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movies-digest           Monday, May 20 2002           Volume 02 : Number 352



[MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13)
[MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)
[MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R)
[MV] ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG)
[MV] THE SALTON SEA / *** (R)
[MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13)
[MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)
[MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R)
[MV] STAR WARS -- EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES / ** (PG)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 20 May 2002 23:08:48 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13)

DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13)

May 10, 2002

Featuring Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Bob Biniak, Paul Constantineau, Shogo Kubo,
Jim Muir, Peggy Oki, Stacy Peralta.Sony Pictures Classics presents a
documentary directed by Stacy Peralta. Written by Peralta and Craig Stecyk.
Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language and some drug
references). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston CineArts.

BY ROGER EBERT

"Dogtown and Z-Boys," a documentary about how the humble skateboard became
the launch pad for aerial gymnastics, answers a question I have long been
curious about: How and why was the first skateboarder inspired to go aerial,
to break contact with any surface and do acrobatics in mid-air? Consider
that the pioneer was doing this for the very first time over a vertical drop
of perhaps 15 feet to a concrete surface. It's not the sort of thing you try
out of idle curiosity.

The movie answers this and other questions in its history of a sport that
grew out of idle time and boundless energy in the oceanfront neighborhood
between Santa Monica and Venice in California. Today the area contains
expensive condos and trendy restaurants, but circa 1975, it was the last
remaining "beachfront slum" in the Los Angeles area. Druggies and hippies
lived in cheap rentals and supported themselves by working in hot dog
stands, tattoo parlors, head shops and saloons.

Surfing was the definitive lifestyle, the Beach Boys supplied the soundtrack
and tough surfer gangs staked out waves as their turf. In the afternoon,
after the waves died down, they turned to skateboards, which at first were
used as a variation of roller skates. But the members of the Zephyr Team, we
learn, devised a new style of skateboarding, defying gravity, adding
acrobatics, devising stunts. When a drought struck the area and thousands of
swimming pools were drained, they invented vertical skateboarding on the
walls of the empty pools. Sometimes they'd glide so close to the edge that
only one of their four wheels still had a purchase on the lip. One day a
Z-Boy went airborne, and a new style was born--a style reflected today in
Olympic ski acrobatics.

I am not sure whether the members of the Zephyr Team were solely responsible
for all significant advances in the sport, or whether they only think they
were. "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is directed by Stacy Peralta, an original and
gifted team member, still a legend in the sport. Like many of the other
Z-Boys (and one Z-girl), he marketed himself, his name, his image, his
products, and became a successful businessman and filmmaker while still
surfing concrete. His film describes the evolution of skateboarding almost
entirely in terms of the experience of himself and his friends. It's like
the vet who thinks World War II centered around his platoon.

The Southern California lifestyle in general, and surfing and skateboarding
in particular, are insular and narcissistic. People who live indoors have
ideas. People who live outdoors have style. Here is an entire movie about
looking cool while not wiping out. Call it a metaphor for life. There comes
a point when sensible viewers will tire of being told how astonishing and
unique each and every Z-Boy was, while looking at repetitive still photos
and home footage of skateboarders, but the film has an infectious enthusiasm
and we're touched by the film's conviction that all life centered on that
place, that time and that sport.

One question goes unanswered: Was anyone ever killed? Maimed? Crippled?
There is a brief shot of someone on crutches, and a few shots showing
skateboarders falling off their boards, but since aerial gymnastics high
over hard surfaces are clearly dangerous and the Z-Boys wear little or no
protective gear, what's the story? That most of them survived is made clear
by info over the end credits, revealing that although one Zephyr Team member
is in prison and another was "last seen in Mexico," the others all seem to
have married, produced an average of two children, and found success in
business. To the amazement no doubt of their parents.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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------------------------------

Date: 20 May 2002 23:08:56 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)

May 10, 2002

Don: Bob Jay Mills
Donatella: Petra Westen
Marion: Tacey Adams
Joe: Al Schuermann
Chuck: Zia
Don Jr.: Andrew Eichner
Mike: Jerry O'Conner
Barry: Scooter Stephan
Universal Focus presents a film written and directed by Frank Novak. Running
time: 90 minutes. Rated R (for pervasive language, domestic violence and
drug content). Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

BY ROGER EBERT

I watch the guests on "Jerry Springer" with the fascination of an ambulance
driver at Demo Derby. Where do these people come from? Their dialogue may be
"suggested" but their lives are all too evidently real, and they have
tumbled right through the safety net of taste and self-respect and gone
spiraling down, down into the pit of amoral vulgarity. Now comes "Good
Housekeeping," a film about how the people on Springer live when they're not
on camera.

No, it's not a documentary. It was written and directed by Frank Novak,
otherwise a trendy Los Angeles furniture manufacturer, who regards his white
trash characters with deadpan neutrality. How is the audience expected to
react? Consider this dialogue:

Don: "Maybe if we cut her in half we could get her in there."

Chuck: "We can't cut her in half!"

Don: "So what are you? Mr. Politically Correct?"

Don and Chuck are brothers. Don (Bob Jay Mills) uneasily shares his house
with his wife Donatella (Petra Westen), while Chuck (credited only as Zia)
sleeps with his girlfriend Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan) in Don's car.

Things are not good between Don and Donatella, and he uses 2x4s and
plasterboard to build a wall that cuts the house in two ("She got way more
square feet than I got," he tells the cops during one of their frequent
visits). Realizing he has forgotten something, Don cuts a crawl hole in the
wall so that Don Jr. (Andrew Eichner) can commute between parents. Soon
Donatella's new lesbian lover Marion (Tacey Adams) is poking her head
through the hole to discuss the "parameters" Don is setting for his son.

Donatella is a forklift operator. Don is self-employed as a trader of action
figures, with a specialty in Pinhead and other Hellraiser characters. When
Chuck tries to sell him a Sad-Eye Doll, he responds like a pro: "Couldn't
you Swap-Meet it? I'm not gonna put that on my table and drag down my other
merch." Don Jr. has less respect for action figures and occasionally saws
off their heads.

Terrible things happen to the many cars in this extended family, both by
accident and on purpose. One of the funniest sequences shows a big blond
family friend, desperately hung-over, methodically crunching into every
other car in the driveway before she runs over the mailbox. Don lives in
fear of Donatella running him down, and at one point discusses his defense
with a gun-show trader (Al Schuermann), who scoffs, "You would use a .38 to
defend yourself?" He comes back with real protection against vehicular
manslaughter: a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

Marion, the well-mannered lesbian lover, is the source of many of the film's
biggest laughs because of the incongruity of her crush on Donatella. She
watches Donatella smoke, eat, talk and blow her nose all at the same time,
and her only reaction is to eat all the more politely, in the hope of
setting an example. Marion is an accountant at the factory where Donatella
works; she dresses in chic business suits, has smart horn-rim glasses and a
stylish haircut, and plunges into Springerland with an arsenal of liberal
cliches. At one point, after a nasty domestic disturbance, she tries to make
peace by inviting Don out to brunch. "There's no way the cops can make you
go to brunch," Don's beer-bellied buddies reassure him.

It is perhaps a warning signal of incipient alcoholism when the family car
has a Breathalyzer permanently attached to the dashboard. Yet Don is not
without standards, and warns his brother against making love in the car
because "I drive Mom to church in it." Family life follows a familiar
pattern. Most evenings end with a fight in the yard, and Novak and his
cinematographer, Alex Vendler, are skilled at getting convincing,
spontaneous performances out of their unknown actors; many scenes, including
the free-for-alls, play with the authenticity of a documentary.

Just as mainstream filmmakers are fascinated by the rich and famous, so
independent filmmakers are drawn to society's hairy underbelly. "Good
Housekeeping" plunges far beneath Todd Solondz's territory and enters the
suburbs of John Waters' universe in its fascination for people who live
without benefit of education, taste, standards, hygiene and shame. Indeed,
all they have enough of are cigarettes, used cars, controlled substances and
four-letter words. The movie is, however, very funny as you peek at it
through the fingers in front of your eyes.

Note: "Good Housekeeping" has had its ups and downs. It won the grand jury
prize at Slamdance 2000, was the only U.S. film chosen for Critic's Week at
Cannes that year, and was picked up for distribution by the Shooting
Gallery--which, alas, went out of business, leaving the film orphaned. "Good
Housekeeping" has its U.S. premiere today through Thursday at the Gene
Siskel Film Center.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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------------------------------

Date: 20 May 2002 23:09:06 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R)

NINE QUEENS / *** (R)

May 10, 2002

Marcos: Ricardo Darin
Juan: Gaston Pauls
Valeria: Leticia Bredice
Gandolfo: Ignasi Abadal
Aunt: Pochi Ducasse
Federico: Tomas Fonzi
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by Fabian
Bielinsky. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 115 minutes.
Rated R (for language). Opening today at the Music Box Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

Fabian Bielinsky's "Nine Queens" is a con within a con within a con. There
comes a time when we think we've gotten to the bottom, and then the floor
gets pulled out again and we fall another level. Since nothing is as it
seems (it doesn't even seem as it seems), watching the film is like
observing a chess game in which all of the pieces are in plain view but one
player has figured out a way to cheat. "David Mamet might kill for a script
as good," Todd McCarthy writes in Variety. True, although Mamet might also
reasonably claim to have inspired it; the set-up owes something to his
"House of Games," although familiarity with that film will not help you
figure out this one.

The film starts with a seemingly chance meeting. Indeed, almost everything
in the film is "seemingly." A young would-be con man named Juan (Gaston
Pauls) is doing the $20 bill switch with a naive cashier--the switch I have
never been able to figure out, where you end up with $39 while seemingly
doing the cashier a favor. Juan succeeds. The cashier goes off duty. Juan is
greedy and tries the same trick on her replacement. The first cashier comes
back with the manager, screaming that she was robbed. At this point Marcos
(Ricardo Darin), a stranger in the store, flashes his gun, identifies
himself as a cop, arrests the thief and hauls him off.

Of course Marcos is only seemingly a cop. He lectures Juan on the dangers of
excessive greed and buys him breakfast, and then the two of them seemingly
happen upon an opportunity to pull a big swindle involving the "nine
queens," a rare sheet of stamps. This happens when Valeria (Leticia
Bredice), seemingly Marcos' sister, berates him because one of his old
criminal associates tried to con a client in the hotel where she seemingly
works. The old con seemingly had a heart attack, and now the field is
seemingly open for Marcos and Juan to bilk the seemingly rich and drunk
Gandolfo (Ignasi Abadal).

Now before you think I've given away the game with all those "seeminglys,"
let me point out that they may only seemingly be seeminglys. They may in
fact be as they seem. Or seemingly otherwise. As Juan and Marcos try to work
out their scheme, which involves counterfeit stamps, we wonder if in fact
the whole game may be a pigeon drop with Juan as the pigeon. But, no, the
fake stamps are stolen, seemingly by complete strangers, requiring Marcos
and Juan to try to con the owner of the real nine queens out of stamps they
can sell Gandolfo. (Since they have no plans to really pay for these stamps,
their profit would be the same in either case.)

And on and on, around and around, in an elegant and sly deadpan comedy. A
plot, however clever, is only the clockwork; what matters is what kind of
time a movie tells. "Nine Queens" is blessed with a gallery of well-drawn
character roles, including the alcoholic mark and his two bodyguards; the
avaricious widow who owns the "nine queens" and her much younger
bleached-blond boyfriend, and Valeria the sister, who opposes Marcos' seamy
friends and life of crime but might be willing to sleep with Gandolfo if she
can share in the spoils.

Juan meanwhile falls for Valeria himself, and then there are perfectly timed
hiccups in the plot where the characters (and we) apparently see through a
deception, only to find that deeper reality explains everything--maybe. The
story plays out in modern-day Buenos Aires, a city that looks sometimes
Latin, sometimes American, sometimes Spanish, sometimes German, sometimes
modern, sometimes ancient. Is it possible the city itself is pulling a con
on its inhabitants, and that some underlying reality will deceive everyone?
The ultimate joke of course would be if the Argentine economy collapsed, so
that everyone's gains, ill-gotten or not, would evaporate. But that is
surely too much to hope for.

Note:"Nine Queens" is like a South American version of "Stolen Summer," the
movie that won the contest sponsored by HBO, Miramax, and Matt Damon and Ben
Affleck. According to Variety, some 350 screenplays were submitted in an
Argentine competition, Bielinsky's won, and he was given funds to film. It's
illuminating that in both cases such competitions yielded more literate and
interesting screenplays than the studios are usually able to find through
their own best efforts.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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------------------------------

Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:02 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13)

ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13)

May 17, 2002

Will: Hugh Grant
Marcus: Nicholas Hoult
Rachel: Rachel Weisz
Fiona: Toni Collette
Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz.
Written by Peter Hedges, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz. Based on the book by
Nick Hornby. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for brief strong
language and some thematic elements).

BY ROGER EBERT

Hugh Grant, who has a good line in charm, has never been more charming than
in "About a Boy." Or perhaps that's not quite what he is. Charming in the
Grant stylebook refers to something he does as a conscious act, and what is
remarkable here is that Grant is--well, likable. Yes, the cad has developed
a heart. There are times, toward the end of the film, where he speaks
sincerely and we can actually believe him.

In "About a Boy," he plays Will, a 38-year-old bachelor who has never had a
job, or a relationship that has lasted longer than two months. He is content
with this lifestyle. "I was the star of the Will Show," he explains. "It was
not an ensemble drama." His purpose in life is to date pretty girls. When
they ask him what he does, he smiles that self-deprecating Hugh Grant smile
and confesses that, well, he does--nothing. Not a single blessed thing. In
1958 his late father wrote a hit song titled "Santa's Super Sleigh," and he
lives rather handsomely off the royalties. His London flat looks like a
showroom for Toys for Big Boys.

Will is the creation of Nick Hornby, who wrote the original novel. This is
the same Hornby who wrote High Fidelity, which was made into the wonderful
John Cusack movie. Hornby depicts a certain kind of immature but latently
sincere man who loves Women as a less demanding alternative to loving a
woman. Will's error, or perhaps it is his salvation, is that he starts
dating single mothers, thinking they will be less demanding and easier to
dump than single girls.

The strategy is flawed: Single mothers invariably have children, and what
Will discovers is that while he would make a lousy husband, he might make a
wonderful father. Of course it takes a child to teach an adult how to be a
parent, and that is how Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) comes into Will's life. Will
is dating a single mom named Suzie, who he meets at a support group named
Single Parents, Alone Together (SPAT). He shamelessly claims that his wife
abandoned him and their 2-year-old son, "Ned."

Suzie has a friend named Fiona (Toni Collette), whose son, Marcus, comes
along one day to the park. We've already met Marcus, who is round-faced and
sad-eyed and has the kind of bangs that get him teased in the school
playground. His mother suffers from depression, and this has made Marcus
mature and solemn beyond his years. When Fiona tries to overdose one day,
Will finds himself involved in a trip to the emergency room and other events
during which Marcus decides that Will belongs in his life whether Will
realizes it or not.

The heart of the movie involves the relationship between Will and
Marcus--who begins by shadowing Will, finds out there is no "Ned," and ends
by coming over on a regular basis to watch TV. Will has had nothing but
trouble with his fictional child, and now finds that a real child is an
unwieldy addition to the bachelor life. Nor is Fiona a dating possibility.
Marcus tried fixing them up, but they're obviously not intended for each
another--not Will with his cool bachelor aura and Fiona with her Goodwill
hippie look and her "health bread," which is so inedible that little Marcus
barely has the strength to tear a bite from the loaf. (There is an
unfortunate incident in the park when Marcus attempts to throw the loaf into
a pond to feed the ducks, and kills one.)

Will finds to his horror that authentic emotions are forming. He likes
Marcus. He doesn't admit this for a long time, but he's a good enough bloke
to buy Marcus a pair of trendy sneakers, and to advise Fiona that since
Marcus is already mocked at school, it is a bad idea, by definition, for him
to sing "Killing Me Softly" at a school assembly. Meanwhile, Will starts
dating Rachel (Rachel Weisz), who turns out to be a much nicer woman than he
deserves (she also has a son much nastier than she deserves).

This plot outline, as it stands, could supply the materials for a film of
complacent stupidity--a formula sitcom with one of the Culkin offspring
blinking cutely. It is much more than that; it's one of the year's most
entertaining films, not only because Grant is so good but because young
Nicholas Hoult has a kind of appeal that cannot be faked. He isn't a
conventionally cute movie child, seems old beyond his years, can never be
caught in an inauthentic moment, and helps us understand why Will likes
him--he likes Marcus because Marcus is so clearly in need of being liked,
and so deserving of it.

The movie has been directed by the Weitz brothers, Paul and Chris, who
directed "American Pie"--which was better than its countless imitators--and
now give us a comedy of confidence and grace. They deserve some of the
credit for this flowering of Grant's star appeal. There is a scene where
Grant does a double-take when he learns that he has been dumped (usually it
is the other way around). The way he handles it--the way he handles the role
in general--shows how hard it is to do light romantic comedy, and how easily
it comes to him. We have all the action heroes and Method script-chewers we
need right now, but the Cary Grant department is understaffed, and Hugh
Grant shows here that he is more than a star, he is a resource.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:16 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG)

THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG)

May 17, 2002

Ganesh: Aasif Mandvi
Ramlogan: Om Puri
Mr. Stewart: James Fox
Beharry: Sanjeev Bhaskar
Leela: Ayesha Dharker
THINKFilm presents a film directed by Ismail Merchant. Written by Caryl
Phillips, based on the novel by V.S. Naipaul. Running time: 117 minutes.
Rated PG.(for mild language). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston
CineArts.

BY ROGER EBERT

The West Indies were a footnote to the British Empire, and the Indian
community of Trinidad was a footnote to the footnote. After slavery was
abolished and the Caribbean still needed cheap labor, thousands of Indians
were brought from one corner of the Empire to another to supply it. They
formed an insular community, treasuring traditional Hindu customs, importing
their dress styles and recipes, recreating India far from home on an island
where it seemed irrelevant to white colonial rulers and the black majority.

The great man produced by these exiles was V.S. Naipaul, the 2001 Nobel
laureate for literature, whose father was a newspaperman with a great
respect for books and ideas. A House for Mr. Biswas (1961) is Naipaul's
novel about his father and his own childhood, and one of the best books of
the century. But Naipaul's career began in 1957 with The Mystic Masseur, a
novel casting a fond but dubious light on the Indian community of Trinidad.
It is now the first of Naipaul's novels to be filmed, directed by Ismail
Merchant, himself an Indian, usually the producing partner for director
James Ivory.

"The Mystic Masseur" is a wry, affectionate delight, a human comedy about a
man who thinks he has had greatness thrust upon him when in fact he has
merely thrust himself in the general direction of greatness. It tells the
story of Ganesh, a schoolteacher with an exaggerated awe for books, who is
inspired by a dotty Englishman to write some of his own. Abandoning the city
for a rural backwater, he begins to compose short philosophical tomes,
which, published by the local printer on a foot-powered flat-bed press, give
him a not quite deserved reputation for profundity.

If Ganesh allowed his success to go to his head, he would be insufferable.
Instead, he is played by Aasif Mandvi as a man so sincere he really does
believe in his mission. Does he have the power to cure with his touch, and
advise troubled people on their lives? Many think he does, and soon he has
become married to the pretty daughter of a canny businessman, who runs taxis
from the city to bring believers to Ganesh's rural retreat.

There is rich humor in the love-hate relationship many Indians have with
their customs, which they leaven with a decided streak of practicality. In
no area is this more true than marriage, as you can see in Mira Nair's
wonderful comedy "Monsoon Wedding." The events leading up to Ganesh's
marriage to the beautiful Leela (Ayesha Dharker) are hilarious, as the
ambitious businessman Ramlogan positions his daughter to capture the rising
young star.

Played by the great Indian actor Om Puri with lip-smacking satisfaction,
Ramlogan makes sure Ganesh appreciates Leela's dark-eyed charm, and then
demonstrates her learning by producing a large wooden sign she has lettered,
with a bright red punctuation mark after every word. "Leela know a lot of
punctuation marks," he boasts proudly, and soon she has Ganesh within her
parentheses. The wedding brings a showdown between the two men; custom
dictates that the father-in-law must toss bills onto a plate as long as the
new husband is still eating his kedgeree, and Ganesh, angered that Ramlogan
has stiffed him with the wedding bill, dines slowly.

The humor in "The Mystic Masseur" is generated by Ganesh's good-hearted
willingness to believe in his ideas and destiny, both of which are slight.
Like a thrift shop Gandhi, he sits on his veranda writing pamphlets and
advising supplicants on health, wealth and marriage. Leela meanwhile quietly
takes charge, managing the family business, as Ganesh becomes the best-known
Indian on Trinidad. Eventually he forms a Hindu Association, collects some
political power, and is elected to parliament, which is the beginning of his
end. Transplanted from his rural base to the capital, he finds his party
outnumbered by Afro-Caribbeans and condescended to by the British governors;
he has traded his stature for a meaningless title, and is correctly seen by
other Indians as a stooge.

The masseur's public career has lasted only from 1943 to 1954. The mistake
would be to assign too much significance to Ganesh. His lack of significance
is the whole point. He rises to visibility as a home-grown guru, is co-opted
by the British colonial government, and by the end of the film is a
nonentity shipped safely out of sight to Oxford on a cultural exchange.
Critics of the film have criticized Ganesh for being a pointless man leading
a marginal life; they don't sense the anger and hurt seething just below the
genial surface of the novel. The young Trinidadian Indian studying at
Oxford, who meets Ganesh at the train station in the opening scene, surely
represents Naipaul, observing the wreck of a man who loomed large in his
childhood.

Movies are rarely about inconsequential characters. They favor characters
who are sensational winners or losers. But Ganesh, one senses, is precisely
the character Naipaul needed to express his feelings about being an Indian
in Trinidad. He has written elsewhere about the peculiarity of being raised
in an Indian community thousands of miles from "home," attempting to reflect
a land none of its members had ever seen. The Empire created generations of
such displaced communities, not least the British exiles in India, sipping
Earl Grey, reading the Times and saluting "God Save the Queen" in blissful
oblivion to the world around them.

Ganesh gets about as far as he could get, given the world he was born into,
and he is such an innocent that many of his illusions persist. Shown around
the Bodleian Library in Oxford by his young guide, the retired statesman
looks at the walls of books, and says, "Boy, this the center of the world!
Everything begin here, everything lead back to this place." Naipaul's whole
career would be about his struggle with that theory.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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------------------------------

Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:27 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE SALTON SEA / *** (R)

THE SALTON SEA / *** (R)

May 17, 2002

Danny/Tom: Val Kilmer
Pooh-Bear: Vincent D'Onofrio
Kujo: Adam Goldberg
Quincy: Luis Guzman
Morgan: Doug Hutchison
Garcetti: Anthony LaPaglia
Bobby: Glenn Plummer
Jimmy the Finn: Peter Sarsgaard
Colette: Deborah Kara Unger
Castle Rock Entertainment presents a film directed by D.J. Caruso. Written
by Tony Gayton. Running time: 103 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence,
drug use, language and some sexuality). Opening today at Pipers Alley and
Landmark Renaissance.

BY ROGER EBERT

"The Salton Sea" is a lowlife black comedy drawing inspiration from
"Memento," "Pulp Fiction" and those trendy British thrillers about drug
lads. It contains one element of startling originality: its bad guy,
nicknamed Pooh-Bear and played by Vincent D'Onofrio in a great weird
demented giggle of a performance; imagine a Batman villain cycled through
the hallucinations of "Requiem for a Dream."

The movie opens with what looks like a crash at the intersection of film and
noir: Val Kilmer sits on the floor and plays a trumpet, surrounded by cash,
photos and flames. He narrates the film, and makes a laundry list of
biblical figures (Judas, the Prodigal Son) he can be compared with. As we
learn about the murder of his wife and the destruction of his life, I was
also reminded of Job.

Kilmer plays Danny Parker, also known as Tom Van Allen; his double identity
spans a life in which he is both a jazz musician and a meth middleman, doing
speed himself, inhabiting the dangerous world of speed freaks ("tweakers")
and acting as an undercover agent for the cops. His life is so arduous we
wonder, not for the first time, why people go to such extraordinary efforts
to get and use the drugs that make them so unhappy. He doesn't use to get
high, but to get from low back to bearable.

The plot involves the usual assortment of lowlifes, scum, killers,
bodyguards, dealers, pathetic women, two-timing cops and strung-out addicts,
all employing Tarantinian dialogue about the flotsam of consumer society
(you'd be surprised to learn what you might find under Bob Hope on eBay).
Towering over them, like a bloated float in a nightmarish Thanksgiving Day
parade, is Pooh-Bear, a drug dealer who lives in a fortified retreat in the
desert and brags about the guy who shorted him $11 and got his head clamped
in a vise while his brains were removed with a handsaw.

D'Onofrio is a gifted actor and his character performances have ranged from
Orson Welles to Abbie Hoffman to the twisted killer with the bizarre murder
devices in "The Cell." Nothing he has done quite approaches Pooh-Bear, an
overweight good ol' boy who uses his folksy accent to explain novel ways of
punishing the disloyal, such as having their genitals eaten off by a rabid
badger. He comes by his nickname because cocaine abuse has destroyed his
nose, and he wears a little plastic job that makes him look like Pooh.

"The Salton Sea" is two movies fighting inside one screenplay. Val Kilmer's
movie is about memory and revenge, and tenderness for the abused woman
(Deborah Kara Unger) who lives across the hall in his fleabag hotel. Kilmer
plays a fairly standard middleman between dealers who might kill him and
cops who might betray him. But he sometimes visits a world that is
essentially the second movie, a nightmarish comedy. Director D.J. Caruso and
writer Tony Gayton ("Murder by Numbers") introduce scenes with images so
weird they're funny to begin with, and then funnier when they're explained.
Consider Pooh-Bear's hobby of restaging the Kennedy assassination with pet
pigeons in model cars. Note the little details like the pink pillbox hat.
Then listen to his driver/bodyguard ask what "JFK" stands for.

On the basis of this film, meth addiction is such a debilitating illness
that it's a wonder its victims have the energy for the strange things the
screenplay puts them up to. We meet, for example, a dealer named Bobby
(Glenn Plummer) whose girlfriend's writhing legs extend frantically from
beneath the mattress he sits on, while he toys with a compressed-air spear
gun. Bobby looks like a man who has earned that good night's sleep.

"The Salton Sea" is all pieces and no coherent whole. Maybe life on meth is
like that. The plot does finally explain itself, like a dislocated shoulder
popping back into place, but then the plot is off the shelf; only the
characters and details set the movie aside from its stablemates. I liked it
because it was so endlessly, grotesquely, inventive: Watching it, I pictured
Tarantino throwing a stick into a swamp, and the movie swimming out through
the muck, retrieving it, and bringing it back with its tail wagging.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:38 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13)

DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13)

May 10, 2002

Featuring Jay Adams, Tony Alva, Bob Biniak, Paul Constantineau, Shogo Kubo,
Jim Muir, Peggy Oki, Stacy Peralta.Sony Pictures Classics presents a
documentary directed by Stacy Peralta. Written by Peralta and Craig Stecyk.
Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language and some drug
references). Opening today at Landmark Century and Evanston CineArts.

BY ROGER EBERT

"Dogtown and Z-Boys," a documentary about how the humble skateboard became
the launch pad for aerial gymnastics, answers a question I have long been
curious about: How and why was the first skateboarder inspired to go aerial,
to break contact with any surface and do acrobatics in mid-air? Consider
that the pioneer was doing this for the very first time over a vertical drop
of perhaps 15 feet to a concrete surface. It's not the sort of thing you try
out of idle curiosity.

The movie answers this and other questions in its history of a sport that
grew out of idle time and boundless energy in the oceanfront neighborhood
between Santa Monica and Venice in California. Today the area contains
expensive condos and trendy restaurants, but circa 1975, it was the last
remaining "beachfront slum" in the Los Angeles area. Druggies and hippies
lived in cheap rentals and supported themselves by working in hot dog
stands, tattoo parlors, head shops and saloons.

Surfing was the definitive lifestyle, the Beach Boys supplied the soundtrack
and tough surfer gangs staked out waves as their turf. In the afternoon,
after the waves died down, they turned to skateboards, which at first were
used as a variation of roller skates. But the members of the Zephyr Team, we
learn, devised a new style of skateboarding, defying gravity, adding
acrobatics, devising stunts. When a drought struck the area and thousands of
swimming pools were drained, they invented vertical skateboarding on the
walls of the empty pools. Sometimes they'd glide so close to the edge that
only one of their four wheels still had a purchase on the lip. One day a
Z-Boy went airborne, and a new style was born--a style reflected today in
Olympic ski acrobatics.

I am not sure whether the members of the Zephyr Team were solely responsible
for all significant advances in the sport, or whether they only think they
were. "Dogtown and Z-Boys" is directed by Stacy Peralta, an original and
gifted team member, still a legend in the sport. Like many of the other
Z-Boys (and one Z-girl), he marketed himself, his name, his image, his
products, and became a successful businessman and filmmaker while still
surfing concrete. His film describes the evolution of skateboarding almost
entirely in terms of the experience of himself and his friends. It's like
the vet who thinks World War II centered around his platoon.

The Southern California lifestyle in general, and surfing and skateboarding
in particular, are insular and narcissistic. People who live indoors have
ideas. People who live outdoors have style. Here is an entire movie about
looking cool while not wiping out. Call it a metaphor for life. There comes
a point when sensible viewers will tire of being told how astonishing and
unique each and every Z-Boy was, while looking at repetitive still photos
and home footage of skateboarders, but the film has an infectious enthusiasm
and we're touched by the film's conviction that all life centered on that
place, that time and that sport.

One question goes unanswered: Was anyone ever killed? Maimed? Crippled?
There is a brief shot of someone on crutches, and a few shots showing
skateboarders falling off their boards, but since aerial gymnastics high
over hard surfaces are clearly dangerous and the Z-Boys wear little or no
protective gear, what's the story? That most of them survived is made clear
by info over the end credits, revealing that although one Zephyr Team member
is in prison and another was "last seen in Mexico," the others all seem to
have married, produced an average of two children, and found success in
business. To the amazement no doubt of their parents.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:46 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)

May 10, 2002

Don: Bob Jay Mills
Donatella: Petra Westen
Marion: Tacey Adams
Joe: Al Schuermann
Chuck: Zia
Don Jr.: Andrew Eichner
Mike: Jerry O'Conner
Barry: Scooter Stephan
Universal Focus presents a film written and directed by Frank Novak. Running
time: 90 minutes. Rated R (for pervasive language, domestic violence and
drug content). Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

BY ROGER EBERT

I watch the guests on "Jerry Springer" with the fascination of an ambulance
driver at Demo Derby. Where do these people come from? Their dialogue may be
"suggested" but their lives are all too evidently real, and they have
tumbled right through the safety net of taste and self-respect and gone
spiraling down, down into the pit of amoral vulgarity. Now comes "Good
Housekeeping," a film about how the people on Springer live when they're not
on camera.

No, it's not a documentary. It was written and directed by Frank Novak,
otherwise a trendy Los Angeles furniture manufacturer, who regards his white
trash characters with deadpan neutrality. How is the audience expected to
react? Consider this dialogue:

Don: "Maybe if we cut her in half we could get her in there."

Chuck: "We can't cut her in half!"

Don: "So what are you? Mr. Politically Correct?"

Don and Chuck are brothers. Don (Bob Jay Mills) uneasily shares his house
with his wife Donatella (Petra Westen), while Chuck (credited only as Zia)
sleeps with his girlfriend Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan) in Don's car.

Things are not good between Don and Donatella, and he uses 2x4s and
plasterboard to build a wall that cuts the house in two ("She got way more
square feet than I got," he tells the cops during one of their frequent
visits). Realizing he has forgotten something, Don cuts a crawl hole in the
wall so that Don Jr. (Andrew Eichner) can commute between parents. Soon
Donatella's new lesbian lover Marion (Tacey Adams) is poking her head
through the hole to discuss the "parameters" Don is setting for his son.

Donatella is a forklift operator. Don is self-employed as a trader of action
figures, with a specialty in Pinhead and other Hellraiser characters. When
Chuck tries to sell him a Sad-Eye Doll, he responds like a pro: "Couldn't
you Swap-Meet it? I'm not gonna put that on my table and drag down my other
merch." Don Jr. has less respect for action figures and occasionally saws
off their heads.

Terrible things happen to the many cars in this extended family, both by
accident and on purpose. One of the funniest sequences shows a big blond
family friend, desperately hung-over, methodically crunching into every
other car in the driveway before she runs over the mailbox. Don lives in
fear of Donatella running him down, and at one point discusses his defense
with a gun-show trader (Al Schuermann), who scoffs, "You would use a .38 to
defend yourself?" He comes back with real protection against vehicular
manslaughter: a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

Marion, the well-mannered lesbian lover, is the source of many of the film's
biggest laughs because of the incongruity of her crush on Donatella. She
watches Donatella smoke, eat, talk and blow her nose all at the same time,
and her only reaction is to eat all the more politely, in the hope of
setting an example. Marion is an accountant at the factory where Donatella
works; she dresses in chic business suits, has smart horn-rim glasses and a
stylish haircut, and plunges into Springerland with an arsenal of liberal
cliches. At one point, after a nasty domestic disturbance, she tries to make
peace by inviting Don out to brunch. "There's no way the cops can make you
go to brunch," Don's beer-bellied buddies reassure him.

It is perhaps a warning signal of incipient alcoholism when the family car
has a Breathalyzer permanently attached to the dashboard. Yet Don is not
without standards, and warns his brother against making love in the car
because "I drive Mom to church in it." Family life follows a familiar
pattern. Most evenings end with a fight in the yard, and Novak and his
cinematographer, Alex Vendler, are skilled at getting convincing,
spontaneous performances out of their unknown actors; many scenes, including
the free-for-alls, play with the authenticity of a documentary.

Just as mainstream filmmakers are fascinated by the rich and famous, so
independent filmmakers are drawn to society's hairy underbelly. "Good
Housekeeping" plunges far beneath Todd Solondz's territory and enters the
suburbs of John Waters' universe in its fascination for people who live
without benefit of education, taste, standards, hygiene and shame. Indeed,
all they have enough of are cigarettes, used cars, controlled substances and
four-letter words. The movie is, however, very funny as you peek at it
through the fingers in front of your eyes.

Note: "Good Housekeeping" has had its ups and downs. It won the grand jury
prize at Slamdance 2000, was the only U.S. film chosen for Critic's Week at
Cannes that year, and was picked up for distribution by the Shooting
Gallery--which, alas, went out of business, leaving the film orphaned. "Good
Housekeeping" has its U.S. premiere today through Thursday at the Gene
Siskel Film Center.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:19:56 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R)

NINE QUEENS / *** (R)

May 10, 2002

Marcos: Ricardo Darin
Juan: Gaston Pauls
Valeria: Leticia Bredice
Gandolfo: Ignasi Abadal
Aunt: Pochi Ducasse
Federico: Tomas Fonzi
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by Fabian
Bielinsky. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 115 minutes.
Rated R (for language). Opening today at the Music Box Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

Fabian Bielinsky's "Nine Queens" is a con within a con within a con. There
comes a time when we think we've gotten to the bottom, and then the floor
gets pulled out again and we fall another level. Since nothing is as it
seems (it doesn't even seem as it seems), watching the film is like
observing a chess game in which all of the pieces are in plain view but one
player has figured out a way to cheat. "David Mamet might kill for a script
as good," Todd McCarthy writes in Variety. True, although Mamet might also
reasonably claim to have inspired it; the set-up owes something to his
"House of Games," although familiarity with that film will not help you
figure out this one.

The film starts with a seemingly chance meeting. Indeed, almost everything
in the film is "seemingly." A young would-be con man named Juan (Gaston
Pauls) is doing the $20 bill switch with a naive cashier--the switch I have
never been able to figure out, where you end up with $39 while seemingly
doing the cashier a favor. Juan succeeds. The cashier goes off duty. Juan is
greedy and tries the same trick on her replacement. The first cashier comes
back with the manager, screaming that she was robbed. At this point Marcos
(Ricardo Darin), a stranger in the store, flashes his gun, identifies
himself as a cop, arrests the thief and hauls him off.

Of course Marcos is only seemingly a cop. He lectures Juan on the dangers of
excessive greed and buys him breakfast, and then the two of them seemingly
happen upon an opportunity to pull a big swindle involving the "nine
queens," a rare sheet of stamps. This happens when Valeria (Leticia
Bredice), seemingly Marcos' sister, berates him because one of his old
criminal associates tried to con a client in the hotel where she seemingly
works. The old con seemingly had a heart attack, and now the field is
seemingly open for Marcos and Juan to bilk the seemingly rich and drunk
Gandolfo (Ignasi Abadal).

Now before you think I've given away the game with all those "seeminglys,"
let me point out that they may only seemingly be seeminglys. They may in
fact be as they seem. Or seemingly otherwise. As Juan and Marcos try to work
out their scheme, which involves counterfeit stamps, we wonder if in fact
the whole game may be a pigeon drop with Juan as the pigeon. But, no, the
fake stamps are stolen, seemingly by complete strangers, requiring Marcos
and Juan to try to con the owner of the real nine queens out of stamps they
can sell Gandolfo. (Since they have no plans to really pay for these stamps,
their profit would be the same in either case.)

And on and on, around and around, in an elegant and sly deadpan comedy. A
plot, however clever, is only the clockwork; what matters is what kind of
time a movie tells. "Nine Queens" is blessed with a gallery of well-drawn
character roles, including the alcoholic mark and his two bodyguards; the
avaricious widow who owns the "nine queens" and her much younger
bleached-blond boyfriend, and Valeria the sister, who opposes Marcos' seamy
friends and life of crime but might be willing to sleep with Gandolfo if she
can share in the spoils.

Juan meanwhile falls for Valeria himself, and then there are perfectly timed
hiccups in the plot where the characters (and we) apparently see through a
deception, only to find that deeper reality explains everything--maybe. The
story plays out in modern-day Buenos Aires, a city that looks sometimes
Latin, sometimes American, sometimes Spanish, sometimes German, sometimes
modern, sometimes ancient. Is it possible the city itself is pulling a con
on its inhabitants, and that some underlying reality will deceive everyone?
The ultimate joke of course would be if the Argentine economy collapsed, so
that everyone's gains, ill-gotten or not, would evaporate. But that is
surely too much to hope for.

Note:"Nine Queens" is like a South American version of "Stolen Summer," the
movie that won the contest sponsored by HBO, Miramax, and Matt Damon and Ben
Affleck. According to Variety, some 350 screenplays were submitted in an
Argentine competition, Bielinsky's won, and he was given funds to film. It's
illuminating that in both cases such competitions yielded more literate and
interesting screenplays than the studios are usually able to find through
their own best efforts.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:04 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] STAR WARS -- EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES / ** (PG)

STAR WARS -- EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES / ** (PG)

May 10, 2002

Obi-Wan Kenobi: Ewan McGregor
Senator Padme Amidala: Natalie Portman
Anakin Skywalker: Hayden Christensen

Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by George Lucas. Produced by
Rick McGallum. Written by George Lucas and Jonathan Hales. Photographed by
David Tattersall. Edited by Ben Burtt. Music by John Williams. Running time:
124 minutes. Classified PG (for sustained sequences of sci-fi
action/violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

It is not what's there on the screen that disappoints me, but what's not
there. It is easy to hail the imaginative computer images that George Lucas
brings to "Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones." To marvel at his
strange new aliens and towering cities and sights such as thousands of
clones all marching in perfect ranks into a huge spaceship. To see the
beginnings of the dark side in young Anakin Skywalker. All of those
experiences are there to be cheered by fans of the "Star Wars" series, and
for them this movie will affirm their faith.

But what about the agnostic viewer? The hopeful ticket buyer walking in not
as a cultist, but as a moviegoer hoping for a great experience? Is this
"Star Wars" critic-proof and scoff-resistant? Yes, probably, at the box
office. But as someone who admired the freshness and energy of the earlier
films, I was amazed, at the end of "Episode II," to realize that I had not
heard one line of quotable, memorable dialogue. And the images, however
magnificently conceived, did not have the impact they deserved. I'll get to
them in a moment.

The first hour of "Episode II" contains a sensational chase through the
skyscraper canyons of a city, and assorted briefer shots of space ships and
planets. But most of that first hour consists of dialogue, as the characters
establish plot points, update viewers on what has happened since "Episode
I," and debate the political crisis facing the Republic. They talk and talk
and talk. And their talk is in a flat utilitarian style: They seem more like
lawyers than the heroes of a romantic fantasy.

In the classic movie adventures that inspired "Star Wars," dialogue was
often colorful, energetic, witty and memorable. The dialogue in "Episode II"
exists primarily to advance the plot, provide necessary information, and
give a little screen time to continuing characters who are back for a new
episode. The only characters in this stretch of the film who have inimitable
personal styles are the beloved Yoda and the hated Jar-Jar Binks, whose
idiosyncrasies turned off audiences for "Phantom Menace." Yes, Jar-Jar's
accent may be odd and his mannerisms irritating, but at least he's a unique
individual and not a bland cipher. The other characters--Obi-Wan Kenobi,
Padme Amidala, Anakin Skywalker--seem so strangely stiff and formal in their
speech that an unwary viewer might be excused for thinking they were the
clones, soon to be exposed.

Too much of the rest of the film is given over to a romance between Padme
and Anakin in which they're incapable of uttering anything other than the
most basic and weary romantic cliches, while regarding each other as if love
was something to be endured rather than cherished. There is not a romantic
word they exchange that has not long since been reduced to cliche.

No, wait: Anakin tells Padme at one point: "I don't like the sand. It's
coarse and rough and irritating--not like you. You're soft and smooth." I
hadn't heard that before.

When it comes to the computer-generated images, I feel that I cannot
entirely trust the screening experience I had. I could see that in
conception many of these sequences were thrilling and inventive. I liked the
planet of rain, and the vast coliseum in which the heroes battle strange
alien beasts, and the towering Senate chamber, and the secret factory where
clones were being manufactured.

But I felt like I had to lean with my eyes toward the screen in order to see
what I was being shown. The images didn't pop out and smack me with delight,
the way they did in earlier films. There was a certain fuzziness, an
indistinctness that seemed to undermine their potential power.

Later I went on the Web to look at the trailers for the movie, and was
startled to see how much brighter, crisper and more colorful they seemed on
my computer screen than in the theater. Although I know that video images
are routinely timed to be brighter than movie images, I suspect another
reason for this. "Episode II" was shot entirely on digital video. It is
being projected in digital video on 19 screens, but on some 3,000 others,
audiences will see it as I did, transferred to film.

How it looks in digital projection I cannot say, although I hope to get a
chance to see it that way. I know Lucas believes it looks better than film,
but then he has cast his lot with digital. My guess is that the film version
of "Episode II" might jump more sharply from the screen in a small multiplex
theater. But I saw it on the largest screen in Chicago, and my suspicion is,
the density and saturation of the image were not adequate to imprint the
image there in a forceful way.

Digital images contain less information than 35mm film images, and the more
you test their limits, the more you see that. Two weeks ago I saw "Patton"
shown in 70mm Dimension 150, and it was the most astonishing projection I
had ever seen--absolute detail on a giant screen, which was 6,000 times
larger than a frame of the 70mm film. That's what large-format film can do,
but it's a standard Hollywood has abandoned (except for IMAX), and we are
being asked to forget how good screen images can look--to accept the
compromises. I am sure I will hear from countless fans who assure me that
"Episode II" looks terrific, but it does not. At least, what I saw did not.
It may look great in digital projection on multiplex-size screens, and I'm
sure it will look great on DVD, but on a big screen it lacks the authority
it needs.

I have to see the film again to do it justice. I'm sure I will greatly enjoy
its visionary sequences on DVD; I like stuff like that. The dialogue is
another matter. Perhaps because a movie like this opens everywhere in the
world on the same day, the dialogue has to be dumbed down for easier dubbing
or subtitling. Wit, poetry and imagination are specific to the languages
where they originate, and although translators can work wonders, sometimes
you get the words but not the music. So it's safer to avoid the music.

But in a film with a built-in audience, why not go for the high notes? Why
not allow the dialogue to be inventive, stylish and expressive?

There is a certain lifelessness in some of the acting, perhaps because the
actors were often filmed in front of blue screens so their environments
could be added later by computer. Actors speak more slowly than they
might--flatly, factually, formally, as if reciting. Sometimes that reflects
the ponderous load of the mythology they represent. At other times it simply
shows that what they have to say is banal. "Episode II-- Attack of the
Clones" is a technological exercise that lacks juice and delight. The title
is more appropriate than it should be.

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