Vivian, who flirts because if a man shows interest in her, that may be evidence that she exists. Joe Piscopo is Rocky, who dresses flamboyantly to imply he is not as colorless as his job. Maury Chaykin is the hopeless nebbish Ernie, who elevates strategic incompetence to an art form. And Crispin Glover is Bartleby. The teen star of the '80s appears here like a ghost, pale and immobile, arrested by some private grief or fear. When he says, "I would prefer not to," it doesn't sound like insubordination, rebellion or resistance, but like a flat statement of fact--a fact so overwhelming it brings all possible alternatives to a dead halt. The film has been directed by Jonathan Parker; he adapted the Melville story with Catherine DiNapoli. It's his first work, and a promising one. I admire it and yet cannot recommend it, because it overstays its natural running time. The Melville short story was short because it needed to be short--to make its point and then stop dead without compromise or consideration. "Bartleby" is short for a feature film, at 82 minutes, but might have been more successful at 50 or 60 minutes. Too bad there seems to be an unbreakable rule against features that short, or short subjects that long. In a perfect world, "Bartleby" would establish the office and its workers, introduce Bartleby, develop response to the work, and stop. Side stories, such as Vivian's attraction to the city manager (Seymour Cassel), would not be necessary. And yet there is a kind of uncompromising, implacable simplicity to "Bartleby" that inspires admiration. In a world where most movies are about exciting people doing thrilling things, here is a film about as job that is living death, and a man who prefers not to do it. My friend McHugh worked his way through college at Acme Pest Control of Bloomington, Ind. One day while he was crawling under a house with a spray gun, a housewife invited him into the kitchen for a lemonade. As he drank it, while covered in cobwebs and mud, she told her son, "Study your lessons hard, Jimmy, or you'll end up like him." Or like Bartleby. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] ENOUGH / *1/2 (PG-13) Date: 24 May 2002 16:32:35 GMT ENOUGH / *1/2 (PG-13) May 24, 2002 Slim: Jennifer Lopez Mitch: Billy Campbell Ginny: Juliette Lewis Gracie: Tessa Allen Joe: Dan Futterman Robbie: Noah Wyle Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Michael Apted. Written by Nicholas Kazan. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for intense scenes of domestic violence, some sensuality and language). BY ROGER EBERT "Enough" is a nasty item masquerading as a feminist revenge picture. It's a step or two above "I Spit On Your Grave," but uses the same structure, in which a man victimizes a woman for the first half of the film, and then the woman turns the tables in an extended sequence of graphic violence. It's surprising to see a director like Michael Apted and an actress like Jennifer Lopez associated with such tacky material. It is possible to imagine this story being told in a good film, but that would involve a different screenplay. Nicholas Kazan's script makes the evil husband (Billy Campbell) such an unlikely caricature of hard-breathing sadistic testosterone that he cannot possibly be a real human being. Of course there are men who beat their wives and torture them with cruel mind games, but do they satirize themselves as the heavy in a B movie? The husband's swings of personality and mood are so sudden, and his motivation makes so little sense, that he has no existence beyond the stereotyped Evil Rich White Male. The fact that he preys on a poor Latino waitress is just one more cynical cliche. The story: Jennifer Lopez plays Slim, a waitress in a diner where she shares obligatory sisterhood and bonding with Ginny (Juliette Lewis), another waitress. A male customer tries to get her to go on a date, and almost succeeds before another customer named Mitch (Campbell) blows the whistle and reveals the first man was only trying to win a bet. In the movie's headlong rush of events, Slim and Mitch are soon married, buy a big house, have a cute child, and then Slim discovers Mitch is having affairs, and he growls at her: "I am, and always will be, a person who gets what he wants." He starts slapping her around. Although their child is now 3 or 4, this is a Mitch she has not seen before in their marriage. Where did this Mitch come from? How did he restrain himself from pounding and strangling her during all of the early years? Why did she think herself happy until now? The answer, of course, is that Mitch turns on a dime when the screenplay requires him to. He even starts talking differently. The plot (spoiler warning) now involves Slim's attempts to hide herself and the child from Mitch. She flees to Michigan and hooks up with a battered-wife group, but Mitch, like the hero of a mad slasher movie, is always able to track her down. Along the way, Slim appeals for help to the father (Fred Ward) who has never acknowledged her, and the father's dialogue is so hilariously over the top in its cruelty that the scene abandons all hope of working seriously and simply functions as haywire dramaturgy. Slim gets discouraging advice from a lawyer ("There is nothing you can do. He will win."). And then she gets training in self-defense from a martial arts instructor. Both of these characters are African-American, following the movie's simplistic moral color-coding. The day when the evil husband is black and the self-defense instructor is white will not arrive in our lifetimes. The last act of the movie consists of Slim outsmarting her husband with a series of clever ploys in which she stage-manages an escape route, sets a booby trap for his SUV, and then lures him into a confrontation where she beats the Shinola out of him, at length, with much blood, lots of stunt work, breakaway furniture, etc. The movie in time-honored horror movie tradition doesn't allow Mitch to really be dead the first time. There is a plot twist showing that Slim can't really kill him--she's the heroine, after all--and then he lurches back into action like the slasher in many an exploitation movie, and is destroyed more or less by accident. During this action scene, Slim finds time for plenty of dialogue explaining that any court will find she was acting in self-defense. All of this would be bad enough without the performance of Tessa Allen as Gracie, the young daughter. She has one of those squeaky itsy-bitsy piped-up voices that combines with babyish dialogue to make her more or less insufferable; after the ninth or 10th scream of "Mommy! Mommy!" we hope that she will be shipped off to an excellent day care center for the rest of the story. Jennifer Lopez is one of my favorite actresses, but not here, where the dialogue requires her to be passionate and overwrought in a way that is simply not believable, maybe because no one could take this cartoon of a story seriously. No doubt she saw "Enough" as an opportunity to play a heavy dramatic role, but there is nothing more dangerous than a heavy role in a lightweight screenplay, and this material is such a melodramatic soap opera that the slick production values seem like a waste of effort. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] INSOMNIA / ***1/2 (R) Date: 24 May 2002 16:32:48 GMT INSOMNIA / ***1/2 (R) May 24, 2002 Will Dormer: Al Pacino Walter Finch: Robin Williams Ellie Burr: Hilary Swank Hap Eckhart: Martin Donovan Rachel Clement: Maura Tierney Randy Stetz: Jonathan Jackson Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Christopher Nolan. Written by Hillary Seitz, based on a screenplay by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik Skjoldbjaerg. Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (for language, some violence and brief nudity). BY ROGER EBERT He looks exhausted when he gets off the plane. Troubles are preying on him. An investigation by internal affairs in Los Angeles may end his police career. And now here he is in--where the hell is this?--Nightmute, Alaska, land of the midnight sun, investigating a brutal murder. The fuels driving Detective Will Dormer are fear and exhaustion. They get worse. Al Pacino plays the veteran cop, looking like a man who has lost all hope. His partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) is younger, more resilient and may be prepared to tell the internal affairs investigators what they want to know--information that would bring the older man down. They have been sent up north to help with a local investigation, flying into Nightmute in a two-engine prop plane that skims low over jagged ice ridges. They'll be assisting a local cop named Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank), who is still fresh with the newness of her job. "Insomnia," the first film directed by Christopher Nolan since his famous "Memento" (2001), is a remake of a Norwegian film of the same name, made in 1998 by Erik Skjoldbjaerg. That was a strong, atmospheric, dread-heavy film, and so is this one. Unlike most remakes, the Nolan "Insomnia" is not a pale retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a good play. Stellan Skarsgard, who starred in the earlier film, took an existential approach to the character; he seemed weighed down by the moral morass he was trapped in. Pacino takes a more physical approach: How much longer can he carry this burden? The story involves an unexpected development a third of the way through, and then the introduction of a character we do not really expect to meet, not like this. The development is the same in both movies; the character is much more important in this new version, adding a dimension I found fascinating. Spoilers will occur in the next paragraph, so be warned. The pivotal event in both films, filmed much alike, is a shoot-out in a thick fog during a stakeout. The Pacino character sets a trap for the killer, but the suspect slips away in the fog, and then Pacino, seeing an indistinct figure loom before him, shoots and kills Hap, his partner from L.A. It is easy enough to pin the murder on the escaping killer, except that one person knows for sure who did it: the escaping killer himself. In the Norwegian film, the local female detective begins to develop a circumstantial case against the veteran cop. In a nice development in the rewrite (credited to original authors Nikolaj Frobenius and Skjoldbjaerg, working with Hillary Seitz), the killer introduces himself into the case as sort of Pacino's self-appointed silent partner. The face of the killer, the first time we see it, comes as a shock, because by now we may have forgotten Robin Williams was even in the film. He plays Walter Finch, who does not really consider himself a murderer, although his killing was cruel and brutal. These things happen. Everyone should be forgiven one lapse. Right, detective? Pacino, sleepless in a land where the sun mercilessly never sets, is trapped: If he arrests Finch, he exposes himself and his own cover-up. And the local detective seems to suspect something. Unusual, for a thriller to hinge on issues of morality and guilt, and Nolan's remake doesn't avoid the obligatory Hollywood requirement that all thrillers must end in a shoot-out. There is also a scene involving a chase across floating logs, and a scene where a character is trapped underwater. These are thrown in as--what? Sops for the cinematically impaired, I suppose. Only a studio executive could explain why we need perfunctory action, just for action's sake, in a film where the psychological suspense is so high. Pacino and Williams are very good together. Their scenes work because Pacino's character, in regarding Williams, is forced to look at a mirror of his own self-deception. The two faces are a study in contrasts. Pacino is lined, weary, dark circles under his eyes, his jaw slack with fatigue. Williams has the smooth, open face of a true believer, a man convinced of his own case. In this film and "One-Hour Photo," which played at Sundance 2002 and will be released later in the year, Williams reminds us that he is a considerable dramatic talent--and that while, over the years, he has chosen to appear in some comedic turkeys ("Death to Smoochy" leaps to mind), his serious films are almost always good ones. Why Nolan took on this remake is easy to understand. "Memento" was one of a kind; the thought of another film based on a similar enigma is exhausting. "Insomnia" is a film with a lot of room for the director, who establishes a distinctive far-north location, a world where the complexities of the big city are smoothed out into clear choices. The fact that it is always daylight is important: The dilemma of this cop is that he feels people are always looking at him, and he has nowhere to hide, not even in his nightmares. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON / *** (G) Date: 24 May 2002 16:32:57 GMT SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON / *** (G) May 24, 2002 Featuring the voices of: Narrator: Matt Damon The Colonel: James Cromwell Little Creek: Daniel Studi DreamWorks Pictures presents a film directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook. Written by John Fusco. Running time: 82 minutes. Rated G. BY ROGER EBERT The animals do not speak in "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron," and I think that's important to the film's success. It elevates the story from a children's fantasy to one wider audiences can enjoy, because although the stallion's adventures are admittedly pumped-up melodrama, the hero is nevertheless a horse and not a human with four legs. There is a whole level of cuteness that the movie avoids, and a kind of narrative strength it gains in the process. The latest animated release from DreamWorks tells the story of Spirit, a wild mustang stallion, who runs free on the great Western plains before he ventures into the domain of man and is captured by U.S. Cavalry troops. They think they can tame him. They are wrong, although the gruff-voiced colonel (voice of James Cromwell) makes the stallion into a personal obsession. Spirit does not want to be broken, shod or inducted into the Army, and his salvation comes through Little Creek (voice of Daniel Studi), an Indian brave who helps him escape and rides him to freedom. The pursuit by the cavalry is one of several sequences in the film where animation frees chase scenes to run wild, as Spirit and his would-be captors careen down canyons and through towering rock walls, dock under obstacles and end up in a river. Watching the film, I was reminded of Jack London's classic novel White Fang, so unfairly categorized as a children's story even though the book (and the excellent 1991 film) used the dog as a character in a parable for adults. White Fang and Spirit represent hold-outs against the taming of the frontier; invaders want to possess them, but they do not see themselves as property. All of which philosophy will no doubt come as news to the cheering kids I saw the movie with, who enjoyed it, I'm sure, on its most basic level, as a big, bold, colorful adventure about a wide-eyed horse with a stubborn streak. That Spirit does not talk (except for some minimal thoughts that we overhear on voice-over) doesn't mean he doesn't communicate, and the animators pay great attention to body language and facial expressions in scenes where Spirit is frightened of a blacksmith, in love with a mare, and the partner of the Indian brave (whom he accepts after a lengthy battle of the wills). There is also a scene of perfect wordless communication between Spirit and a small Indian child who fearlessly approaches the stallion at a time when he feels little but alarm about humans. The two creatures, one giant, one tiny, tentatively reach out to each other, and the child's absolute trust is somehow communicated to the horse. I remembered the great scene in "The Black Stallion" (1979) where the boy and the horse edge together from the far sides of the wide screen. In the absence of much dialogue, the songs by rocker Bryan Adams fill in some of the narrative gaps, and although some of them simply comment on the action (a practice I find annoying), they are in the spirit of the story. The film is short at 82 minutes, but surprisingly moving, and has a couple of really thrilling sequences, one involving a train wreck and the other a daring leap across a chasm. Uncluttered by comic supporting characters and cute sidekicks, "Spirit" is more pure and direct than most of the stories we see in animation--a fable I suspect younger viewers will strongly identify with. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST / *** (PG) Date: 24 May 2002 16:33:07 GMT THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST / *** (PG) May 24, 2002 Algernon Moncrieff: Rupert Everett Jack Worthing: Colin Firth Cecily Cardew: Reese Witherspoon Lady Bracknell: Judi Dench Gwendolen Fairfax: Frances O'Connor Rev. Chasuble: Tom Wilkinson Miss Prism: Anna Massey Lane: Edward Fox Miramax Films presents a film written and directed by Oliver Parker. Based on the play by Oscar Wilde. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG.(for mild sensuality). BY ROGER EBERT Be careful what you ask for; you might get it. Two weeks ago I deplored the lack of wit in "Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones," which has not one line of quotable dialogue. Now here is "The Importance of Being Earnest," so thick with wit it plays like a reading from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. I will demonstrate. I have here the complete text of the Oscar Wilde play, which I have downloaded from the Web. I will hit "Page Down" 20 times and quote the first complete line from the top of the screen: All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his. Now the question is, does this sort of thing appeal to you? Try these: Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them? To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like carelessness. It appeals to me. I yearn for a world in which every drawing room is a stage, and we but players on it. But does anyone these days know what a drawing room is? The Universal Studios theme park has decided to abolish its characters dressed like the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, because "a majority of people no longer recognize them." I despair. How can people recognize wit who begin with only a half-measure of it? Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a comedy constructed out of thin air. It is not really about anything. There are two romances at the center, but no one much cares whether the lovers find happiness together. Their purpose is to make elegant farce out of mistaken identities, the class system, mannerisms, egos, rivalries, sexual warfare and verbal playfulness. Oliver Parker's film begins with music that is a little too modern for the period, circa 1895, following the current fashion in anachronistic movie scores. It waltzes us into the story of two men who are neither one named Ernest and who both at various times claim to be. Jack Worthing (Colin Firth) calls himself Jack in the country and Ernest in town. In the country, he is the guardian of the charming Miss Cecily Cardew (Reese Witherspoon), who is the granddaughter of the elderly millionaire who adopted Jack after finding him as an infant in a handbag he was handed in error at the cloakroom in Victoria Station. When Jack grows bored with the country, he cites an imaginary younger brother named Ernest who lives in London and must be rescued from scrapes with the law. This imaginary person makes perfect sense to Jack's friend Algernon Moncrieff (Rupert Everett), who lives in town but has a fictitious friend named Bunbury who lives in the country and whose ill health provides Algernon an excuse to get out of town. I have gone into such detail about these names and alternate identities because the entire play is constructed out of such silliness, and to explain all of it would require--well, the play. In town Jack is much besotted by Gwendolen Fairfax (Frances O'Connor), daughter of the formidable Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench), Algernon's aunt, who is willing to consider Jack as a suitor for the girl but nonplussed to learn that he has no people--none at all--and was indeed left in a bag at the station. Thus her remark about his carelessness in losing both parents. Algernon in the meantime insinuates himself into the country estate where young Cecily is being educated under the watchful eye of Miss Prism (Anna Massey), the governess; eventually all of the characters gather at the Manor House, Woolton, where there's some confusion since Algernon has taken the name Ernest for his visit and proposed to Cecily, so that when Cecily meets Gwendolen, they both believe they are engaged to Ernest although Cecily of course doesn't know that in town Gwendolen knows Jack as Ernest. But now I have been lured into the plot again. The important thing about "The Importance" is that all depends on the style of the actors, and Oliver Parker's film is well cast. Reese Witherspoon, using an English accent that sounds convincing to me, is charming as Jack's tender ward, who of course falls for Algernon. She is a silly, flighty girl, just right for Algernon, for whom romance seems valuable primarily as a topic of conversation. Frances O'Connor is older and more sensuous as Gwendolen, and gently encourages the shy Jack to argue his case ("Mr. Worthing, what have you got to say to me?"). Judi Dench keeps a stern eye on the would-be lovers, and a strong hand on the tiller. "The Importance of Being Earnest" is above all an exercise in wit. There is nothing to be learned from it, no moral, no message. It adopts what one suspects was Wilde's approach to sex--more fun to talk about than to do. As Algernon observes, romance dies when a proposal is accepted: "The very essence of romance is uncertainty." Wilde takes this as his guide. When the play's uncertainties have all been exhausted, the play ends. The last line ("I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital importance of being earnest") takes on an interesting spin if we know that "earnest" was a vernacular term for "gay" in 1895. Thus the closing line may subvert the entire play, although not to the surprise of anyone who has been paying attention. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: KenKnows@aol.com Subject: Re: [MV] ENOUGH / (PG-13) Date: 26 May 2002 21:08:35 EDT In a message dated 05/24/2002 2:55:27 AM Roger Ebert's review of the new Jennifer Lopez movie "Enough" says: << It is possible to imagine this story being told in a good film>> just by enjoying the movie that was made instead of the movie that Roger would have made. << He starts slapping her around. Although their child is now 3 or 4, this is a Mitch she has not seen before in their marriage. Where did this Mitch come from? How did he restrain himself from pounding and strangling her during all of the early years? Why did she think herself happy until now? The answer, of course, is that Mitch turns on a dime when the screenplay requires him to. >> No, the answer is that Mitch was able to hide his adulterous affair until then and when his wife found out about it, he at first said it will never happen again. When later she found out it was still going on, he told her she will have to live with it. He insisted on his being able to continue his affair and continue his marriage and he used force to try to keep her in line. This has happened to people in real life. She also saw this side of him before when he forced a man to sell them their new home by his scaring that man into selling it to them. << Slim gets discouraging advice from a lawyer ("There is nothing you can do. He will win."). And then she gets training in self-defense from a martial arts instructor. Both of these characters are African-American, following the movie's simplistic moral color-coding. The day when the evil husband is black and the self-defense instructor is white will not arrive in our lifetimes.>> Last time I checked, Chuck Norris was white and he acted as a self-defense instructor. She gets crucially important financial help from her father, who is white. The fact that her father is white makes her bi-racial and at least half white. Her father also found the African-American self-defense instructor who effectively shows her how to fight back. << Jennifer Lopez is one of my favorite actresses, but not here, where the dialogue requires her to be passionate and overwrought in a way that is simply not believable >> It was believable to me. I enjoyed this move, as did the audience who saw it with me. This extremely well made film with a first-rate cast is a lot of escapist fun. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE SUM OF ALL FEARS / ***1/2 (PG-13) Date: 31 May 2002 18:16:02 GMT THE SUM OF ALL FEARS / ***1/2 (PG-13) May 31, 2002 Jack Ryan: Ben Affleck Bill Cabot: Morgan Freeman President Fowler: James Cromwell John Clark: Liev Schreiber Richard Dressler: Alan Bates Defense Sec. Becker: Philip Baker Hall Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Written by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne. Based on the novel by Tom Clancy. Running time: 119 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence, disaster images and brief strong language). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT Oh, for the innocent days when a movie like "The Sum of All Fears" could be enjoyed as a "thriller." In these dark times, it is not a thriller but a confirmer, confirming our fears that the world is headed for disaster. The film is about the detonation of a nuclear device in an American city. No less an authority than Warren Buffet recently gave a speech in which he flatly stated that such an event was "inevitable." Movies like "Black Sunday" could exorcise our fears, but this one works instead to give them form. To be sure, Tom Clancy's horrifying vision has been footnoted with the obligatory Hollywood happy ending, in which world war is averted and an attractive young couple pledge love while sitting on a blanket in the sunshine on the White House lawn. We can walk out smiling, unless we remember that much of Baltimore is radioactive rubble. Human nature is a wonderful thing. The reason the ending is happy is because we in the audience assume we'll be the two on the blanket, not the countless who've been vaporized. The movie is based on another of Clancy's fearfully factual stories about Jack Ryan, the CIA agent, this time a good deal younger than Harrison Ford's Ryan in "A Clear and Present Danger" and played by Ben Affleck. It follows the ancient convention in which the hero goes everywhere important and personally performs most of the crucial actions, but it feels less contrived because Clancy has expertise about warfare and national security issues; the plot is a device to get us from one packet of information to another. The story: In 1973, an Israeli airplane carrying a nuclear bomb crashes in Syria. Many years later, the unexploded bomb is dug up, goes on the black market, and is sold to a right-wing fanatic who has a theory: "Hitler was stupid. He fought America and Russia, instead of letting them fight one another." The fanatic's plan is to start a nuclear exchange between the superpowers, after which Aryan fascists would pick up the pieces. The use of the neo-Nazis is politically correct: Best to invent villains who won't offend any audiences. This movie can play in Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq without getting walkouts. It's more likely that if a bomb ever does go off in a big city, the perpetrators will be True Believers whose certainty about the next world gives them, they think, the right to kill us in this one. In the film, Ryan becomes a sort of unofficial protege of Bill Cabot (Morgan Freeman), a high-level CIA official and good guy who maintains a "back channel" into the Kremlin to avoid just such misunderstandings as occur. Ryan and Cabot fly to Moscow when a new president assumes power, and the new Soviet leader (Ciaran Hinds) is shown as a reasonable man who must take unreasonable actions (like invading Chechnya) to placate the militarists in his government. America is being run by President Fowler (tall, Lincolnesque James Cromwell), who is surrounded by advisors cast with some of the most convincing character actors in the movies: Philip Baker Hall, Alan Bates, Bruce McGill, etc. Crucial scenes take place aboard Air Force One after Baltimore has been bombed, and we see the president and his cabinet not in cool analytical discussions but all shouting at once. Somehow I am reassured by the notion that our leaders might be really upset at such a time; anyone who can be dispassionate about nuclear war is probably able to countenance one. There are some frightening special effects in the movie, which I will not describe, because their unexpected appearance has such an effect. There are also several parallel story lines, including one involving a particularly skilled dirty tricks specialist named John Clark (Liev Schreiber) who I am glad to have on our side. There are also the usual frustrations in which the man with the truth can't get through because of bureaucracy. Against these strengths are some weaknesses. I think Jack Ryan's one-man actions in post-bomb Baltimore are unlikely and way too well-timed. I doubt he would find evildoers still hanging around the scene of their crime. I am not sure all of the threads--identifying the plutonium, finding the shipping manifest and invoice, tracking down the guy who dug up the bomb--could take place with such gratifying precision. And I smile wearily at the necessity of supplying Jack with a girlfriend (Bridget Moynahan), who exists only so that she can (1) be impatient when he is called away from dates on official business; (2) disbelieve his alibis; (3) be heroic; (4) be worried about him; (5) be smudged with blood and dirt, and (6) populate the happy ending. We are so aware of the character's function that we can hardly believe her as a person. These details are not fatal to the film. Director Phil Alden Robinson and his writers, Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne, do a spellbinding job of cranking up the tension, they create a portrait of convincing realism, and then they add the other stuff because, well, if anybody ever makes a movie like this without the obligatory Hollywood softeners, audiences might flee the theater in despair. My own fear is that in the post-apocalyptic future, "The Sum of All Fears" will be seen as touchingly optimistic. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] LATE MARRIAGE / *** (Not rated) Date: 31 May 2002 18:15:48 GMT LATE MARRIAGE / *** (Not rated) May 31, 2002 Zaza: Lior Loui Ashkenazi Judith: Ronit Elkabetz Yasha (father): Moni Moshonov Lily (mother): Lili Kosashvili Ilana: Aya Steinovits Laor Transfax Film Productions presents a film written and directed by Dover Kosashvili. In Hebrew and Georgian with English subtitles. Running time: 100 minutes. No MPAA rating. Opening today at the Music Box Theatre. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ]