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movies-digest           Monday, May 20 2002           Volume 02 : Number 353



[MV] THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13)
[MV] UNFAITHFUL / *** (R)
[MV] BARAN / ***1/2 (PG)
[MV] HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated)
[MV] JASON X / 1/2* (R)
[MV] LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13)
[MV] THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13)
[MV] WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R)

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:13 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13)

THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13)

May 10, 2002

Dizzy/Gil: DJ Qualls
Bear Harrison: Lyle Lovett
Luther: Eddie Griffin
Danielle: Eliza Dushku
Nora: Zooey Deschanel
Columbia Pictures/Revolution Studios presents a film directed by Ed Decter.
Written by David Kendall. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexual
content, language, vulgarity, crude humor and mild drug references). Opening
today at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

DJ Qualls stars in "The New Guy" as a high school misfit who switches
schools and gets a fresh start. At Rocky Creek, he was the target of cruel
jokes almost daily (sample: being tied to a chair while wearing false
breasts), but now, at Eastland High and with a new haircut, he is seen as a
cool hero. The point is, he explains with relief, "today nobody stuffed me
in my locker or singed off my ass hairs."

The movie made from this material is quirkier than I would have expected,
considering that the building blocks have been scavenged from the trash heap
of earlier teenage comedies. Much of the credit goes to Qualls (from "Road
Trip"), who not only plays the son of Lyle Lovett in this movie but looks
biologically descended from him, no mean feat. He has a goofy grin and an
offhand way with dialogue that make him much more likable than your usual
teenage comedy hero.

Known at one school by his nickname Dizzy and at the other by his first name
Gil, D/G does not approach the dating game with high expectations. Here's
how he asks a popular girl out on a date: "Maybe sometime if you would like
to drink coffee near me, I would pay."

There is a school scandal at Rocky Creek when a librarian does something
painful and embarrassing I cannot describe here to that part of his anatomy
I cannot name, and he ends up in prison. (His condition or crime--I am not
sure--is described as Tourette's syndrome, which is either a misdiagnosis, a
mispronunciation, or an example of Tourette's in action.)

Yes, prison. The movie begins with a direct-to-camera narration by Luther
(Eddie Griffin), who is in prison for undisclosed reasons and is the
narrator of this film for reasons even more deeply concealed. Perhaps my
attention strayed, but I was unable to discern any connection between Luther
and the other characters, and was baffled by how Dizzy/Gil was in prison
whenever he needed to get advice from Luther, and then out again whenever it
was necessary for him to rejoin the story in progress. Perhaps a subplot, or
even a whole movie, is missing from the middle.

In any event, Dizzy/Gil is seen as a neat guy at the new school, especially
after he unfurls a giant American flag at football practice and stands in
front of it dressed as George C. Scott in "Patton" and delivers a speech so
rousing that the team wins for the first time in five years. He also steals
a horse and rides around on it more than is necessary.

The movie has all the shots you would expect in a movie of this sort:
cheerleaders, football heroics, pratfalls. Some of them are cruel, as when a
bully stuffs a midget in a trash can and rolls it downhill. Others are
predictably vulgar, as when Dizzy snatches a surveillance camera from the
wall and (aided by its extension cord of infinite length) uses it to send a
live broadcast into every classroom of a hated teacher struggling with a
particularly difficult bowel movement. Sometimes even verbal humor is
attempted, as when a high school counselor (Illeana Douglas) tells our hero
he is in denial, and helpfully explains, "Denial is not just a river in
Egypt.''

I don't know why this movie was made or who it was made for. It is however
not assembly-line fodder, and seems occasionally to be the work of inmates
who have escaped from the Hollywood High School Movie Asylum. It makes
little sense, fails as often as it succeeds, and yet is not hateful and is
sometimes quite cheerfully original. And DJ Qualls is a kid you can't help
but like--a statement I do not believe I have ever before made about the
hero of a teenage vulgarian movie.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

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

UNFAITHFUL / *** (R)

May 10, 2002

Connie Sumner: Diane Lane
Edward Sumner: Richard Gere
Paul Martel: Olivier Martinez
Charlie Sumner: Erik Per Sullivan
Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Adrian Lyne. Written by
Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr, based on a script by Claude Chabrol.
Running time: 123 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality, partial nudity, language
and a scene of violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

The heart has its reasons, said the French philosopher Pascal, quoted by the
American philosopher Woody Allen. It is a useful insight when no other
reasons seem apparent. Connie Sumner's heart and other organs have their
reasons for straying outside a happy marriage in "Unfaithful,'' but the
movie doesn't say what they are. This is not necessarily a bad thing,
sparing us tortured Freudian explanations and labored plot points. It is
almost always more interesting to observe behavior than to listen to
reasons.

Connie (Diane Lane) and her husband, Edward (Richard Gere), live with their
9-year-old son, Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan), in one of those Westchester
County houses that has a room for every mood. They are happy together, or at
least the movie supplies us with no reasons why they are unhappy. One windy
day she drives into New York City, is literally blown down on top of a rare
book dealer named Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), and is invited upstairs
for Band-Aids and a cup of tea. He occupies a large flat filled with shelves
of books and art objects.

Martel is your average Calvin Klein model as a bibliophile. He has the
Spanish looks, the French accent, the permanent three-day beard, and the
strength to suspend a woman indefinitely in any position while making love.
He is also cool in his seduction methods. Instead of making a crude pass, he
asks her to accept a book as a gift from him, and directs her down an aisle
to the last book on the end of the second shelf from the top, where he tells
her what page to turn to, and then joins her in reciting the words there: Be
happy for this moment, for this moment is your life.

Does it occur to Connie that Martel planted that book for just such an
occasion as this? No, because she likes to be treated in such a way, and
soon she's on the phone with a transparent ruse to get up to his apartment
again, where Martel overcomes her temporary stall in bed by commanding her:
Hit me! That breaks the logjam, and soon they're involved in a passionate
affair that involves arduous sex in his apartment and quick sex in
restrooms, movie theaters and corridors. (The movie they go to see is Tati's
"Monsieur Hulot's Holiday,'' which, despite its stature on my list of The
Great Movies, fails to compete with furtive experiments that would no doubt
have Hulot puffing furiously at his pipe.) Edward senses that something is
wrong. There are clues, but mostly he picks up on her mood, and eventually
hires a man to shadow her.

Discovering where Martel lives, he visits there one day, and what happens
then I will not reveal. What does not happen then, I am happy to reveal, is
that the movie doesn't turn into a standard thriller in which death stalks
Westchester County and the wife and husband fear murder by each other, or by
Martel.

That's what's intriguing about the film: Instead of pumping up the plot with
recycled manufactured thrills, it's content to contemplate two reasonably
sane adults who get themselves into an almost insoluble dilemma.

"Unfaithful" contains, as all movies involving suburban families are
required to contain, a scene where the parents sit proudly in the audience
while their child performs bravely in a school play. But there are no
detectives lurking in the shadows to arrest them, and no killers skulking in
the parking lot with knives or tire-irons. No, the meaning of the scene is
simply, movingly, that these two people in desperate trouble are
nevertheless able to smile at their son on the stage.

The movie was directed by Adrian Lyne, best known for higher-voltage films
like "Fatal Attraction" and "Indecent Proposal.'' This film is based on "La
Femme Infidele" (1969) by Claude Chabrol, which itself is an update of
Madame Bovary. Lyne's film is juicier and more passionate than Chabrol's,
but both share the fairly daring idea of showing a plot that is entirely
about illicit passion and its consequences in a happy marriage. Although
cops turn up from time to time in "Unfaithful," this is not a crime story,
but a marital tragedy. Richard Gere and Diane Lane are well-suited to the
roles, exuding a kind of serene materialism that seems happily settled in
suburbia. It is all the more shocking when Lane revisits Martel's apartment
because there is no suggestion that she is unhappy with Gere, starved for
sex, or especially impulsive. She goes back up there because--well, because
she wants to. He's quite a guy. On one visit he shows her The Joy of Cooking
in Braille. And then his fingers brush hers as if he's reading The Joy of
Sex on her skin.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:28 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BARAN / ***1/2 (PG)

BARAN / ***1/2 (PG)

May 3, 2002

Lateef: Hossein Abedini
Rahmat/Baran: Zahra Bahrami
Memar: Mohammad Reza Naji
Bric-a-brac trader: Hossein Mahjoub
Soltan: Abbas Rahimi
Najaf: Gholam Ali Bakhsi
Miramax Films presents a film written and directed by Majid Majidi. Running
time: 99 minutes. In Farsi and Dari with English subtitles. Rated PG.(for
language and brief violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

What are they like, over there in Iran? Are they all glowering fanatics,
stewing in resentment of America? What's your mental image? When a land is
distant, unknown and labeled as an enemy, it's easy to think in simple
terms. No doubt Iranians are as quick to think evil about us as we are to
think evil about them. The intriguing thing about an Iranian movie like
"Baran" is that it gives human faces to these strangers. It could be a
useful learning tool for those who have not traveled widely, who never see
foreign films, who reduce whole nations to labels.

The movie is a romantic fable about a construction worker. His name is
Lateef (Hossein Abedini), and he labors on a building site not far from the
border with Afghanistan. All of the labor here is manual, including hauling
50-pound bags of cement up a series of ramps. Lateef doesn't actually work
very hard, since he is Iranian and most of the labor is being done by
underpaid refugees from Afghanistan. Lateef is the tea boy, bringing hot
cups to the workers and drinking more than his own share.

We learn at the beginning of the movie that millions of Afghanis have poured
into Iran as refugees. Since it is illegal to hire them, they work secretly
for low wages, like undocumented Mexicans in America. Many are fleeing the
Taliban for the comparatively greater freedom and prosperity of Iran, a
distinction that may seem small to us, but not to them. (The title cards
carrying this information were already in place when the film debuted at the
2001 Montreal and Toronto festivals, and were not added post-9/11.)

One day there is an accident on the site. A man named Najaf injures his leg,
and that is a catastrophe, because he has five children to feed in the
squatters' camp where his family lives. Najaf sends his son Rahmat (Zahra
Bahrami) to take his place, but the son is small, slight and young, and
staggers under the burden of the concrete sacks. So Memar, the construction
boss, who pays low wages but is not unkind, gives Rahmat the job of tea boy
and reassigns Lateef to real work.

Lateef is lazy, immature, resentful. He trashes the kitchen in revenge, and
makes things hard for Rahmat. Yet at the same time he finds something
intriguing about the new tea boy, and eventually Lateef discovers the
secret: The boy is a girl. So desperate for money was Rahmat's family that
in a society where women are strictly forbidden from mixing with men on a
job like this, a deception was planned. In keeping the secret, Lateef begins
his journey to manhood and tolerance.

The outlines of "Baran," as they emerge, seem as much like an ancient fable
as a modern story. Middle Eastern society, so insistent on the division
between men and women, has a literature filled with stories about men and
women in disguise, passing through each other's worlds. The vast gulf
between Lateef and Rahmat is dramatized by the way they essentially fall in
love without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, watching conditions on the
work site and seeing raids by government agents looking for illegal workers,
we get an idea of Iran's ground-level economy.

My description perhaps makes the film sound grim and gray, covered with a
silt of concrete dust. Not at all. It is the latest work by Majid Majidi,
whose "The Children of Heaven" (1997) was a heartwarming fable about a
brother and sister who lose a pair of shoes and try to hide this calamity
from their parents. The director uses natural colors and painterly
compositions to make even the most spartan locations look beautiful, and as
Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com observes: "Majidi uses sunlight, a
completely free resource if you can time your filmmaking around it, as a
dazzling special effect."

What happens between Rahmat and Lateef I will leave you to discover. There
are many surprises along the way, one of the best involving a man Lateef
meets during a long journey--an itinerant shoemaker, who has thoughtful
observations about life. "Baran" is the latest in a flowering of good films
from Iran, and gives voice to the moderates there. It shows people existing
and growing in the cracks of their society's inflexible walls.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:40 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13)

HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13)

May 3, 2002

Val Waxman: Woody Allen
Ellie: Tea Leoni
Ed: George Hamilton
Lori: Debra Messing
Al Hack: Mark Rydell
Hal: Treat Williams
DreamWorks presents a film written and directed by Woody Allen. Running
time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some drug references and sexual
material).

BY ROGER EBERT

Val Waxman is a movie director going through a slow period in his career.
Maybe it's more like a slow decade. He left his last movie project,
explaining, "I quit over a big thing." What was that? "They fired me." Then
he gets a big break, Galaxie Studios has just green-lighted "The City that
Never Sleeps," and his ex-wife has convinced the studio head that Val,
despite his laundry list of psychosomatic anxieties and neurotic tics, is
the right guy to direct it.

Woody Allen's new comedy "Hollywood Ending" quickly adds a complication to
this setup: Waxman goes blind. It may all be in his mind, but he can't see a
thing. For his ever-smiling agent Al Hack (Mark Rydell), this is
insufficient cause to leave the project. Al says he will glide through the
picture at Waxman's elbow, and no one will ever notice. When the studio
demurs at the agent being on the set, Al and Val recruit another seeing-eye
man: The business student (Barney Cheng) who has been hired as the
translator for the Chinese cinematographer. The translator says he'll blend
right in: "I will practice casual banter."

Further complications: Waxman's ex-wife Ellie (Tea Leoni) is now engaged to
Hal (Treat Williams), the head of Galaxie Studios. Waxman casts his current
squeeze, Lori (Debra Messing), for a supporting role in the movie, but while
Lori is away at a spa getting in shape, co-star Sharon (Tiffani Thiessen)
moves on Waxman. In his dressing room, she removes her robe while explaining
that she is eager to perform sexual favors for all of her directors (Waxman,
who cannot see her abundant cleavage, helpfully suggests she advertise this
willingness in the Directors' Guild magazine).

What is Val Waxman's movie about? We have no idea. Neither does Waxman, who
agrees with every suggestion so he won't have to make any decisions. He's
not only blind but apparently has ears that don't work in stereo, since he
can't tell where people are standing by the sound of their voices, and
spends much of his time gazing into space. No one notices this, maybe
because directors are such gods on movies that they can get away with
anything.

The situation is funny and Allen of course populates it with zingy
one-liners, orchestrated with much waving of the hands (he's a virtuoso of
body language). But somehow the movie doesn't get over the top. It uses the
blindness gimmick in fairly obvious ways, and doesn't bring it to another
level--to build on the blindness instead of just depending on it. When
Waxman confesses his handicap to the wrong woman--a celebrity
journalist--because he thinks he's sitting next to someone he can trust,
that's very funny. But too often he's just seen with a vacant stare, trying
to bluff his way through conversations.

Why not use the realities of a movie set to suggest predicaments for the
secretly blind? Would Val always need to take his translator into the honey
wagon with him? Could there be tragic misunderstandings in the catering
line? Would he wander unknowingly into a shot? How about the cinematographer
offering him a choice of lenses, and he chooses the lens cap? David Mamet's
"State and Main" does a better job of twisting the realities of a movie into
the materials of comedy.

Because Allen is a great verbal wit and because he's effortlessly
ingratiating, I had a good time at the movie even while not really buying
it. I enjoyed Tea Leoni's sunny disposition, although she spends too much
time being the peacemaker between the two men in her life and not enough
time playing a character who is funny in herself. George Hamilton, as a
tanned studio flunky, suggests a familiar Hollywood type, the guy who is
drawing a big salary for being on the set without anybody being quite sure
what he's there for (he carries a golf club to give himself an identity--the
guy who carries the golf club). And Mark Rydell smiles and smiles and
smiles, as an agent who reasons that anything he has 10 percent of must be
an unqualified good thing. As Waxman's seeing eyes, Barney Cheng adds a nice
element: Not only is Waxman blind, but he is being given an inexact
description of the world through the translator's English, which is always
slightly off-track.

I liked the movie without loving it. It's not great Woody Allen, like "Sweet
and Lowdown" or "Bullets Over Broadway," but it's smart and sly, and the
blindness is an audacious idea. It also has moments when you can hear Allen
editorializing in the dialogue. My favorite is this exchange:

"He has made some very financially successful American films."

"That should tell you everything you need to know about him."

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:54 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13)

SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13)

May 3, 2002

Spider-Man/Peter Parker: Tobey     Maguire
Green Goblin/ Norman Osborn: Willem Dafoe
Mary Jane: Kirsten Dunst
Harry Osborn: James Franco
Ben Parker: Cliff Robertson
May Parker: Rosemary Harris

Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Sam Raimi. Written by David
Koepp. Based on the Marvel comic by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Running time:
121 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for stylized violence and action).

BY ROGER EBERT

Imagine "Superman" with a Clark Kent more charismatic than the Man of Steel,
and you'll understand how "Spider-Man" goes wrong. Tobey Maguire is
pitch-perfect as the socially retarded Peter Parker, but when he becomes
Spider-Man, the film turns to action sequences that zip along like
perfunctory cartoons. Not even during Spidey's first experimental outings do
we feel that flesh and blood are contending with gravity. Spidey soars too
quickly through the skies of Manhattan; he's as convincing as Mighty Mouse.

The appeal of the best sequences in the Superman and Batman movies is that
they lend weight and importance to comic-book images. Within the ground
rules set by each movie, they even have plausibility. As a reader of the
Spider-Man comics, I admired the vertiginous frames showing Spidey dangling
from terrifying heights. He had the powers of a spider and the instincts of
a human being, but the movie is split between a plausible Peter Parker and
an inconsequential superhero.

Consider a sequence early in the film, after Peter Parker is bitten by a
mutant spider and discovers his new powers. His hand is sticky. He doesn't
need glasses anymore. He was scrawny yesterday, but today he's got muscles.
The movie shows him becoming aware of these facts, but insufficiently amazed
(or frightened) by them. He learns how to spin and toss webbing, and finds
that he can make enormous leaps. And then there's a scene where he's like a
kid with a new toy, jumping from one rooftop to another, making giant leaps,
whooping with joy.

Remember the first time you saw the characters defy gravity in "Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? They transcended gravity, but they didn't dismiss it:
They seemed to possess weight, dimension and presence. Spider-Man as he
leaps across the rooftops is landing too lightly, rebounding too much like a
bouncing ball. He looks like a video game figure, not like a person having
an amazing experience.

The other super-being in the movie is the Green Goblin, who surfs the skies
in jet-shoes. He, too, looks like a drawing being moved quickly around a
frame, instead of like a character who has mastered a daring form of
locomotion. He's handicapped, too, by his face, which looks like a high-tech
action figure with a mouth that doesn't move. I understand why it's immobile
(we're looking at a mask), but I'm not persuaded; the movie could simply
ordain that the Green Goblin's exterior shell has a face that's mobile, and
the character would become more interesting. (True, Spider-Man has no mouth,
and Peter Parker barely opens his--the words slip out through a reluctant
slit.)

The film tells Spidey's origin story--who Peter Parker is, who Aunt May
(Rosemary Harris) and Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) are, how Peter's an
outcast at school, how he burns with unrequited love for Mary Jane Watson
(Kirsten Dunst), how he peddles photos of Spider-Man to cigar-chomping
editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons).

Peter Parker was crucial in the evolution of Marvel comics because he was
fallible and had recognizable human traits. He was a nerd, a loner, socially
inept, insecure, a poor kid being raised by relatives. Maguire gets all of
that just right, and I enjoyed the way Dunst is able to modulate her
gradually increasing interest in this loser who begins to seem attractive to
her. I also liked the complexity of the villain, who in his Dr. Jekyll
manifestation is brilliant tycoon Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) and in his
Mr. Hyde persona is a cackling psychopath. Osborn's son Harry (James Franco)
is a rich kid, embarrassed by his dad's wealth, who is Peter's best and only
friend, and Norman is affectionate toward Peter even while their alter-egos
are deadly enemies. That works, and there's an effective scene where Osborn
has a conversation with his invisible dark side.

The origin story is well told, and the characters will not disappoint anyone
who values the original comic books. It's in the action scenes that things
fall apart. Consider the scene where Spider-Man is given a cruel choice
between saving Mary Jane or a cable car full of school kids. He tries to
save both, so that everyone dangles from webbing that seems about to pull
loose. The visuals here could have given an impression of the enormous
weights and tensions involved, but instead the scene seems more like a
bloodless storyboard of the idea. In other CGI scenes, Spidey swoops from
great heights to street level and soars back up among the skyscrapers again
with such dizzying speed that it seems less like a stunt than like a
fast-forward version of a stunt.

I have one question about the Peter Parker character: Does the movie go too
far with his extreme social paralysis? Peter tells Mary Jane he just wants
to be friends. "Only a friend?" she repeats. "That's all I have to give," he
says. How so? Impotent? Spidey-sense has skewed his sexual instincts? Afraid
his hands will get stuck?

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:07 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated)

THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated)

April 26, 2002

Erika Kohut: Isabelle Huppert
The Mother: Annie Girardot
Walter Klemmer: Benoit Magimel
Mrs. Schober: Susanne Lothar
Dr. Blonskij: Udo Samel
Anna Schober: Anna Sigalevitch
Mme Blonskij: Cornelia Kondgen
Baritone: Thomas Weinhappel
Kino International presents a film written and directed by Michael Haneke.
Based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek. Running time: 130 minutes. No MPAA
rating (intended for adults). In French with English subtitles. Opening
today at Landmark Century.

BY ROGER EBERT

There is a self-assurance in Isabelle Huppert that defies all explanation. I
interviewed her in 1977, asking her how she got her start in the movies. She
knocked on the door of a Paris studio, she said, and announced, "I am here."
Was she kidding? I peered at her. I thought not.

In Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," which won three awards at Cannes
2001 (best actress, actor and film), she plays a bold woman with a secret
wound. She is Erika Kohut, 40ish, a respected instructor at a conservatory
of music in Vienna. Demanding, severe, distant, unsmiling, she leads a
secret life of self-mutilation. That she sleeps in the same bed with her
domineering mother is no doubt a clue--but to what?

Erika is fascinated with the sexual weaknesses and tastes of men. There is a
scene where she visits a porn shop in Vienna, creating an uncomfortable
tension by her very presence. The male clients are presumably there to
indulge their fantasies about women, but faced with a real one, they look
away, disturbed or ashamed. If she were obviously a prostitute, they could
handle that, but she's apparently there to indulge her own tastes, and that
takes all the fun out of it, for them. She returns their furtive glances
with a shriveling gaze.

She has a handsome young student named Walter (Benoit Magimel). She notices
him in a particular way. They have a clash of wills. He makes it clear he is
interested in her. Not long after, in one of the school's restrooms, they
have a sexual encounter--all the more electrifying because while she shocks
him with her brazen behavior, she refuses to actually have sex with him. She
wants the upper hand.

What games does she want to play? A detailed and subtle plan of revenge
against her mother is involved, and Walter, who is not really into
sadomasochism, allows himself to be enlisted out of curiosity, or perhaps
because he hopes she will yield to him at the end of the scenario. Does it
work out that way? Some audience members will dislike the ending, but with a
film like this any conventional ending would be a cop-out.

Most sexual relationships in the movies have a limited number of possible
outcomes, but this one is a mystery. Another mystery is, what's wrong with
Erika? She is not simply an adventuress, a sexual experimenter, a
risk-taker. Some buried pathology is at work. Walter's idle thoughts about
an experienced older woman have turned into nightmares about experiences he
doesn't even want to know about.

Huppert often plays repressed, closed-off, sexually alert women. At 47, she
looks curiously as she did at 22; she is thin, with fine, freckled skin that
does not seem to weather, and seems destined to be one of those women who
was never really young and then never really ages. Many of her roles involve
women it is not safe to scorn. Magimel won his best actor award for standing
up to her force. He doesn't play the standard movie character we'd expect in
this role (the immature twentysomething boy who flowers under the tutelage
of an older woman). Instead, he's a capable, confident young man who thinks
he has met hidden wildness and then finds it is madness.

The movie seems even more highly charged because it is wrapped in an elegant
package. These are smart people. They talk about music as if they understand
it, they duel with their minds as well as their bodies, and Haneke
photographs them in two kinds of spaces: Sometimes they're in elegant,
formal conservatory settings, and at other times in frankly vulgar places
where quick release can be snatched from strangers. There is an old saying:
Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. "The Piano Teacher"
has a more ominous lesson: Be especially careful with someone who has asked
for you.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:19 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] JASON X / 1/2* (R)

JASON X / 1/2* (R)

April 26, 2002

Jason Voorhees: Kane Hodder
Rowan: Lexa Doig
Kay-Em 14: Lisa Ryder
Tsunaron: Chuck Campbell
Professor Lowe: Jonathan Potts
Sergeant Brodski: Peter Mensah
New Line Cinema presents a film directed by Jim Isaac. Written by Todd
Farmer. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for strong horror violence,
language and some sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

This sucks on so many levels.
- --Dialogue from "Jason X"

Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the
levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects,
originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. Only its title
works. And I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the name "Jason X" is
Copyrighted (c)2002, World Wrestling Federation, and that Jason's real name
is Dwayne Johnson. No, wait, that was last week's movie.

"Jason X" is technically "Friday the 13th, Part 10." It takes place
centuries in the future, when Earth is a wasteland and a spaceship from
Earth II has returned to the Camp Crystal Lake Research Facility and
discovered two cryogenically frozen bodies, one of them holding a machete
and wearing a hockey mask.

The other body belongs to Rowan (Lexa Doig), a researcher who is thawed out
and told it is now the year 2455: "That's 455 years in the future!" Assuming
that the opening scenes take place now, you do the math and come up with 453
years in the future. The missing two years are easily explained: I learn
from the Classic Horror Reviews Web site that the movie was originally
scheduled to be released on Halloween 2000, and was then bumped to March
2001, summer 2001 and Halloween 2001 before finally opening on the 16th
anniversary of Chernobyl, another famous meltdown.

The movie is a low-rent retread of the "Alien" pictures, with a monster
attacking a spaceship crew; one of the characters, Dallas, is even named in
homage to the earlier series. The movie's premise: Jason, who has a "unique
ability to regenerate lost and damaged tissue," comes back to life and goes
on a rampage, killing the ship's plentiful supply of sex-crazed students and
staff members. Once you know that the ship contains many dark corners and
that the crew members wander off alone as stupidly as the campers as Camp
Crystal Lake did summer after summer, you know as much about the plot as the
writers do.

With "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" opening in mid-May,
there's been a lot of talk lately about how good computer-generated special
effects have become. On the basis of the effects in "Jason X" and the (much
more entertaining) "Scorpion King," we could also chat about how bad they
are getting. Perhaps audiences do not require realistic illusions, but
simply the illusion of realistic illusions. Shabby special effects can have
their own charm.

Consider a scene where the space ship is about to dock with Solaris, a
gigantic mother ship, or a city in space, or whatever. Various controls go
haywire because Jason has thrown people through them, and the ship fails to
find its landing slot and instead crashes into Solaris, slicing off the top
of a geodesic dome and crunching the sides of skyscrapers (why Solaris has a
city-style skyline in outer space I do not presume to ask). This sequence is
hilariously unconvincing. But never mind. Consider this optimistic dialogue
by Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts), the greedy top scientist who wants to
cash in on Jason: "Everyone OK? We just over-shot it. We'll turn around."
Uh, huh. We're waiting for the reaction from Solaris Air Traffic Control,
when a dull thud echoes through the ship, and the characters realize Solaris
has just exploded. Fine, but how could they hear it? Students of "Alien"
will know that in space, no one can hear you blow up.

The characters follow the usual rules from Camp Crystal Lake, which require
the crew members to split up, go down dark corridors by themselves, and call
out each other's names with the sickening certainty that they will not
reply. Characters are skewered on giant screws, cut in half, punctured by
swords, get their heads torn off, and worse. A veteran pilot remains calm:
"You weren't alive during the Microsoft conflict. We were beating each other
with our own severed limbs."

There is one good effects shot, in which a scientist's face is held in
super-cooled liquid until it freezes and then smashed into smithereens
against a wall. There is also an interesting transformation, as the on-board
regenerator restores Jason and even supplies him with superhero armor and a
new face to replace his hockey mask and ratty Army surplus duds. I left the
movie knowing one thing for sure: There will be a "Jason XI"--or, given the
IQ level of the series, "Jason X, Part 2."

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:35 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13)

LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13)

April 26, 2002

Lanie Kerrigan: Angelina Jolie
Deborah Connors: Stockard     Channing
Pete: Edward Burns
Andrea: Melissa Errico
Prophet Jack: Tony Shalhoub
Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Stephen Herek. Written
John Scott Shepherd and Dana Stevens. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13
(for sexual content, brief violence and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Someone once said, live every day as if it will be your last.

Not just someone once said that. Everyone once said it, over and over again,
although "Life or Something Like It" thinks it's a fresh insight. This is an
ungainly movie, ill-fitting, with its elbows sticking out where the knees
should be. To quote another ancient proverb, A camel is a horse designed by
a committee. "Life or Something Like It" is the movie designed by the camel.

The movie stars Angelina Jolie as Lanie Kerrigan, a bubbly blond Seattle TV
reporter whose ignorance of TV is equaled only by the movie's. I don't know
how the filmmakers got their start, but they obviously didn't come up
through television. Even a viewer knows more than this.

Example: Sexy Pete the cameraman (Edward Burns) wants to play a trick on
Lanie, so he fiddles with her microphone during a stand-up report from the
street, and her voice comes out like Mickey Mouse's squeak--like when you
talk with helium in your mouth. Everybody laughs at her. Except, see, your
voice comes out of your body, and when it goes through the air, it sounds
like your voice to the people standing around. When it goes into the
microphone, it kind of stays inside there, and is recorded on videotape,
which is not simultaneously played back live to a street crowd.

Lanie dreams of going to New York to work on "AM USA," the network show. She
gets her big invitation after attracting "national attention" by covering a
strike and leading the workers in singing "Can't Get No Satisfaction" while
she dances in front of them, during a tiny lapse in journalistic
objectivity. Meanwhile, she is afraid she will die, because a mad street
person named Prophet Jack has predicted the Seattle team will win, there
will be a hailstorm tomorrow morning, and Lanie will die next Thursday. They
win, it hails, Lanie believes she will die.

This leads to a romantic crisis. She is engaged to Cal Cooper (Christian
Kane), a pitcher with the Seattle Mariners. He's in the field, he looks
lovingly at her, she smiles encouragingly, the pitch is thrown, the opposing
team batter hits a home run, and she jumps up and applauds. If he sees that,
she may not last until Thursday.

Meanwhile, she apparently hates Pete the sexy cameraman, although when Cal
is out of town and she thinks she's going to die, they make love, and then
we find out, belatedly, they've made love before. The screenplay keeps
doubling back to add overlooked info.

Cal comes back to town and she wants a heart-to-heart, but instead he takes
her to the ballpark, where the friendly groundskeeper (who hangs around all
night in every baseball movie for just such an opportunity) turns on the
lights so Cal can throw her a few pitches. Is she moved by this loving
gesture? Nope: "Your cure for my emotional crisis is batting practice?" This
is the only turning-on-the-lights-in-the-empty-ballpark scene in history
that ends unhappily.

Lanie and Pete the sexy cameraman become lovers, until Pete whipsaws
overnight into an insulted, wounded man who is hurt because she wants to go
to New York instead of stay in Seattle with him and his young son. This
about-face exists only so they can break up so they can get back together
again later. It also inspires a scene in the station's equipment room, where
Jolie tests the theoretical limits of hysterical overacting.

Lanie's "AM USA" debut involves interviewing the network's biggest star, a
Barbara Walters-type (Stockard Channing), on the star's 25th anniversary. So
earth-shaking is this interview, the "AM USA" anchor breathlessly announces,
"We welcome our viewers on the West Coast for this special live edition!"
It's 7 a.m. in New York. That makes it 4 a.m. on the West Coast. If you
lived in Seattle, would you set your alarm to 4 a.m. to see Barbara Walters
plugging her network special?

Lanie begins the interview, pauses, and is silent for 30 seconds while
deeply thinking. She finally asks, "Was it worth everything?"

What?

"Giving up marriage and children for a career?"

Tears roll down Channing's cheeks. Pandemonium. Great interview. Network
president wants to hire Lanie on the spot. Has never before heard anyone
asked, "Was it worth it?" The question of whether a woman can have both a
career and a family is controversial in "Life or Something Like It"--even
when posed by Ms. Jolie, who successfully combines tomb-raiding with Billy
Bob Thornton.

I want to close with the mystery of Lanie's father, who is always found
stationed in an easy chair in his living room, where he receives visits from
his daughters, who feel guilty because since Mom died they have not been
able to communicate with Dad, who, apparently as a result, just sits there
waiting for his daughters to come back and feel guilty some more. Eventually
there's an uptick in his mood, and he admits he has always been proud of
Lanie and will "call in sick" so he can watch Lanie on "AM USA." Until then
I thought he was sick. Maybe he's just tired because he's on the night
shift, which is why he would be at work at 4 a.m.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:43 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13)

THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13)

April 26, 2002

Marion Davies: Kirsten Dunst
William Randolph Hearst: Edward     Herrmann
Thomas Ince: Cary Elwes
Charlie Chaplin: Eddie Izzard
Louella Parsons: Jennifer Tilly
Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Written by
Steven Peros. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexuality, a scene
of violence and brief drug use).

BY ROGER EBERT

William Randolph Hearst did, or did not, get away with murder on board his
private yacht Oneida on Nov. 15, 1924. If he did, there is no question he
was powerful enough to cover it up. Hearst was the carnivorous media tycoon
of the age, proprietor of newspapers, magazines, radio stations, wire
services, movie production companies, a private castle, and his mistress,
Marion Davies, an actress of great but perhaps not exclusive charms. He was
above the law not so much because of clout or bribery but because of awe;
the law enforcement officials of the day were so keenly aware of their
inferior social status that they lacked the nerve to approach him. The
silent movies of the time are filled with scenes in which cops arrest a
millionaire, discover who he is, respectfully tip their hats to him, and
apologize.

On that day in 1924, the Hollywood producer Thomas Ince possibly died, or
was murdered, on board the Oneida. Or perhaps not. According to one story,
he was shot dead by Hearst through an unfortunate misunderstanding; Hearst
mistook him for Charlie Chaplin, and thought Chaplin was having an affair
with Davies. Other theories say Hearst accidentally stuck Ince with a hat
pin, precipitating a heart attack. Or that Ince drank some bad rotgut. There
is even the possibility that Ince died at home. There was no autopsy, so the
official cause of death was never determined. No guests on the yacht were
ever questioned; indeed, no one can agree about who was on the yacht during
its cruise.

In Hollywood at the time, whispers about Ince's death and Hearst's
involvement were easily heard, and the story told in Peter Bogdanovich's
"The Cat's Meow" is, the film tells us, "the whisper heard most often."
Bogdanovich is not much interested in the scandal as a scandal. He uses it
more as a prism through which to view Hollywood in the 1920s, when the new
medium had generated such wealth and power that its giants, like Chaplin,
were gods in a way no later stars could ever be. Hearst (Edward Herrmann)
liked to act the beneficent host, and on the Oneida for that cruise were the
studio head Ince (Cary Elwes), the stars Davies (Kirsten Dunst) and Chaplin
(Eddie Izzard), the British wit Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley), and an
ambitious young gossip columnist named Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly).
There were also various stuffed shirts and their wives, and a tame society
doctor.

In this company Hearst is an insecure loner, an innocent barely the equal of
the life of sin he has chosen for himself. He has the Oneida bugged with
hidden microphones, and scarcely has time to join his guests because he
needs to hurry away and eavesdrop on what they say about him in his absence.
Davies knows about the microphones and knows all about Willie; she was a
loyal mistress who loved her man and stood by him to the end. Whether she
did have an affair with Chaplin is often speculated. According to this
scenario, she may have, and Willie finds one of her brooches in Chaplin's
stateroom (after tearing it apart in a scene mirroring Charles Foster Kane's
famous destruction of Susan's bedroom in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane").

Bogdanovich has an exact way of conveying the forced and metronomic gaiety
on the yacht, where guests are theoretically limited to one drink before
dinner, Davies has to order the band to play the Charleston to cover awkward
silences, every guest has a personal agenda, and at night, as guests creep
from one stateroom to another and deck planks creak, they seem to be living
in an English country house mystery--"Gosford Yacht."

Apart from its theory about the mistaken death of Ince and its cover-up, the
movie's most intriguing theory is that Parsons witnessed it, which might
explain her lifetime contract with the Hearst papers. In the exquisite
wording of a veiled blackmail threat, she tells the tycoon: "We're at the
point in our careers where we both need real security." Since she was making
peanuts and he was one of the richest men in the world, one can only admire
the nuance of "our careers."

The film is darkly atmospheric, with Herrmann quietly suggesting the sadness
and obsession beneath Hearst's forced avuncular chortles. Dunst is as good,
in her way, as Dorothy Comingore in "Citizen Kane" in showing a woman who is
more loyal and affectionate than her lover deserves. Lumley's zingers as
Glyn cut right through the hypocritical grease. Tilly, we suspect, has the
right angle on Parsons' chutzpah.

There is a detail easy to miss toward the end of the film that suggests as
well as anything what power Hearst had. After the society doctor ascertains
that Ince, still alive, has a bullet in his brain, Hearst orders the yacht
to moor at San Diego, and then dispatches the dying producer by private
ambulance--not to a local hospital, but to his home in Los Angeles! Hearst
is on the phone to the future widow, suggesting a cover story, long before
the pathetic victim arrives home.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:50 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R)

WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R)

April 26, 2002

Cal: Billy Crudup
Dulcie: Julianne Moore
Carl: Cleavant Derricks
Richard: David Keith
Jack: James LeGros
ThinkFilm presents a film written and directed by Bart Freundlich. Running
time: 104 minutes. Rated R (for language and some sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

Cal drags a woman out of a bar to look at the stars and listen to his rants
about the universe. She pulls loose and asks, "Do you get away with this
crap because you look like that?" Later in the film two kids will ask him if
he's a movie star. He's good-looking, in a morose, tormented way, but it's
more than that; Cal is charismatic, and strangers are fascinated by his aura
of doom and emptiness.

There is another new movie, "About a Boy," with a hero who complains that
he's a "blank." The dialogue is needed in "World Traveler." Although others
are fascinated by Cal's loneliness, with his drinking, his lack of a plan,
his superficial charm, he is a blank. Early in the film he walks out on his
marriage, on the third birthday of his son. Taking the family station wagon,
he drives west across the United States and into the emptiness of his soul.

Cal is played by Billy Crudup, one of the best actors in the movies, but
there needs to be something there for an actor to play, and Cal is like a
moony poet who embraces angst as its own reward. Throwing back Jack Daniels
in the saloons of the night, he doesn't have a complaint so much as
celebrate one. When we discover that his own father walked out on Cal and
his mother, that reads like a motivation but doesn't play like one. It seems
too neat--the Creative Writing explanation for his misery.

The film, written and directed by Bart Freundlich, is a road picture, with
Cal meeting and leaving a series of other lonely souls without ever
achieving closure. It's as if he glimpses them through the windows of his
passing car. There's a young hitchhiker who implies an offer of sex, which
he doesn't accept. A construction worker named Carl (Cleavant Derricks) who
wants friendship and thinks Cal offers it, but is mistaken. A high school
classmate (James LeGros, bitingly effective) who provides us with evidence
that Cal has been an emotional hit-and-run artist for a long time. Finally
there is Dulcie (Julianne Moore), who is drunk and passed out in a bar.

Cal throws her over his shoulder and hauls her back to his motel room, to
save her from arrest. She involves him in her own madness. Both sense
they're acting out interior dramas from obscure emotional needs, and there
is a slo-mo scene on a carnival ride that plays like a parody of a good
time. Nelson Algren advised, "Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are
greater than your own," and Cal would be wise to heed him.

There are moments of sudden truth in the film; Freundlich, who also made
"The Myth of Fingerprints" (1997), about an almost heroically depressed
family at Thanksgiving, can create and write characters, even if he doesn't
always know where to take them.

The construction buddy Carl and his wife (Mary McCormack) spring into focus
with a few lines of dialogue. Cal persuades Carl, a recovering alcoholic, to
get drunk with him, and help him pick up two women in a bar. The next day
Carl says his wife is angry at him, and brings her to life with one line of
dialogue: "She's mad about the drinking--and the objectification of women."
Later, drunk again, Cal meets Carl's wife, who says, "In all the years I've
been married to Carl, I've never heard him talk about anyone the way he
talks about you." She loves Carl, we see, so much she is moved that he has
found a friend. But then Cal tries to make a pass, and the wife looks cold
and level at him: "You're not his friend."

Cal isn't anybody's friend. Near the end of his journey, in the Western
mountains, he meets his father (David Keith). The role is thankless, but
Keith does everything possible, and more, to keep the father from being as
much a cipher as the son. One senses in "World Traveler" and in his earlier
film that Freundlich bears a grievous but obscure complaint against fathers,
and circles it obsessively, without making contact.

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