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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE PIANIST / ***1/2 (R)
Date: 03 Jan 2003 16:37:35 GMT

THE PIANIST / ***1/2 (R)

January 3, 2003

Wladyslaw Szpilman:    Adrien Brody
Dorota:    Emilia Fox
Capt. Wilm Hosenfeld:    Thomas Kretschmann
The Father:    Frank Finlay
The Mother:    Maureen Lipman

Focus Features presents a film directed by Roman Polanski. Written by Ronald
Harwood. Based on the book by Wladyslaw Szpilman. Running time: 148 minutes.
Rated R (for violence and brief strong language).

BY ROGER EBERT

The title is an understatement, and so is the film. Roman Polanski's "The
Pianist" tells the story of a Polish Jew, a classical musician, who survived
the Holocaust through stoicism and good luck. This is not a thriller, and
avoids any temptation to crank up suspense or sentiment; it is the pianist's
witness to what he saw and what happened to him. That he survived was not a
victory when all whom he loved died; Polanski, in talking about his own
experiences, has said that the death of his mother in the gas chambers
remains so hurtful that only his own death will bring closure.

The film is based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, who was
playing Chopin on a Warsaw radio station when the first German bombs fell.
Szpilman's family was prosperous and seemingly secure, and his immediate
reaction was, "I'm not going anywhere." We watch as the Nazi noose tightens.
His family takes heart from reports that England and France have declared
war; surely the Nazis will soon be defeated and life will return to normal.

It does not. The city's Jews are forced to give up their possessions and
move to the Warsaw ghetto, and there is a somber shot of a brick wall being
built to enclose it. A Jewish police force is formed to enforce Nazi
regulations, and Szpilman is offered a place on it; he refuses, but a good
friend, who joins, later saves his life by taking him off a train bound for
the death camps. Then the movie tells the long and incredible story of how
Szpilman survived the war by hiding in Warsaw, with help from the Polish
resistance.

Szpilman is played in the film by Adrien Brody, who is more gaunt and
resourceless than in Ken Loach's "Bread and Roses" (2000), where he played a
cocky Los Angeles union organizer. We sense that his Szpilman is a man who
came early and seriously to music, knows he is good, and has a certain
aloofness to life around him. More than once we hear him reassuring others
that everything will turn out all right; this faith is based not on
information or even optimism, but essentially on his belief that, for anyone
who plays the piano as well as he does, it must.

Polanski himself is a Holocaust survivor, saved at one point when his father
pushed him through the barbed wire of a camp. He wandered Krakow and Warsaw,
a frightened child, cared for by the kindness of strangers. His own survival
(and that of his father) are in a sense as random as Szpilman's, which is
perhaps why he was attracted to this story. Steven Spielberg tried to enlist
him to direct "Schindler's List," but he refused, perhaps because
Schindler's story involved a man who deliberately set out to frustrate the
Holocaust, while from personal experience Polanski knew that fate and chance
played an inexplicable role in most survivals.

The film was shot in Poland (where he had not worked since his first feature
film, "Knife in the Water," in 1962), and also in Prague and in a German
studio. On giant sets he recreates a street overlooked by the apartment
where Szpilman is hidden by sympathizers; from his high window the pianist
can see the walls of the ghetto, and make inferences about the war, based on
the comings and goings at the hospital across the street. Szpilman is safe
enough here for a time, but hungry, lonely, sick and afraid, and then a bomb
falls and he discovers with terror that the running water no longer works.
By now it is near the end of the war and the city lies in ruins; he finds
some rooms standing in the rubble, ironically containing a piano that he
dare not play.

The closing scenes of the movie involve Szpilman's confrontation with a
German captain named Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann), who finds his
hiding place by accident. I will not describe what happens, but will observe
that Polanski's direction of this scene, his use of pause and nuance, is
masterful.

Some reviews of "The Pianist" have found it too detached, lacking urgency.
Perhaps that impassive quality reflects what Polanski wants to say. Almost
all of the Jews involved in the Holocaust were killed, so all of the
survivor stories misrepresent the actual event by supplying an atypical
ending. Often their buried message is that by courage and daring, these
heroes saved themselves. Well, yes, some did, but most did not and--here is
the crucial point--most could not. In this respect Tim Blake Nelson's "The
Grey Zone" (2001) is tougher and more honest, by showing Jews trapped within
a Nazi system that removed the possibility of moral choice.

By showing Szpilman as a survivor but not a fighter or a hero--as a man who
does all he can to save himself, but would have died without enormous good
luck and the kindness of a few non-Jews--Polanski is reflecting, I believe,
his own deepest feelings: that he survived, but need not have, and that his
mother died and left a wound that had never healed.

After the war, we learn, Szpilman remained in Warsaw and worked all of his
life as a pianist. His autobiography was published soon after the war, but
was suppressed by Communist authorities because it did not hew to the party
line (some Jews were flawed and a German was kind). Republished in the
1990s, it caught Polanski's attention and resulted in this film, which
refuses to turn Szpilman's survival into a triumph and records it primarily
as the story of a witness who was there, saw, and remembers.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] NICHOLAS NICKLEBY / ***1/2 (PG)
Date: 03 Jan 2003 16:37:34 GMT

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY / ***1/2 (PG)

January 3, 2003

Nicholas Nickleby:    Charlie Hunnam
Ralph Nickleby:    Christopher Plummer
Newman Noggs:    Tom Courtenay
Smike:    Jamie Bell
Vincent Crummles:    Nathan Lane
Mrs. Crummles:    Dame Edna Everage
Wackford Squeers:    Jim Broadbent
Young Nicholas:    Hugh Mitchell

United Artists presents a film written and directed by Douglas McGrath.
Based on the novel by Charles Dickens. Running time: 130 minutes. Rated PG
(for thematic material involving some violent action and a childbirth
scene). Opening today at Landmark Renaissance, Landmark Century, Evanston
CineArts 6 and the Esquire.

BY ROGER EBERT

Nicholas Nickleby was the third novel by Charles Dickens, following The
Pickwick Papers and Oliver Twist, and sharing with them a riot of colorful
characters. One of them, the sadistic boarding school proprietor Wackford
Squeers, was a portrait taken so much from life that it resulted in laws
being passed to reform the private education industry. The novel followed a
familiar Dickens pattern--a young man sets out in the world to win fortune
and love despite a rogue's gallery of villains. It contained characters
improbably good or despicable, and with admirable economy tied together
several of the key characters in a web of melodramatic coincidences. It is
not placed in the first rank of Dickens' art, but I would place it near the
top for sheer readability.

The new film version by Douglas McGrath, who made "Emma" (1996), is much
more reasonable than the 1980 nine-hour stage version of the Royal
Shakespeare Company, which I have on laserdisk and really mean to get to one
of these days. The movie is jolly and exciting and brimming with life, and
wonderfully well-acted. McGrath has done some serious pruning, but the
result does not seem too diluted; there is room for expansive consideration
of such essential characters as Nicholas' vindictive uncle Ralph
(Christopher Plummer), secretly undermined by his dipsomaniac and disloyal
servant Newman Noggs (Tom Courtenay). The movie gives full screen time to
Wackford Squeers (Jim Broadbent, looking curiously Churchillian) and his
wife (Juliet Stevenson)--and hints that psychosexual pathology inspired
their mistreatment of students. Their most pathetic target, Smike (Jamie
Bell, who played the title role in "Billy Elliot"), is seen as less of a
caricature and more of a real victim.

To balance the scales are two of the happiest comic couples Dickens ever
created: the touring theatricals Vincent and Mrs. Crummles (Nathan Lane and
Barry Humphries) and the brothers Cheeryble (Timothy Spall and Gerald
Horan). The Crummles rescue Nicholas (Charlie Hunnam) after his escape from
the Squeers school, turn him into an actor, and even find talent in the
hapless Smike. Their touring company is a loving exaggeration of companies
Dickens must have worked with, and is rich with such inspirations as their
aging and expanding daughter the Child Phenomenon. Humphries uses his alter
ego, Dame Edna Everage, to play Mrs. Crummles, and if you look closely you
will notice Humphries as a man, playing opposite the formidable Dame.

The Cheerybles are the lawyer brothers who agree on everything, especially
that Nicholas must be hired in their firm, all of his problems solved, and
his romantic future secured through a liaison with Madeline Bray (Anne
Hathaway), whose tyrannical father has long ruled her life. It is
particularly good to see Spall nodding and smiling as brother Charles, after
seeing him so depressed in role after role.

Nicholas himself is more of a place-holder than a full-blooded character:
the handsome, feckless and earnest young man who leads us through the story
as he encounters one unforgettable character after another. The most
striking member of the Nickleby family is of course Uncle Ralph, played by
Plummer in a performance so cold-blooded it actually reminded me of his
stage Iago. Ralph lives only for the accumulation of money. His opinion of
the poor is that poverty is their own fault, and they deserve as a result to
be put to work to enrich him (in this he reflects some of the latest tax
reforms). Nicholas he more or less sells to Squeers, and he lodges Mrs.
Nickleby (Stella Gonet) and her daughter Kate (Romola Garai) in a hovel
while Kate is put to work doing piecework. Kate is a beauty, however, and so
Ralph's larger scheme is to marry her off to the vile Sir Mulberry Hawk
(Edward Fox) in return for various considerations involving their business
interests.

The actors assembled for "Nicholas Nickleby" are not only well cast, but
well typecast. Each one by physical appearance alone replaces a page or more
of Dickens' descriptions, allowing McGrath to move smoothly and swiftly
through the story without laborious introductions: They are obviously who
they are. The result is a movie that feels like a complete account of
Dickens' novel, even though the Royal Shakespeare Company found an
additional seven hours of inspiration.

The physical production is convincing without being too charming, or too
realistic. The clothes of some of the characters remind us that in those
days their wardrobes would have consisted only of what they wore. The
countryside is picturesque but falls short of greeting cards (except for the
Nicklebys' cottage at the end). The story takes place at about the same time
as Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," but London is heavier on alehouses,
lighter on blood in the gutters. The movie makes Dickens' world look more
pleasant to inhabit than it probably was, but then so did his novels.

What animates the story is Dickens' outrage, and his good heart. The
Pickwick Papers was essentially a series of sketches of comic characters,
but in Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby we find him using fiction like
journalism, to denounce those who would feed on the poor and exploit the
helpless. One senses that in Dickens' time there were more Uncle Ralphs than
Cheerybles, but that perhaps he helped to improve the ratio.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] NARC / *** (R)
Date: 10 Jan 2003 18:37:57 GMT

NARC / *** (R)

January 10, 2003

Henry Oak:    Ray Liotta
Nick Tellis:    Jason Patric
Capt. Cheevers:    Chi McBride
Beery:    Busta Rhymes
Steeds:    Richard Chevolleau
Paramount Pictures presents a film written and directed by Joe Carnahan.
Running time: 105 minutes. Rated R (for strong brutal violence, drug content
and pervasive language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Joe Carnahan's "Narc" is a cold, hard film about Detroit narcotics
detectives. Ray Liotta and Jason Patric star, as a veteran whose partner has
been killed and a younger cop assigned to join him in the investigation. If
many cop-partner movies have an undertone of humor, even a splash of "The
Odd Couple," this one is hard-bitten and grim: The team consists of Bad Cop
and Bad Cop. The twist is that both of them are good at their work; their
problem is taking the job too personally.

The film opens with a virtuoso handheld chase scene, as Nick Tellis (Patric)
pursues a suspect through backyards and over fences until the chase ends in
a shooting--and it's not the perp who is hit, but a pregnant woman. Tellis
is put on suspension and cools off at home with his wife and a baby he
loves. It's clear this is a man with big problems involving anger and
overcompensation; is there such a thing as being too dedicated as a cop?

More than a year later, his captain (Chi McBride) calls in Tellis and makes
him an offer: He can be reinstated on the force if he becomes the partner of
Henry Oak (Liotta). Oak's former partner, a cop named Calvess, has been
murdered. The captain thinks Tellis' contacts with drug dealers and other
lowlifes, plus his unique brand of dedication, are needed to track down the
cop-killer. He warns Tellis that Oak is a good cop but sometimes unstable,
and there are quick subjective cuts to the older man beating a prisoner.

Tellis and Oak do not fit the usual pattern of cop partners in the movies.
Either of them could be the lead. Neither one is supporting. As cops, they
think independently and are self-starters, and cooperation doesn't come
easily. Tellis is startled, too, at Oak's methods, which are quick and
practical and amoral, and produce results but are not always legal.

The movie's writer and director, Joe Carnahan, brings a rough, aggressive
energy to the picture. His first film, "Blood, Guts, Bullets & Octane,"
was all style, but here he creates believable characters. His screenplay
stays within the broad outlines of the cop-buddy formula, but brings fresh
energy to the obligatory elements. It is no surprise, for example, that
Tellis' wife doesn't want him back out on the streets, and that there's
tension between his home life and his job. This is an ancient action cliche:
A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do. But the details of the domestic
scenes ring true.

In terms of its urban wasteland, the movie descends to a new level of
grittiness. These streets aren't mean, they're cruel, and to work them is
like being the garbage man in hell. Liotta's character stalks them as a man
on a mission, driven by private agendas we only begin to suspect. The Patric
character is stunned to see the other man not only violating protocol, but
apparently trying to shut him out of the investigation, as if this business
can only be settled privately between him and his demons.

Both Liotta and Patric have played similar roles. Patric starred in "Rush"
(1991), in a brilliant performance as an undercover narcotics cop who, along
with his rookie partner (Jennifer Jason Leigh), gets hooked on drugs
himself. Liotta has appeared in countless crime pictures, both as a cop and,
most memorably, in "GoodFellas" (1990) as a cocaine-addled criminal. Here
they bring a kind of rawness to the table. Liotta, heavier, wearing a beard,
leaves behind his days as a handsome leading man and begins edging into
interesting Brian Cox territory. Patric, 10 years after "Rush," looks less
like he's playing a cop and more like he might be one.

The investigation itself must remain undescribed here. But its ending is a
neat and ironic exercise in poetic justice. Pay attention during one of the
very last shots, and tell me if you think the tape recorder was on or off.
In a way, it makes a difference. In another way, it doesn't.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] JUST MARRIED / *1/2 (R)
Date: 10 Jan 2003 18:37:56 GMT

JUST MARRIED / *1/2 (R)

January 10, 2003

Tom:    Ashton Kutcher
Sarah:    Brittany Murphy
Peter Prentiss:     Christian Kane
Kyle:    David Moscow
Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Shawn Levy. Written by Sam
Harper. Running time: 94 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexual content, some
crude humor and a brief drug reference).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Just Married" is an ungainly and witless comedy, made more poignant because
its star, Brittany Murphy, made such a strong impression as Eminem's
sometime girlfriend in "8 Mile." With her fraught eyes and husky voice, she
has a rare and particular quality (I think of Jennifer Jason Leigh) and yet
here she's stuck in a dumb sitcom.

She and Ashton Kutcher play newlyweds in a plot that proves that opposites
repel. She's a rich kid named Sarah, expensively raised and educated. He's
Tom, an example of the emerging subspecies Sports Bar Man. They have a
perfect relationship, spoiled by marriage (I think that may even be one of
the lines in the movie). They're too tired for sex on their wedding night,
but make up for it on their honeymoon flight to Europe with a quickie in the
toilet of the airplane. There is perhaps the potential for a glimmer of
comedy there, but not in Sam Harper's overwritten and Shawn Levy's
overdirected movie, which underlines and emphasizes like a Power Point
presentation for half-wits.

Consider. It may be possible to find humor in a scene involving sex in an
airplane restroom, but not by pushing the situation so far that Tom's foot
gets caught in the toilet and the bitchy flight attendant suffers a broken
nose. Later, in their honeymoon hotel in Venice, it may be possible that
energetic sex could break a bed frame--but can it actually destroy the wall
of the adjoining room? And it may be possible for an improper electrical
device to cause a short in a hotel's electrical system, but need the
offending device be a vibrator? And for that matter, isn't it an alarming
sign of incipient pessimism to take a vibrator along on your honeymoon?

Europe was not the right choice for this honeymoon. He should have gone to
Vegas, and she should have stayed single. Sarah wants to visit every church
and museum, but Tom abandons her in the middle of Venice when he finds a bar
that's showing an American baseball game. This is as likely as a sports bar
in Brooklyn televising boules in French.

Sarah and Tom have nothing to talk about. They are a pathetic stupid couple
and deserve each other. What they do not deserve, perhaps, is a screenplay
that alternates between motivation and slapstick. Either it's
character-driven or it isn't. If it is, then you can't take your plausible
characters and dump them into Laurel and Hardy. Their rental car, for
example, gets a cheap laugh, but makes them seem silly in the wrong way. And
earlier in the film, Tom is responsible for the death of Sarah's dog in a
scenario recycled directly from an urban legend everyone has heard.

Would it have been that much more difficult to make a movie in which Tom and
Sarah were plausible, reasonably articulate newlyweds with the humor on
their honeymoon growing out of situations we could believe? Apparently.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BIGGIE & TUPAC / ***1/2 (R)
Date: 10 Jan 2003 18:37:54 GMT

BIGGIE & TUPAC / ***1/2 (R)

January 10, 2003

Optimum Releasing presents a documentary directed by Nick Broomfield.
Featuring Tupac Shakur, Christopher Wallace (Biggie Smalls/The Notorious
B.I.G.) and Marion "Suge" Knight. Rated R (for language). Running time: 107
minutes.

BY ROGER EBERT

Nick Broomfield is the Geraldo Rivera of celebrity documentarians, plunging
fearlessly into combat zones, protected only by his pluck, his boom mike and
his apparent cluelessness. Looking something like the guy who sidles up to
you in Best Buy and offers advice on bug zappers, Broomfield persuades his
subjects to say astonishing things on camera. His "Kurt & Courtney"
(1998) more or less blamed Courtney Love for her husband Kurt Cobain's
death; his "Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam" (1995) argued that a Hollywood
sleazehead named Ivan Nagy was the real villain and Heidi was the fall-girl.

And now here is "Biggie & Tupac," which claims to solve the murders of
rap artists Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace (a k a Biggie Smalls, a k a
the Notorious B.I.G.). According to Broomfield, both killings were ordered
and paid for by recording tycoon Suge Knight, and the hit men were off-duty
Los Angeles police officers. He produces an eyewitness who names one of
Tupac's killers, and a bag man willing to say, on camera, that he delivered
the money for the Notorious B.I.G. hit. And in an astonishing sequence, he
marches into a California prison and confronts the surprised Suge Knight on
camera.

Before moving on to Broomfield's argument, it's worth lingering for a moment
or two over that interview with Suge Knight. Knight is the millionaire boss
of Death Row Records (now called Tha Row Records), has been known to post
death threats on his Web site, and is a big, intimidating man--so fearsome
that Broomfield's photographer, the fellow documentarian Joan Churchill,
refused to go into the prison with him, and Broomfield had to hire a
free-lancer for the day. A free-lancer so nervous that at one crucial moment
the camera was pointed at the clouds overhead.

Broomfield describes all of this in his voiceover track. His movies are, in
a sense, about his experiences in making them. Appearing unannounced at the
prison, his two-man band is unprepossessing: the sloppy Broomfield with a
recorder slung over his shoulder and a boom mike in his hand, and the
cameraman trailing nervously behind. A network crew would have required
clearances, but maybe Broomfield looks harmless. He says he has an interview
scheduled with Suge Knight, and the warden, who takes this at face value,
nervously observes that "Mr. Knight" is on the phone.

Broomfield walks fearlessly up to Knight, who carries a mean-looking walking
stick and has a couple of apparent bodyguards, and announces he is "here for
the interview." What interview? "Your message to the kids," Broomfield
brilliantly improvises. Knight, a media creature on autopilot, doesn't miss
a beat in delivering his message ("Don't get in trouble because you can't
afford high-powered lawyers like artists can."). Then Broomfield segues to
Tupac and Biggie, predictably without success.

Tupac Shakur was said to be the leading rap artist of his time, and his work
in "Gridlock'd" (1997) showed him as a talented actor. He was shot in Las
Vegas on Sept. 8, 1996, while his car was in a motorcade following one
containing Suge Knight, and died five days later. In March 1997, his rival
Biggie Smalls was shot down outside a Los Angeles party.

Broomfield assembles a case charging that Shakur was ordered killed by
Knight because the executive owed the singer unpaid royalties and had heard
Shakur planned to jump to another record label. Then he ordered B.I.G.'s
death in order to make the two murders seem like part of a fictitious East
Coast-West Coast rap rivalry. The film observes that Suge Knight had 30 to
40 LAPD officers on his payroll for off-duty bodyguard and other duties. And
he produces an LAPD detective whose own investigation into the Shakur murder
was stonewalled, leading to his resignation from the force. If nothing else,
Broomfield proves that the LAPD bent over backward to avoid questioning the
most obvious suspects.

There is another theory about the two murders, developed in a long Los
Angeles Times investigation by Chuck Phillips, published Sept. 6, 2002. His
findings in a nutshell: Shakur was killed by the Crips street gang to avenge
Shakur's beating of one of their members, and the gun used was supplied by
the Notorious B.I.G., who agreed to pay the Crips $1 million. As for
B.I.G.'s death: It remains unresolved.

Whether either of these theories is correct is not my purpose to decide.
What can be said is that "Biggie & Tupac" is compulsively watchable and
endlessly inventive as it transforms Broomfield's limited materials into a
compelling argument.

Broomfield himself is the star of the film, complaining about his gas
mileage, forcing himself to listen to one of Tupac's tapes, complaining
about his incompetent employees, confessing to fear as he walks into
dangerous situations. There is something so disarming about the man as he
persuades people to say things on camera that, presumably, could land them
in trouble. That no trouble has resulted from those things being said seems
to support his argument--that the killings were covered up within the LAPD
and there is no interest, these days, in being inconvenienced by any
additional facts. It goes without saying that the killings only enhanced the
aura around rap music, encouraging other artists to adopt the popular
gangsta image.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] 25TH HOUR / ***1/2 (R)
Date: 10 Jan 2003 18:37:53 GMT

25TH HOUR / ***1/2 (R)

January 10, 2003

Monty Brogan:    Edward Norton
Jacob Elinsky:    Philip Seymour Hoffman
Frank Slaughtery:    Barry Pepper
Naturelle:    Rosario Dawson
Mary D'Annunzio:    Anna Paquin
James Brogan:    Brian Cox
Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Spike Lee. Written by David
Benioff, based on his novel. Running time: 132 minutes. Rated R (for strong
language and some violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

Spike Lee's "25th Hour" tells the story of a businessman's last day of
freedom before the start of his seven-year prison sentence. During this day
he will need to say goodbye to his girlfriend, his father and his two best
friends. And he will need to find someone to take care of his dog. The man's
business was selling drugs, but his story could be a microcosm for the Enron
thieves. What it has in common is a lack of remorse; the man is sorry he is
going to prison, but not particularly sorry for his business practices,
which he would still be engaged in if he hadn't been caught.

The man's name is Monty Brogan. He is thoughtful, well-spoken, a nice guy.
The first time we see him, he's rescuing a dog that has been beaten half to
death. He associates with bad guys--the Russian Mafia of New York--but it's
hard to picture him at work. He doesn't seem like the type, especially not
on the morning of his last day, when an old customer approaches him and he
wearily advises him, "Take your jones somewhere else."

Monty is played by Edward Norton as a man who bitterly regrets his greed. He
should have gotten out sooner--taken the money and run. He stayed in too
long, someone ratted on him, and the feds knew exactly where to look for the
cocaine. He dreads prison not so much because of seven lost years, but
because he fears he will be raped. His friends see his future more clearly.
They are Jacob Elinsky (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a high school English
teacher, and Frank Slaughtery (Barry Pepper), a Wall Street trader. Talking
sadly with Jacob, Frank spells out Monty's options. He can kill himself. He
can become a fugitive. Or he can do the time, but when he comes out his life
will never be the same and he will not be able to put it together in any
meaningful way. Frank's verdict: "It's over."

The film reflects this elegiac tone as it follows Monty's last hours of
freedom. He has been lucky in his girlfriend, Naturelle (Rosario Dawson),
and in his father, James (Brian Cox). Although he suspects that Naturelle
could have been his betrayer, we see her as a good-hearted young woman who
knows how to read him, who observes at a certain point in the evening that
Monty doesn't want company. The father, a retired fireman, runs a bar on
Staten Island. Most of his customers are firemen, too, and the shadow of
9/11 hangs over them.

Monty has given his father money to pay off the bar's debts. He has moved
with Naturelle into a nice apartment. Both the father and the girl know
where the money comes from. His dad disapproves of drugs but has a curious
way of forgiving his son: He blames himself. Because he was a drunk, because
his wife died, it's not all Monty's fault.

The screenplay is by David Benioff, based on his novel. It contains a
brilliant sequence where Monty looks in the mirror of a restroom and spits
out a litany of hate for every group he can think of in New York--every
economic, ethnic, sexual and age group gets the f-word, until finally he
sees himself in the mirror and includes himself. This scene seems so typical
of Spike Lee (it's like an extension of a sequence in "Do the Right Thing")
that it's a surprise to find it's in the original novel--but then Benioff's
novel may have been inspired by Lee's earlier film.

There are two other sequences where we see Lee's unique energy at work. In
one of them, also from the book, his father drives Monty to prison and, in a
long voiceover monologue, describes an alternative to jail. He tells his son
that he could take an exit on the turnpike, head west, start over. In an
extraordinary visual illustration of the monologue, we see Monty getting a
job in a small town, finding a wife, starting a family, and finally, old and
gray, revealing the secret of his life. Wouldn't it be nice to think so.
Brian Cox's reading of this passage is another reminder that he is not only
the busiest but the best of character actors.

The other sequence involves Jacob, the Philip Seymour Hoffman character. He
is a nebbishy English teacher, single, lacking social skills, embracing his
thankless job as a form of penance for having been born rich. He is
attracted to one of his students, Mary D'Annunzio (Anna Paquin), but does
nothing about it, constantly reminding himself that to act would be a sin
and a crime. On Monty's last night he takes Naturelle, Jacob and Frank to a
nightclub, and Mary is in the crowd of girls hoping to get past the doorman.
From across the street she shouts at Jacob: "Elinsky! Get me in." And we
think, yes, she would call him by his unadorned last name--the same way she
refers to him among her friends.

She does get in, and this continues a parallel story. She is precocious with
sexuality yet naive with youth, and the poor schmuck Jacob is finally driven
to trying to kiss her, with results that will burn forever in both of their
memories. How does this story fit with Monty's? Maybe it shows that we want
what we want, no matter the social price. And maybe that's the connection,
too, with Frank, who invites Monty over to his big apartment in a building
literally overlooking the devastation of the World Trade Center. He has
never thought of moving, because the price is right. All three men are
willing to see others suffer, in one way or another, or even die, so that
they can have what they want. The movie suggests a thought that may not
occur to a lot of its viewers: To what degree do we all live that way?

The film is unusual for not having a plot or a payoff. It is about the end
of this stage of Monty's life, and so there is no goal he is striving
for--unless it is closure with Naturelle and his father. He may not see them
again; certainly not like this. The movie criticizes the harsh Rockefeller
drug laws, which make drugs more profitable and therefore increase crime. We
reflect that when Monty sold drugs, at least his customers knew exactly what
they were buying, and why. That makes him a little more honest than the
corporate executives who relied on trust to con their innocent victims out
of billions of dollars.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND / ***1/2 (R)
Date: 24 Jan 2003 19:15:59 GMT

CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND / ***1/2 (R)

January 24, 2003

Chuck Barris:    Sam Rockwell
Penny:    Drew Barrymore
Jim Byrd:    George Clooney
Patricia:    Julia Roberts
Keeler:    Rutger Hauer
Debbie:    Maggie Gyllenhaal
Dancing Machine:    Gene Patton
Miramax Films presents a film directed by George Clooney. Written by Charlie
Kaufman. Based on the book by Chuck Barris. Running time: 113 minutes. Rated
R (for language, sexual content and violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

I had not read the autobiography of Chuck Barris when I went to see
"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind." Well, how many people have? So I made an
understandable error. When the movie claimed that the game show creator had
moonlighted as a CIA hit man, I thought I was detecting a nudge from the
screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman. He is the man who created the portal into
John Malkovich's mind in "Being John Malkovich" and gave himself a twin
brother in "Adaptation." Now, I thought, the little trickster had juiced up
the Barris biopic by making the creator of "The Gong Show" into an assassin.
What a card.

I am now better informed. Barris himself claims to have killed 33 times for
the CIA. It's in his book. He had the perfect cover: The creator of "The
Dating Game" and "The Gong Show" would accompany his lucky winners on trips
to romantic spots such as Helsinki in midwinter and kill for the CIA while
the winners regaled each other with reindeer steaks. Who, after all, would
ever suspect him?

When I met Barris I asked him, as everyone does, if this story is true. He
declined to answer. The book and the movie speak for themselves--or don't
speak for themselves, depending on your frame of mind. As for myself, I
think he made it all up and never killed anybody. Having been involved in a
weekly television show myself, I know for a melancholy fact that there is
just not enough time between tapings to fly off to Helsinki and kill for my
government.

It matters not whether the story is true, because all autobiographies are
fictional, made up out of that continuous subconscious rewriting process by
which we make ourselves blameless and heroic. Barris has a particular need
to be heroic, because he blamed himself for so much. As the movie opens in
1981, he is holed up in a New York hotel, mired in self-contempt and
watching TV as his penance. It is here, he tells us in a confiding
voiceover, that he began to record "my wasted life."

That this would be the first project to attract George Clooney as a director
is not so surprising if you know that his father directed game shows, and he
was often a backstage observer. That Clooney would direct it so well is a
little surprising, and is part of that re-education by which we stop
thinking of Clooney as a TV hunk and realize he is smart and curious. His
first movie is not only intriguing as a story but great to look at, a
marriage of bright pop images from the 1960s and 1970s and dark, cold
spyscapes that seem to have wandered in from John le Carre.

Sam Rockwell plays Barris as a man who was given gifts but not the ability
to enjoy them. He is depressed not so much because he thinks he could have
done better in his life, but because he fears he could not. From his start
as an NBC page in 1955, through his backstage work on Dick Clark's "American
Bandstand," to the crushing blow of having ABC choose "Hootenanny" over his
"Dating Game" pilot, Barris comes across as a man who wants to succeed in
order to confirm his low opinion of himself. When his shows finally make the
air, the TV critics blame him for the destruction of Western civilization,
and he doesn't think they're so far off.

The movie has fun with the TV shows. We are reminded once again of the
Unknown Comic and Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, and on an episode of "The
Dating Game" we see a contestant choose Bachelor No. 3 when we can see that
Bachelors 1 and 2 are Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. Early in his career, Barris
is recruited by a CIA man named Jim Byrd (Clooney) and agrees to become a
secret agent, maybe as a way of justifying his existence. "Think of it as a
hobby," Byrd says soothingly. "You're an assassination enthusiast."

Two other women figure strongly in his life. Patricia Watson (Julia Roberts)
is the CIA's Marlene Dietrich, her face sexily shadowed at a rendezvous. She
gives him a quote from Nietzsche that could serve as his motto: "The man who
despises himself still respects himself as he who despises." And then
there's Penny (Drew Barrymore), the hippie chick who comes along at first
for the ride and remains to be his loyal friend, trying to talk him out of
that hotel room.

"Confessions of a Dangerous Mind" makes a companion to Paul Schrader's "Auto
Focus," the story of the rise and fall of "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane.
Both films show men whose secret lives are more exciting than the public
lives that win them fame. Barris seems to want to redeem himself for the
crimes he committed on television, while Crane uses his fame as a ticket to
sex addiction.

Both films lift up the cheerful rock of television to find wormy things
crawling for cover. The difference is that Crane comes across as shallow and
pathetic, while Barris--well, any man who would claim 33 killings as a way
to rehabilitate his reputation deserves our sympathy and maybe our
forgiveness.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] MAX / ***1/2 (R)
Date: 24 Jan 2003 19:16:10 GMT

MAX / ***1/2 (R)

January 24, 2003

Max Rothman:    John Cusack
Adolf Hitler:    Noah Taylor
Liselore Von Peltz:    Leelee Sobieski
Nina Rothman:    Molly Parker
Capt. Mayr:    Ulrich Thomsen
Max's father:    David Horovitch
Max's mother:    Janet Suzman
NCO:    Andras Stohl

Lions Gate Films presents a film written and directed by Menno Meyjes.
Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (for language).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Und ... Der Fuhrer vas a better artist than Churchill!"

"The Producers"

The central mystery of Hitler, William Boyd writes in a recent Times
Literary Supplement, is: "How on earth could a dysfunctional, deranged,
down-and-out homeless person in pre-First World War Vienna become, 20 years
later, Chancellor of Germany?" A peculiar and intriguing film named "Max"
argues that he succeeded because he had such a burning need to be
recognized--and also, of course, because of luck, good for him, bad for us.
If Hitler had won fame as an artist, the century's history might have been
different. Pity about his art.

"Max" imagines a fictional scenario in which the young Adolf Hitler (Noah
Taylor) is befriended by a one-armed Jewish art dealer named Max Rothman
(John Cusack) in Munich in the years following World War I. Both served in
the German army and fought in the same battle, where Rothman lost his arm.
The dealer opens an avant-garde art gallery in a vast abandoned factory,
showcasing artists such as George Grosz and attracting important
collectors--and Hitler, clutching his portfolio of kitsch. Rothman takes
pity on this man and is friendly to him, moved by the pathos beneath his
bluster.

The film, written and directed by Menno Meyjes, who scripted "The Color
Purple," has been attacked because it attempts to "humanize" a monster. But
of course Hitler was human, and we must understand that before we can
understand anything else about him. To dehumanize him is to fall under the
spell which elevated him into the Fuhrer, a mythical being who transfixed
Germans and obscured the silly little man with the mustache. To ponder
Hitler's early years with the knowledge of his later ones is to understand
how life can play cosmic tricks with tragic results.

"Max" suggests that Hitler's real work of art was himself and the Nazi state
he first envisioned in fantasy terms; even as a young man we see him
doodling with swastikas and designing comic-book uniforms. Clothes make the
man, and to some extent Hitler's skill as a fashion designer made men into
Nazis. "I am the new avant garde and politics is the new art," he tells
Rothman, not inaccurately.

If Hitler is a mystery, what are we to make of Max Rothman? John Cusack
plays him as a man of empathy, who endures the tantrums of his artists and
feels pity for this bedraggled Hitler whom he first meets as a liquor
deliveryman. Rothman himself wanted to be an artist but has put that on hold
after losing his arm. He has returned to a comfortable bourgeois life in
Munich, with his doctor father-in-law, his secure wife, Nina (Molly Parker),
and his stimulating mistress, Liselore (Leelee Sobieski). When he's quizzed
about his friendship with the pathetic Hitler, his answers are simple: "He
came back from the war to nothing. He doesn't have any friends."

Yes, Hitler is anti-Semitic, and makes no secret of it. But in Germany in
those days, anti-Semitism was like the weather; you couldn't do anything
about it and you had to go out in it. Rothman takes Hitler's rantings with
weariness and sadness, and at one point tells Liselore, "I told him his
insane f------ ideas are holding him back as an artist."

There is never, even for a moment, a glimmer of evidence to suggest that
Hitler could have been a successful artist. His drawings look like the kind
of cartoon caricatures that bored boys create in their notebooks in the back
row of geometry class, playing with their protractors and dreaming of
supermen. Hitler instinctively fails to see the point of abstract art; at
one point he suggests that Rothman frame his diarrhea. We are reminded that,
in power, both the Nazis and the Soviets banned and burned abstract art.
Curious, that art which claimed to represent nothing nevertheless
represented so much to them. Perhaps art is a threat to totalitarianism when
it does not have a clear, censurable subject and is left to the musings of
the citizen.

As the title suggests, "Max" centers more on Rothman than on Hitler. Max is
a kind, dreamy, hopeful man, who we presume saw his share of the horrors of
that particularly nasty war and trusts that art is taking him in the right
direction. He is also smooth and sophisticated, a master of one-armed
cigarette technique, who moves seamlessly between his bourgeois home and the
cafes and dives of bohemian Munich. He is worldly in a way that Hitler is
not, and their differences are suggested when he says in exasperation to the
fierce failed artist, "Listen--do you want to meet some girls?"

Hitler's other patron is an army propagandist named Mayr (Ulrich Thomsen),
like Hitler an outcast in the German economic ruin. He is attached to a
small splinter party and thinks Hitler might make a good spokesman. What
Mayr sees in this hapless nonentity is hard to say, but he is quite right,
and soon Hitler is fascinating crowds in beer halls with his emerging Nazi
vision. (Mayr, I learn, is an actual historical figure, who later, for his
pains, was beheaded by Hitler.)

But what, we may ask, parroting Soviet realism, is the purpose of this
movie? What is its message? It is not abstract but presents us with two
central characters whose races have a rendezvous with destiny. I think the
key is in Rothman, who is a kind liberal humanist, who cares for the
unfortunate, who lives a life of the mind that blinds him to the ominous
rising tide of Nazism. Can a man like this, with values like this, survive
against a man like Hitler, who has no value except the will for power? It is
the duty of the enlightened state to assure that he can. Dissent protects
the body politic from the virus of totalitarianism.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CITY OF GOD (CIDADE DE DEUS) / **** (R)
Date: 24 Jan 2003 19:15:46 GMT

CITY OF GOD (CIDADE DE DEUS) / **** (R)

January 24, 2003

Sandro Cenoura ("Carrott"): Matheus Nachtergaele
Mane Galinha ("Knockout Ned"):    Seu Jorge
Rocket:    Alexandre Rodrigues
L'il Ze    Leandro: Firmino da Hora
Bene (Benny):    Phelipe     Haagensen
Cabeleira (Shaggy):    Johnathan Haagensen

Miramax presents a film directed by Fernando Meirelles. Written by Braulio
Mantovani. Based on the novel by Paulo Lins. Running time: 135 minutes.
Rated R (for strong brutal violence, sexuality, drug content and language).
In Portuguese with English subtitles.

BY ROGER EBERT

"City of God" churns with furious energy as it plunges into the story of the
slum gangs of Rio de Janeiro. Breathtaking and terrifying, urgently involved
with its characters, it announces a new director of great gifts and
passions: Fernando Meirelles. Remember the name. The film has been compared
with Scorsese's "GoodFellas," and it deserves the comparison. Scorsese's
film began with a narrator who said that for as long as he could remember he
wanted to be a gangster. The narrator of this film seems to have had no
other choice.

The movie takes place in slums constructed by Rio to isolate the poor people
from the city center. They have grown into places teeming with life, color,
music and excitement--and also with danger, for the law is absent and
violent gangs rule the streets. In the virtuoso sequence opening the
picture, a gang is holding a picnic for its members when a chicken escapes.
Among those chasing it is Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), the narrator. He
suddenly finds himself between two armed lines: the gang on one side, the
cops on the other.

As the camera whirls around him, the background changes and Rocket shrinks
from a teenager into a small boy, playing soccer in a housing development
outside Rio. To understand his story, he says, we have to go back to the
beginning, when he and his friends formed the Tender Trio and began their
lives of what some would call crime and others would call survival.

The technique of that shot--the whirling camera, the flashback, the change
in colors from the dark brightness of the slum to the dusty sunny browns of
the soccer field--alert us to a movie that is visually alive and inventive
as few films are.

Meirelles began as a director of TV commercials, which gave him a command of
technique--and, he says, trained him to work quickly, to size up a shot and
get it, and move on. Working with the cinematographer Cesar Charlone, he
uses quick-cutting and a mobile, hand-held camera to tell his story with the
haste and detail it deserves. Sometimes those devices can create a film that
is merely busy, but "City of God" feels like sight itself, as we look here
and then there, with danger or opportunity everywhere.

The gangs have money and guns because they sell drugs and commit robberies.
But they are not very rich because their activities are limited to the City
of God, where no one has much money. In an early crime, we see the stickup
of a truck carrying cans of propane gas, which the crooks sell to
homeowners. Later there is a raid on a bordello, where the customers are
deprived of their wallets. (In a flashback, we see that raid a second time,
and understand in a chilling moment why there were dead bodies at a site
where there was not supposed to be any killing.)

As Rocket narrates the lore of the district he knows so well, we understand
that poverty has undermined all social structures in the City of God,
including the family. The gangs provide structure and status. Because the
gang death rate is so high, even the leaders tend to be surprisingly young,
and life has no value except when you are taking it. There is an astonishing
sequence when a victorious gang leader is killed in a way he least expects,
by the last person he would have expected, and we see that essentially he
has been killed not by a person but by the culture of crime.

Yet the film is not all grim and violent. Rocket also captures some of the
Dickensian flavor of the City of God, where a riot of life provides
ready-made characters with nicknames, personas and trademarks. Some like
Benny (Phelipe Haagensen) are so charismatic they almost seem to transcend
the usual rules. Others, like Knockout Ned and Lil Ze, grow from kids into
fearsome leaders, their words enforced by death.

The movie is based on a novel by Paulo Lins, who grew up in the City of God,
somehow escaped it, and spent eight years writing his book. A note at the
end says it is partly based on the life of Wilson Rodriguez, a Brazilian
photographer. We watch as Rocket obtains a (stolen) camera that he treasures
and takes pictures from his privileged position as a kid on the streets. He
gets a job as an assistant on a newspaper delivery truck, asks a
photographer to develop his film, and is startled to see his portrait of an
armed gang leader on the front page of the paper.

"This is my death sentence," he thinks, but no: The gangs are delighted by
the publicity and pose for him with their guns and girls. And during a
vicious gang war, he is able to photograph the cops killing a gangster--a
murder they plan to pass off as gang-related. That these events throb with
immediate truth is indicated by the fact that Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the
newly elected president of Brazil, actually reviewed and praised "City of
God" as a needful call for change.

In its actual level of violence, "City of God" is less extreme than
Scorsese's "Gangs of New York," but the two films have certain parallels. In
both films, there are really two cities: the city of the employed and
secure, who are served by law and municipal services, and the city of the
castaways, whose alliances are born of opportunity and desperation. Those
who live beneath rarely have their stories told.

"City of God" does not exploit or condescend, does not pump up its stories
for contrived effect, does not contain silly and reassuring romantic
sidebars, but simply looks, with a passionately knowing eye, at what it
knows.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SOLARIS (1972)
Date: 24 Jan 2003 19:16:25 GMT

SOLARIS (1972)

January 24, 2003

Kris Kelvin:    Donatas Banionis
Khari:    Natalya Bondarchuk
Dr. Snauth:    Juri Jarvet
Berton:    Vladislav Dvorzhetsky
Kelvin's father:    Nikolai Grinko
Dr. Sartorius:    Anatoli Solonitsyn

Kino International presents a film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. Written by
Tarkovsky and Fridrikh Gorenshtein, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem. No
MPAA rating. Running time: 167 minutes. In Russian with English subtitles.
Opening today at the Music Box Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

"Solaris," Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film that was recently remade by Steven
Soderbergh, will play in a newly restored 35mm print starting today at the
Music Box, 3733 N. Southport. I wrote about it last Sunday in the Great
Movies series. Excerpts:

I saw "Solaris" for the first time at the 1972 Chicago Film Festival. It was
my first experience of Tarkovsky, and at first I balked. It was long and
slow and the dialogue seemed deliberately dry. But then the overall shape of
the film floated into view, there were images of startling beauty, then
developments that questioned the fundamental being of the characters
themselves, and finally an ending which teasingly suggested that everything
in the film needed to be seen in a new light. There was so much to think
about afterward, and so much that remained in my memory.

"Solaris" is routinely called Tarkovsky's reply to Kubrick's "2001," and
indeed Tarkovsky could have seen the Kubrick film at the 1969 Moscow Film
Festival, but the film is based on a 1961 novel by the Polish science
fiction writer Stanislaw Lem. Both films involve human space journeys and
encounters with a transforming alien intelligence, which creates places
("2001") or people ("Solaris") from clues apparently obtained by reading
minds. But Kubrick's film is outward, charting man's next step in the
universe, while Tarkovsky's is inward, asking about the nature and reality
of the human personality.

"Solaris" begins with a long conversation between the psychologist Kelvin
(Donatas Banionis) and the cosmonaut Berton (Vladislav Dvorzhetsky) at the
country home of Kelvin's father. This home will be seen again at the end of
a film in a transformed context. Berton tells him about a Soviet space
station circling the planet Solaris, and of deaths and mysteries on board.
Eventually, Kelvin arrives at the station (his journey is not shown) and
finds one crew member dead and two more deeply disturbed by events on the
station.

The planet, we learn, is entirely covered by a sea, and when X-ray probes
were used to investigate it, the planet apparently replied with probes of
its own, entering the minds of the cosmonauts and making some of their
memories real. Within a day, Kelvin is presented with one of the Guests that
the planet can create: a duplicate of his late wife, Khari (Natalya
Bondarchuk), exact in every detail, but lacking her memories.

This Guest is not simply a physical manifestation, however. She has
intelligence, self-consciousness, memory and lack of memories. She does not
know that the original Khari committed suicide. She questions Kelvin, wants
to know more about herself, eventually grows despondent when she realizes
she cannot be who she appears to be. To some extent, her being is limited by
how much Kelvin knows about her, since Solaris cannot know more than Kelvin
does; this theme is made clearer in Soderbergh and George Clooney's 2002
remake of the film.

When we love someone, who do we love? That person, or our idea of that
person? Some years before virtual reality became a byword, Tarkovsky was
exploring its implications. Although other persons no doubt exist in
independent physical space, our entire relationship with them exists in our
minds. When we touch them, it is not the touch we experience, but our
consciousness of the touch. To some extent, then, the second Khari is as
"real" as the first, although different.

The relationship between Kelvin and the new Khari plays out against the
nature of reality on the space station. He glimpses other Guests. He views a
taped message from the dead cosmonaut, filled with information and warning.
Khari, it develops, cannot be killed, although that is tried, because she
can simply be replaced. Physical pain is meaningless to her, as we see when
she attempts to rip through a steel bulkhead door because she does not know
how to open it. Gentle feelings are accessible to her, as seen in a scene
that everybody agrees is the magic center of "Solaris," when the space
station enters a stage of zero gravity and Kelvin, Khari and lighted candles
float in the air.

The last sequence of the film, which I will not reveal, invites us to
reconsider the opening sequence, and to toy with the notion that there may
be more Guests in the film that we first thought. It is a crucial fact that
this final shot is seen by us, the viewers, and not by those on the space
station. "The arc of discovery is on the part of the audience, not the
characters," writes the critic N. Medlicott. That they may be trapped within
a box of consciousness that deceives them about reality is only appropriate,
since the film argues that we all are.

The complete article on Tarkovsky and "Solaris" is at
www.suntimes.com/ebert.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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