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movies-digest           Monday, May 20 2002           Volume 02 : Number 355



[MV] CRUSH / *** (R)
[MV] FRAILTY / **** (R)
[MV] HUMAN NATURE / *** (R)
[MV] MARYAM / ***1/2 (Not rated)
[MV] THE SWEETEST THING / *1/2 (R)
[MV] BIG TROUBLE / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] HIGH CRIMES / *** (PG-13)
[MV] NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER / * (R)
[MV] Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN / **** (Not Rated)
[MV] CLOCKSTOPPERS / **1/2 (PG)

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:41 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CRUSH / *** (R)

CRUSH / *** (R)

April 12, 2002

Kate: Andie MacDowell
Janine: Imelda Staunton
Molly: Anna Chancellor
Jed: Kenny Doughty
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by John McKay.
Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

If I were reviewing "Crush" in England, I would work the name of Joanna
Trollope into the first sentence, and my readers would immediately be able
to identify the terrain. Trollope, a best-seller who is often quite
perceptive and touching, writes at the upper range of the category just
below serious fiction. She is a good read for those, like myself, who
fantasize about living prosperously in the Cotswolds in an old but
comfortably remodeled cottage not far from the village green, the
churchyard, the tea shop, the bookstore and the rail line to London, while
meanwhile growing involved in a web of imprudent adulterous sex. (As a
happily married man, you understand, I do not want to perform adulterous
imprudent sex, only to be involved in a web with such entertaining
neighbors.)

This is not England. Few North Americans read Joanna Trollope, and fewer
still respond to key words in her vocabulary such as Aga. An Aga
cooker-stove is so expensive and versatile, it does everything but peel the
potatoes, and its presence in a kitchen tells you so much about the
occupants that in the Brit book review pages, the phrase "Aga romance"
perfectly categorizes a novel.

"Crush" is an Aga romance crossed with modern retro-feminist soft porn, in
which liberated women discuss lust as if it were a topic and not a fact. We
begin by meeting the three heroines, who are fortysomething professionals
and meet once a week to (1) drink gin, (2) smoke cigarettes, (3) eat
caramels, and (4) discuss their lousy love lives. My advice to these women:
Stop after (3).

The characters: Kate (Andie MacDowell) is the American headmistress of the
local upscale school, Janine (Imelda Staunton) is a physician, and Molly
(Anna Chancellor) is the police chief. That these three professional women
at their age would all still be smoking can be explained only by a movie
that does not give them enough to do with their hands. One day Kate goes to
a funeral, is immeasurably moved by the music, and meets the organist. His
name is Jed (Kenny Doughty), and he was once a student of hers. She is
between 15 and 18 years older, but their conversation drifts out of the
church and into the churchyard, and soon they are performing the old
rumpy-pumpy behind a tombstone while the mourners are still stifling their
sobs.

This is, you will agree, an example of lust. In a rabbit, it would be simple
lust. In a headmistress, it is reckless lust. (In a 25-year-old organist, it
is what comes from pumping the foot pedals for 30 minutes while observing
Andie MacDowell). The movie cannot leave it at lust, however, because then
it would be a different movie. So it elevates it into a Love That Was Meant
to Be, in which the two lovers overcome differences of age, class and
grooming, and determine to spend their lives together. Because they are
attractive people and we like them, of course we identify with their
foolishness and feel good when romance triumphs.

A sixth sense tells us, however, that romance has triumphed a little too
early in the movie. The only way for "Crush" to get from its romantic
triumph to the end of the film is to supply setbacks, and does it ever. I
will not reveal what episodes of bad judgment, bad karma and plain bad luck
lead to the ultimate bittersweet denouement, and will distract myself from
the temptation by telling you that the pastor of the local church is named
the Rev. Gerald Farquar-Marsden, a name to rival Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright.

The movie does its best to work us over, with second helpings of love,
romance, tragedy, false dawns, real dawns, comic relief, two separate crises
during marriage ceremonies, and the lush scenery of the Cotswolds (or, as
the Web site refers to the district, "Cotswold"). It's the kind of world
where romance begins in tombs among the headstones, or vice versa, and
almost immediately requires engraved invitations. Jed is described as being
25 years old and Kate is described as being 40 (cough), but Andie MacDowell
is the definition of a dish, and Jed, just by being a church organist, is
mature for his age. Besides, what is an age difference of 15 or even 18
years, when my old friend Betty Dodson, at 72, is in the third year of a
steamy romance with a 25-year-old? You can look it up at Salon.com, under
"sex."

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:54 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] FRAILTY / **** (R)

FRAILTY / **** (R)

April 12, 2002

Dad: Bill Paxton
Fenton Meiks: Matthew McConaughey
Agent Wesley Doyle: Powers Boothe
Young Fenton Meiks: Matthew O'Leary
Young Adam Meiks: Jeremy Sumpter
Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Bill Paxton. Written by Brent
Hanley. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for violence and some language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Heaven protect us from people who believe they can impose their will on us
in this world because of what they think they know about the next. "Frailty"
is about such a man, a kind and gentle father who is visited by an angel who
assigns him to murder demons in human form. We are reminded that Andrea
Yates believed she was possessed by Satan and could save her children by
drowning them. "Frailty" is as chilling: The father enlists his two sons,
who are about 7 and 10, to join him in the murders of victims he brings
home.

This is not, you understand, an abusive father. He loves his children. He is
only following God's instructions: "This is our job now, son. We've got to
do this." When the older son, terrified and convinced his father has gone
mad, says he'll report him to the police, his father explains, "If you do
that, son, I'll die. The angel was clear on this." The pressure that the
children are under is unbearable, and tragic, and warps their entire lives.

"Frailty" is an extraordinary work, concealing in its depths not only
unexpected story turns but also implications, hidden at first, that make it
even deeper and more sad. It is the first film directed by the actor Bill
Paxton, who also plays the father and succeeds in making "Dad" not a villain
but a sincere man lost within his delusions. Matthew McConaughey plays one
of his sons as a grown man, and Powers Boothe is the FBI agent who is
investigating the "God's Hand" serial murders in Texas when the son comes to
him one night, with the body of his brother parked outside in a stolen
ambulance.

The movie works in so many different ways that it continues to surprise us
right until the end. It begins as a police procedural, seems for a time to
be a puzzle like "The Usual Suspects," reveals itself as a domestic terror
film, evokes pity as well as horror, and reminded me of "The Rapture,"
another film about a parent who is willing to sacrifice a child in order to
follow the literal instructions of her faith.

As the film opens, McConaughey appears in the office of FBI agent Wesley
Doyle (Boothe), introduces himself as Fenton Meiks, and says he knows who
committed the serial killings that have haunted the area for years. His
story becomes the narration of two long flashbacks in which we see Paxton as
the elder Meiks, and Matthew O'Leary and Jeremy Sumpter as young Fenton and
Adam. Their mother is dead; they live in a frame house near the community
rose garden, happy and serene, until the night their father wakes them with
the news that he has been visited by an angel.

The film neither shies away from its horrifying events, nor dwells on them.
There is a series of ax murders, but they occur offscreen; this is not a
movie about blood, but about obsession. The truly disturbing material
involves the two boys, who are played by O'Leary and Sumpter as ordinary,
happy kids whose lives turn into nightmares. Young Adam simply believes
everything his father tells him. Fenton is old enough to know it's wrong:
"Dad's brainwashed you," he tells Adam. "It's all a big lie. He murders
people and you help him."

The construction of the story circles around the angel's "instructions" in
several ways. The sons and father are trapped in a household seemingly ruled
by fanaticism. There is, however, the intriguing fact that when Dad touches
his victims, he has graphic visions of their sins--he can see vividly why
they need to be killed. Are these visions accurate? We see them, too, but
it's unclear whether through Dad's eyes or the movie's narrator--if that
makes a difference. Whether they are objectively true is something I, at
least, believe no man can know for sure about another. Not just by touching
them, anyway. But the movie contains one shot, sure to be debated, that
suggests God's hand really is directing Dad's murders.

Perhaps only a first-time director, an actor who does not depend on
directing for his next job, would have had the nerve to make this movie. It
is uncompromised. It follows its logic right down into hell. We love movies
that play and toy with the supernatural, but are we prepared for one that is
an unblinking look at where the logic of the true believer can lead? There
was just a glimpse of this mentality on the day after 9/11, when certain TV
preachers described it as God's punishment for our sins, before backpedaling
when they found such frankness eroded their popularity base.

On the basis of this film, Paxton is a gifted director; he and his
collaborators, writer Brent Hanley, cinematographer Bill Butler and editor
Arnold Glassman, have made a complex film that grips us with the intensity
of a simple one. We're with it every step of the way, and discover we hardly
suspect where it is going.

Note: Watching the film, I was reminded again of the "West Memphis Three"
(www.wm3.org), those three Arkansas teenagers convicted of the brutal murder
of three children. One faces death and the other two long sentences. The
documentaries "Paradise Lost" (1992) and "Paradise Lost 2: Revelations"
(2000) make it clear they are probably innocent (a prime suspect all but
confesses onscreen), but the three are still in jail because they wore
black, listened to heavy metal music, and were railroaded by courts and a
community convinced they were Satanists--which must have been evidence
enough, since there wasn't much else, and the boys could prove they were
elsewhere.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:07 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] HUMAN NATURE / *** (R)

HUMAN NATURE / *** (R)

April 12, 2002

Nathan Bronfman: Tim Robbins
Lila Jute: Patricia Arquette
Puff: Rhys Ifans
Gabrielle: Miranda Otto
Nathan's Father: Robert Forster
Nathan's Mother: Mary Kay Place
Wendall the Therapist: Miguel Sandoval
Puff's Father: Toby Huss
Fine Line Features presents a film directed by Michel Gondry. Written by
Charlie Kaufman. Running time: 96 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality/nudity and
language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Is human life entirely based on sex, or is that only what it seems like on
cable television? "Human Nature," a comedy written and produced by the
writer and director who made us the great gift of "Being John Malkovich," is
a study of three characters in war against their sexual natures.

Lila (Patricia Arquette) fled to the woods at the age of 20, after hair
entirely covered her body. She becomes a famous reclusive nature writer, a
very hairy Annie Dillard, but finally returns to civilization because she's
so horny. Puff (Rhys Ifans) is a man who was raised as an ape, thinks he's
an ape, and is cheerfully eager on all occasions to act out an ape's sexual
desires. And Nathan (Tim Robbins) was a boy raised by parents so strict that
his entire sexual drive was sublimated into the desire to train others as
mercilessly as he was trained.

With these three characters as subjects for investigation, "Human Nature"
asks if there is a happy medium between natural impulses and the inhibitions
of civilization--or if it is true, as Nathan instructs Puff, "When in doubt,
don't ever do what you really want to do." The movie involves these three in
a menage a trois that is (as you can imagine) very complicated, and just in
order to be comprehensive in its study of human sexual behavior, throws in a
cute French lab assistant (Miranda Otto).

None of which gives you the slightest idea of the movie's screwball charm.
The writer, Charlie Kaufman, must be one madcap kinda guy. I imagine him
seeming to wear a funny hat even when he's not. His inventions here lead us
down strange comic byways, including Disneyesque song-and-dance numbers in
which the hairy Arquette dances nude with the cute little animals of the
forest. (Her hair, like Salome's veil, prevents us from seeing quite what we
think we're seeing, but the MPAA's eyeballs must have been popping out under
the strain.)

Early scenes show poor Nathan as a boy, at the dinner table with his parents
(Robert Forster and Mary Kay Place), where every meal involves as much
cutlery as a diplomatic feast, and using the wrong fork gets the child sent
to his room without eating. As an adult, Nathan dedicates his life to
training white mice to eat with the right silver, after the male mouse
politely pulls out the female mouse's chair for her.

Then he gets a really big challenge, when the ape-man (Ifans) comes into his
clutches. Nicknaming him Puff, Nathan keeps him in a Plexiglas cage in his
lab, and fits Puff with an electrified collar that jolts him with enough
juice to send him leaping spasmodically into the air every time he engages
in sexual behavior, which is constantly. Lila the hairy girl, meanwhile, has
turned herself over to a sympathetic electrologist (Rosie Perez), who fixes
her up with Nathan--who does not know she is covered with hair and, if he
did, would be sure it was bad manners.

The movie has nowhere much to go and nothing much to prove, except that
Stephen King is correct and if you can devise the right characters and the
right situation, the plot will take care of itself--or not, as the case may
be. Ifans is so dogged in the determination of his sex drive, despite the
electrical shocks, that when the professor sets his final examination at a
Hooters-type place, we're grinning before he gets inside the door.

The movie is the feature debut of Michel Gondry, who directed a lot of
Bjork's videos and therefore in a sense has worked with characters like
these before. His movie is slight without being negligible. If it tried to
do anything more, it would fail and perhaps explode, but at this level of
manic whimsy, it is just about right. You had better go alone, because in
any crowd of four, there will be three who find it over their heads, or
under their radar. They would really be better off attending "National
Lampoon's Van Wilder," unless you want to go to the trouble of having them
fitted with electric collars.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:19 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] MARYAM / ***1/2 (Not rated)

MARYAM / ***1/2 (Not rated)

April 12, 2002

Maryk Armin: Mariam Parris
Ali Armin: David Ackert
Darius Armin: Shaun Toub
Homa Armin: Shohreh Aghdashloo
Reza: Maziyar Jobrani
Jamie: Victor Jory
Streetlight Films presents a film written and directed by Ramin Serry.
Running time: 90 minutes. No MPAA rating (suitable for teens). Opening today
at the Music Box.

BY ROGER EBERT

Girls just want to have fun, says Cyndi Lauper, and Maryam, a high school
senior, is one of them. Yes, she's an honor student and anchors the news on
the in-school TV program, but she also likes to hang out at the roller rink
with her slacker boyfriend, and pot and booze are not unknown to her. In New
Jersey in 1979, she is a typical teenage girl--until the Iran hostage crisis
slaps her with an ethnic label that makes her an outsider at school and a
rebel in her own home.

Maryam (Mariam Parris) is Iranian-American--or Persian, her father would
say. Her parents emigrated from Iran before the fall of the shah, and
settled comfortably into suburbia; her father is a doctor, her mother a
warm, chatty neighbor, and Maryam (or "Mary," as she calls herself at
school) doesn't think much about her Iranian or Muslim heritage. Then two
things happen to force her to confront her history. The hostage crisis
inspires knee-jerk hostility from her classmates (whose families also come
from somewhere else), and her radical cousin Ali arrives from Tehran.

Ramin Serry's "Maryam," a film that cares too deeply for its characters to
simplify them, doesn't indulge in tired cliches about the generation gap.
Maryam's home life is strict but not unreasonable. Her father doesn't want
her to date, places great emphasis on her grades, doesn't know about her
boyfriend. He is not a cruel or domineering man, and Maryam, to her credit,
knows her parents love her. She's caught between trying to be a good
daughter and a typical teenager, and has found a workable middle ground
before Ali arrives.

With Ali comes a history of family tension she knows nothing about. Ali is
an orphan, the son of Mary's uncle, and so he must be taken in. It is more
complicated than that. Her father, we learn, turned his brother in to the
shah's secret police; he felt he had no choice, but is consumed by guilt.
The blood-stained backgammon board Ali brings as a "gift" is an ominous
reminder of times past.

Ali is such an observant Muslim that he cannot touch his cousin Maryam, even
to shake her hand. Pressed into service as a chaperone, he finds himself
plunged into teenage culture that offends and attracts him. He calls Maryam
a "whore" to her mother, but subtly flirts with her. More disturbing is his
alliance with a campus radical, and his obsession with the deposed shah, who
has just entered a New York hospital for cancer treatment. (Maryam's take on
this: "He calls the U.S. the Great Satan. I mean, the guy could lighten up a
little.")

"Maryam" was made before 9/11, and indeed I first saw it at the 2000 Hawaii
Film Festival and invited it to my own Overlooked Film Festival in April
2001. It is, I learned, the somewhat autobiographical story of
writer-director Ramin Serry, who grew up in Chicago and was made sharply
aware of his Iranian heritage during the 1979 hostage crisis.

In the film, Maryam's neighbors put a yellow ribbon around the tree in their
front yard, and discontinue their friendly chats and visits. Maryam's
boyfriend drops her like a hot potato. She is deposed from her TV show (she
suggests her newly arrived cousin might make a good interview; the other
students prefer to cover a homecoming controversy). A brick comes through
the front window. A public demonstration turns into shouts of "Iranians, go
home." Through all of this, the gifted actress Mariam Parris (British, but
seamlessly playing American) finds the right notes: wounded, sad, angry, but
more balanced than distraught.

Whatever hostility Serry felt in 1979 is no doubt much worse today for
Arab-Americans, who have, like most immigrants since the Pilgrims, left a
native land to seek the American dream.

Strange how many Americans, themselves members of groups that were hated a
few generations ago, now turn against newcomers. (I could hear the pain in
my German-American father's voice as he recalled being yanked out of
Lutheran school during World War I and forbidden by his immigrant parents
ever to speak German again.) "Maryam" is more timely now than ever.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:29 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE SWEETEST THING / *1/2 (R)

THE SWEETEST THING / *1/2 (R)

April 12, 2002

Christina: Cameron Diaz
Courtney: Christina Applegate
Peter: Thomas Jane
Jane: Selma Blair
Roger: Jason Bateman
Judy: Parker Posey
Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Roger Kumble. Written by Nancy
M. Pimental. Running time: 84 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexual content
and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

I like Cameron Diaz. I just plain like her. She's able to convey
bubble-brained zaniness about as well as anyone in the movies right now, and
then she can switch gears and give you a scary dramatic performance in
something like "Vanilla Sky." She's a beauty, but apparently without vanity;
how else to account for her appearance in "Being John Malkovich," or her
adventures in "There's Something About Mary"? I don't think she gets halfway
enough praise for her talent.

Consider her in "The Sweetest Thing." This is not a good movie. It's
deep-sixed by a compulsion to catalog every bodily fluids gag in "There's
Something About Mary" and devise a parallel clone-gag. It knows the words
but not the music; while the Farrelly brothers got away with murder, "The
Sweetest Thing" commits suicide.

And yet there were whole long stretches of it when I didn't much care how
bad it was--at least, I wasn't brooding in anger about the film--because
Cameron Diaz and her co-stars had thrown themselves into it with such
heedless abandon. They don't walk the plank, they tap dance.

The movie is about three girls who just wanna have fun. They hang out in
clubs, they troll for cute guys, they dress like Maxim cover girls, they
study paperback best-sellers on the rules of relationships, and frequently
(this comes as no surprise), they end up weeping in one other's arms. Diaz's
running-mates, played by Christina Applegate and Selma Blair, are pals and
confidantes, and a crisis for one is a crisis for all.

The movie's romance involves Diaz meeting Thomas Jane in a dance club; the
chemistry is right but he doesn't quite accurately convey that the wedding
he is attending on the weekend is his own. This leads to Diaz's ill-fated
expedition into the wedding chapel, many misunderstandings, and the kind of
Idiot Plot dialogue in which all problems could be instantly solved if the
characters were not studiously avoiding stating the obvious.

The plot is merely the excuse, however, for an astonishing array of sex and
body-plumbing jokes, nearly all of which dream of hitting a home run like
"There's Something About Mary," but do not. Consider "Mary's" scene where
Diaz has what she thinks is gel in her hair. Funny--because she doesn't know
what it really is, and we do. Now consider the scene in this movie where the
girls go into a men's room and do not understand that in a men's room a hole
in the wall is almost never merely an architectural detail. The pay-off is
sad, sticky, and depressing.

Or consider a scene where one of the roommates gets "stuck" while performing
oral sex. This is intended as a ripoff of the "franks and beans" scene in
"Mary," but gets it all wrong. You simply cannot (I am pretty sure about
this) get stuck in the way the movie suggests--no, not even if you've got
piercings. More to the point, in "Mary" the victim is unseen, and we picture
his dilemma. In "Sweetest Thing," the dilemma is seen, sort of (careful
framing preserves the R rating), and the image isn't funny. Then we get
several dozen neighbors, all singing to inspire the girl to extricate
herself; this might have looked good on the page, but it just plain doesn't
work, especially not when embellished with the sobbing cop on the doorstep,
the gay cop, and other flat notes.

More details. Sometimes it is funny when people do not know they may be
consuming semen (as in "American Pie") and sometimes it is not, as in the
scene at the dry cleaners in this movie. How can you laugh when what you
really want to do is hurl? And what about the scene in the ladies' room,
where the other girls are curious about Applegate's boobs and she tells them
she paid for them and invites them to have a feel, and they do, like
shoppers at Kmart? Again, a funny concept. Again, destroyed by bad timing,
bad framing and overkill. Because the director, Roger Kumble, doesn't know
how to set it up and pay it off with surgical precision, he simply has women
pawing Applegate while the scene dies. An unfunny scene only grows worse by
pounding in the concept as if we didn't get it.

So, as I say, I like Cameron Diaz. I like everyone in this movie (I must not
neglect the invaluable Parker Posey, as a terrified bride). I like their
energy. I like their willingness. I like the opening shot when Diaz comes
sashaying up a San Francisco hill like a dancer from "In Living Color" who
thinks she's still on the air. I like her mobile, comic face--she's smart in
the way she plays dumb. But the movie I cannot like, because the movie
doesn't know how to be liked. It doesn't even know how to be a movie.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:41 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BIG TROUBLE / **1/2 (PG-13)

BIG TROUBLE / **1/2 (PG-13)

April 5, 2002

Eliot Arnold: Tim Allen
Anna Herk: Rene Russo
Pat Greer: Omar Epps
Henry Algott: Dennis Farina
Matt Arnold: Ben Foster
Monica Ramiro: Janeane Garofalo
Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Written by
Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone. Based on the novel by Dave Barry. Running
time: 84 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language, crude humor and sex-related
material).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Big Trouble" is based on a novel by Dave Barry, and I have no trouble
believing that. The genius of Dave Barry is that he applies a logical and
helpful analysis to a situation that can only be worsened by such
intervention. It is impossible, for example, to explain to a policeman why
he is wasting his time on your illegal left turn while real criminals go
free. Or to the IRS agent that Enron is robbing billions from widows and
orphans while he ponders your business-related need to buy lots of CDs. Or
to your wife why it is pointless to do the dishes on a daily basis when you
can save hot water by letting them accumulate for a week in the
dishwasher--which, being airtight, will not stink up the kitchen if you slam
it right after adding more dishes.

All of these positions, which make perfect sense, only infuriate the cop,
tax man, spouse, etc., by applying logic to a situation they have invested
with irrational passion. As a sane voice in a world gone mad, Barry alone
sees clearly. The Dave Barry figure in "Big Trouble," I think, is Puggy
(Jason Lee), a man who when he first addresses the camera seems to be Jesus,
until he starts munching Fritos between his words of wisdom, observing, "You
really can't beat these when they're fresh." Puggy is a homeless man who was
living in the rainy north inside a cardboard box, when an article in Martha
Stewart Living inspired him to move to sunny southern Florida.

He is the film's omniscient narrator, not because he knows everything in a
godlike way, but because he lives outdoors and happens to be ideally
positioned during an evening when most of the film's other characters meet
at the luxury home of Arthur Herk (Stanley Tucci), who is "one of the few
Floridians who actually did vote for Pat Buchanan." (Saddened by the
inability of many Republicans to express even token pity about the Jewish
senior citizens whose mistaken votes for the Great Foamer tilted the
election, I am always happy to have this event recalled.)

Arthur Herk is ... ah, but if I begin a plot synopsis, we will be here all
day, and I have already squandered three paragraphs with fancy writing.
There is a plot in "Big Trouble," quite a logical one actually, with all the
threads tied into neat knots at the end, but to explain it would leave you
banging your forehead against the newspaper and crying "Why must I know
this?" It might be simpler to describe the characters, and let you discover
their interactions for yourself.

Herk is a rich man who owes money to the wrong people and wants to buy a
bomb. Rene Russo is his wife Anna, who no longer remembers why she married
this jerk. Zooey Deschanel is their daughter Jenny, who is the target of
Matt Arnold (Ben Foster), a school classmate who needs to squirt her with a
one-gallon water gun. Tim Allen is Eliot Arnold, Matt's father, who was the
two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of the Miami Herald until he
kicked in the computer screen of an editor who gave him idiotic assignments
while refusing to meet his eyes. (It would seem to the casual moviegoer that
Eliot Arnold is the Dave Barry figure in the movie, since he closely
resembles the author, but, no, it's Puggy.)

Then there are Dennis Farina and Jack Kehler as two bit men assigned to kill
Arthur Herk. And Janeane Garofalo and Patrick Warburton as two cops who
answer a call to the Herk home. And Lars Arenta-Hansen and Daniel London,
who have a nuclear bomb they can sell to Arthur Herk. And Omar Epps and
Heavy D as FBI agents on the trail of the bomb-sellers. And Sofia Vergara as
Nina, the Herks' maid, who Arthur wants to have sex with. She despises Herk
but instantly lusts for Puggy--another clue he is the Dave Barry character.
And Tom Sizemore and Johnny Knoxville as Snake and Eddie, who try to stick
up the bar where the bomb dealers meet Arthur Herk while the FBI stakes it
out. (Sample dialogue: "Snake, let's get the hell out of here. I think I
hear one of them silent alarms.") There is also a toad whose spit is
hallucinogenic.

The film has been directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who made "Get Shorty." It's
not in that class--indeed, it seems so crowded that it sometimes feels like
the casting call for an eventual picture not yet made--but it has its
charms. It's the kind of movie you can't quite recommend because it is all
windup and not much of a pitch, yet you can't bring yourself to dislike it.
A video or airplane or cable movie. Originally scheduled for an autumn
opening, it was pulled from the release schedule after 9/11 because it
involves terrorists and a nuclear bomb. But these are terrorists and bombs
from a simpler and more innocent time. The movie is a reminder of an age
when such plots were obviously not to be taken seriously. It's nice to be
reminded of that time.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:49 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] HIGH CRIMES / *** (PG-13)

HIGH CRIMES / *** (PG-13)

April 5, 2002

Claire Kubik:     Ashley Judd
Charlie Grimes:    Morgan Freeman
Tom:     James Caviezel
Lt. Embry:    Adam Scott
Jackie:     Amanda Peet
Major Waldron:     Michael Gaston
Brig. Gen. Marks:         Bruce Davison
Agent Mullins:    Tom Bower

Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Carl Franklin. Written by
Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley. Based on the novel by Joseph Finder. Running
time: 115 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence, sexual content and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Although I believe Ashley Judd could thrive in more challenging roles, and
offer "Normal Life" (1996) as an example, her career seems to tilt toward
thrillers, with the occasional comedy. She often plays a strong, smart woman
who is in more danger than she realizes. Although her characters are
eventually screaming as they flee brutal killers in the long tradition of
Women in Danger movies, the set-ups show her as competent, resourceful,
independent.

"High Crimes" is a movie like that. Judd plays Claire Kubik, a high-profile
defense attorney for a big firm. When her ex-Army husband (Jim Caviezel) is
arrested by the FBI, charged with murder and arraigned before a military
tribunal, she defiantly says she will defend him herself. And because she
doesn't know her way around military justice, she enlists a lawyer named
Grimes (Morgan Freeman) as co-counsel. Grimes is that dependable character,
a drunk who is on the wagon but may (i.e., will) fall off under stress.

This is the second movie Judd and Freeman have made together (after "Kiss
the Girls" in 1997). They're both good at projecting a kind of Southern
intelligence that knows its way around the frailties of human nature.
Although Freeman refers to himself as the "wild card" in the movie, actually
that role belongs to Caviezel, whose very identity is called into question
by the military charges. "Is your name Tom Chapman?" Claire asks her husband
at one point. She no longer knows the answer.

The plot involves a massacre in a Latin American village and a subsequent
cover-up. Did Claire's husband gun down innocent civilians, or was he framed
by a scary Army vet and his straight-arrow superior? Does the military want
justice or a cover-up? We are not given much reason to trust military
tribunals--evidence the screenplay was written before 9/11--and the Freeman
character intones the familiar refrain, "Military justice is to justice as
military music is to music."

And yet ... well, maybe there's more to the story. I wouldn't dream of
revealing crucial details. I do like the way director Carl Franklin and
writers Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley, working from Joseph Finder's novel,
play both ends against the middle, so that the audience has abundant
evidence to believe two completely conflicting theories of what actually
happened. In the very season of the DVD release of "Rashomon," which is the
template for stories with more than one convincing explanation, here's
another example of how Kurosawa's masterpiece continues to inspire movie
plots.

"High Crimes" works to keep us involved and make us care. Although Freeman's
character may indeed start drinking again, it won't be for reasons we can
anticipate (of course, like all heroic movie drunks, he retains the
exquisite timing to sober up on demand). The unfolding of various versions
of the long-ago massacre is handled by Franklin in flashbacks that show how
one camera angle can refute what another angle seems to prove. And if we
feel, toward the end, a little whiplashed by the plot manipulations, well,
that's what the movie promises and that's what the movie delivers.

As for Ms. Judd, from the first time I saw her, in "Ruby in Paradise"
(1993), I thought she had a unique sympathy with the camera, an ability that
cannot be learned but only exercised. In the years, she has often been
better than her material--or do her advisers choose mainstream commercial
roles for her as the safest course? When she strays out of genre, as she did
in "Smoke," "Heat," "Normal Life" and "Simon Birch," she shows how good she
is. Of course, she's good in "High Crimes," too, and involves us more than
the material really deserves. But this is the kind of movie any studio
executive would green-light without a moment's hesitation--always an ominous
sign.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:24:57 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER / * (R)

NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER / * (R)

April 5, 2002

Van Wilder:      Ryan Reynolds
Gwen:          Tara Reid
Taj:               Kal Penn
Vance Wilder Sr.:      Tim Matheson
Casey:              Kim Smith
Richard Bagg:      Daniel Cosgrove
Elliot Grebb:      Tom Everett Scott
Timmy (The Jumper): Chris Owen
Artisan Entertainment presents a film directed by Walt Becker. Written by
Brent Goldberg and David Wagner. Running time: 92 minutes. Rated R (for
strong sexual content, gross humor, language and some drug use).

BY ROGER EBERT

Watching "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," I grew nostalgic for the lost
innocence of a movie like "American Pie," in which human semen found itself
in a pie. In "NatLampVW," dog semen is baked in a pastry. Is it only a
matter of time until the heroes of teenage grossout comedies are injecting
turtle semen directly through their stomach walls?

"National Lampoon's Van Wilder," a pale shadow of "National Lampoon's Animal
House," tells the story of Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds), who has been the
Biggest Man on Campus for seven glorious undergraduate years. He doesn't
want to graduate, and why should he, since he has clout, fame, babes and the
adulation of the entire campus (except, of course, for the professor whose
parking space he swipes, and the vile fraternity boy who is his sworn
enemy). Van Wilder is essentially a nice guy, which is a big risk for a
movie like this to take; he raises funds for the swimming team, tries to
restrain suicidal students and throws legendary keg parties.

Ryan Reynolds is, I suppose, the correct casting choice for Van Wilder,
since the character is not a devious slacker but merely a Permanent Student.
That makes him, alas, a little boring, and Reynolds (from ABC's "Two Guys
and a Girl") brings along no zing: He's a standard leading man when the
movie cries out for a manic character actor. Jack Black in this role would
have been a home run.

Is Van Wilder too good to be true? That's what Gwen (Tara Reid) wonders.
She's a journ student who wants to do an in-depth piece about Van for the
campus paper. Of course she's the girlfriend of the vile frat boy, and of
course her investigation inspires her to admire the real Van Wilder while
deploring his public image. Tara Reid is remarkably attractive, as you may
remember from "Josie and the Pussycats" and "American Pie 2," but much of
the time, she simply seems to be imitating still photos of Renee Zellweger
smiling.

That leaves, let's see, Kal Penn as Taj, the Indian-American student who
lands the job as Van Wilder's assistant, and spends much of his time using a
stereotyped accent while reciting lists of synonyms for oral sex. I cannot
complain, since the hero's buddy in every movie in this genre is always a
sex-crazed zealot, and at least this film uses non-traditional casting.
(Casting directors face a Catch-22: They cast a white guy, and everybody
wants to know why he had to be white. So they cast an ethnic guy, and
everybody complains about the negative stereotype. Maybe the way out is to
cast the ethnic guy as the hero and the white guy as the horny doofus.)

The movie is a barfathon that takes full advantage of the apparent MPAA
guidelines in which you can do pretty much anything with bodily functions
except involve them in healthy sex. The movie contains semen, bare breasts
and butts, epic flatulence, bizarre forms of masturbation, public nudity,
projectile vomiting and an extended scene of explosive defecation with sound
effects that resemble the daily duties of the Port-a-Loo serviceman, in
reverse. There are also graphic shots of enormous testicles, which are
allowed under the National Geographic loophole, since they belong to Van
Wilder's pet bulldog. Presumably the MPAA would not permit this if it had
reason to believe there were dogs in the audience.

"On a scale of 1-10 shots of bourbon needed to make a pledge ralph," writes
Bob Patterson of the Web site Delusions of Adequacy, "this film will get a
very strong five from most college age film fans who are not offended by
vulgar humor. Older filmgoers who might be offended by such offerings are
encouraged to do something that is physically impossible (i.e., lift
yourself up by your bootstraps)."

Although this is obviously the review the movie deserves, I confess the
rating scale baffles me. Is it better or worse if a film makes you ralph?
Patterson implies that older filmgoers might be offended by vulgar humor.
There is a flaw in this reasoning: It is not age but humor that is the
variable.

Laughter for me was such a physical impossibility during "National Lampoon's
Van Wilder" that had I not been pledged to sit through the film, I would
have lifted myself up by my bootstraps and fled.

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:25:05 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN / **** (Not Rated)

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN / **** (Not Rated)

April 5, 2002

Luisa:    Maribel Verdu
Julio:    Gael Garcia Bernal
Tenoch:
     Diego Luna

IFC Films presents a film directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Written by Alfonso
Cuaron and Carlos Cuaron. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time:
105 minutes. No MPAA rating.

BY ROGER EBERT

"Y Tu Mama Tambien" is described on its Web site as a "teen drama," which is
like describing "Moulin Rouge" as a musical. The description is technically
true but sidesteps all of the reasons to see the movie. Yes, it's about two
teenage boys and an impulsive journey with an older woman that involves
sexual discoveries. But it is also about the two Mexicos. And it is about
the fragility of life and the finality of death. Beneath the carefree road
movie that the movie is happy to advertise is a more serious level--and
below that, a dead serious level.

The movie, whose title translates as "And Your Mama, Too," is another
trumpet blast that there may be a New Mexican Cinema a-bornin'. Like "Amores
Perros," which also stars Gael Garcia Bernal, it is an exuberant exercise in
interlocking stories. But these interlock not in space and time, but in what
is revealed, what is concealed, and in the parallel world of poverty through
which the rich characters move.

The surface is described in a flash: Two Mexican teenagers named Tenoch and
Julio, one from a rich family, one middle class, are free for the summer
when their girlfriends go to Europe. At a wedding they meet Luisa, 10 years
older, the wife of a distant cousin; she's sexy and playful. They suggest a
weekend trip to the legendary beach named Heaven's Mouth. When her husband
cheats on her, she unexpectedly agrees, and they set out together on a lark.

This level could have been conventional but is anything but, as directed by
Alfonso Cuaron, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Carlos. Luisa
kids them about their sex lives in a lighthearted but tenacious way, until
they have few secrets left, and at the same time she teases them with erotic
possibilities. The movie is realistic about sex, which is to say, franker
and healthier than the smutty evasions forced on American movies by the R
rating. We feel a shock of recognition: This is what real people do and how
they do it, sexually, and the MPAA has perverted a generation of American
movies into puerile masturbatory snickering.

Whether Luisa will have sex with one or both of her new friends is not for
me to reveal. More to the point is what she wants to teach them, which is
that men and women learn to share sex as a treasure they must carry together
without something spilling--that women are not prizes, conquests or targets,
but the other half of a precarious unity. This is news to the boys, who are
obsessed with orgasms (needless to say, their own).

The progress of that story provides the surface arc of the movie. Next to
it, in a kind of parallel world, is the Mexico they are driving through.
They pass police checkpoints, see drug busts and traffic accidents, drive
past shanty towns, and are stopped at a roadblock of flowers by villagers
demanding a donation for their queen--a girl in bridal white, representing
the Virgin. "You have a beautiful queen," Luisa tells them. Yes, but the
roadblock is genteel extortion. The queen has a sizable court that quietly
hints a donation is in order.

At times during this journey the soundtrack goes silent and we hear a
narrator who comments from outside the action, pointing out the village
where Tenoch's nanny was born and left at 13 to seek work. Or a stretch of
road where, two years earlier, there was a deadly accident. The narration
and the roadside images are a reminder that in Mexico and many other
countries a prosperous economy has left an uneducated and penniless
peasantry behind.

They arrive at the beach. They are greeted by a fisherman and his family,
who have lived here for four generations, sell them fried fish, rent them a
place to stay. This is an unspoiled paradise. (The narrator informs us the
beach will be purchased for a tourist hotel, and the fisherman will abandon
his way of life, go to the city in search of a job and finally come back
here to work as a janitor.) Here the sexual intrigues which have been
developing all along will find their conclusion.

Beneath these two levels (the coming-of-age journey, the two Mexicos) is
hidden a third. I will say nothing about it, except to observe there are
only two shots in the entire movie that reflect the inner reality of one of
the characters. At the end, finally knowing everything, you think back
through the film--or, as I was able to do, see it again.

Alfonso Cuaron is Mexican but his second and third features were big-budget
American films. I thought "Great Expectations" (1998), with Ethan Hawke,
Gwyneth Paltrow and Anne Bancroft, brought a freshness and visual excitement
to the updated story. I liked "A Little Princess" (1995) even more. It is
clear Cuaron is a gifted director, and here he does his best work to date.
Why did he return to Mexico to make it? Because he has something to say
about Mexico, obviously, and also because Jack Valenti and the MPAA have
made it impossible for a movie like this to be produced in America. It is a
perfect illustration of the need for a workable adult rating: too mature,
thoughtful and frank for the R, but not in any sense pornographic. Why do
serious film people not rise up in rage and tear down the rating system that
infantilizes their work?

The key performance is by Maribel Verdu as Luisa. She is the engine that
drives every scene she's in, as she teases, quizzes, analyzes and lectures
the boys, as if impatient with the task of turning them into beings fit to
associate with an adult woman. In a sense she fills the standard role of the
sexy older woman, so familiar from countless Hollywood comedies, but her
character is so much more than that--wiser, sexier, more complex, happier,
sadder. It is true, as some critics have observed, that "Y Tu Mama" is one
of those movies where "after that summer, nothing would ever be the same
again." Yes, but it redefines "nothing."

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Date: 20 May 2002 23:25:12 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CLOCKSTOPPERS / **1/2 (PG)

CLOCKSTOPPERS / **1/2 (PG)

March 29, 2002

Zak: Jesse Bradford
Dr. Earl Dopler: French Stewart
Francesca: Paula Garces
Henry Gate: Michael Biehn
Dr. George Gibbs: Robin Thomas
Jay: Linda Kim
Mom: Julia Sweeney
Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Frakes. Written by
Rob Hedden, Andy Hedden, J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. Running time:
approximately 90 minutes. Rated PG.(for action violence and mild language).

BY ROGER EBERT

In an early scene of "Clockstoppers," a student in a college physics class
is unable to complete the sentence, "Einstein's Theory of ..." And just as
well, too, since any time-manipulation movie has to exist in blissful
ignorance of Einstein's theory. Not that it can't be done, at least in the
movies. "Clockstoppers" has a new twist: The traveler doesn't travel through
time but stays right where he is, and lives faster. This is closer to
Einstein's Theory of Amphetamines.

Dr. George Gibbs (Robin Thomas) has invented a way for a subject to live
much faster than those around him, so that they seem to stand in place while
he whizzes around. He is like the mayfly, which lives a lifetime in a
day--and that is precisely the trouble. The system works well, but
experimenters age so quickly that they return looking worn and wrinkled,
like Keir Dullea in "2001," who checks into that alien bedroom, and doesn't
check out. Gibbs needs to iron out a few kinks.

Before he can perfect his discovery, intrigue strikes. His teenage son Zak
(Jesse Bradford) is informed by the friendly Dr. Earl Dopler (French
Stewart) that Gibbs had been kidnapped into hyperspace by the evil and
scheming millionaire Henry Gates. Dopler is named after the Effect. I have
no idea how they came up with the name of Gates.

Zak has just met the beautiful Francesca (Paula Garces) a pretty student
from Venezuela, at his high school, and they find themselves teamed on a
mission to venture into hyperspace, rescue his father, outsmart Gates, and
return without becoming senior citizens. (That's if hyperspace is the same
place as speeded-up-time-space, and frankly the movie lost me there.) To
assist in their mission they use a gun which fires marbles filled with
liquid nitrogen, which burst on impact and instantly freeze their targets.
That this gun is not fatal is a fact the movie wisely makes no attempt to
explain.

"Clockstoppers" has high energy, bright colors, neat sets, and intriguing
effects as the speeded-up characters zip around. There is a time when Zak
outsmarts characters who are merely speeded-up by speeding up while in
speedspace, or whatever it's called, so that he whizzes around the whizzers
while emitting a kind of pulsing glow.

The movie has been produced by Nickelodeon, and will no doubt satisfy its
intended audience enormously. It does not cross over into the
post-Nickelodeon universe. Unlike "Spy Kids" or "Big Fat Liar," it offers
few consolations for parents and older brothers and sisters. It is what it
is, efficiently and skillfully, and I salute it for hitting a double or
maybe a triple. I also like the dialogue of Dr. ("Don't blow your RAM")
Dopler. No one can be altogether uninteresting who makes a verb out of
"Ginzu."

Note: At one point, the characters pass a high-security check point and have
to submit to a retinal scan. In a subtle bow to the Americans with
Disabilities Act, the retinal scan device is at waist level.

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