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From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] LITTLE SECRETS / *** (PG) Date: 06 Sep 2002 16:00:24 GMT LITTLE SECRETS / *** (PG) August 23, 2002 Emily: Evan Rachel Wood Philip: Michael Angarano David: David Gallagher Pauline: Vivica A. Fox Caroline: Jan Gardner IDP Pictures presents a film directed by Blair Treu. Written by Jessica Bardones. Running time: 107 minutes. Rated PG.(for thematic elements). BY ROGER EBERT The biggest surprise in "Little Secrets" is that Ozzie and Harriet don't live next door. The movie takes place in an improbably perfect suburban neighborhood where all the kids wear cute sportswear and have the kinds of harmless problems that seem to exist only so that they can be harmless problems. Then of course there are some Big Problems which are rendered harmless, too. This is a very reassuring film. The heroine of the movie, Emily (Evan Rachel Wood) is a budding young violinist who as a sideline runs a Little Secrets stand in her back yard, where kids can tell her their secrets at 50 cents apiece. The secrets are then written on scraps of paper and locked in a chest. The theological and psychological origins of her practice would be fascinating to research. The neighborhood kids sure take it seriously. When she's a few minutes late in opening her stand, there's a line of impatient kids clamoring to unburden themselves. The 50-cent price tag doesn't discourage them; these are not kids who remember the days when a quarter used to buy something. But what kinds of kids are they, exactly? Consider Philip and David. Philip tells David, "Her name is Emily. Like Emily ..." "... Dickinson?" says David. "And Emily Bronte," says Philip. Heartened as I am to know that the grade school kids in this movie are on first-name terms with these authors, I am nevertheless doubtful that Dickinson and Bronte will ring many bells in the audience. Vivica A. Fox is the only widely known star in the film, playing a violin teacher who is wise and philosophical. Much suspense centers around Emily's audition for the local symphony orchestra (every suburb should have one). The problems of the kids range from a girl who hides kittens in her room to a boy who is digging a hole to China. Larger issues, including adoption, are eventually introduced. I am rating this movie at three stars because it contains absolutely nothing to object to. That in itself may be objectionable, but you will have to decide for yourself. The film is upbeat, wholesome, chirpy, positive, sunny, cheerful, optimistic and squeaky-clean. It bears so little resemblance to the more complicated worlds of many members of its target audience (girls 4 to 11) that it may work as pure escapism. That it has been rated not G but PG (for "thematic elements") is another of the arcane mysteries created by the flywheels of the MPAA. There is not a parent on earth who would believe this film requires "parental guidance." 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] SECRET BALLOT / *** (G) Date: 06 Sep 2002 16:00:21 GMT SECRET BALLOT / *** (G) August 30, 2002 Woman: Nassim Abdi Soldier: Cyrus Ab Local people: Youssef Habashi, Farrokh Shojaii , Gholbahar Janghali Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by Babak Payami. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated G. In Farsi with English subtitles. BY ROGER EBERT 'Secret Ballot" is a quixotic new Iranian comedy about a female election agent who is sent to a remote island to collect ballots in a national election. Because we never find out who or what is being elected, there has been much puzzlement among critics about what the election symbolizes. I believe the message is in the messenger: The agent is a woman. "It's election day, don't you know?" the woman tells a bored soldier assigned to drive her around. "There's a letter. You have to guard the ballots." The soldier studies the letter. "It says an agent will come, not a woman." "I'm in charge here, mister. I have orders. You must obey or I'll see to it you remain a soldier forever." Strong words in a culture where the rights of women are limited. I was reminded of "In the Heat of the Night," in which the whole point is that the Sidney Poitier character insists on being treated with respect. This movie could be titled "They Call Me MISS Election Agent." The plot is secondary to the fact of the character's gender, and in Iran this movie must play with a subtext we can only guess. But what else is going on? Is the movie intended to show us (a) that democracy exists in Iran, (b) that it is struggling to be born, or (c) that most people find it irrelevant to their daily lives? There's a little of all three during the long day the soldier and the woman (both unnamed) spend together. Some citizens, asked to choose two of 10 names on the ballot, complain they've never heard of any of them. A fierce old lady shuts her door to the team, but later sends them food, and her courier observes, "Granny Baghoo has her own government here." A man in charge of a solar energy station expresses his opinion with admirable clarity: "I know no one but God almighty, who makes the sun come up. If I vote for anyone, it must be God." If the woman is the Poitier character, the soldier is like the sheriff played by Rod Steiger. He starts out strongly disapproving of a female agent, but during the course of the day begins to find her persuasive, intriguing and sympathetic. By the end of the day, when he casts his ballot, it is for her, and we're reminded of the sheriff's little smile as Mister Tibbs gets back on the train. The director, Babak Payami, has a visual style that is sometimes astonishing, sometimes frustrating, sometimes both. The first shot is of a plane dropping a box by parachute over a dry, empty plain. The camera pans with exquisite subtlety to reveal ... a bed? Can it be a bed, in the middle of this wilderness? We see that it is. In this hot climate, they sleep outdoors. As the soldier drives the agent around the island, events do not build so much as accumulate. Mourners in a cemetery tell her women are not allowed inside. Symbol quandary: (a) The fading patriarchy is buried there, or (b) women cannot even die as equals? In the middle of a deserted, unpopulated plain, the soldier brings the Jeep to a halt before a red traffic light. Symbol quandary: (1) Outmoded laws must be ignored, or (b) in a democracy the law must be respected everywhere? As the woman continues her discouraging attempt to involve indifferent islanders in the vote, we are reminded of Dr. Johnson's famous observation in the 18th century, when women were as much without rights in England as they are today in the Middle East. After hearing a woman deliver a sermon, he told Mr. Boswell: "It is not done well, but one is surprised to find it done at all." Watching the movie, I reflected on a persistent subgenre of Iranian cinema, in which characters drive or walk endlessly through enigmatic landscapes, holding conversations of debatable meaning. Abbas Kiarostami's "The Taste of Cherry" (1997), a Cannes winner much prized by many critics, not by me, follows that pattern. "Secret Ballot" brings to it much more interest and life. Perhaps the lack of cities, names, relationships and plots provides a certain immunity: A film cannot be criticized for being about what it does not contain. 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] CITY BY THE SEA / *** (R) Date: 06 Sep 2002 16:00:17 GMT CITY BY THE SEA / *** (R) September 6, 2002 Det. Vincent LaMarca: Robert De Niro Michelle: Frances McDormand Joey: James Franco Reg: George Dzundza Maggie: Patti LuPone Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Michael Caton-Jones. Written by Ken Hixon. Based on a magazine article by Michael McAlary. Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (for language, drug use and some violence). BY ROGER EBERT "City by the Sea" tells the sad, fatalistic story of a cop whose father was a baby-killer, and whose son now seems to be a murderer, too. Robert De Niro stars as Detective Vincent LaMarca, a pro whose years of hard experience have made him into a cop who dismisses sociology and psychology and believes simply that if you did it, you have to pay for it. This code extends to his father and he will apply it if necessary to his son. LaMarca works homicide in a shabby beachfront area; Asbury Park, N.J., supplied the locations. He knows so much about police work his autopilot is better than most cops' bright ideas. His partner, Reg (George Dzundza), who has eaten too many doughnuts over the years, soldiers along with him. LaMarca walked out on his wife (Patti LuPone) and son 14 years ago, and now tentatively dates his upstairs neighbor, Michelle (Frances McDormand). The cop's story is intercut with the life of his son, Joey (James Franco), a strung-out addict who has worked himself into a fearful situation involving debt and need. In a confusing struggle, he knifes a drug dealer, and eventually, inevitably, LaMarca is working the case and discovers that the killer may have been Joey. If this story sounds a little too symmetrical and neat, and in a way it does, real life supplies a rebuttal: "City by the Sea" is based on a true story, as described by the writer Mike McAlary in a 1997 Esquire article. I learn from Variety, however, that in fact the murder the son committed was vicious and premeditated, and not, as it is here, more or less an accident. The plot takes us places we have been before, right down to the scene where LaMarca resigns from the force and places his gun and badge on the captain's desk. There is also the possibility in LaMarca's mind that his son is innocent--he claims he is--and there is the enormous psychic burden caused by the fact that LaMarca's own father was convicted of a heartless murder. The last act of the movie is the sort of cat-and-mouse chase we have seen before, staged with expertise by director Michael Caton-Jones, but the movie's heart isn't in the action but in the character of Vince LaMarca. De Niro has worked so long and so frequently that there is sometimes the tendency to take him for granted. He is familiar. He has a range dictated by his face, voice and inescapable mannerisms, but he rarely goes on autopilot and he makes an effort to newly invent his characters. Here he is a man with a wounded boy inside. Most of the time the cop routine provides him with a template for behavior: He keeps his head low, he does his job well. But inside is the kid who found out his dad was a killer. That provides the twist when he finds himself on his own son's case. There is hurt here, and De Niro is too good an actor to reduce it to a plot gimmick. He feels it. Details of the plot I will not reveal, except to observe that the context of the murder and the condition of the son leave enough room for the LaMarca character to believe, or want to believe, that his son may be innocent. That leads to the scene where he turns in his badge and gun, accusing his boss of having already made up his mind. And it leaves LaMarca free-floating, because without the protection of the job he is now nakedly facing a situation that churns up his own past. Frances McDormand takes a routine, even obligatory, character and makes her into an important part of the movie. The female confidant is usually dispensable in cop movies, except for a few scenes where she provides an ear for necessary exposition. Not here. McDormand's Michelle likes LaMarca, but more importantly she worries about him, sees the inner wounds, provides a balm, and knows about tough love. "City by the Sea" is not an extraordinary movie. In its workmanship it aspires not to be remarkable but to be well made, dependable, moving us because of the hurt in the hero's eyes. A better movie might have abandoned the crime paraphernalia and focused on the pain between the generations, but then this director, Caton-Jones, has already made that movie with De Niro. "This Boy's Life" (1993) had De Niro as a harsh adoptive father and Leonardo DiCaprio as his resentful son. A better movie, but "City by the Sea" is a good one. 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 KISS (L'ULTIMO BACIO)/ ** Date: 06 Sep 2002 16:00:23 GMT THE LAST KISS (L'ULTIMO BACIO)/ ** August 30, 2002 Carlo: Stefano Accorsi Giulia: Giovanna Mezzogiorno Anna: Stefania Sandrelli Francesca: Martina Stella Alberto: Marco Cocci Marco: Pierfrancesco Favino Paolo: Claudio Santamaria Think Films presents a film written and directed by Gabriele Muccino. Running time: 114 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles. Rated R (for language, sexuality and some drug use). Opening today at Landmark Century. BY ROGER EBERT "The Last Kiss" is a comedy, I guess, about male panic at the spectre of adult responsibility. If you're a guy and want to figure out what side of the question you're on, take this test. You're a young single man. Your girlfriend announces at a family dinner that she is pregnant. You (a) accept the joys and responsibilities of fatherhood; (b) climb up into a treehouse at a wedding to begin a passionate affair with an 18-year-old; (c) join three buddies in discussing their plan to buy a van and trek across Africa. Carlo (Stefano Accorsi), the hero of the film, is torn between (b) and (c). Marriage looms like a trap to him, and he complains to Francesca (Martina Stella), the 18-year-old, that he fears "the passion is going" from his life. When his girlfriend Giulia (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) takes him along to look at a house they could buy, he complains that buying a house seems so "final." Not encouraging words for a pregnant fiancee to hear. "If I catch him cheating, I'll kill him," she says, in the ancient tradition of Italian movie comedy. But the movie isn't all comedy, and has fugitive ambitions, I fear, to say something significant about romance and even life. Consider some of Carlo's friends. Paolo (Claudio Santamaria) is expected to take over his father's clothing store, has no interest in retail, but is wracked with guilt because his father is dying and this is his last wish. Marco (Pierfrancesco Favino) is a serial lover. Adriano (Giorgio Pasotti) is depressed because his girlfriend has lost all interest in sex after giving birth. Their 30s and indeed their 40s are breathing hot on the necks of these friends, who cling to golden memories of adolescence. There is also the case of Anna (Stefania Sandrelli), Carlo's mother, who is married to a detached and indifferent psychiatrist, and seeks out a former lover with hopes of, who knows, maybe now taking the path not chosen. The lover is delighted to see her for a chat over lunch, but reveals that he has recently married and is the proud father of a one-year-old. How cruelly age discriminates against women (at least those prepared to consider it discrimination and not freedom). "The Last Kiss" specializes in dramatic exits and entrances. Anna bursts into her husband's office when he is deep in consultation with a patient, who seems alarmed that his own house is so clearly not in order. Carlo awakens with dread after a night spent imprudently, and flees. Giulia makes a dramatic appearance at a death bed after discovering Carlo lied to her. And so on. The problem is that the movie has no idea of it is serious or not. It combines heartfelt self-analysis with scenes like the one where Carlo is taken by his teenage squeeze to her friend's birthday, and tries to party with the kids. This is either funny or sad, not both, but the movie doesn't know which. The message behind all of this is difficult to nail down. Mars and Venus? Adults who haven't grown up? The last fling syndrome? Doing what you want instead of doing what you must? I have just finished Without Stopping, the autobiography of the novelist and composer Paul Bowles, who as nearly as I can tell always did exactly what he wanted, and was married to Jane Bowles, who did the same. The answer, obviously, is not to choose between marriage and the van trip through Africa, but to dump the buddies and find a wife who wants to come along. 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] BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (LA BELLE ET LA BETE) / **** (Not rated) Date: 06 Sep 2002 16:00:13 GMT BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (LA BELLE ET LA BETE) / **** (Not rated) September 6, 2002 The Beast/Prince: Jean Marais Beauty: Josette Day Felicie: Mila Parely Adelaide: Nan Germon Ludovic: Michel Auclair The Merchant: Marcel Andre Cowboy Pictures presents a film directed by Jean Cocteau. Written by Cocteau, based on a story by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. In French, with English subtitles. No MPAA rating. Running time 93 minutes. Opening today at the Music Box Theatre. BY ROGER EBERT Long before Disney's 1991 film, Jean Cocteau filmed "Beauty and the Beast" in 1946, in France. It is one of the most magical of all films. Alive with trick shots and astonishing effects, it gives us a Beast who is lonely like a man and misunderstood like an animal. Cocteau, a poet and surrealist, was not making a "children's film" but was adapting a classic French tale that he felt had a special message after the suffering of World War II: Anyone who has an unhappy childhood may grow up to be a Beast. The movie has long been considered one of the best ever made, but has been rarely seen in America--more rarely still since the Disney animated feature cornered the market in beauties and beasts. The Disney film is inspired, but so is Cocteau's, in an entirely different way. And now a newly restored 35mm print, with missing scenes restored, is opening at the Music Box for one week. There is probably no better film in town. Filming at a time when Freudian imagery was cutting edge, Cocteau uses haunting images to suggest emotions at a boil in the subconscious of his characters. Consider Beauty's reaction to the first entrance of the Beast, which is theoretically frightened yet, it you look more closely, orgasmic. The Beast's dwelling is treated in the Disney film like a vast Gothic extravaganza. Cocteau sees it more like the setting for a nightmare. And dream logic prevails in the action. The entrance hall is lined with candelabra held by living human arms that extend from the walls. The statues are alive, and their eyes follow the progress of the characters. Gates and doors open themselves. As Belle first enters the Beast's domain, she seems to run dreamily a few feet above the floor. Later, her feet do not move at all, but she glides, as if drawn by a magnetic force. She sees smoke rising from the Beast's fingertips--a sign that he has killed. When he carries her into her bed chamber, she wears common clothes on one side of the door, and a queen's costume on the other. Jean Marais plays both the Beast and the prince who was turned into the Beast and is restored again. Odd, how appealing he is as the Beast, and how shallow as the pompadoured prince. Even Belle notices, and instead of leaping into the arms of the prince confesses she misses her Beast. (So did Marlene Dietrich, who held Cocteau's hand during the first screening of the film. As the prince shimmered into sight and presented himself as Belle's new lover, she called to the screen, "Where is my beautiful Beast?") The film's devices penetrate the usual conventions of narrative, and appeal at a deeper psychic level. Cocteau wanted to appeal through images rather than words, and although the story seems to be masking deeper and more disturbing currents. It is not a "children's film," but older children may find it involves them more deeply than the Disney version, because it is not just a jolly comic musical but deals, like all fairy tales, with what we dread and desire. Adapted from Ebert's essay on "Beauty and the Beast" in his book The Great Movies, and online at www.suntimes.com/ebert. 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] feardotcom / ** (R) Date: 06 Sep 2002 16:00:19 GMT feardotcom / ** (R) August 30, 2002 Mike Reilly: Stephen Dorff Jerry Houston: Natascha McElhone Alistair Pratt: Stephen Rea Warner Bros. presents a film directed by William Malone. Written by Josephine Coyle. Based on a story by Moshe Diamant. Running time: 98 minutes. Rated R (for violence including grisly images of torture, nudity and language). BY ROGER EBERT Strange, how good "feardotcom" is, and how bad. The screenplay is a mess, and yet the visuals are so creative this is one of the rare bad films you might actually want to see. The plot is a bewildering jumble of half-baked ideas, from which we gather just enough of a glimmer about the story to understand how it is shot through with contradictions and paradoxes. And yet I watched in admiration as a self-contained nightmareformed with the visuals. Not many movies know how to do that. I'll get to the plot later, or maybe never. Let me talk about what I liked. The film takes place in a city where it always rains and is nearly always night, where even people with good jobs live in apartments that look hammered together after an air raid. Computers and the Internet exist here, and indeed telephones, televisions and all the other props of the present day, but windows are broken, walls are punctured, lights flicker, streets are deserted, and from time to time a dramatic thunderstorm threatens to sweep everything away. This is like "Dark City" after a hurricane. It is the kind of city where a man can walk down into a subway and be the only person there, except for a little girl bouncing her ball against the third rail. Or .. is the man really alone? Is that his fantasy? Whether it is or not, he gets slammed by the next train, and the cops are startled by the expression on his face. It looks, they agree, as if he has just seen something terrifying. Apparently something even worse than the train. And he is bleeding from the eyes. The film's premise is that a Web site exists that channels negative energy into the mind of the beholder, who self-destructs within 48 hours, a victim of his or her deepest fear. Our first glimpse of this Web site suggests nothing more than a reasonably well-designed horror site, with shock-wave images of dark doorways, screaming lips, rows of knives and so forth. The movie wisely doesn't attempt to develop the site much more than that, relying on the reactions of the victims to imply what other terrors it contains. And it does something else, fairly subtly: It expands the site to encompass the entire movie, so that by the end all of the characters are essentially inside the fatal Web experience, and we are, too. The last 20 minutes are, I might as well say it, brilliant. Not in terms of what happens, but in terms of how it happens, and how it looks as it happens. The movie has tended toward the monochromatic all along, but now it abandons all pretense of admitting the color spectrum, and slides into the kind of tinting used in silent films: Browns alternate with blues, mostly. The images play like homage to the best Grand Guignol traditions, to "Nosferatu" and some of the James Whale and Jacques Tourneur pictures, and the best moments of the Hammer horror films. Squirming victims are displayed on the Internet by the sadistic killer, who prepares to autopsy them while still alive; subscribers to the site, whose crime is that they want to watch, are addressed by name and are soon paying dearly for their voyeurism. The movie is extremely violent; it avoided the NC-17 rating and earned an R, I understand, after multiple trims and appeals, and even now it is one of the most graphic horror films I've seen. (The classification is "for violence including grisly images of torture, nudity and language," the ratings board explains, but you'll be disappointed if you hope to see grisly images of language). Stephen Dorff and Natascha McElhone star, as a cop and a public health inspector, and Stephen Rea, who was so unexpectedly deceived in "The Crying Game," plays the host of the Web site and the torturer. The movie keeps trying to make some kind of connection between Rea and the ghostly little girl, who was his first victim, but if the site is her revenge, why is he running it? And how can what happens to him in the end not have happened before? Never mind. Disregard the logic of the plot. Don't even go there. Don't think to ask how the Internet can channel thoughts and commands into the minds of its users. Disregard the dialogue (sample: "We will provide a lesson that reducing relationships to an anonymous electronic impulse is a perversion"). This is a movie that cannot be taken seriously on the narrative level. But look at it. Just look at it. Wear some of those Bose sound-defeating earphones into the theater, or turn off the sound when you watch the DVD. If the final 20 minutes had been produced by a German impressionist in the 1920s, we'd be calling it a masterpiece. All credit to director William Malone, cinematographer Christian Sebaldt, production designer Jerome Latour and art directors Regime Freise and Markus Wollersheim. Now. Do I recommend the film? Not for the majority of filmgoers, who will listen to the dialogue, and will expect a plot, and will be angered by the film's sins against logic (I do not even mention credibility). But if you have read this far because you are intrigued, because you can understand the kind of paradox I am describing, then you might very well enjoy "feardotcom." I give the total movie two stars, but there are some four-star elements that deserve a better movie. You have to know how to look for them, but they're 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: Gene Ehrich <gene@ehrich.com> Subject: [MV] Microsoft Cinemania 96 CD Date: 17 Sep 2002 20:35:34 -0400 I hope this post isn't against the rules but I have 9 copies of Microsoft Cinemania 96 CD for Windows 95 that is still shrinkwrapped. I have nine copies of it and would love to get them out to movie fans here. I can sell them for $4.50 each including media mail shipping. Cash, check, money order or PayPal. It is truly great software for movie fans. It's only up to date through 1996 but it is much better than Internet Movie Data Base for looking up movies from 1996 and back. I use it all the time to look up old movies and stars. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Keith H. Poole" <keith_poole@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: [MV] Microsoft Cinemania 96 CD Date: 18 Sep 2002 05:58:09 -0700 (PDT) Gene, I would like one of your copies. Reply with your PayPal info, or else I can mail you a personal check. Thanks! Keith --- Gene Ehrich <gene@ehrich.com> wrote: > I hope this post isn't against the rules but I have 9 copies of > Microsoft > Cinemania 96 CD for Windows 95 that is still shrinkwrapped. I have > nine > copies of it and would love to get them out to movie fans here. I > can sell > them for $4.50 each including media mail shipping. Cash, check, > money order > or PayPal. > > It is truly great software for movie fans. It's only up to date > through > 1996 but it is much better than Internet Movie Data Base for > looking up > movies from 1996 and back. I use it all the time to look up old > movies and > stars. > > > > [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] > [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ===== Please visit http://www.moviekites.com Stage Three of the movie review database is now complete! To recommend MovieKites, click here: http://www.ric2.com/cgr.jsp?576234 keith@moviekites.com __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! News - Today's headlines http://news.yahoo.com [ 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] Microsoft Cinemania 96 CD - order confirmation Date: 18 Sep 2002 21:22:14 -0400 At 05:58 AM 9/18/02 -0700, you wrote: >Gene, > >I would like one of your copies. Reply with your PayPal info, or >else I can mail you a personal check. > >Thanks! >Keith I have put it aside for you. My PayPal account is gene@ehrich.com Please be sure to give me your mailing address. Payment Amount: $4.50 Thanx for your order. Gene http://www.voicenet.com/~generic For buying, selling and trading of Computer & Video Games of all kinds. To join just send a blank e-mail to: computer-and-video-games-for-sale-subscribe@yahoogroups.com [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER / 1/2* (R) Date: 20 Sep 2002 20:01:15 GMT BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER / 1/2* (R) September 20, 2002 Jeremiah Ecks: Antonio Banderas Sever: Lucy Liu Gant/Clark: Gregg Henry Vinn/Rayne: Talisa Soto Zane: Roger R. Cross Ross: Ray Park Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Kaos. Written by Alan McElroy. Running time: 91 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence). BY ROGER EBERT There is nothing wrong with the title "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" that renaming it "Ballistic" would not have solved. Strange that they would choose such an ungainly title when, in fact, the movie is not about Ecks versus Sever but about Ecks and Sever working together against a common enemy--although Ecks, Sever and the audience take a long time to figure that out. The movie is a chaotic mess, overloaded with special effects and explosions, light on continuity, sanity and coherence. So short is its memory span that although Sever kills, I dunno, maybe 40 Vancouver police officers in an opening battle, by the end, when someone says, "She's a killer," Ecks replies, "She's a mother." The movie stars Lucy Liu as Sever, a former agent for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which according to www.dia.mil/ is a branch of the United States Government. Antonio Banderas is Ecks, a former ace FBI agent who is coaxed back into service. Sever has lost her child in an attack and Ecks believes he has lost his wife, so they have something in common, you see, even though ... But I'll not reveal that plot secret, and will discuss the curious fact that both of these U.S. agencies wage what amounts to warfare in Vancouver, which is actually in a nation named Canada, which has agencies and bureaus of its own and takes a dim view of machineguns, rocket launchers, plastic explosives and the other weapons the American agents and their enemies use to litter the streets of the city with the dead. Both Sever and Ecks, once they discover this, have the same enemy in common: Gant (Gregg Henry), a DIA agent who is married to Talisa Sota and raising her child, although Sever kidnaps the child, who is in fact ... but never mind, I want to discuss Gant's secret weapon. He has obtained a miniaturized robot so small it can float in the bloodstream and cause strokes and heart attacks. At one point in the movie, a man who will remain nameless is injected with one of these devices by a dart gun, and it kills him. All very well, but consider for a moment the problem of cost overruns in these times of economic uncertainty. A miniaturized assassination robot small enough to slip through the bloodstream would cost how much? Millions? And it is delivered by dart? How's this for an idea: use a poison dart, and spend the surplus on school lunches. "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" is an ungainly mess, submerged in mayhem, occasionally surfacing for cliches. When the FBI goes looking for Ecks, for example, they find him sitting morosely on a bar stool, drinking and smoking. That is of course always where sad former agents are found, but the strange thing is, after years of drinking, he is still in great shape, has all his karate moves, and goes directly into violent action without even a tiny tremor of the DTs. The movie ends in a stock movie location I thought had been retired: A Steam and Flame Factory, where the combatants stalk each other on catwalks and from behind steel pillars, while the otherwise deserted factory supplies vast quantities of flame and steam. Vancouver itself, for that matter, is mostly deserted, and no wonder, if word has gotten around that two U.S. agencies and a freelance killer are holding war games. "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" was directed by Wych Kaosayananda of Thailand, whose pseudonym, you may not be surprised to learn, is Kaos. 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] MIYAZAKI'S SPIRITED AWAY / **** (PG) Date: 20 Sep 2002 20:01:23 GMT MIYAZAKI'S SPIRITED AWAY / **** (PG) September 20, 2002 With the voices of:Chihiro: Daveigh Chase Yubaba, Zeniba: Suzanne : Pleshette Haku: Jason Marsden Kamaji: David Ogden Stiers Chirhiro's mother: Lauren Holly Assistant Manager: John Ratzenberger Walt Disney Studios presents a film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. U.S. production directed by Kirk Wise. Running time: 124 minutes. Rated PG.(for some scary moments). Opening today at Landmark Century, McClurg Court and Evanston CineArts 6. BY ROGER EBERT "Miyazaki's Spirited Away" has been compared to "Alice in Wonderland," and indeed it tells of a 10-year-old girl who wanders into a world of strange creatures and illogical rules. But it's enchanting and delightful in its own way, and has a good heart. It is the best animated film of recent years, the latest work by Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese master who is a god to the Disney animators. Because many adults have an irrational reluctance to see an animated film from Japan (or anywhere else), I begin with reassurances: It has been flawlessly dubbed into English by John Lasseter ("Toy Story"), it was co-winner of this year's Berlin Film Festival against "regular" movies, it passed "Titanic" to become the top-grossing film in Japanese history, and it is the first film ever to make more than $200 million before opening in America. I feel like I'm giving a pitch on an infomercial, but I make these points because I come bearing news: This is a wonderful film. Don't avoid it because of what you think you know about animation from Japan. And if you only go to Disney animation--well, this is being released by Disney. Miyazaki's works ("My Neighbor Totoro," "Kiki's Delivery Service," "Princess Mononoke") have a depth and complexity often missing in American animation. Not fond of computers, he draws thousand of frames himself, and there is a painterly richness in his work. He's famous for throwaway details at the edges of the screen (animation is so painstaking that few animators draw more than is necessary). And he permits himself silences and contemplation, providing punctuation for the exuberant action and the lovable or sometimes grotesque characters. "Spirited Away" is told through the eyes of Chihiro (voice by Daveigh Chase), a 10-year-old girl, and is more personal, less epic, than "Princess Mononoke." As the story opens, she's on a trip with her parents, and her father unwisely takes the family to explore a mysterious tunnel in the woods. On the other side is what he speculates is an old theme park; but the food stalls still seem to be functioning, and as Chihiro's parents settle down for a free meal, she wanders away and comes upon the film's version of wonderland, which is a towering bathhouse. A boy named Haku appears as her guide, and warns her that the sorceress who runs the bathhouse, named Yubaba, will try to steal her name and thus her identity. Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette) is an old crone with a huge face; she looks a little like a Toby mug, and dotes on a grotesquely huge baby named Boh. Ominously, she renames Chihiro, who wanders through the structure, which is populated, like "Totoro," with little balls of dust that scurry and scamper underfoot. In the innards of the structure, Chihiro comes upon the boiler room, operated by a man named Kamaji (David Ogden Stiers), who is dressed in a formal coat and has eight limbs, which he employs in a bewildering variety of ways. At first he seems as fearsome as the world he occupies, but he has a good side, is no friend of Yubaba, and perceives Chihiro's goodness. If Yubaba is the scariest of the characters and Kamaji the most intriguing, Okutaresama is the one with the most urgent message. He is the spirit of the river, and his body has absorbed the junk, waste and sludge that has been thrown into it over the years. At one point, he actually yields up a discarded bicycle. I was reminded of a throwaway detail in "My Neighbor Totoro," where a child looks into a bubbling brook, and there is a discarded bottle at the bottom. No point is made; none needs to be made. Japanese myths often use shape-shifting, in which bodies reveal themselves as facades concealing a deeper reality. It's as if animation was invented for shape-shifting, and Miyazaki does wondrous things with the characters here. Most alarming for Chihiro, she finds that her parents have turned into pigs after gobbling up the free lunch. Okutaresama reveals its true nature after being freed of decades of sludge and discarded household items. Haku is much more than he seems. Indeed the entire bathhouse seems to be under spells affected the appearance and nature of its inhabitants. Miyazaki's drawing style, which descends from the classical Japanese graphic artists, is a pleasure to regard, with its subtle use of colors, clear lines, rich detail and its realistic depiction of fantastical elements. He suggests not just the appearances of his characters, but their natures. Apart from the stories and dialogue, "Spirited Away" is a pleasure to regard just for itself. This is one of the year's best films. 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] IGBY GOES DOWN / ***1/2 (R) Date: 20 Sep 2002 20:01:17 GMT IGBY GOES DOWN / ***1/2 (R) September 20, 2002 Jason 'Igby' Slocumb Jr.: Kieran Culkin Mimi Slocumb: Susan Sarandon Oliver Slocumb: Ryan Phillippe Jason Slocumb: Bill Pullman D.H. Baines: Jeff Goldblum Sookie Sapperstein: Claire Danes Rachel: Amanda Peet MGM presents a film written and directed by Burr Steers. Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (for language, sexuality and drug content). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT Holden Caulfield formed the mold and Jason "Igby" Slocumb Jr. fits it perfectly, in "Igby Goes Down," an inspired example of the story in which the adolescent hero discovers that the world sucks, people are phonies, and sex is a consolation. Because the genre is well established, what makes the movie fresh is smart writing, skewed characters, and the title performance by Kieran Culkin, who captures just the right note as an advantaged rich boy who has been raised in discontent. Igby is the child of a malevolently malfunctioning family. His mother, Mimi (Susan Sarandon), is a tart, critical, perfectionist mandarin ("I call her Mimi because Heinous One is a bit cumbersome"). His father, Jason (Bill Pullman), went through meltdown and is in a mental hospital, staring into space. His stepfather, D. H. Baines (Jeff Goldblum), is a slick operator who converts both lofts and the young girls he installs in them. His brother, Oliver (Ryan Phillippe), is a supercilious Columbia student who regards Igby as a species of bug. Igby, like Citizen Kane before him, has been thrown out of all the best schools, and early in the movie he escapes from a military school and hides out in New York City. Of course, a boy with his advantages is fortunate even in hideouts. He has an understanding meeting with his stepfather, finds shelter in one of his lofts, and soon is on very good terms with Rachel (Amanda Peet), his father's mistress, who is an artist in every respect, except producing anything that can be considered art. Through Rachel he meets Sookie Sapperstein (Claire Danes), a Bennington student who likes him because he makes her laugh. Among the lessons every young man should learn is this one: All women who like you because you make them laugh sooner or later stop laughing, and then why do they like you? The movie has a fairly convoluted plot, involving who is sleeping with whom, and why, and who finds out about it, and what happens then. There is also the problem of the older brother, who does not make women laugh, which may be his strong point. The Goldblum character is especially intriguing, as a charmer with unlimited personal style and a hidden vicious streak. Movies like this depend above all on the texture of the performances, and it is easy to imagine "Igby Goes Down" as a sitcom in which the characters don't quite seem to understand the witty things they're saying. All of the actors here have flair and presence, and get the joke, and because they all affect a kind of neo-Wildean irony toward everything, they belong in the same world. It is refreshing to hear Igby refer to his "Razor's Edge experience" without the movie feeling it is necessary to have him explain what he is talking about. The Culkins are approaching brand-name status, but the thing is, the kids can act. Kieran emerges here as an accomplished, secure comic actor with poise and timing, and there is still another younger brother, Rory, who appears as a younger Igby. Kieran's role is not an easy one. He is not simply a rebellious, misfit teenager with a con man's verbal skills, but also a wounded survivor of a family that has left him emotionally scarred. One of the movie's touching scenes has him visiting his father in the mental hospital, where his father's total incomprehension suggests a scary message: I don't understand my family or anything else, and I've given up thinking about it. Sarandon, as Mimi the Heinous One, treats her boys as if they're straight men in the ongoing sitcom of her life. That there are tragic secrets involved, which I will not reveal, makes her all the more frightening: Is nothing entirely sincere with this woman? Goldblum's sense of possession is the scariest thing about him, since Igby finds out it's bad to be considered his property and worse not to be. And Phillippe is pitch-perfect as the affected college student, whose elevated style and mannered speech seem designed to hide the same wounds that Igby bears. There is a lot of sex in the movie, but it is sane sex, which is to say sex performed by people who seem to have heard of sex and even experienced it before the present moment. Sex is seen here as part of the process of life, rather than as the subject of a heightened scene of cinematic mountain-climbing. Everyone except Igby is fairly casual about it, which is kind of sad, and among the things Igby has been deprived of in life, one is an early romance with a sincere girl of about the same age who takes him seriously. Perhaps the sad inherited family trait among the Slocumbs is premature sophistication. The movie was written and directed by Burr Steers (who acted in "Pulp Fiction" and "The Last Days of Disco," among others). It is an astonishing filmmaking debut, balancing so many different notes and story elements. What Steers has not lost sight of, in all the emotional chaos, is heart. The film opens and closes on different kinds of pain, and by the end Igby has discovered truths that Holden Caulfield, we feel, could not have handled. 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] APOLLO 13: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE / **** (PG) Date: 20 Sep 2002 20:01:14 GMT APOLLO 13: THE IMAX EXPERIENCE / *** (PG) September 20, 2002 Jim Lovell: Tom Hanks Fred Haise: Bill Paxton Jack Swigert: Kevin Bacon Ken Mattingly: Gary Sinise Gene Kranz: Ed Harris Marilyn Lovell: Kathleen Quinlin Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Ron Howard. Written by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert. Based on the book Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger. Running time: 135 minutes. Rated PG.(intense situations). Opening today at Navy Pier IMAX. BY ROGER EBERT At a time when screens and theaters grow smaller and movie palaces are a thing of the past, the new practice of re-releasing films in the IMAX format is a thrilling step in the opposite direction. Ron Howard's "Apollo 13," which opens today at the IMAX theater at Navy Pier, looks bold and crisp on the big screen, and the sound has never sounded better--perhaps couldn't have ever sounded better, because IMAX uses some 70 speakers. Although it takes place largely in outer space, "Apollo 13" isn't the kind of adventure saga that needs the bigger screen so its effects play better. "Star Wars," which is headed for IMAX theaters, fits that definition. "Apollo 13" is a thrilling drama that plays mostly within enclosed spaces: The space capsule, mission control and the homes of those waiting in suspense on Earth. The film re-creates the saga of the Apollo 13 mission, which was aborted after an onboard explosion crippled the craft on its way to the moon. In a desperate exercise of improvisation, crew members and the ground support staff figure out how to return the craft safely to Earth, cannibalize life-support from both the mother capsule and the lunar landing module, and navigate into a terrifyingly narrow angle between too steep (the craft would burn up in the atmosphere) and too shallow (it would skip off and fly forever into space). Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton and Kevin Bacon play astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert, respectively. On Earth, the key roles are by Gary Sinise, as the left-behind astronaut Ken Mattingly, who uses a flight simulator to help improvise a solution; Ed Harris, who is cool-headed flight director Gene Kranz, and Kathleen Quinlan, as Lovell's wife, Marilyn, who tries to explain to their children that "something broke on Daddy's spaceship." The movie has been trimmed by about 20 minutes for the IMAX release. Filmed in widescreen, it has been cropped from the sides to fit the IMAX format. Neither change bothered me. Although I am an opponent of pan-and-scan in general, I understand when it is used to maximize a different projection format. The detail and impact of the IMAX screen essentially creates a new way of looking at the film. 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 BANGER SISTERS / *** (R) Date: 20 Sep 2002 20:01:25 GMT THE BANGER SISTERS / *** (R) September 20, 2002 Lavinia: Susan Sarandon Suzette: Goldie Hawn Harry: Geoffrey Rush Raymond: Robin Thomas Hannah: Erika Christensen Ginger: Eva Amurri Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a film written and directed by Bob Dolman. Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (for language, sexual content and some drug use.) Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT When you get right down to it, "The Banger Sisters" is pretty thin, but you grin while you're watching it. Later you reflect that it has an obvious story arc, sketchy minor characters, and awkwardly tries to get down and provide uplift at the same time. The screenplay could have used an overhaul before production, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad primarily because of Goldie Hawn. She's infectious and likable in this movie, but not in that ditzy way we remember. Although she plays a legendary groupie who, in her day, "rattled" most of the rock stars ("and roadies") in the business, she plays a woman who has taken her youthful sense of freedom and combined it with a certain amount of common sense. Hawn is Suzette. Her co-star, Susan Sarandon, is Lavinia. Together, some (cough) years ago, they were such legendary groupies that Frank Zappa named them the Banger Sisters. Hawn has stayed true to her school, and as we meet her she's bartending in a West Hollywood club where she is more beloved by the customers than by the owner, who fires her. (She thinks that's not fair: "See that toilet? Jim Morrison passed out in there one night with me underneath him.") Broke and without plans, she points her pickup toward Phoenix for a reunion with Lavinia, whom she hasn't seen in years. Along the way, in need of gas money, she picks up a lost soul named Harry (Geoffrey Rush), a screenwriter whose dreams have not come true, and who is traveling to Phoenix with one bullet in his gun, to shoot his father. Harry is one of those finicky weirdos who doesn't want anyone upsetting his routine. The very sight of Suzette, with her silicone treasures, is disturbing in more ways than he can bear to think of. In Phoenix, Lavinia lives with her lawyer husband Raymond, (Robin Thomas), and her two spoiled teenagers, Hannah (Erika Christensen) and Ginger (Eva Amurri). She is so respectable she doesn't even want to think about her former life, which her husband knows nothing about. Are you counting the formulas? And so here we have not one but two Fish Out of Water (Harry and Suzette), plus two examples (Lavinia and Harry) of that other reliable element, the repressed sad sack who needs a taste of freedom. Give the movie a moment's thought, and you see the screenplay's gears turning. This is a movie that could have been a term paper. But Hawn and Sarandon hit the ground running, and are so funny and goofy that they distract and delight us. Lavinia at first resists Suzette's appeal, but then she realizes, "I'm the same color as the Department of Motor Vehicles--and you're like a flower." The girls go out for a wild night on the town, and Suzette brings much-needed reality into the cocooned existence of the two daughters. The most underwritten character is Lavinia's husband, Raymond. The movie doesn't know what to do with him. They let him be a little surprised, a little shocked, a little too straight, but mostly he just stands there waiting for dialogue that is never supplied. Comic opportunities were lost here. And the Geoffrey Rush character, while more filled in, also seems oddly unnecessary. I can easily imagine the movie without him, and with more about the family in Phoenix. He is not and never will be a workable life partner for Suzette, no matter how the movie tries to sentimentalize him. What Goldie Hawn does is to play Suzette sincerely--as if she really were a groupie who still holds true to her partying past. Her daughter, Kate Hudson, of course, played the groupie Penny Lane in "Almost Famous," and Suzette could be the same character, or her friend, in 2002. The movie's buried joke is that Suzette, the wild girl from West Hollywood, has more common sense knowledge about life than the movie's conventional types. Listen to how she talks to Harry on the phone. I guess you learn something about human nature after (cough) years as a bartender. 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] LAWRENCE OF ARABIA / **** (PG) Date: 20 Sep 2002 20:01:21 GMT LAWRENCE OF ARABIA / **** (PG) September 20, 2002 Lawrence: Peter O'Toole Prince Feisal: Alec Guinness Auda Abu Tayi: Anthony Quinn Gen. Allenby: Jack Hawkins Turkish Bey: Jose Ferrer Sherif Ali: Omar Sharif Col. Brighton: Anthony Quayle Mr. Dryden: Claude Rains Jackson Bentley: Arthur Kennedy Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by David Lean Screenplay by Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, inspired by the writings of T.E. Lawrence. Running time: 216 minutes. Rated PG. Opening today at the Music Box Theatre. BY ROGER EBERT W hat a bold, mad act of genius it was, to make "Lawrence of Arabia," or even think that it could be made. In the words years later of one of its stars, Omar Sharif: "If you are the man with the money and somebody comes to you and says he wants to make a film that's four hours long, with no stars, and no women, and no love story, and not much action, either, and he wants to spend a huge amount of money to go film it in the desert--what would you say?" But producers took big chances in the early 1960s, and Sam Spiegel went ahead with David Lean's masterpiece, even though Lean was able to cast Peter O'Toole in the lead only over Spiegel's fierce protests. O'Toole went on to win the first of his seven Oscar nominations; the film totaled 10 nominations and won seven Oscars, including Best Picture. After being treated with shocking neglect for years, the movie has gone through several restorations and opens Friday at the Music Box looking as bright and clear as the day it was released. I remember how Robert Harris, one of the ranking experts on film preservation, who restored the film in 1989, mailed me a rusty, crumpled film can with a note that said, "This is how we found the print had been treated when we went into the vault." "Lawrence of Arabia" was shot in 70mm, a format that offers four times as much detail as 35mm. That makes possible the famous shot where a speck in the desert eventually draws close enough to be recognized. To see it in this way, as it was shown recently at the Telluride Film Festival, is to understand it entirely differently than any impression you could get from television or video. For Roger Ebert's full-length review of "Lawrence of Arabia" in the Great Movies series, go to www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Gene Ehrich <gene@ehrich.com> Subject: [MV] Alice & I will always love you Date: 21 Sep 2002 13:53:33 -0400 We were watching the original movie of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore which was made in 1974 and in the background was the song I Will Always Love You and it sounded like the Whitney Houston version but that was recorded in 1992. Can anybody tell me anything about the recording in Alice? Click below to see & join my Yahoo Groups http://www.users.voicenet.com/~generic/groups.html [ 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: [MV] Alice & I will always love you Date: 21 Sep 2002 13:59:47 -0400 We were watching the original movie of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore which was made in 1974 and in the background was the song I Will Always Love You and it sounded like the Whitney Houston version but that was recorded in 1992. Can anybody tell me anything about the recording in Alice? Click below to see & join my Yahoo Groups http://www.users.voicenet.com/~generic/groups.html [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: "Diane Christy" <dchristy10@earthlink.net> Subject: Re: [MV] Alice & I will always love you Date: 21 Sep 2002 14:05:34 -0500 On Sat, 21 Sep 2002 13:59:47 -0400, Gene Ehrich so aptly wrote: >We were watching the original movie of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore >which was made in 1974 and in the background was the song I Will Always >Love You and it sounded like the Whitney Houston version but that was >recorded in 1992. Can anybody tell me anything about the recording in Alice? That song was made popular first by Dolly Parton. I think she may have written it also. I don't know who sang it in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" but it's not a "new" song. -- Diane Christy, Homemaker Rockford, IL (N'Awlins native!) Mom to Sammie and Josh dchristy10@earthlink.net http://www.geocities.com/diane507 [ 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] Alice & I will always love you Date: 23 Sep 2002 08:22:38 -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_01C26304.4956F0EE Content-Type: text/plain You are right. Dolly Parton wrote it. I had always thought she basically wrote it for Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in the early 80s, but I didn't realize it was in "Alice" (a movie I haven't seen in a very long time) so I checked and Dolly first recorded the song in 1974 for an album, "Jolene". According to the site I checked, she was the only country artist to have a hit with same song twice, once in 74 and again in the early 80s (82 I think?). And thats not even counting Whitney's cover. I checked the IMDB and it was Dolly's original version in the movie. > -----Original Message----- > From: Diane Christy [SMTP:dchristy10@earthlink.net] > Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2002 2:06 PM > To: movies@lists.xmission.com > Subject: Re: [MV] Alice & I will always love you > > On Sat, 21 Sep 2002 13:59:47 -0400, Gene Ehrich so aptly wrote: > > > >We were watching the original movie of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore > >which was made in 1974 and in the background was the song I Will Always > >Love You and it sounded like the Whitney Houston version but that was > >recorded in 1992. Can anybody tell me anything about the recording in > Alice? > That song was made popular first by Dolly Parton. I think she may have > written it also. I don't know who sang it in "Alice > Doesn't Live Here Anymore" but it's not a "new" song. > -- > > Diane Christy, Homemaker > Rockford, IL (N'Awlins native!) > Mom to Sammie and Josh > dchristy10@earthlink.net > http://www.geocities.com/diane507 > > > > [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] > [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------_=_NextPart_001_01C26304.4956F0EE 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] Alice & I will always love you</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY> You are right. Dolly = Parton wrote it. I had always thought she basically wrote it for Best = Little Whorehouse in Texas in the early 80s, but I didn't realize it = was in "Alice" (a movie I haven't seen in a very long time) = so I checked and Dolly first recorded the song in 1974 for an album, = "Jolene". According to the site I checked, she was the only = country artist to have a hit with same song twice, once in 74 and again = in the early 80s (82 I think?). And thats not even counting Whitney's = cover. I checked the IMDB and it was Dolly's original version in the = movie. <UL> -----Original Message----- From: Diane Christy = [SMTP:dchristy10@earthlink.net] Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2002 2:06 PM To: movies@lists.xmission.com Subject: = Re: [MV] Alice & I will always = love you On Sat, 21 Sep 2002 13:59:47 -0400, = Gene Ehrich so aptly wrote: >We were watching the original = movie of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore >which was made in 1974 and in the = background was the song I Will Always >Love You and it sounded like the = Whitney Houston version but that was >recorded in 1992. Can anybody = tell me anything about the recording in Alice? That song was made popular first by = Dolly Parton. I think she may have written it also. I don't know = who sang it in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" but = it's not a "new" song. -- Diane Christy, Homemaker Rockford, IL (N'Awlins = native!) Mom to Sammie and Josh dchristy10@earthlink.net <A = HREF=3D"http://www.geocities.com/diane507" = TARGET=3D"_blank">http://www.geocities.com/diane507</A> [ 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_01C26304.4956F0EE-- [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:35:11 GMT SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Melanie: Reese Witherspoon Jake: Josh Lucas Andrew: Patrick Dempsey Earl: Fred Ward Pearl: Mary Kay Place Stella Kay: Jean Smart Kate: Candice Bergen Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Andy Tennant. Written by C. Jay Cox. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some language and sexual references). BY ROGER EBERT Among the pieties that Hollywood preaches but does not believe is the notion that small towns are preferable to big cities. Film after film rehearses this belief: Big cities are repositories of greed, alienation and hypocrisy, while in a small town you will find the front doors left unlocked, peach pies cooling on the kitchen window sill, and folks down at the diner who all know your name. "Sweet Home Alabama" is the latest, admittedly charming, recycling of this ancient myth. The fact is that few people in Hollywood have voluntarily gone home again since William Faulkner fled to Mississippi. The screenwriters who retail the mirage of small towns are relieved to have escaped them. I await a movie where a New Yorker tries moving to a small town and finds that it just doesn't reflect his warm-hearted big city values. Reese Witherspoon, who is the best reason to see "Sweet Home Alabama," stars as Melanie Carmichael, a small-town girl who moves to the Big Apple and while still in her 20s becomes a famous fashion designer. She's in love with Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), a JFK Jr. lookalike whose mother (Candice Bergen) is mayor of New York. After he proposes to Melanie in Tiffany's, which he has rented for the occasion, she flies back home to Alabama to take care of unfinished business. Specifically, she doesn't want Andrew to discover that she is already married to a local boy, and that her family doesn't own a moss-dripped plantation. Her folks live in a luxury mobile home with lots of La-Z-Boys and knitted afghans (La-Z-Boy: the sign of a home where the man makes the decisions). Her husband, Jake (Josh Lucas), was her high school sweetheart, but, looking ahead at a lifetime of dirty diapers and dishes with a loser, she fled north. His plan: prove himself, to earn her respect and get her back again. That's why he's never given her the divorce. When Melanie returns home, she's greeted by the locals, who remember her high school hijinks (like tying dynamite to a stray cat, ho, ho). Her parents (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place), who wile away their days lounging around the double-wide practicing sitcom dialogue, look on with love and sympathy, because they know that sooner or later she'll realize that home is right here. A clue comes when the mayor advises her prospective in-laws to "go back to your double-wide and fry something." The Jake character is more complex, as he needs to be, because the screenplay requires him to keep a secret that common sense insists he divulge immediately. He must meanwhile undergo a subtle transformation so that when we first meet him, we think he's a redneck hayseed, and then later he has transmogrified into a sensitive, intelligent, caring male. Oh, and his coon dog still likes her. The JFK Jr. guy, in the meantime, cannot be permitted to become a total jerk, because the movie's poignancy factor demands that he be Understanding, as indeed he would be, with a Jackie lookalike mom who is mayor of New York, a city where in this movie nothing bad has happened in recent memory. So, OK, we understand how the formula works, even without learning that C. Jay Cox, the screenwriter, is a student of writing coach Syd Field's theories (i.e., analyze successful movies and copy their structures). We know that the movie absolutely requires that Melanie reject bright lights, big city and return to the embrace of her home town. And we know the odds are low that Melanie will get the divorce, return to New York and marry the mayor's son. (Anyone who thinks I have just committed a spoiler will be unaware of all movies in this genre since "Ma and Pa Kettle.") But answer me this: What about Melanie as a person, with her own success and her own ambition? Would a woman with the talent and ambition necessary to become world-famous in the fashion industry before the age of 30 be able, I ask you, be willing, be prepared, to renounce it all to become the spouse of a man who has built a successful business as a (let's say) glass-blower? The chances of that happening are, I submit, extremely thin, and that is why "Sweet Home Alabama" works. It is a fantasy, a sweet, light-hearted fairy tale with Reese Witherspoon at its center. She is as lovable as Doris Day would have been in this role (in fact, Doris Day was in this role, in "Please Don't Eat the Daisies"). So I enjoyed Witherspoon and the local color, but I am so very tired of the underlying premise. Isn't it time for the movies to reflect reality and show the Melanies of the world fleeing to New York as fast as they can? Even if Syd Field flunks 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] THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:35:12 GMT THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Jimmy Tong: Jackie Chan Del Blaine: Jennifer Love Hewitt Clark Devlin: Jason Isaacs Banning: Ritchie Coster Steena: Debi Mazar DreamWorks Pictures presents a film directed by Kevin Donovan. Written by Michael J. Wilson and Michael Leeson. Running time: 99 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for action violence, sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT There is an ancient tradition in action movies that the first scene is a self-contained shocker with no relevance to the rest of the plot. James Bond parachutes from a mountainside, Clint Eastwood disarms a robber, etc. Jackie Chan's "The Tuxedo" opens with a deer urinating in a mountain stream. The deer, the urine and the stream have nothing to do with the rest of the film. The movie's plot does involve water. The bad guy wants to add an ingredient to the world's water supply that will cause victims to dehydrate and die. To save themselves, they will have to buy the villain's pure water. Since his opening gambit is to sabotage, I repeat, the world's water supply, he will dehydrate everyone except those already drinking only bottled water, and so will inherit a planet of health nuts, which is just as well, since all the fish and animals and birds will dehydrate, too, and everyone will have to live on PowerBars. I have been waiting for a dehydrating villain for some time. My wife is of the opinion that I do not drink enough water. She believes the proper amount is a minimum of eight glasses a day. She often regards me balefully and says, "You're not getting enough water." In hot climates her concern escalates. In Hawaii last summer she had the grandchildren so worked up they ran into the bedroom every morning to see if Grandpa Roger had turned to dust. The movie's villain, whose name is Banning (Ritchie Coster), has a novel scheme for distributing the formula, or virus, or secret ingredient, or whatever it is, that will make water into a dehydrating agent. He plans to use water striders, those insects that can skate across the surface of a pond. In his secret laboratory he keeps his ultimate weapon, a powerful water strider queen. Do water striders have queens, like bees and ants do? For an authoritative answer I turned to Dr. May Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and founder of the Insect Fear Film Festival, held every year at the Great University. She writes: "Water striders are true bugs (i.e., insects with piercing/sucking mouthparts) that run or skate on the surface of bodies of water, feeding on the insects that fall onto the water surface. There are about 500 species of gerrids in the world and, as far as I know, not a single one of those 500 species is eusocial (i.e., has a complex social structure with reproductive division of labor and cooperative brood care). I don't even know of an example of maternal care in the whole group. In short, the answer to your question is an emphatic 'no!' I can't wait to see this film. It definitely sounds like a candidate for a future Insect Fear Film Festival!" More crushing evidence: Dr. Bruce P. Smith, expert entomologist at Ithaca College, writes me, "There is no known species of water striders that has queens. The most closely related insects that do are some colonial aphid speciies, and the most familiar (and much more distant rleatives) are the ants, bees, wasps and termites." He adds helpfully, "One mammal does have queens: the naked mole rats of Africa." Revealing himself as a student of insect films, he continues, "If my memory is correct, 'Arachnophobia' has a king spider, but no queen--totally absurd!" So there you have it. Professors Smith and Berenbaum have spoken. The evil Banning has spent untold millions on his secret plans for world domination, and thinks he possesses a water strider queen when he only has a lucky regular water strider living the life of Riley. But back to "The Tuxedo." Jackie Chan plays a taxi driver named Jimmy Tong, who is hired by Debi Mazar to be the chauffeur for Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs), a multimillionaire secret agent whose $2 million tuxedo turns him into a fighting machine (also a dancer, kung-fu expert, etc). After Devlin is injured by a skateboard bomb, Jackie puts on the suit and soon partners with agent Del Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who realizes he has a strange accent for a man named Clark Devlin, but nevertheless joins him in battle against Banning. The movie is silly beyond comprehension, and even if it weren't silly, it would still be beyond comprehension. It does have its moments, as when the tuxedo inadvertently cold-cocks James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, and Jackie Chan has to go onstage in place of the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. He's very funny as James Brown, although not as funny as James Brown is. There's something engaging about Jackie Chan. Even in a bad movie, I like him, because what you see is so obviously what you get. This time he goes light on the stunts, at least the stunts he obviously does himself, so that during the closing credits, there are lots of flubbed lines and times when the actors break out laughing, but none of those spellbinding shots in which he misses the bridge, falls off the scaffold, etc. And some of the shots are computer-generated, which is kind of cheating isn't it, with Jackie Chan? Luckily, special effects are not frowned upon at the Insect Fear Film Festival. 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] 8 WOMEN / *** (R) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:35:02 GMT 8 WOMEN / *** (R) September 27, 2002 Mamy: Danielle Darrieux Gaby: Catherine Deneuve Augustine: Isabelle Huppert Suzon: Virginie Ledoyen Catherine: Ludivine Sagnier Pierrette: Fanny Ardant Louise: Emmanuelle Beart Madame Chanel: Firmine Richard Focus Features presents a film written and directed by Francois Ozon. Adapted from the play by Robert Thomas. Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R (for some sexual content). In French with English subtitles. Opening today at Pipers Alley, Evanston CineArts 6 and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT Here it is at last, the first Agatha Christie musical. Eight women are isolated in a snowbound cottage, there is a corpse with a knife in his back, all of the women are potential suspects, plus six song and dance numbers. The cast is a roll call of French legends. In alphabetical order: Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Ledoyen, Firmine Richard and Ludivine Sagnier. From the opening shot, the film cheerfully lets us know it's a spoof of overproduced Hollywood musicals. We pan past tree branches impossibly laden with picturesque snow and find a charming cottage where guests are just arriving. Eight women have gathered to celebrate Christmas with Marcel, who is the husband of Gaby (Deneuve), the son-in-law of Mamy (Darrieux), the brother-in-law of Aunt Augustine (Huppert), the father of Catherine (Sagnier) and Suzon (Ledoyen), the employer of the domestic servants Madame Chanel (Richard) and Louise (Beart), and the brother of the late-arriving Pierrette (Ardant). "Monsieur died in his bed with a knife in his back," the assembled company is informed. And (significant detail required in all isolated rural murders) "the dogs didn't bark all night." The women absorb this news while dressed in stunning designer fashions (even the maids look chic) and deployed around a large, sunny room that looks like nothing so much as a stage set--even to the detail that all the furniture is behind the actresses most of the time. Only a couple of brief excursions upstairs prevent the movie from taking place entirely on this one bright set, where nothing looks used or lived with. The artificiality is so jolly that we're not surprised when the first song begins, because "8 Women" is in no sense serious about murder, its plot, or anything else. It's an elaborate excuse to have fun with its cast, and we realize we've been waiting a long time for Catherine Deneuve to come right out and say of Isabelle Huppert: "I'm beautiful and rich. She's ugly and poor." I had also just about given up hope of ever seeing Deneuve and Fanny Ardant rolling around on the floor pulling each other's hair. In a cast where everybody has fun, Huppert has the most, as Augustine. She and her mother (Darrieux) have been living rent-free in Marcel's cottage with her sister (Deneuve), but that has not inspired Augustine to compromise in her fierce resentment and spinsterish isolation. She stalks around the set like Whistler's mother, frowning from behind her horn-rims and making disapproval into a lifestyle. The other characters quickly fall into approved Agatha Christie patterns. Young Suzon appoints herself Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps in this case Hercule Poirot, and begins sniffing out the clues. The sexy Louise is established as the late Marcel's mistress. Madame Chanel, from French Africa, has been with the family for years and lives out back in the guest cottage, where, as it develops, she often plays cards with Pierrette. And Pierrette herself, who arrives late with the kind of entrance that only the tall, dark and forcible Ardant could pull off, has secrets which are as amazing as they are inevitable. I dare not reveal a shred of the plot. And the movie is all plot--that, and stylish behavior, and barbed wit, and those musical numbers. Watching "8 Women," you have a silly grin half of the time. Astonishing, that Francois Ozon, who directed this, also made "Under the Sand" (2001), that melancholy record of a wife (Charlotte Rampling) whose husband disappears, apparently drowned, and who refuses to deal with the fact that he is dead. Movies like "8 Women" are essentially made for movie-lovers. You have to have seen overdecorated studio musicals, and you have to know who Darrieux and Deneuve and Beart and Huppert and Ardant are, to get the full flavor. It also helps if you have seen Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap," now in the 50th year of its London run, with its cast still trapped with the corpse in the isolated cottage. "Do not give away the secret!" the program notes exhort. And here, too. Not that the secret is anything more than one more twist of the plot's pepper mill. 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] MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:35:03 GMT MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Joe Nast Jake Gyllenhaal Ben Floss: Dustin Hoffman JoJo Floss: Susan Sarandon Mona Camp: Holly Hunter Bertie Knox: Ellen Pompeo Mike Mulcahey: Dabney Coleman Stan Michaels: Allan Corduner Ty: Richard T. Jones Touchstone Pictures and Hyde Park Entertainment present a film written and directed by Brad Silberling. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sensuality and brief strong language). Opening today at Pipers Alley, Northbrook Court and Yorktown. BY ROGER EBERT After the funeral is over and the mourners have come back to the house for coffee and cake and have all gone home, the parents and the boyfriend of Diana, the dead girl, sit by themselves. Her mother criticizes how one friend expressed her sympathy. And the father asks, what could she say? "Put yourself in their shoes." That little scene provides a key to Brad Silberling's "Moonlight Mile." What do you say when someone dies--someone you cared for? What are the right words? And what's the right thing to do? Death is the ultimate rebuke to good manners. The movie, which makes an unusually intense effort to deal with the process of grief and renewal, is inspired by a loss in Silberling's own life. The TV actress Rebecca Schaeffer, his girlfriend at the time, was killed in 1989 by a fan. Silberling has grown very close to her parents in the years since then, he told me, and more than a decade later he has tried to use the experience as the starting point for a film. "Moonlight Mile," which takes place in 1973, opens in an elliptical way. At first only quiet clues in the dialogue allow us to understand that someone has died. We meet Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal), the fiance of the dead girl, and her parents Ben and JoJo Floss (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon). They talk not in a sentimental way, but in that strange, detached tone we use when grief is too painful to express and yet something must be said. After the funeral and the home visitation, the film follows what in a lesser film would be called the "healing process." "Moonlight Mile" is too quirky and observant to be described in psychobabble. Joe stays stuck in the Floss house, living in an upstairs bedroom, his plans on hold. Ben, who has lost a daughter, now in a confused way hopes to gain a son, and encourages Joe to join him in his business as a real estate developer. JoJo, protected by intelligence and wit, looks closely and suspects a secret Joe is keeping, which leaves him stranded between the past and future. Gyllenhaal, who in person is a jokester, in the movies almost always plays characters who are withdrawn and morose. Remember him in "Donnie Darko," "The Good Girl" and "Lovely & Amazing." Here, too, he is a young man with troubled thoughts. At the post office, and again at a bar where she has a night job, he meets Bertie Knox (Ellen Pompeo), who sees inside when others only look at the surface. They begin to talk. She has a loss, too: Her boyfriend has been missing in action in Vietnam for three years. While it is possible that they will mend each other's hearts by falling in love, the movie doesn't simple-mindedly pursue that plot path, but meanders among the thoughts of the living. Silberling's screenplay pays full attention to all of the characters. Ben and JoJo are not simply a backdrop to a romance involving Joe and Bertie. The movie provides key scenes for all of the characters, in conversation and in monologue, so that it is not only about Joe's grieving process but about all four, who have lost different things in different ways. Anyone regarding the Hoffman character will note that his name is Benjamin and remember Hoffman's most famous character, in "The Graduate." But Joe is the Benjamin of this film, and Hoffman's older man has more in common with another of his famous roles: Willy Loman, the hero of "Death of a Salesman." Ben occupies a low-rent storefront office on Main Street in Cape Anne, Mass., but dreams of putting together a group of properties and bringing in a superstore like Kmart. This will be his big killing, the deal that caps his career, even though we can see in the eyes of the local rich man (Dabney Coleman) that Ben is too small to land this fish. Ben's desire to share his dream with his surrogate son, Joe, also has echoes from the Arthur Miller tragedy. Sarandon's JoJo is tart, with a verbal wit to protect her and a jaundiced view of her husband's prospects. The deepest conversation JoJo has with Joe ("Isn't it funny, that we have the same name?") is about as well done as such a scene can be. She intuits that Joe is dealing not only with the loss of Diana's life but with the loss of something else. Pompeo, a newcomer, plays Bertie with a kind of scary charisma that cannot be written, only felt. She knows she is attractive to Joe. She knows she likes him. She knows she is faithful to her old boyfriend. She is frightened by her own power to attract, especially since she wants to attract even while she tells herself she doesn't. She is so vulnerable in this movie, so sweet as she senses Joe's pain and wants to help him. Holly Hunter is the fifth major player, as the lawyer who is handling the case against Diana's killer. She embodies the wisdom of the law, which knows, as laymen do not, that it moves with its own logic regardless of the feelings of those in the courtroom. She offers practical advice, and then you can see in her eyes that she wishes she could offer emotional advice instead. "Moonlight Mile" gives itself the freedom to feel contradictory things. It is sentimental but feels free to offend, is analytical and then surrenders to the illogic of its characters, is about grief and yet permits laughter. Everyone who has grieved for a loved one will recognize the moment, some days after the death, when an irreverent remark will release the surprise of laughter. Sometimes we laugh, that we may not cry. Not many movies know that truth. "Moonlight Mile" is based on it. 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] WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE / *** (Not rated) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:35:14 GMT WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE / *** (Not rated) September 27, 2002 Yosuke Sasano: Koji Yakusho Saeko Aizawa: Misa Shimizu Mitsu Aizawa: Mitsuko Baisho Gen: Manasaku Fuwa Taro: Kazuo Kitamura Cowboy Pictures presents a film directed by Shohei Imamura. Written by Motofumi Tomikawa, Daisuke Tengan and Imamura. Based on a book by Yo Henmi. Running time: 119 minutes. No MPAA rating (intended for mature audiences). In Japanese with English subtitles. Opening today at the Music Box. BY ROGER EBERT "Warm Water Under a Red Bridge" has modern automobiles and supermarkets, telephones and pepper cheese imported from Europe, but it resonates like an ancient Japanese myth. Imagine a traveler in search of treasure, who finds a woman with special needs that only he can fulfill, and who repays him by ending his misery. Shohei Imamura, one of the greatest Japanese directors, tells this story with the energy and delight of a fairy tale, but we in the West are not likely to see it so naively, because unlike the Japanese, we are touchy on the subject of bodily fluids. In Japan, natural functions are accepted calmly as a part of life, and there is a celebrated children's book about farts. No doubt a Japanese audience would view "Warm Water" entirely differently than a North American one--because, you see, the heroine has a condition that causes water to build up in her body, and it can be released only by sexual intercourse. Water arrives in puddles and rivulets, in sprays and splashes. "Don't worry," Saeko (Misa Shimizu) cheerfully tells Yosuke, the hero. "It's not urine." It is instead--well, what? The water of life? Of growth and renewal? Is she a water goddess? When it runs down the steps of her house and into the river, fish grow large and numerous. And it seems to have a similar effect on Yosuke (Koji Yakusho, from "Shall We Dance?" and "The Eel"). From a pallid, hopeless wanderer in the early scenes, he grows into a bold lover and a brave ocean fisherman. As the film opens, Yosuke is broke and jobless, fielding incessant cell phone calls from his nagging wife, who wants an update on his job searches. In despair, he hunkers down next to the river with an old philosopher named Taro (Kazuo Kitamura), who tells him a story. Long ago, he says, right after the war, he was stealing to get the money to eat, and he took a gold Buddha from a temple. He left it in an upstairs room of a house next to a red bridge, where he assumes it remains to this day. Yosuke takes a train to the town named by the old man, finds the bridge, finds the house, and follows Saeko from it into a supermarket where he sees her shoplift some cheese while standing in a puddle. From the puddle he retrieves her earring (a dolphin, of course) and returns it to her, and she asks if he'd like some cheese and then forthrightly tells him, "You saw me steal the cheese. Then you saw the puddle of water." All true. She explains her problem. The water builds up and must be "vented," often by doing "something wicked" like shoplifting. It is, she adds, building up right now--and soon they are having intercourse to the delight of the fish in the river below. This story is unthinkable in a Hollywood movie, but there is something about the matter-of-fact way Saeko explains her problem, and the surprised but not stunned way that Yosuke hears her, that takes the edge off. If women are a source of life, and if water is where life began, then--well, whatever. It is important to note that the sex in the movie is not erotic or titillating in any way--it's more like a therapeutic process--and that the movie is not sex-minded but more delighted with the novelty of Saeko's problem. Only in a nation where bodily functions are discussed in a matter-of-fact way, where nude public bathing is no big deal, where shame about human plumbing has not been ritualized, could this movie play in the way Imamura intended. But seeing it as a Westerner is an enlightening, even liberating, experience. Imamura, now 76, is also the director of the masterpieces "The Insect Woman" (1963), about a woman whose only priority is her own comfort and survival; "Ballad of Narayama" (1982), the heartbreaking story of a village where the old are left on the side of a mountain to die, and "Black Rain" (1989), not the Michael Douglas thriller, but a harrowing human story about the days and months after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. At his age, he seems freed from convention, and in "Warm Water," for example, he cuts loose from this world to include a dream in which Saeko floats like a embryo in a cosmic cloud. There is also an effortless fusion of old and new. The notion of a man leaving his nagging wife and home and finding succor from a goddess is from ancient myth, and the fact that he would then turn to wrest his living from the sea is not unheard of. But throwing his cell phone overboard, now that's a modern touch. 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] SECRETARY / *** (R) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:35:05 GMT SECRETARY / *** (R) September 27, 2002 Mr. Grey: James Spader Lee Holloway: Maggie Gyllenhaal Peter: Jeremy Davies Joan Holloway: Lesley Ann Warren Burt Holloway: Stephen McHattie Dr. Twardon: Patrick Bauchau Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Steven Shainberg. Written by Erin Cressida Wilson. Based on the story by Mary Gaitskill. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexuality, some nudity, depiction of behavioral disorders and language). Opening today at Evanston CineArts 6, Esquire, Pipers Alley and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT "Secretary" approaches the tricky subject of sadomasochism with a stealthy tread, avoiding the dangers of making it either too offensive, or too funny. Because S/M involves postures that are absorbing for the participants but absurd to the onlooker, we tend to giggle at the wrong times. Here is a film where we giggle at the right times. The director, Steven Shainberg, has succeeded by focusing intently on his characters, making them quirky individuals rather than figures of fun. The movie, to begin with, is well cast. There may be better actors than James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, but for this material, I cannot think who they are. About Spader there always seems to be some unarticulated secret hovering, and Gyllenhaal avoids numerous opportunities to make her character seem pathetic, and makes her seem plucky instead--intent on establishing herself and making herself necessary. Spader plays Mr. Grey, a lawyer whose office looks like the result of intense conversations with an interior designer who has seen too many Michael Douglas movies. Mr. Grey has such bad luck with secretaries that he has an illuminated help-wanted sign out front he can light up, like the "Vacancy" sign at a motel. Gyllenhaal plays Lee Holloway, who has the illness of self-mutilation and comes from a neurotic family. Released from treatment, Lee takes typing classes, goes looking for work and has an interview with Mr. Grey. Something unspoken passes between them and they know they are thinking about the same thing. Lee is submissive. Spader is dominant and obsessive (he has a fetish for lining up red markers in his desk drawer). He demands perfection, she falls short of the mark, he punishes her, and this becomes a workable relationship. When he loses interest for a time and stops correcting her mistakes, she grows disconsolate; when he sharply calls her back into her office, she is delighted. The movie does not argue that S/M is good for you, but has a more complex dynamic. By absorbing so much of Mr. Grey's time and attention, Lee, who has abysmal self-esteem, feels that attention is being paid to her. Mr. Grey notices her. He thinks about her. He devises new games for them. He never threatens serious hurt or harm, but instead tends toward role-playing and ritual. What they discover is that, in the long run, S/M is more fun (and less trouble) for the "M" than for the "S." "We can't go on like this 24 hours a day," Mr. Grey complains at one point. Lee doesn't see why not. Jeremy Davies plays Peter, the other key role, sincere to the point of being inarticulate, who for a time dates Lee. Mr. Grey looks on jealously as they do their laundry together, and is faced with the possibility that he might lose his agreeable secretary. That would be the final straw, since we sense that Mr. Grey is in much worse shape than Lee was ever in. His obsessive-compulsive behavior is driving him nuts, not to mention his clients. Stories about S/M often have an ironic happy ending, but this one, based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill, seems sincere enough: They've found a relationships that works. For them. The movie's humor comes through the close observation of behavior. It allows us to understand what has happened without specifying it. The lawyer and secretary have subtle little signals by which they step out of their roles and sort of wink, so they both know that they both know what they're doing. Their behavior, which is intended to signify hostility, eventually grows into a deeper recognition of each other's natures and needs. That of course leads to affection, which can be tricky, but not for them, because both suspect there is no one else they're ever likely to meet who will understand them quite so completely. 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] 8 WOMEN / *** (R) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:38:45 GMT 8 WOMEN / *** (R) September 27, 2002 Mamy: Danielle Darrieux Gaby: Catherine Deneuve Augustine: Isabelle Huppert Suzon: Virginie Ledoyen Catherine: Ludivine Sagnier Pierrette: Fanny Ardant Louise: Emmanuelle Beart Madame Chanel: Firmine Richard Focus Features presents a film written and directed by Francois Ozon. Adapted from the play by Robert Thomas. Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R (for some sexual content). In French with English subtitles. Opening today at Pipers Alley, Evanston CineArts 6 and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT Here it is at last, the first Agatha Christie musical. Eight women are isolated in a snowbound cottage, there is a corpse with a knife in his back, all of the women are potential suspects, plus six song and dance numbers. The cast is a roll call of French legends. In alphabetical order: Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Ledoyen, Firmine Richard and Ludivine Sagnier. From the opening shot, the film cheerfully lets us know it's a spoof of overproduced Hollywood musicals. We pan past tree branches impossibly laden with picturesque snow and find a charming cottage where guests are just arriving. Eight women have gathered to celebrate Christmas with Marcel, who is the husband of Gaby (Deneuve), the son-in-law of Mamy (Darrieux), the brother-in-law of Aunt Augustine (Huppert), the father of Catherine (Sagnier) and Suzon (Ledoyen), the employer of the domestic servants Madame Chanel (Richard) and Louise (Beart), and the brother of the late-arriving Pierrette (Ardant). "Monsieur died in his bed with a knife in his back," the assembled company is informed. And (significant detail required in all isolated rural murders) "the dogs didn't bark all night." The women absorb this news while dressed in stunning designer fashions (even the maids look chic) and deployed around a large, sunny room that looks like nothing so much as a stage set--even to the detail that all the furniture is behind the actresses most of the time. Only a couple of brief excursions upstairs prevent the movie from taking place entirely on this one bright set, where nothing looks used or lived with. The artificiality is so jolly that we're not surprised when the first song begins, because "8 Women" is in no sense serious about murder, its plot, or anything else. It's an elaborate excuse to have fun with its cast, and we realize we've been waiting a long time for Catherine Deneuve to come right out and say of Isabelle Huppert: "I'm beautiful and rich. She's ugly and poor." I had also just about given up hope of ever seeing Deneuve and Fanny Ardant rolling around on the floor pulling each other's hair. In a cast where everybody has fun, Huppert has the most, as Augustine. She and her mother (Darrieux) have been living rent-free in Marcel's cottage with her sister (Deneuve), but that has not inspired Augustine to compromise in her fierce resentment and spinsterish isolation. She stalks around the set like Whistler's mother, frowning from behind her horn-rims and making disapproval into a lifestyle. The other characters quickly fall into approved Agatha Christie patterns. Young Suzon appoints herself Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps in this case Hercule Poirot, and begins sniffing out the clues. The sexy Louise is established as the late Marcel's mistress. Madame Chanel, from French Africa, has been with the family for years and lives out back in the guest cottage, where, as it develops, she often plays cards with Pierrette. And Pierrette herself, who arrives late with the kind of entrance that only the tall, dark and forcible Ardant could pull off, has secrets which are as amazing as they are inevitable. I dare not reveal a shred of the plot. And the movie is all plot--that, and stylish behavior, and barbed wit, and those musical numbers. Watching "8 Women," you have a silly grin half of the time. Astonishing, that Francois Ozon, who directed this, also made "Under the Sand" (2001), that melancholy record of a wife (Charlotte Rampling) whose husband disappears, apparently drowned, and who refuses to deal with the fact that he is dead. Movies like "8 Women" are essentially made for movie-lovers. You have to have seen overdecorated studio musicals, and you have to know who Darrieux and Deneuve and Beart and Huppert and Ardant are, to get the full flavor. It also helps if you have seen Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap," now in the 50th year of its London run, with its cast still trapped with the corpse in the isolated cottage. "Do not give away the secret!" the program notes exhort. And here, too. Not that the secret is anything more than one more twist of the plot's pepper mill. 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] MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:38:47 GMT MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Joe Nast Jake Gyllenhaal Ben Floss: Dustin Hoffman JoJo Floss: Susan Sarandon Mona Camp: Holly Hunter Bertie Knox: Ellen Pompeo Mike Mulcahey: Dabney Coleman Stan Michaels: Allan Corduner Ty: Richard T. Jones Touchstone Pictures and Hyde Park Entertainment present a film written and directed by Brad Silberling. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sensuality and brief strong language). Opening today at Pipers Alley, Northbrook Court and Yorktown. BY ROGER EBERT After the funeral is over and the mourners have come back to the house for coffee and cake and have all gone home, the parents and the boyfriend of Diana, the dead girl, sit by themselves. Her mother criticizes how one friend expressed her sympathy. And the father asks, what could she say? "Put yourself in their shoes." That little scene provides a key to Brad Silberling's "Moonlight Mile." What do you say when someone dies--someone you cared for? What are the right words? And what's the right thing to do? Death is the ultimate rebuke to good manners. The movie, which makes an unusually intense effort to deal with the process of grief and renewal, is inspired by a loss in Silberling's own life. The TV actress Rebecca Schaeffer, his girlfriend at the time, was killed in 1989 by a fan. Silberling has grown very close to her parents in the years since then, he told me, and more than a decade later he has tried to use the experience as the starting point for a film. "Moonlight Mile," which takes place in 1973, opens in an elliptical way. At first only quiet clues in the dialogue allow us to understand that someone has died. We meet Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal), the fiance of the dead girl, and her parents Ben and JoJo Floss (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon). They talk not in a sentimental way, but in that strange, detached tone we use when grief is too painful to express and yet something must be said. After the funeral and the home visitation, the film follows what in a lesser film would be called the "healing process." "Moonlight Mile" is too quirky and observant to be described in psychobabble. Joe stays stuck in the Floss house, living in an upstairs bedroom, his plans on hold. Ben, who has lost a daughter, now in a confused way hopes to gain a son, and encourages Joe to join him in his business as a real estate developer. JoJo, protected by intelligence and wit, looks closely and suspects a secret Joe is keeping, which leaves him stranded between the past and future. Gyllenhaal, who in person is a jokester, in the movies almost always plays characters who are withdrawn and morose. Remember him in "Donnie Darko," "The Good Girl" and "Lovely & Amazing." Here, too, he is a young man with troubled thoughts. At the post office, and again at a bar where she has a night job, he meets Bertie Knox (Ellen Pompeo), who sees inside when others only look at the surface. They begin to talk. She has a loss, too: Her boyfriend has been missing in action in Vietnam for three years. While it is possible that they will mend each other's hearts by falling in love, the movie doesn't simple-mindedly pursue that plot path, but meanders among the thoughts of the living. Silberling's screenplay pays full attention to all of the characters. Ben and JoJo are not simply a backdrop to a romance involving Joe and Bertie. The movie provides key scenes for all of the characters, in conversation and in monologue, so that it is not only about Joe's grieving process but about all four, who have lost different things in different ways. Anyone regarding the Hoffman character will note that his name is Benjamin and remember Hoffman's most famous character, in "The Graduate." But Joe is the Benjamin of this film, and Hoffman's older man has more in common with another of his famous roles: Willy Loman, the hero of "Death of a Salesman." Ben occupies a low-rent storefront office on Main Street in Cape Anne, Mass., but dreams of putting together a group of properties and bringing in a superstore like Kmart. This will be his big killing, the deal that caps his career, even though we can see in the eyes of the local rich man (Dabney Coleman) that Ben is too small to land this fish. Ben's desire to share his dream with his surrogate son, Joe, also has echoes from the Arthur Miller tragedy. Sarandon's JoJo is tart, with a verbal wit to protect her and a jaundiced view of her husband's prospects. The deepest conversation JoJo has with Joe ("Isn't it funny, that we have the same name?") is about as well done as such a scene can be. She intuits that Joe is dealing not only with the loss of Diana's life but with the loss of something else. Pompeo, a newcomer, plays Bertie with a kind of scary charisma that cannot be written, only felt. She knows she is attractive to Joe. She knows she likes him. She knows she is faithful to her old boyfriend. She is frightened by her own power to attract, especially since she wants to attract even while she tells herself she doesn't. She is so vulnerable in this movie, so sweet as she senses Joe's pain and wants to help him. Holly Hunter is the fifth major player, as the lawyer who is handling the case against Diana's killer. She embodies the wisdom of the law, which knows, as laymen do not, that it moves with its own logic regardless of the feelings of those in the courtroom. She offers practical advice, and then you can see in her eyes that she wishes she could offer emotional advice instead. "Moonlight Mile" gives itself the freedom to feel contradictory things. It is sentimental but feels free to offend, is analytical and then surrenders to the illogic of its characters, is about grief and yet permits laughter. Everyone who has grieved for a loved one will recognize the moment, some days after the death, when an irreverent remark will release the surprise of laughter. Sometimes we laugh, that we may not cry. Not many movies know that truth. "Moonlight Mile" is based on it. 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] SECRETARY / *** (R) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:38:48 GMT SECRETARY / *** (R) September 27, 2002 Mr. Grey: James Spader Lee Holloway: Maggie Gyllenhaal Peter: Jeremy Davies Joan Holloway: Lesley Ann Warren Burt Holloway: Stephen McHattie Dr. Twardon: Patrick Bauchau Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Steven Shainberg. Written by Erin Cressida Wilson. Based on the story by Mary Gaitskill. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexuality, some nudity, depiction of behavioral disorders and language). Opening today at Evanston CineArts 6, Esquire, Pipers Alley and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT "Secretary" approaches the tricky subject of sadomasochism with a stealthy tread, avoiding the dangers of making it either too offensive, or too funny. Because S/M involves postures that are absorbing for the participants but absurd to the onlooker, we tend to giggle at the wrong times. Here is a film where we giggle at the right times. The director, Steven Shainberg, has succeeded by focusing intently on his characters, making them quirky individuals rather than figures of fun. The movie, to begin with, is well cast. There may be better actors than James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, but for this material, I cannot think who they are. About Spader there always seems to be some unarticulated secret hovering, and Gyllenhaal avoids numerous opportunities to make her character seem pathetic, and makes her seem plucky instead--intent on establishing herself and making herself necessary. Spader plays Mr. Grey, a lawyer whose office looks like the result of intense conversations with an interior designer who has seen too many Michael Douglas movies. Mr. Grey has such bad luck with secretaries that he has an illuminated help-wanted sign out front he can light up, like the "Vacancy" sign at a motel. Gyllenhaal plays Lee Holloway, who has the illness of self-mutilation and comes from a neurotic family. Released from treatment, Lee takes typing classes, goes looking for work and has an interview with Mr. Grey. Something unspoken passes between them and they know they are thinking about the same thing. Lee is submissive. Spader is dominant and obsessive (he has a fetish for lining up red markers in his desk drawer). He demands perfection, she falls short of the mark, he punishes her, and this becomes a workable relationship. When he loses interest for a time and stops correcting her mistakes, she grows disconsolate; when he sharply calls her back into her office, she is delighted. The movie does not argue that S/M is good for you, but has a more complex dynamic. By absorbing so much of Mr. Grey's time and attention, Lee, who has abysmal self-esteem, feels that attention is being paid to her. Mr. Grey notices her. He thinks about her. He devises new games for them. He never threatens serious hurt or harm, but instead tends toward role-playing and ritual. What they discover is that, in the long run, S/M is more fun (and less trouble) for the "M" than for the "S." "We can't go on like this 24 hours a day," Mr. Grey complains at one point. Lee doesn't see why not. Jeremy Davies plays Peter, the other key role, sincere to the point of being inarticulate, who for a time dates Lee. Mr. Grey looks on jealously as they do their laundry together, and is faced with the possibility that he might lose his agreeable secretary. That would be the final straw, since we sense that Mr. Grey is in much worse shape than Lee was ever in. His obsessive-compulsive behavior is driving him nuts, not to mention his clients. Stories about S/M often have an ironic happy ending, but this one, based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill, seems sincere enough: They've found a relationships that works. For them. The movie's humor comes through the close observation of behavior. It allows us to understand what has happened without specifying it. The lawyer and secretary have subtle little signals by which they step out of their roles and sort of wink, so they both know that they both know what they're doing. Their behavior, which is intended to signify hostility, eventually grows into a deeper recognition of each other's natures and needs. That of course leads to affection, which can be tricky, but not for them, because both suspect there is no one else they're ever likely to meet who will understand them quite so completely. 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] SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:38:50 GMT SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Melanie: Reese Witherspoon Jake: Josh Lucas Andrew: Patrick Dempsey Earl: Fred Ward Pearl: Mary Kay Place Stella Kay: Jean Smart Kate: Candice Bergen Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Andy Tennant. Written by C. Jay Cox. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some language and sexual references). BY ROGER EBERT Among the pieties that Hollywood preaches but does not believe is the notion that small towns are preferable to big cities. Film after film rehearses this belief: Big cities are repositories of greed, alienation and hypocrisy, while in a small town you will find the front doors left unlocked, peach pies cooling on the kitchen window sill, and folks down at the diner who all know your name. "Sweet Home Alabama" is the latest, admittedly charming, recycling of this ancient myth. The fact is that few people in Hollywood have voluntarily gone home again since William Faulkner fled to Mississippi. The screenwriters who retail the mirage of small towns are relieved to have escaped them. I await a movie where a New Yorker tries moving to a small town and finds that it just doesn't reflect his warm-hearted big city values. Reese Witherspoon, who is the best reason to see "Sweet Home Alabama," stars as Melanie Carmichael, a small-town girl who moves to the Big Apple and while still in her 20s becomes a famous fashion designer. She's in love with Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), a JFK Jr. lookalike whose mother (Candice Bergen) is mayor of New York. After he proposes to Melanie in Tiffany's, which he has rented for the occasion, she flies back home to Alabama to take care of unfinished business. Specifically, she doesn't want Andrew to discover that she is already married to a local boy, and that her family doesn't own a moss-dripped plantation. Her folks live in a luxury mobile home with lots of La-Z-Boys and knitted afghans (La-Z-Boy: the sign of a home where the man makes the decisions). Her husband, Jake (Josh Lucas), was her high school sweetheart, but, looking ahead at a lifetime of dirty diapers and dishes with a loser, she fled north. His plan: prove himself, to earn her respect and get her back again. That's why he's never given her the divorce. When Melanie returns home, she's greeted by the locals, who remember her high school hijinks (like tying dynamite to a stray cat, ho, ho). Her parents (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place), who wile away their days lounging around the double-wide practicing sitcom dialogue, look on with love and sympathy, because they know that sooner or later she'll realize that home is right here. A clue comes when the mayor advises her prospective in-laws to "go back to your double-wide and fry something." The Jake character is more complex, as he needs to be, because the screenplay requires him to keep a secret that common sense insists he divulge immediately. He must meanwhile undergo a subtle transformation so that when we first meet him, we think he's a redneck hayseed, and then later he has transmogrified into a sensitive, intelligent, caring male. Oh, and his coon dog still likes her. The JFK Jr. guy, in the meantime, cannot be permitted to become a total jerk, because the movie's poignancy factor demands that he be Understanding, as indeed he would be, with a Jackie lookalike mom who is mayor of New York, a city where in this movie nothing bad has happened in recent memory. So, OK, we understand how the formula works, even without learning that C. Jay Cox, the screenwriter, is a student of writing coach Syd Field's theories (i.e., analyze successful movies and copy their structures). We know that the movie absolutely requires that Melanie reject bright lights, big city and return to the embrace of her home town. And we know the odds are low that Melanie will get the divorce, return to New York and marry the mayor's son. (Anyone who thinks I have just committed a spoiler will be unaware of all movies in this genre since "Ma and Pa Kettle.") But answer me this: What about Melanie as a person, with her own success and her own ambition? Would a woman with the talent and ambition necessary to become world-famous in the fashion industry before the age of 30 be able, I ask you, be willing, be prepared, to renounce it all to become the spouse of a man who has built a successful business as a (let's say) glass-blower? The chances of that happening are, I submit, extremely thin, and that is why "Sweet Home Alabama" works. It is a fantasy, a sweet, light-hearted fairy tale with Reese Witherspoon at its center. She is as lovable as Doris Day would have been in this role (in fact, Doris Day was in this role, in "Please Don't Eat the Daisies"). So I enjoyed Witherspoon and the local color, but I am so very tired of the underlying premise. Isn't it time for the movies to reflect reality and show the Melanies of the world fleeing to New York as fast as they can? Even if Syd Field flunks 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] THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:38:51 GMT THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Jimmy Tong: Jackie Chan Del Blaine: Jennifer Love Hewitt Clark Devlin: Jason Isaacs Banning: Ritchie Coster Steena: Debi Mazar DreamWorks Pictures presents a film directed by Kevin Donovan. Written by Michael J. Wilson and Michael Leeson. Running time: 99 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for action violence, sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT There is an ancient tradition in action movies that the first scene is a self-contained shocker with no relevance to the rest of the plot. James Bond parachutes from a mountainside, Clint Eastwood disarms a robber, etc. Jackie Chan's "The Tuxedo" opens with a deer urinating in a mountain stream. The deer, the urine and the stream have nothing to do with the rest of the film. The movie's plot does involve water. The bad guy wants to add an ingredient to the world's water supply that will cause victims to dehydrate and die. To save themselves, they will have to buy the villain's pure water. Since his opening gambit is to sabotage, I repeat, the world's water supply, he will dehydrate everyone except those already drinking only bottled water, and so will inherit a planet of health nuts, which is just as well, since all the fish and animals and birds will dehydrate, too, and everyone will have to live on PowerBars. I have been waiting for a dehydrating villain for some time. My wife is of the opinion that I do not drink enough water. She believes the proper amount is a minimum of eight glasses a day. She often regards me balefully and says, "You're not getting enough water." In hot climates her concern escalates. In Hawaii last summer she had the grandchildren so worked up they ran into the bedroom every morning to see if Grandpa Roger had turned to dust. The movie's villain, whose name is Banning (Ritchie Coster), has a novel scheme for distributing the formula, or virus, or secret ingredient, or whatever it is, that will make water into a dehydrating agent. He plans to use water striders, those insects that can skate across the surface of a pond. In his secret laboratory he keeps his ultimate weapon, a powerful water strider queen. Do water striders have queens, like bees and ants do? For an authoritative answer I turned to Dr. May Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and founder of the Insect Fear Film Festival, held every year at the Great University. She writes: "Water striders are true bugs (i.e., insects with piercing/sucking mouthparts) that run or skate on the surface of bodies of water, feeding on the insects that fall onto the water surface. There are about 500 species of gerrids in the world and, as far as I know, not a single one of those 500 species is eusocial (i.e., has a complex social structure with reproductive division of labor and cooperative brood care). I don't even know of an example of maternal care in the whole group. In short, the answer to your question is an emphatic 'no!' I can't wait to see this film. It definitely sounds like a candidate for a future Insect Fear Film Festival!" More crushing evidence: Dr. Bruce P. Smith, expert entomologist at Ithaca College, writes me, "There is no known species of water striders that has queens. The most closely related insects that do are some colonial aphid speciies, and the most familiar (and much more distant rleatives) are the ants, bees, wasps and termites." He adds helpfully, "One mammal does have queens: the naked mole rats of Africa." Revealing himself as a student of insect films, he continues, "If my memory is correct, 'Arachnophobia' has a king spider, but no queen--totally absurd!" So there you have it. Professors Smith and Berenbaum have spoken. The evil Banning has spent untold millions on his secret plans for world domination, and thinks he possesses a water strider queen when he only has a lucky regular water strider living the life of Riley. But back to "The Tuxedo." Jackie Chan plays a taxi driver named Jimmy Tong, who is hired by Debi Mazar to be the chauffeur for Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs), a multimillionaire secret agent whose $2 million tuxedo turns him into a fighting machine (also a dancer, kung-fu expert, etc). After Devlin is injured by a skateboard bomb, Jackie puts on the suit and soon partners with agent Del Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who realizes he has a strange accent for a man named Clark Devlin, but nevertheless joins him in battle against Banning. The movie is silly beyond comprehension, and even if it weren't silly, it would still be beyond comprehension. It does have its moments, as when the tuxedo inadvertently cold-cocks James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, and Jackie Chan has to go onstage in place of the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. He's very funny as James Brown, although not as funny as James Brown is. There's something engaging about Jackie Chan. Even in a bad movie, I like him, because what you see is so obviously what you get. This time he goes light on the stunts, at least the stunts he obviously does himself, so that during the closing credits, there are lots of flubbed lines and times when the actors break out laughing, but none of those spellbinding shots in which he misses the bridge, falls off the scaffold, etc. And some of the shots are computer-generated, which is kind of cheating isn't it, with Jackie Chan? Luckily, special effects are not frowned upon at the Insect Fear Film Festival. 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] WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE / *** (Not rated) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:38:53 GMT WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE / *** (Not rated) September 27, 2002 Yosuke Sasano: Koji Yakusho Saeko Aizawa: Misa Shimizu Mitsu Aizawa: Mitsuko Baisho Gen: Manasaku Fuwa Taro: Kazuo Kitamura Cowboy Pictures presents a film directed by Shohei Imamura. Written by Motofumi Tomikawa, Daisuke Tengan and Imamura. Based on a book by Yo Henmi. Running time: 119 minutes. No MPAA rating (intended for mature audiences). In Japanese with English subtitles. Opening today at the Music Box. BY ROGER EBERT "Warm Water Under a Red Bridge" has modern automobiles and supermarkets, telephones and pepper cheese imported from Europe, but it resonates like an ancient Japanese myth. Imagine a traveler in search of treasure, who finds a woman with special needs that only he can fulfill, and who repays him by ending his misery. Shohei Imamura, one of the greatest Japanese directors, tells this story with the energy and delight of a fairy tale, but we in the West are not likely to see it so naively, because unlike the Japanese, we are touchy on the subject of bodily fluids. In Japan, natural functions are accepted calmly as a part of life, and there is a celebrated children's book about farts. No doubt a Japanese audience would view "Warm Water" entirely differently than a North American one--because, you see, the heroine has a condition that causes water to build up in her body, and it can be released only by sexual intercourse. Water arrives in puddles and rivulets, in sprays and splashes. "Don't worry," Saeko (Misa Shimizu) cheerfully tells Yosuke, the hero. "It's not urine." It is instead--well, what? The water of life? Of growth and renewal? Is she a water goddess? When it runs down the steps of her house and into the river, fish grow large and numerous. And it seems to have a similar effect on Yosuke (Koji Yakusho, from "Shall We Dance?" and "The Eel"). From a pallid, hopeless wanderer in the early scenes, he grows into a bold lover and a brave ocean fisherman. As the film opens, Yosuke is broke and jobless, fielding incessant cell phone calls from his nagging wife, who wants an update on his job searches. In despair, he hunkers down next to the river with an old philosopher named Taro (Kazuo Kitamura), who tells him a story. Long ago, he says, right after the war, he was stealing to get the money to eat, and he took a gold Buddha from a temple. He left it in an upstairs room of a house next to a red bridge, where he assumes it remains to this day. Yosuke takes a train to the town named by the old man, finds the bridge, finds the house, and follows Saeko from it into a supermarket where he sees her shoplift some cheese while standing in a puddle. From the puddle he retrieves her earring (a dolphin, of course) and returns it to her, and she asks if he'd like some cheese and then forthrightly tells him, "You saw me steal the cheese. Then you saw the puddle of water." All true. She explains her problem. The water builds up and must be "vented," often by doing "something wicked" like shoplifting. It is, she adds, building up right now--and soon they are having intercourse to the delight of the fish in the river below. This story is unthinkable in a Hollywood movie, but there is something about the matter-of-fact way Saeko explains her problem, and the surprised but not stunned way that Yosuke hears her, that takes the edge off. If women are a source of life, and if water is where life began, then--well, whatever. It is important to note that the sex in the movie is not erotic or titillating in any way--it's more like a therapeutic process--and that the movie is not sex-minded but more delighted with the novelty of Saeko's problem. Only in a nation where bodily functions are discussed in a matter-of-fact way, where nude public bathing is no big deal, where shame about human plumbing has not been ritualized, could this movie play in the way Imamura intended. But seeing it as a Westerner is an enlightening, even liberating, experience. Imamura, now 76, is also the director of the masterpieces "The Insect Woman" (1963), about a woman whose only priority is her own comfort and survival; "Ballad of Narayama" (1982), the heartbreaking story of a village where the old are left on the side of a mountain to die, and "Black Rain" (1989), not the Michael Douglas thriller, but a harrowing human story about the days and months after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. At his age, he seems freed from convention, and in "Warm Water," for example, he cuts loose from this world to include a dream in which Saeko floats like a embryo in a cosmic cloud. There is also an effortless fusion of old and new. The notion of a man leaving his nagging wife and home and finding succor from a goddess is from ancient myth, and the fact that he would then turn to wrest his living from the sea is not unheard of. But throwing his cell phone overboard, now that's a modern touch. 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] 8 WOMEN / *** (R) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:39:17 GMT 8 WOMEN / *** (R) September 27, 2002 Mamy: Danielle Darrieux Gaby: Catherine Deneuve Augustine: Isabelle Huppert Suzon: Virginie Ledoyen Catherine: Ludivine Sagnier Pierrette: Fanny Ardant Louise: Emmanuelle Beart Madame Chanel: Firmine Richard Focus Features presents a film written and directed by Francois Ozon. Adapted from the play by Robert Thomas. Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R (for some sexual content). In French with English subtitles. Opening today at Pipers Alley, Evanston CineArts 6 and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT Here it is at last, the first Agatha Christie musical. Eight women are isolated in a snowbound cottage, there is a corpse with a knife in his back, all of the women are potential suspects, plus six song and dance numbers. The cast is a roll call of French legends. In alphabetical order: Fanny Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert, Virginie Ledoyen, Firmine Richard and Ludivine Sagnier. From the opening shot, the film cheerfully lets us know it's a spoof of overproduced Hollywood musicals. We pan past tree branches impossibly laden with picturesque snow and find a charming cottage where guests are just arriving. Eight women have gathered to celebrate Christmas with Marcel, who is the husband of Gaby (Deneuve), the son-in-law of Mamy (Darrieux), the brother-in-law of Aunt Augustine (Huppert), the father of Catherine (Sagnier) and Suzon (Ledoyen), the employer of the domestic servants Madame Chanel (Richard) and Louise (Beart), and the brother of the late-arriving Pierrette (Ardant). "Monsieur died in his bed with a knife in his back," the assembled company is informed. And (significant detail required in all isolated rural murders) "the dogs didn't bark all night." The women absorb this news while dressed in stunning designer fashions (even the maids look chic) and deployed around a large, sunny room that looks like nothing so much as a stage set--even to the detail that all the furniture is behind the actresses most of the time. Only a couple of brief excursions upstairs prevent the movie from taking place entirely on this one bright set, where nothing looks used or lived with. The artificiality is so jolly that we're not surprised when the first song begins, because "8 Women" is in no sense serious about murder, its plot, or anything else. It's an elaborate excuse to have fun with its cast, and we realize we've been waiting a long time for Catherine Deneuve to come right out and say of Isabelle Huppert: "I'm beautiful and rich. She's ugly and poor." I had also just about given up hope of ever seeing Deneuve and Fanny Ardant rolling around on the floor pulling each other's hair. In a cast where everybody has fun, Huppert has the most, as Augustine. She and her mother (Darrieux) have been living rent-free in Marcel's cottage with her sister (Deneuve), but that has not inspired Augustine to compromise in her fierce resentment and spinsterish isolation. She stalks around the set like Whistler's mother, frowning from behind her horn-rims and making disapproval into a lifestyle. The other characters quickly fall into approved Agatha Christie patterns. Young Suzon appoints herself Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps in this case Hercule Poirot, and begins sniffing out the clues. The sexy Louise is established as the late Marcel's mistress. Madame Chanel, from French Africa, has been with the family for years and lives out back in the guest cottage, where, as it develops, she often plays cards with Pierrette. And Pierrette herself, who arrives late with the kind of entrance that only the tall, dark and forcible Ardant could pull off, has secrets which are as amazing as they are inevitable. I dare not reveal a shred of the plot. And the movie is all plot--that, and stylish behavior, and barbed wit, and those musical numbers. Watching "8 Women," you have a silly grin half of the time. Astonishing, that Francois Ozon, who directed this, also made "Under the Sand" (2001), that melancholy record of a wife (Charlotte Rampling) whose husband disappears, apparently drowned, and who refuses to deal with the fact that he is dead. Movies like "8 Women" are essentially made for movie-lovers. You have to have seen overdecorated studio musicals, and you have to know who Darrieux and Deneuve and Beart and Huppert and Ardant are, to get the full flavor. It also helps if you have seen Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap," now in the 50th year of its London run, with its cast still trapped with the corpse in the isolated cottage. "Do not give away the secret!" the program notes exhort. And here, too. Not that the secret is anything more than one more twist of the plot's pepper mill. 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] MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:39:20 GMT MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Joe Nast Jake Gyllenhaal Ben Floss: Dustin Hoffman JoJo Floss: Susan Sarandon Mona Camp: Holly Hunter Bertie Knox: Ellen Pompeo Mike Mulcahey: Dabney Coleman Stan Michaels: Allan Corduner Ty: Richard T. Jones Touchstone Pictures and Hyde Park Entertainment present a film written and directed by Brad Silberling. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sensuality and brief strong language). Opening today at Pipers Alley, Northbrook Court and Yorktown. BY ROGER EBERT After the funeral is over and the mourners have come back to the house for coffee and cake and have all gone home, the parents and the boyfriend of Diana, the dead girl, sit by themselves. Her mother criticizes how one friend expressed her sympathy. And the father asks, what could she say? "Put yourself in their shoes." That little scene provides a key to Brad Silberling's "Moonlight Mile." What do you say when someone dies--someone you cared for? What are the right words? And what's the right thing to do? Death is the ultimate rebuke to good manners. The movie, which makes an unusually intense effort to deal with the process of grief and renewal, is inspired by a loss in Silberling's own life. The TV actress Rebecca Schaeffer, his girlfriend at the time, was killed in 1989 by a fan. Silberling has grown very close to her parents in the years since then, he told me, and more than a decade later he has tried to use the experience as the starting point for a film. "Moonlight Mile," which takes place in 1973, opens in an elliptical way. At first only quiet clues in the dialogue allow us to understand that someone has died. We meet Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal), the fiance of the dead girl, and her parents Ben and JoJo Floss (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon). They talk not in a sentimental way, but in that strange, detached tone we use when grief is too painful to express and yet something must be said. After the funeral and the home visitation, the film follows what in a lesser film would be called the "healing process." "Moonlight Mile" is too quirky and observant to be described in psychobabble. Joe stays stuck in the Floss house, living in an upstairs bedroom, his plans on hold. Ben, who has lost a daughter, now in a confused way hopes to gain a son, and encourages Joe to join him in his business as a real estate developer. JoJo, protected by intelligence and wit, looks closely and suspects a secret Joe is keeping, which leaves him stranded between the past and future. Gyllenhaal, who in person is a jokester, in the movies almost always plays characters who are withdrawn and morose. Remember him in "Donnie Darko," "The Good Girl" and "Lovely & Amazing." Here, too, he is a young man with troubled thoughts. At the post office, and again at a bar where she has a night job, he meets Bertie Knox (Ellen Pompeo), who sees inside when others only look at the surface. They begin to talk. She has a loss, too: Her boyfriend has been missing in action in Vietnam for three years. While it is possible that they will mend each other's hearts by falling in love, the movie doesn't simple-mindedly pursue that plot path, but meanders among the thoughts of the living. Silberling's screenplay pays full attention to all of the characters. Ben and JoJo are not simply a backdrop to a romance involving Joe and Bertie. The movie provides key scenes for all of the characters, in conversation and in monologue, so that it is not only about Joe's grieving process but about all four, who have lost different things in different ways. Anyone regarding the Hoffman character will note that his name is Benjamin and remember Hoffman's most famous character, in "The Graduate." But Joe is the Benjamin of this film, and Hoffman's older man has more in common with another of his famous roles: Willy Loman, the hero of "Death of a Salesman." Ben occupies a low-rent storefront office on Main Street in Cape Anne, Mass., but dreams of putting together a group of properties and bringing in a superstore like Kmart. This will be his big killing, the deal that caps his career, even though we can see in the eyes of the local rich man (Dabney Coleman) that Ben is too small to land this fish. Ben's desire to share his dream with his surrogate son, Joe, also has echoes from the Arthur Miller tragedy. Sarandon's JoJo is tart, with a verbal wit to protect her and a jaundiced view of her husband's prospects. The deepest conversation JoJo has with Joe ("Isn't it funny, that we have the same name?") is about as well done as such a scene can be. She intuits that Joe is dealing not only with the loss of Diana's life but with the loss of something else. Pompeo, a newcomer, plays Bertie with a kind of scary charisma that cannot be written, only felt. She knows she is attractive to Joe. She knows she likes him. She knows she is faithful to her old boyfriend. She is frightened by her own power to attract, especially since she wants to attract even while she tells herself she doesn't. She is so vulnerable in this movie, so sweet as she senses Joe's pain and wants to help him. Holly Hunter is the fifth major player, as the lawyer who is handling the case against Diana's killer. She embodies the wisdom of the law, which knows, as laymen do not, that it moves with its own logic regardless of the feelings of those in the courtroom. She offers practical advice, and then you can see in her eyes that she wishes she could offer emotional advice instead. "Moonlight Mile" gives itself the freedom to feel contradictory things. It is sentimental but feels free to offend, is analytical and then surrenders to the illogic of its characters, is about grief and yet permits laughter. Everyone who has grieved for a loved one will recognize the moment, some days after the death, when an irreverent remark will release the surprise of laughter. Sometimes we laugh, that we may not cry. Not many movies know that truth. "Moonlight Mile" is based on it. 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] SECRETARY / *** (R) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:39:21 GMT SECRETARY / *** (R) September 27, 2002 Mr. Grey: James Spader Lee Holloway: Maggie Gyllenhaal Peter: Jeremy Davies Joan Holloway: Lesley Ann Warren Burt Holloway: Stephen McHattie Dr. Twardon: Patrick Bauchau Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Steven Shainberg. Written by Erin Cressida Wilson. Based on the story by Mary Gaitskill. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexuality, some nudity, depiction of behavioral disorders and language). Opening today at Evanston CineArts 6, Esquire, Pipers Alley and Landmark Renaissance. BY ROGER EBERT "Secretary" approaches the tricky subject of sadomasochism with a stealthy tread, avoiding the dangers of making it either too offensive, or too funny. Because S/M involves postures that are absorbing for the participants but absurd to the onlooker, we tend to giggle at the wrong times. Here is a film where we giggle at the right times. The director, Steven Shainberg, has succeeded by focusing intently on his characters, making them quirky individuals rather than figures of fun. The movie, to begin with, is well cast. There may be better actors than James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal, but for this material, I cannot think who they are. About Spader there always seems to be some unarticulated secret hovering, and Gyllenhaal avoids numerous opportunities to make her character seem pathetic, and makes her seem plucky instead--intent on establishing herself and making herself necessary. Spader plays Mr. Grey, a lawyer whose office looks like the result of intense conversations with an interior designer who has seen too many Michael Douglas movies. Mr. Grey has such bad luck with secretaries that he has an illuminated help-wanted sign out front he can light up, like the "Vacancy" sign at a motel. Gyllenhaal plays Lee Holloway, who has the illness of self-mutilation and comes from a neurotic family. Released from treatment, Lee takes typing classes, goes looking for work and has an interview with Mr. Grey. Something unspoken passes between them and they know they are thinking about the same thing. Lee is submissive. Spader is dominant and obsessive (he has a fetish for lining up red markers in his desk drawer). He demands perfection, she falls short of the mark, he punishes her, and this becomes a workable relationship. When he loses interest for a time and stops correcting her mistakes, she grows disconsolate; when he sharply calls her back into her office, she is delighted. The movie does not argue that S/M is good for you, but has a more complex dynamic. By absorbing so much of Mr. Grey's time and attention, Lee, who has abysmal self-esteem, feels that attention is being paid to her. Mr. Grey notices her. He thinks about her. He devises new games for them. He never threatens serious hurt or harm, but instead tends toward role-playing and ritual. What they discover is that, in the long run, S/M is more fun (and less trouble) for the "M" than for the "S." "We can't go on like this 24 hours a day," Mr. Grey complains at one point. Lee doesn't see why not. Jeremy Davies plays Peter, the other key role, sincere to the point of being inarticulate, who for a time dates Lee. Mr. Grey looks on jealously as they do their laundry together, and is faced with the possibility that he might lose his agreeable secretary. That would be the final straw, since we sense that Mr. Grey is in much worse shape than Lee was ever in. His obsessive-compulsive behavior is driving him nuts, not to mention his clients. Stories about S/M often have an ironic happy ending, but this one, based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill, seems sincere enough: They've found a relationships that works. For them. The movie's humor comes through the close observation of behavior. It allows us to understand what has happened without specifying it. The lawyer and secretary have subtle little signals by which they step out of their roles and sort of wink, so they both know that they both know what they're doing. Their behavior, which is intended to signify hostility, eventually grows into a deeper recognition of each other's natures and needs. That of course leads to affection, which can be tricky, but not for them, because both suspect there is no one else they're ever likely to meet who will understand them quite so completely. 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] SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:39:23 GMT SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Melanie: Reese Witherspoon Jake: Josh Lucas Andrew: Patrick Dempsey Earl: Fred Ward Pearl: Mary Kay Place Stella Kay: Jean Smart Kate: Candice Bergen Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Andy Tennant. Written by C. Jay Cox. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some language and sexual references). BY ROGER EBERT Among the pieties that Hollywood preaches but does not believe is the notion that small towns are preferable to big cities. Film after film rehearses this belief: Big cities are repositories of greed, alienation and hypocrisy, while in a small town you will find the front doors left unlocked, peach pies cooling on the kitchen window sill, and folks down at the diner who all know your name. "Sweet Home Alabama" is the latest, admittedly charming, recycling of this ancient myth. The fact is that few people in Hollywood have voluntarily gone home again since William Faulkner fled to Mississippi. The screenwriters who retail the mirage of small towns are relieved to have escaped them. I await a movie where a New Yorker tries moving to a small town and finds that it just doesn't reflect his warm-hearted big city values. Reese Witherspoon, who is the best reason to see "Sweet Home Alabama," stars as Melanie Carmichael, a small-town girl who moves to the Big Apple and while still in her 20s becomes a famous fashion designer. She's in love with Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), a JFK Jr. lookalike whose mother (Candice Bergen) is mayor of New York. After he proposes to Melanie in Tiffany's, which he has rented for the occasion, she flies back home to Alabama to take care of unfinished business. Specifically, she doesn't want Andrew to discover that she is already married to a local boy, and that her family doesn't own a moss-dripped plantation. Her folks live in a luxury mobile home with lots of La-Z-Boys and knitted afghans (La-Z-Boy: the sign of a home where the man makes the decisions). Her husband, Jake (Josh Lucas), was her high school sweetheart, but, looking ahead at a lifetime of dirty diapers and dishes with a loser, she fled north. His plan: prove himself, to earn her respect and get her back again. That's why he's never given her the divorce. When Melanie returns home, she's greeted by the locals, who remember her high school hijinks (like tying dynamite to a stray cat, ho, ho). Her parents (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place), who wile away their days lounging around the double-wide practicing sitcom dialogue, look on with love and sympathy, because they know that sooner or later she'll realize that home is right here. A clue comes when the mayor advises her prospective in-laws to "go back to your double-wide and fry something." The Jake character is more complex, as he needs to be, because the screenplay requires him to keep a secret that common sense insists he divulge immediately. He must meanwhile undergo a subtle transformation so that when we first meet him, we think he's a redneck hayseed, and then later he has transmogrified into a sensitive, intelligent, caring male. Oh, and his coon dog still likes her. The JFK Jr. guy, in the meantime, cannot be permitted to become a total jerk, because the movie's poignancy factor demands that he be Understanding, as indeed he would be, with a Jackie lookalike mom who is mayor of New York, a city where in this movie nothing bad has happened in recent memory. So, OK, we understand how the formula works, even without learning that C. Jay Cox, the screenwriter, is a student of writing coach Syd Field's theories (i.e., analyze successful movies and copy their structures). We know that the movie absolutely requires that Melanie reject bright lights, big city and return to the embrace of her home town. And we know the odds are low that Melanie will get the divorce, return to New York and marry the mayor's son. (Anyone who thinks I have just committed a spoiler will be unaware of all movies in this genre since "Ma and Pa Kettle.") But answer me this: What about Melanie as a person, with her own success and her own ambition? Would a woman with the talent and ambition necessary to become world-famous in the fashion industry before the age of 30 be able, I ask you, be willing, be prepared, to renounce it all to become the spouse of a man who has built a successful business as a (let's say) glass-blower? The chances of that happening are, I submit, extremely thin, and that is why "Sweet Home Alabama" works. It is a fantasy, a sweet, light-hearted fairy tale with Reese Witherspoon at its center. She is as lovable as Doris Day would have been in this role (in fact, Doris Day was in this role, in "Please Don't Eat the Daisies"). So I enjoyed Witherspoon and the local color, but I am so very tired of the underlying premise. Isn't it time for the movies to reflect reality and show the Melanies of the world fleeing to New York as fast as they can? Even if Syd Field flunks 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] THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:39:24 GMT THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13) September 27, 2002 Jimmy Tong: Jackie Chan Del Blaine: Jennifer Love Hewitt Clark Devlin: Jason Isaacs Banning: Ritchie Coster Steena: Debi Mazar DreamWorks Pictures presents a film directed by Kevin Donovan. Written by Michael J. Wilson and Michael Leeson. Running time: 99 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for action violence, sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT There is an ancient tradition in action movies that the first scene is a self-contained shocker with no relevance to the rest of the plot. James Bond parachutes from a mountainside, Clint Eastwood disarms a robber, etc. Jackie Chan's "The Tuxedo" opens with a deer urinating in a mountain stream. The deer, the urine and the stream have nothing to do with the rest of the film. The movie's plot does involve water. The bad guy wants to add an ingredient to the world's water supply that will cause victims to dehydrate and die. To save themselves, they will have to buy the villain's pure water. Since his opening gambit is to sabotage, I repeat, the world's water supply, he will dehydrate everyone except those already drinking only bottled water, and so will inherit a planet of health nuts, which is just as well, since all the fish and animals and birds will dehydrate, too, and everyone will have to live on PowerBars. I have been waiting for a dehydrating villain for some time. My wife is of the opinion that I do not drink enough water. She believes the proper amount is a minimum of eight glasses a day. She often regards me balefully and says, "You're not getting enough water." In hot climates her concern escalates. In Hawaii last summer she had the grandchildren so worked up they ran into the bedroom every morning to see if Grandpa Roger had turned to dust. The movie's villain, whose name is Banning (Ritchie Coster), has a novel scheme for distributing the formula, or virus, or secret ingredient, or whatever it is, that will make water into a dehydrating agent. He plans to use water striders, those insects that can skate across the surface of a pond. In his secret laboratory he keeps his ultimate weapon, a powerful water strider queen. Do water striders have queens, like bees and ants do? For an authoritative answer I turned to Dr. May Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and founder of the Insect Fear Film Festival, held every year at the Great University. She writes: "Water striders are true bugs (i.e., insects with piercing/sucking mouthparts) that run or skate on the surface of bodies of water, feeding on the insects that fall onto the water surface. There are about 500 species of gerrids in the world and, as far as I know, not a single one of those 500 species is eusocial (i.e., has a complex social structure with reproductive division of labor and cooperative brood care). I don't even know of an example of maternal care in the whole group. In short, the answer to your question is an emphatic 'no!' I can't wait to see this film. It definitely sounds like a candidate for a future Insect Fear Film Festival!" More crushing evidence: Dr. Bruce P. Smith, expert entomologist at Ithaca College, writes me, "There is no known species of water striders that has queens. The most closely related insects that do are some colonial aphid speciies, and the most familiar (and much more distant rleatives) are the ants, bees, wasps and termites." He adds helpfully, "One mammal does have queens: the naked mole rats of Africa." Revealing himself as a student of insect films, he continues, "If my memory is correct, 'Arachnophobia' has a king spider, but no queen--totally absurd!" So there you have it. Professors Smith and Berenbaum have spoken. The evil Banning has spent untold millions on his secret plans for world domination, and thinks he possesses a water strider queen when he only has a lucky regular water strider living the life of Riley. But back to "The Tuxedo." Jackie Chan plays a taxi driver named Jimmy Tong, who is hired by Debi Mazar to be the chauffeur for Clark Devlin (Jason Isaacs), a multimillionaire secret agent whose $2 million tuxedo turns him into a fighting machine (also a dancer, kung-fu expert, etc). After Devlin is injured by a skateboard bomb, Jackie puts on the suit and soon partners with agent Del Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who realizes he has a strange accent for a man named Clark Devlin, but nevertheless joins him in battle against Banning. The movie is silly beyond comprehension, and even if it weren't silly, it would still be beyond comprehension. It does have its moments, as when the tuxedo inadvertently cold-cocks James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, and Jackie Chan has to go onstage in place of the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. He's very funny as James Brown, although not as funny as James Brown is. There's something engaging about Jackie Chan. Even in a bad movie, I like him, because what you see is so obviously what you get. This time he goes light on the stunts, at least the stunts he obviously does himself, so that during the closing credits, there are lots of flubbed lines and times when the actors break out laughing, but none of those spellbinding shots in which he misses the bridge, falls off the scaffold, etc. And some of the shots are computer-generated, which is kind of cheating isn't it, with Jackie Chan? Luckily, special effects are not frowned upon at the Insect Fear Film Festival. 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] WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE / *** (Not rated) Date: 27 Sep 2002 16:39:26 GMT WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE / *** (Not rated) September 27, 2002 Yosuke Sasano: Koji Yakusho Saeko Aizawa: Misa Shimizu Mitsu Aizawa: Mitsuko Baisho Gen: Manasaku Fuwa Taro: Kazuo Kitamura Cowboy Pictures presents a film directed by Shohei Imamura. Written by Motofumi Tomikawa, Daisuke Tengan and Imamura. Based on a book by Yo Henmi. Running time: 119 minutes. No MPAA rating (intended for mature audiences). In Japanese with English subtitles. Opening today at the Music Box. BY ROGER EBERT "Warm Water Under a Red Bridge" has modern automobiles and supermarkets, telephones and pepper cheese imported from Europe, but it resonates like an ancient Japanese myth. Imagine a traveler in search of treasure, who finds a woman with special needs that only he can fulfill, and who repays him by ending his misery. Shohei Imamura, one of the greatest Japanese directors, tells this story with the energy and delight of a fairy tale, but we in the West are not likely to see it so naively, because unlike the Japanese, we are touchy on the subject of bodily fluids. In Japan, natural functions are accepted calmly as a part of life, and there is a celebrated children's book about farts. No doubt a Japanese audience would view "Warm Water" entirely differently than a North American one--because, you see, the heroine has a condition that causes water to build up in her body, and it can be released only by sexual intercourse. Water arrives in puddles and rivulets, in sprays and splashes. "Don't worry," Saeko (Misa Shimizu) cheerfully tells Yosuke, the hero. "It's not urine." It is instead--well, what? The water of life? Of growth and renewal? Is she a water goddess? When it runs down the steps of her house and into the river, fish grow large and numerous. And it seems to have a similar effect on Yosuke (Koji Yakusho, from "Shall We Dance?" and "The Eel"). From a pallid, hopeless wanderer in the early scenes, he grows into a bold lover and a brave ocean fisherman. As the film opens, Yosuke is broke and jobless, fielding incessant cell phone calls from his nagging wife, who wants an update on his job searches. In despair, he hunkers down next to the river with an old philosopher named Taro (Kazuo Kitamura), who tells him a story. Long ago, he says, right after the war, he was stealing to get the money to eat, and he took a gold Buddha from a temple. He left it in an upstairs room of a house next to a red bridge, where he assumes it remains to this day. Yosuke takes a train to the town named by the old man, finds the bridge, finds the house, and follows Saeko from it into a supermarket where he sees her shoplift some cheese while standing in a puddle. From the puddle he retrieves her earring (a dolphin, of course) and returns it to her, and she asks if he'd like some cheese and then forthrightly tells him, "You saw me steal the cheese. Then you saw the puddle of water." All true. She explains her problem. The water builds up and must be "vented," often by doing "something wicked" like shoplifting. It is, she adds, building up right now--and soon they are having intercourse to the delight of the fish in the river below. This story is unthinkable in a Hollywood movie, but there is something about the matter-of-fact way Saeko explains her problem, and the surprised but not stunned way that Yosuke hears her, that takes the edge off. If women are a source of life, and if water is where life began, then--well, whatever. It is important to note that the sex in the movie is not erotic or titillating in any way--it's more like a therapeutic process--and that the movie is not sex-minded but more delighted with the novelty of Saeko's problem. Only in a nation where bodily functions are discussed in a matter-of-fact way, where nude public bathing is no big deal, where shame about human plumbing has not been ritualized, could this movie play in the way Imamura intended. But seeing it as a Westerner is an enlightening, even liberating, experience. Imamura, now 76, is also the director of the masterpieces "The Insect Woman" (1963), about a woman whose only priority is her own comfort and survival; "Ballad of Narayama" (1982), the heartbreaking story of a village where the old are left on the side of a mountain to die, and "Black Rain" (1989), not the Michael Douglas thriller, but a harrowing human story about the days and months after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. At his age, he seems freed from convention, and in "Warm Water," for example, he cuts loose from this world to include a dream in which Saeko floats like a embryo in a cosmic cloud. There is also an effortless fusion of old and new. The notion of a man leaving his nagging wife and home and finding succor from a goddess is from ancient myth, and the fact that he would then turn to wrest his living from the sea is not unheard of. But throwing his cell phone overboard, now that's a modern touch. Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ]