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movies-digest         Thursday, June 13 2002         Volume 02 : Number 359



[MV] LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA / ***1/2 (PG)
[MV] CHELSEA WALLS / *** (R)
[MV] THE LADY AND THE DUKE / *** (PG-13)
[MV] DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD / *1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] BAD COMPANY / ** (PG-13)
[MV] LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA / ***1/2 (PG)
[MV] THE LADY AND THE DUKE / *** (PG-13)
[MV] THE SUM OF ALL FEARS / ***1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] CHELSEA WALLS / *** (R)

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

Date: 07 Jun 2002 18:11:19 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA / ***1/2 (PG)

LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA / ***1/2 (PG)

June 7, 2002

Bhuvan: Aamir Khan
Gauri: Gracy Singh
Elizabeth Russell: Rachel ShelleyCapt. Russell: Paul Blackthorne
Yashodamai: Suhasini Mulay
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film directed by Ashutosh Gowariker.
Written by Gowariker, Kumar Dave, Sanjay Dayma and K.P. Saxena. Running
time: 225 minutes. In Hindi, Bhojpuri and English. Rated PG.(for language
and some violence). Opening today at the Landmark Century.

BY ROGER EBERT

"Lagaan" is an enormously entertaining movie, like nothing we've ever seen
before, and yet completely familiar. Set in India in 1893, it combines
sports with political intrigue, romance with evil scheming, musical numbers
with low comedy and high drama, and is therefore soundly in the tradition of
the entertainments produced by the Bombay film industry, "Bollywood," which
is the world's largest.

I have seen only five or six Bollywood movies, one of them in Hyderabad,
India, in 1999, where I climbed to the highest balcony and shivered in
arctic air conditioning while watching a movie that was well over three
hours long and included something for everyone. The most charming aspect of
most Bollywood movies is their cheerful willingness to break into song and
dance at the slightest pretext; the film I saw was about a romance between a
rich boy and a poor girl, whose poverty did not prevent her from producing
back-up dancers whenever she needed them.

"Lagaan" is said to be the most ambitious, expensive and successful
Bollywood film ever made, and has been a box-office hit all over the world.
Starring Aamir Khan, who is one of the top Indian heartthrobs, it was made
with an eye to overseas audiences: If "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" could
break out of the martial-arts ghetto and gross $150 million, then why not a
Bollywood movie for non-Indians? It has succeeded in jumping its genre; it
won an Academy Award nomination this year as best foreign film, and has been
rolling up amazing per-screen averages in North American theaters.

All of which evades the possibility that most readers of this review have
never seen a Bollywood movie and don't want to start now. That will be their
loss. This film is like nothing they've seen before, with its startling
landscapes, architecture and locations, its exuberant colors, its sudden and
joyous musical numbers right in the middle of dramatic scenes, and its
melodramatic acting (teeth gnash, tears well, lips tremble, bosoms heave,
fists clench). At the same time, it's a memory of the films we all grew up
on, with clearly defined villains and heroes, a romantic triangle, and even
a comic character who saves the day. "Lagaan" is a well-crafted, hugely
entertaining epic that has the spice of a foreign culture.

The story takes place at the height of the Raj, England's government of
occupation in India. In a remote province, the local British commander is
Capt. Russell (Paul Blackthorne), a lip-curling rotter with a racist streak,
who insults the local maharajah to his face and thinks nothing of whipping a
Hindu upstart. Even his fellow officers think he's over the top. He
administers "lagaan," which is the annual tax the farmers must pay to their
maharajah, and he to the British. It is a time of drought and hunger, and
the farmers cannot pay.

Enter Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), a leader among his people, who confronts Russell
and finds his weak point: The captain is obsessed by cricket, and believes
it's a game that can never be mastered by Indians. Bhuvan says it is much
like an ancient Indian game, and that Indians could excel at it. Russell
makes Bhuvan a bet: The Brits and a village team will play a cricket match.
If the Indians win, there will be no lagaan for three years. If the Brits
win, lagaan will be tripled. The villagers think Bhuvan is insane, since a
triple tax would destroy them, but he points out that since they cannot pay
the current tax, they have nothing to lose.

Bhuvan assembles and starts to coach a local team. Elizabeth Russell (Rachel
Shelley), the evil captain's sister, believes her brother's deal is unfair,
and secretly sneaks out to the village to provide pointers on cricket. Her
closeness to Bhuvan disturbs Gauri (Gracy Singh), a local woman who has
believed since childhood that she and Bhuvan are fated to marry. There's
another coil of the plot with the two-faced Lakha (Yashpal Sharma), who
wants Gauri for himself, and acts as a spy for Russell because he feels that
if Bhuvan loses face, he'll have a better chance with her.

We meet the members of the village team, an oddly assorted group that
includes a low-caste fortune-teller named Guran (Rajesh Vivek), whose
crippled arm allows him to throw a wicked curve ball. There also is Deva
(Pradeep Rawat), whose service in the British army has fueled his contempt
for his former masters. As training proceeds in the village and the British
sneer from their regimental headquarters, the action is punctuated by much
music.

The British hold dances, at which single young women who have come out from
home hope to find an eligible young officer. (Elizabeth, dreaming about
Bhuvan, is not much interested in the candidate selected for her.) And in
the village music wells up spontaneously, most memorably when storm clouds
promise an end to the long drought. In keeping with Bollywood tradition, the
singing voices in these sequences are always dubbed (the voice-over artists
are stars in their own right), as the camera plunges into joyous
choreography with dancers, singers and swirls of beautifully colored saris.
Such dance sequences would be too contrived and illogical for sensible
modern Hollywood, but we feel like we're getting away with something as we
enjoy them.

"Lagaan" somehow succeeds in being suspenseful at the same time it's
frivolous and obvious. The final cricket match (which we can follow even if
we don't understand the game) is in the time-honored tradition of all sports
movies, and yet the underlying issues are serious. And there is the
intriguing question of whether the hero will end up with his childhood
sweetheart, or cross color lines with the Victorian woman (this is hard to
predict, since both women are seen in entirely positive terms).

As a backdrop to the action, there is India itself. It is a long time since
I praised a movie for its landscapes; I recall "Dr. Zhivago" (1965) or
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), and indeed like David Lean, director Ashutosh
Gowariker is not shy about lingering on ancient forts and palaces, vast
plains, and the birthday-cake architecture of the British Raj, so out of
place and yet so serenely confident.

Watching the film, we feel familiarity with the characters and the
show-down, but the setting and the production style is fresh and exciting.
Bollywood has always struck a bargain with its audience members, many of
them poor: You get your money's worth. Leaving the film, I did not feel
unsatisfied or vaguely short-changed, as after many Hollywood films, but
satisfied: I had seen a movie.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 07 Jun 2002 18:11:05 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CHELSEA WALLS / *** (R)

CHELSEA WALLS / *** (R)

June 7, 2002

Bud: Kris Kristofferson
Terry: Robert Sean Leonard
Mary: Natasha Richardson
Grace: Uma Thurman
Audrey: Rosario Dawson
Frank: Vincent D'Onofrio
Ross: Steve Zahn
Greta: Tuesday Weld
Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Ethan Hawke. Written by Nicole
Burdette, based on her play. Running time: 109 minutes. Rated R (for
language). Opening today at Landmark Century.

BY ROGER EBERT

A rest stop for rare individuals.

- --Motto of the Chelsea Hotel

'Chelsea Walls" is the movie for you, if you have a beaten-up copy of the
Compass paperback edition of Kerouac's On the Road and on page 124 you
underlined the words, "The one thing that we yearn for in our living days,
that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the
remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced only in the
womb and can only be reproduced (through we hate to admit it) in death." If
you underlined the next five words ("But who wants to die?"), you are too
realistic for this movie.

Lacking the paperback, you qualify for the movie if you have ever made a
pilgrimage to the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street in New York and given a
thought to Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur C. Clarke, R. Crumb, Brendan
Behan, Gregory Corso, Bob Dylan, or Sid and Nancy, who lived (and in some
cases died) there. You also qualify if you have ever visited the Beat
Bookshop in Boulder, Colo., if you have ever yearned to point the wheel west
and keep driving until you reach the Pacific Coast Highway, or if you have
never written the words "somebody named Lawrence Ferlinghetti."

If you are by now thoroughly bewildered by this review, you will be equally
bewildered by "Chelsea Walls" and had better stay away from it. Ethan
Hawke's movie evokes the innocent spirit of the Beat Generation 50 years
after the fact, and celebrates characters who think it is noble to live in
extravagant poverty while creating Art and leading untidy sex lives. These
people smoke a lot, drink a lot, abuse many substances, and spend either no
time at all or way too much time managing their wardrobes. They live in the
Chelsea Hotel because it is cheap and provides a stage for their
psychodramas.

Countless stories have been set in the Chelsea. Andy Warhol's "Chelsea
Girls" (1967) was filmed there. Plays have between written about it,
including one by Nicole Burdette that inspired this screenplay.
Photographers and painters have recorded its seasons. It is our American
Left Bank, located at one convenient address. That Hawke would have wanted
to direct a movie about it is not surprising; he and his wife, Uma Thurman,
who could relax with easy-money stardom, have a way of sneaking off for
dodgy avant-garde projects. They starred in Richard Linklater's "Tape"
(2001) about three people in a motel room, and now here is the epic version
of the same idea, portraying colorful denizens of the Chelsea in full bloom.

We meet Bud (Kris Kristofferson), a boozy author who uses a typewriter
instead of a computer, perhaps because you can't short it out by spilling a
bottle on it. He has a wife named Greta (Tuesday Weld) and a mistress named
Mary (Natasha Richardson), and is perhaps able to find room for both of them
in his life because neither one can stand to be around him all that long. He
tells them both they are his inspiration. When he's not with the Muse he
loves, he loves the Muse he's with.

Val (Mark Webber) is so young he looks embryonic. He buys lock, stock and
barrel into the mythology of bohemia, and lives with Audrey (Rosario
Dawson). They are both poets. I do not know how good Audrey's poems are
because Dawson reads them in closeup--just her face filling the screen--and
I could not focus on the words. I have seen a lot of closeups in my life but
never one so simply, guilelessly erotic. Have more beautiful lips ever been
photographed?

Frank (Vincent D'Onofrio) is a painter who thinks he can talk Grace
(Thurman) into being his lover. She is not sure. She prefers a vague, absent
lover, never seen, and seems to know she has made the wrong choice but takes
a perverse pride in sticking with it. Ross (Steve Zahn) is a singer whose
brain seems alarmingly fried. Little Jimmy Scott is Skinny Bones, a
down-and-out jazzman. Robert Sean Leonard is Terry, who wants to be a folk
singer. The corridors are also occupied by the lame and the brain-damaged;
every elevator trip includes a harangue by the house philosopher.

Has time passed these people by? Very likely. Greatness resides in ability,
not geography, and it is futile to believe that if Thomas Wolfe wrote Look
Homeward, Angel in Room 831, anyone occupying that room is sure to be
equally inspired. What the movie's characters are seeking is not
inspiration, anyway, but an audience. They stay in the Chelsea because they
are surrounded by others who understand the statements they are making with
their lives. In a society where the average college freshman has already
targeted his entry-level position in the economy, it's a little lonely to
embrace unemployment and the aura of genius. To actors with a romantic edge,
however, it's very attractive: No wonder Matt Dillon sounds so effortlessly
convincing on the audiobook of On the Road.

Hawke shot the film for $100,000 on digital video, in the tradition of
Warhol's fuzzy 16mm photography. Warhol used a split screen, so that while
one of his superstars was doing nothing on the left screen, we could watch
another of his superstars doing nothing on the right screen. Hawke, working
with Burdette's material, has made a movie that by contrast is
action-packed. The characters enjoy playing hooky from life and posing as
the inheritors of bohemia. Hawke's cinematographer, Richard Rutkowski, and
his editor, Adriana Pacheco, weave a mosaic out of the images, avoiding the
temptation of a simple realistic look: The film is patterned with color,
superimposition, strange exposures, poetic transitions, grainy color
palettes.

Movies like this do not grab you by the throat. You have to be receptive.
The first time I saw "Chelsea Walls," in a stuffy room late at night at
Cannes 2001, I found it slow and pointless. This time, I saw it earlier in
the day, fueled by coffee, and I understood that the movie is not about what
the characters do, but about what they are. It may be a waste of time to
spend your life drinking, fornicating, posing as a genius and living off
your friends, but if you've got the money, honey, take off the time.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 07 Jun 2002 18:11:27 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE LADY AND THE DUKE / *** (PG-13)

THE LADY AND THE DUKE / *** (PG-13)

June 7, 2002

The Lady, Grace Elliott: Lucy Russell
Duke of Orleans: Jean-Claude Dreyfus
Dumouriez: Francois Marthouret
Champcenetz: Leonard Cobiant
Nanon: Caroline Morin
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film directed by Eric Rohmer. Written by
Rohmer, based on the memoir Journal of My Life During the French Revolution
by Grace Elliott. In French with English subtitles. Running time: 129
minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some violent images). Opening today at the Music
Box.

BY ROGER EBERT

In the Paris of the mob, during the French Revolution, a patrician British
lady supports the monarchy and defies the citizens' committees that rule the
streets. She does this not in the kind of lame-brained action story we might
fear, but with her intelligence and personality--outwitting the louts who
come to search her bedroom, even as a wanted man cowers between her
mattresses.

Eric Rohmer's "The Lady and the Duke" is an elegant story about an elegant
woman, told in an elegant visual style. It moves too slowly for those with
impaired attention spans, but is fascinating in its style and mannerisms.
Like all of the films in the long career of Rohmer, it centers on men and
women talking about differences of moral opinion.

At 81, Rohmer has lost none of his zest and enthusiasm. The director, who
runs up five flights of stairs to his office every morning, has devised a
daring visual style in which the actors and foreground action are seen
against artificial tableaux of Paris circa 1792. These are not "painted
backdrops," but meticulously constructed perspective drawings, which are
digitally combined with the action in a way that is both artificial and
intriguing.

His story is about a real woman, Grace Elliott (Lucy Russell), who told her
story in a forgotten autobiography Rohmer found 10 years ago. She was a
woman uninhibited in her behavior and conservative in her politics, at
onetime the lover of the Prince of Wales (later King George IV), then of
Phillipe, the Duke of Orleans (father of the future king Louis Phillipe).
Leaving England for France and living in a Paris townhouse paid for by the
Duke (who remains her close friend even after their ardor has cooled), she
refuses to leave France as the storm clouds of revolution gather, and
survives those dangerous days even while making little secret of her
monarchist loyalties.

She is stubbornly a woman of principle. She dislikes the man she hides
between her mattresses, but faces down an unruly citizens' search committee
after every single member crowds into her bedroom to gawk at a fine lady in
her nightgown. After she gets away with it, her exhilaration is clear: She
likes living on the edge, and later falsely obtains a pass allowing her to
take another endangered aristocrat out of the city to her country house.

Her conversations with the Duke of Orleans (attentive, courtly Jean-Claude
Dreyfus) suggest why he and other men found her fascinating. She defends his
cousin the king even while the Duke is mealy-mouthed in explaining why it
might benefit the nation for a few aristocrats to die; by siding with the
mob, he hopes to save himself, and she is devastated when he breaks his
promise to her and votes in favor of the king's execution.

Now consider the scene where Grace Elliott and a maid stand on a hillside
outside Paris and use a spyglass to observe the execution of the king and
his family, while distant cheering floats toward them on the wind.
Everything they survey is a painted perspective drawing--the roads, streams,
hills, trees and the distant city. It doesn't look real, but it has a kind
of heightened presence, and Rohmer's method allows the shot to exist at all.
Other kinds of special effects could not compress so much information into
seeable form.

Rohmer's movies are always about moral choices. His characters debate them,
try to bargain with them, look for loopholes. But there is always clearly a
correct way. Rohmer, one of the fathers of the New Wave, is Catholic in
religion and conservative in politics, and here his heroine believes
strongly in the divine right of kings and the need to risk your life, if
necessary, for what you believe in.

Lucy Russell, a British actress speaking proper French we imagine her
character learned as a child, plays Grace Elliott as a woman of great
confidence and verve. As a woman she must sit at home and wait for news;
events are decided by men and reported to women. We sense her imagination
placing her in the middle of the action, and we are struck by how much more
clearly she sees the real issues than does the muddled Duke.

"The Lady and the Duke" is the kind of movie one imagines could have been
made in 1792. It centers its action in personal, everyday experience--an
observant woman watches from the center of the maelstrom--and has time and
attention for the conversational styles of an age when evenings were not
spent stultified in front of the television. Watching it, we wonder if
people did not live more keenly then. Certainly Grace Elliott was seldom
bored.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 07 Jun 2002 18:11:12 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD / *1/2 (PG-13)

DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD / *1/2 (PG-13)

June 7, 2002

Sidda: Sandra Bullock
Vivi: Ellen Burstyn
Teensy: Fionnula Flanagan
Shep: James Garner
Younger Vivi: Ashley Judd
Necie: Shirley Knight
Caro: Maggie Smith
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Callie Khouri. Written by
Khouri and Mark Andrus, based on the novels Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya
Sisterhood and Little Altars Everywhere by Rebecca Wells. Running time: 116
minutes. Rated PG-13 (for mature thematic elements, language and brief
sensuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

"The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" has a title suggesting that the
movie will be cute and about colorful, irrepressible, eccentric originals.
Heavens deliver us. The Ya-Ya Sisterhood is rubber-stamped from the same
mold that has produced an inexhaustible supply of fictional Southern belles
who drink too much, talk too much, think about themselves too much, try too
hard to be the most unforgettable character you've ever met, and are, in
general, insufferable. There must be a reason these stories are never set in
Minnesota. Maybe it's because if you have to deal with the winter, it makes
you too realistic to become such a silly goose.

There is not a character in the movie with a shred of plausibility, not an
event that is believable, not a confrontation that is not staged, not a
moment that is not false. For their sins, the sisterhood should be forced to
spend the rest of their lives locked in a Winnebago camper. The only
character in the movie who is bearable is the heroine as a young woman,
played by Ashley Judd, who suggests that there was a time before the story's
main events when this creature was palatable.

The heroine is Vivi, played by Ellen Burstyn in her 60s, Judd in her 30s
and, as a child, by a moppet whose name I knoweth not. Yes, this is one of
those movies that whisks around in time, as childhood vows echo down through
the years before we whiplash back to the revelations of ancient secrets. If
life were as simple as this movie, we would all have time to get in shape
and learn Chinese.

As the film opens, four little girls gather around a campfire in the woods
and create the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, exchanging drops of their blood, no doubt
while sheriff's deputies and hounds are searching for them. Flash forward to
the present. Vivi's daughter Sidda (Sandra Bullock) is a famous New York
playwright, who tells an interviewer from Time magazine that she had a
difficult childhood, mostly because of her mother. Whisk down to Louisiana,
where Vivi reads the article and writes the daughter forever out of her
life--less of a banishment than you might think, since they have not seen
each other for seven years and Vivi doesn't even know of the existence of
Sidda's Scottish fiance, Connor (Angus MacFadyen).

Connor seems cut from the same mold as Shep Walker (James Garner), Vivi's
husband. Both men stand around sheepishly while portraying superfluous
males. No doubt their women notice them occasionally and are reminded that
they exist and are a handy supply of sperm. Shep's role for decades has
apparently been to beam approvingly as his wife gets drunk, pops pills and
stars in her own mind. Both men are illustrations of the impatience this
genre has for men as a gender; they have the presence of souvenirs left on
the mantel after a forgotten vacation.

Anyway, we meet the other adult survivors of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: Teensy
(Fionnula Flanagan), Necie (Shirley Knight) and Caro (Maggie Smith). Why do
they all have names like pet animals? Perhaps because real names, like
Martha, Florence or Esther, would be an unseemly burden for such
featherweights. Summoned by Vivi so that she can complain about Sidda,
Teensy, Necie and Caro fly north and kidnap Sidda, bringing her back to
Louisiana so that they can show her that if she really knew the secrets of
her mother's past, she would forgive her all shortcomings, real and
imagined. Since the central great mystery of Vivi's past is how she has
evaded rehab for so long, this quest is as pointless as the rest of the
film.

Why do gifted actresses appear in such slop? Possibly because good roles for
women are rare, for those over 60 precious. Possibly, too, because for all
the other shortcomings of the film, no expense has been spared by the hair,
makeup and wardrobe departments, so that all of the women look just terrific
all of the time, and when Vivi is distraught and emotional, she looks even
more terrific. It's the kind of movie where the actresses must love watching
the dailies as long as they don't listen to the dialogue.

The movie marks the directorial debut of Callie Khouri, author of "Thelma
and Louise." She seems uncertain what the film is about, where it is going,
what it hopes to prove apart from the most crashingly obvious cliches of
light women's fiction. So inattentive is the screenplay that it goes to the
trouble of providing Vivi with three other children in addition to Sidda,
only to never mention them again. A fellow critic, Victoria Alexander,
speculates that the secret in Vivi's past may have been that she drowned the
kids, but that's too much to hope for.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:40 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BAD COMPANY / ** (PG-13)

BAD COMPANY / ** (PG-13)

June 7, 2002

Gaylord Oakes: Anthony Hopkins
Jake Hayes: Chris Rock
Dragan Adjanic: Matthew Marsh
Seale: Gabriel Macht
Julie: Kerry Washington
Jarma: Adoni Maropis
Nicole: Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon
Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Joel Schumacher. Written by
Jason Richman, Michael Browning, Gary Goodman and David Himmelstein. Running
time: 111 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of violent action,
some sensuality and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Hard on the heels of "The Sum of All Fears," here's Jerry Bruckheimer's "Bad
Company," another movie about an American city threatened by the explosion
of a stolen nuclear device. This one is an action comedy. There may come a
day when the smiles fade. To be sure, the movie was made before 9/11 (and
its original autumn 2001 release was delayed for obvious reasons), but even
before 9/11 it was clear that nuclear terrorism was a real possibility.
While "The Sum of all Fears" deals in a quasi-serious way with the subject
(up until the astonishingly inappropriate ending), "Bad Company" is more
light-hearted. Ho, ho.

The nuclear device is really only the McGuffin. It could be anything, as
long as bad guys want it and good guys fight to keep them from it. The
movie's a collision between three durable genres: Misfit Partners, Fish Out
of Water and Mistaken Identity. After an opening scene in which the Chris
Rock character is killed, we learn that he had a twin brother named Jake
Hayes; the babies were separated at birth and never knew about each other.
The first was adopted by a rich family, went to Ivy League schools, and
joined the CIA. Jake is a ticket scalper and chess hustler who's in love
with a nursing student (Kerry Washington).

One problem with the movie, directed by Joel Schumacher, is that it jams too
many prefabricated story elements into the running time. Consider the
training sequence, in which Rock has nine days to perfect the mannerisms and
absorb the knowledge of his dead brother. Odd that most of the coaching
sessions have him learning to recognize fine vintages of wine and evaluate
ancient cognacs; is he going to be dining with the terrorists? Meanwhile,
he's apparently expected to learn to speak Czech from a dictionary tossed
onto his bunk.

His minder at the CIA is Gaylord Oakes (Anthony Hopkins), a spookily calm
veteran operative whose plan is to substitute this twin for the other in a
sting operation designed to buy a stolen nuclear device. When another
would-be buyer enters the picture, the film descends into a series of chase
scenes, which are well enough done, but too many and too long.

Hopkins plays his character right down the middle, hard-edged and serious.
Rock has some effective scenes played straight, but at other times he goes
into a nonstop comic monologue that is funny, yes, but unlikely; when he's
being shot at, how can he think of all those one-liners? The movie's
strategy is to make every sequence stand on its own, with no thought to the
overall tone of the film, so that we go from the deadly serious to something
approaching parody.

Of the plot I can say nothing, except that it exists entirely at the whim of
the stunts, special effects, chases and action. The two competing teams of
would-be evil bomb buyers function entirely to supply an endless number of
guys who fire machineguns a lot but hardly ever hit anything. The motive for
blowing up New York is scarcely discussed. And could I believe my eyes? Here
in 2002--another Red Digital Readout counting down to zero, just when I
thought that was one cliche that had finally outlived its viability.

As for the girls, well, Kerry Washington is sweet and believable as Rock's
girlfriend, but a Bruckheimer movie is not the place to look for meaningful
female performances. No doubt there was a nice payday, but meanwhile
Washington's fine performance in "Lift," the shoplifting film from Sundance
2001, goes unreleased. Even more thankless is the role by Garcelle
Beauvais-Nilon as a CNN correspondent who was the girlfriend of the first
twin, and spots this one because he kisses differently. She disappears
entirely from the film after an ironically appropriate slide down a laundry
chute. (By the way: During the shoot-out in that hotel, how come not a
single guest or employee is ever seen?)

I won't tell you I didn't enjoy parts of "Bad Company," because I did. But
the enjoyment came at moments well-separated by autopilot action scenes and
stunt sequences that outlived their interest. As for the theme of a nuclear
device that might destroy New York, I have a feeling that after this
generation of pre-9/11 movies plays out, we won't be seeing it much anymore.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:47 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA / ***1/2 (PG)

LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA / ***1/2 (PG)

June 7, 2002

Bhuvan: Aamir Khan
Gauri: Gracy Singh
Elizabeth Russell: Rachel ShelleyCapt. Russell: Paul Blackthorne
Yashodamai: Suhasini Mulay
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film directed by Ashutosh Gowariker.
Written by Gowariker, Kumar Dave, Sanjay Dayma and K.P. Saxena. Running
time: 225 minutes. In Hindi, Bhojpuri and English. Rated PG.(for language
and some violence). Opening today at the Landmark Century.

BY ROGER EBERT

"Lagaan" is an enormously entertaining movie, like nothing we've ever seen
before, and yet completely familiar. Set in India in 1893, it combines
sports with political intrigue, romance with evil scheming, musical numbers
with low comedy and high drama, and is therefore soundly in the tradition of
the entertainments produced by the Bombay film industry, "Bollywood," which
is the world's largest.

I have seen only five or six Bollywood movies, one of them in Hyderabad,
India, in 1999, where I climbed to the highest balcony and shivered in
arctic air conditioning while watching a movie that was well over three
hours long and included something for everyone. The most charming aspect of
most Bollywood movies is their cheerful willingness to break into song and
dance at the slightest pretext; the film I saw was about a romance between a
rich boy and a poor girl, whose poverty did not prevent her from producing
back-up dancers whenever she needed them.

"Lagaan" is said to be the most ambitious, expensive and successful
Bollywood film ever made, and has been a box-office hit all over the world.
Starring Aamir Khan, who is one of the top Indian heartthrobs, it was made
with an eye to overseas audiences: If "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" could
break out of the martial-arts ghetto and gross $150 million, then why not a
Bollywood movie for non-Indians? It has succeeded in jumping its genre; it
won an Academy Award nomination this year as best foreign film, and has been
rolling up amazing per-screen averages in North American theaters.

All of which evades the possibility that most readers of this review have
never seen a Bollywood movie and don't want to start now. That will be their
loss. This film is like nothing they've seen before, with its startling
landscapes, architecture and locations, its exuberant colors, its sudden and
joyous musical numbers right in the middle of dramatic scenes, and its
melodramatic acting (teeth gnash, tears well, lips tremble, bosoms heave,
fists clench). At the same time, it's a memory of the films we all grew up
on, with clearly defined villains and heroes, a romantic triangle, and even
a comic character who saves the day. "Lagaan" is a well-crafted, hugely
entertaining epic that has the spice of a foreign culture.

The story takes place at the height of the Raj, England's government of
occupation in India. In a remote province, the local British commander is
Capt. Russell (Paul Blackthorne), a lip-curling rotter with a racist streak,
who insults the local maharajah to his face and thinks nothing of whipping a
Hindu upstart. Even his fellow officers think he's over the top. He
administers "lagaan," which is the annual tax the farmers must pay to their
maharajah, and he to the British. It is a time of drought and hunger, and
the farmers cannot pay.

Enter Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), a leader among his people, who confronts Russell
and finds his weak point: The captain is obsessed by cricket, and believes
it's a game that can never be mastered by Indians. Bhuvan says it is much
like an ancient Indian game, and that Indians could excel at it. Russell
makes Bhuvan a bet: The Brits and a village team will play a cricket match.
If the Indians win, there will be no lagaan for three years. If the Brits
win, lagaan will be tripled. The villagers think Bhuvan is insane, since a
triple tax would destroy them, but he points out that since they cannot pay
the current tax, they have nothing to lose.

Bhuvan assembles and starts to coach a local team. Elizabeth Russell (Rachel
Shelley), the evil captain's sister, believes her brother's deal is unfair,
and secretly sneaks out to the village to provide pointers on cricket. Her
closeness to Bhuvan disturbs Gauri (Gracy Singh), a local woman who has
believed since childhood that she and Bhuvan are fated to marry. There's
another coil of the plot with the two-faced Lakha (Yashpal Sharma), who
wants Gauri for himself, and acts as a spy for Russell because he feels that
if Bhuvan loses face, he'll have a better chance with her.

We meet the members of the village team, an oddly assorted group that
includes a low-caste fortune-teller named Guran (Rajesh Vivek), whose
crippled arm allows him to throw a wicked curve ball. There also is Deva
(Pradeep Rawat), whose service in the British army has fueled his contempt
for his former masters. As training proceeds in the village and the British
sneer from their regimental headquarters, the action is punctuated by much
music.

The British hold dances, at which single young women who have come out from
home hope to find an eligible young officer. (Elizabeth, dreaming about
Bhuvan, is not much interested in the candidate selected for her.) And in
the village music wells up spontaneously, most memorably when storm clouds
promise an end to the long drought. In keeping with Bollywood tradition, the
singing voices in these sequences are always dubbed (the voice-over artists
are stars in their own right), as the camera plunges into joyous
choreography with dancers, singers and swirls of beautifully colored saris.
Such dance sequences would be too contrived and illogical for sensible
modern Hollywood, but we feel like we're getting away with something as we
enjoy them.

"Lagaan" somehow succeeds in being suspenseful at the same time it's
frivolous and obvious. The final cricket match (which we can follow even if
we don't understand the game) is in the time-honored tradition of all sports
movies, and yet the underlying issues are serious. And there is the
intriguing question of whether the hero will end up with his childhood
sweetheart, or cross color lines with the Victorian woman (this is hard to
predict, since both women are seen in entirely positive terms).

As a backdrop to the action, there is India itself. It is a long time since
I praised a movie for its landscapes; I recall "Dr. Zhivago" (1965) or
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962), and indeed like David Lean, director Ashutosh
Gowariker is not shy about lingering on ancient forts and palaces, vast
plains, and the birthday-cake architecture of the British Raj, so out of
place and yet so serenely confident.

Watching the film, we feel familiarity with the characters and the
show-down, but the setting and the production style is fresh and exciting.
Bollywood has always struck a bargain with its audience members, many of
them poor: You get your money's worth. Leaving the film, I did not feel
unsatisfied or vaguely short-changed, as after many Hollywood films, but
satisfied: I had seen a movie.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:49 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE LADY AND THE DUKE / *** (PG-13)

THE LADY AND THE DUKE / *** (PG-13)

June 7, 2002

The Lady, Grace Elliott: Lucy Russell
Duke of Orleans: Jean-Claude Dreyfus
Dumouriez: Francois Marthouret
Champcenetz: Leonard Cobiant
Nanon: Caroline Morin
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film directed by Eric Rohmer. Written by
Rohmer, based on the memoir Journal of My Life During the French Revolution
by Grace Elliott. In French with English subtitles. Running time: 129
minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some violent images). Opening today at the Music
Box.

BY ROGER EBERT

In the Paris of the mob, during the French Revolution, a patrician British
lady supports the monarchy and defies the citizens' committees that rule the
streets. She does this not in the kind of lame-brained action story we might
fear, but with her intelligence and personality--outwitting the louts who
come to search her bedroom, even as a wanted man cowers between her
mattresses.

Eric Rohmer's "The Lady and the Duke" is an elegant story about an elegant
woman, told in an elegant visual style. It moves too slowly for those with
impaired attention spans, but is fascinating in its style and mannerisms.
Like all of the films in the long career of Rohmer, it centers on men and
women talking about differences of moral opinion.

At 81, Rohmer has lost none of his zest and enthusiasm. The director, who
runs up five flights of stairs to his office every morning, has devised a
daring visual style in which the actors and foreground action are seen
against artificial tableaux of Paris circa 1792. These are not "painted
backdrops," but meticulously constructed perspective drawings, which are
digitally combined with the action in a way that is both artificial and
intriguing.

His story is about a real woman, Grace Elliott (Lucy Russell), who told her
story in a forgotten autobiography Rohmer found 10 years ago. She was a
woman uninhibited in her behavior and conservative in her politics, at
onetime the lover of the Prince of Wales (later King George IV), then of
Phillipe, the Duke of Orleans (father of the future king Louis Phillipe).
Leaving England for France and living in a Paris townhouse paid for by the
Duke (who remains her close friend even after their ardor has cooled), she
refuses to leave France as the storm clouds of revolution gather, and
survives those dangerous days even while making little secret of her
monarchist loyalties.

She is stubbornly a woman of principle. She dislikes the man she hides
between her mattresses, but faces down an unruly citizens' search committee
after every single member crowds into her bedroom to gawk at a fine lady in
her nightgown. After she gets away with it, her exhilaration is clear: She
likes living on the edge, and later falsely obtains a pass allowing her to
take another endangered aristocrat out of the city to her country house.

Her conversations with the Duke of Orleans (attentive, courtly Jean-Claude
Dreyfus) suggest why he and other men found her fascinating. She defends his
cousin the king even while the Duke is mealy-mouthed in explaining why it
might benefit the nation for a few aristocrats to die; by siding with the
mob, he hopes to save himself, and she is devastated when he breaks his
promise to her and votes in favor of the king's execution.

Now consider the scene where Grace Elliott and a maid stand on a hillside
outside Paris and use a spyglass to observe the execution of the king and
his family, while distant cheering floats toward them on the wind.
Everything they survey is a painted perspective drawing--the roads, streams,
hills, trees and the distant city. It doesn't look real, but it has a kind
of heightened presence, and Rohmer's method allows the shot to exist at all.
Other kinds of special effects could not compress so much information into
seeable form.

Rohmer's movies are always about moral choices. His characters debate them,
try to bargain with them, look for loopholes. But there is always clearly a
correct way. Rohmer, one of the fathers of the New Wave, is Catholic in
religion and conservative in politics, and here his heroine believes
strongly in the divine right of kings and the need to risk your life, if
necessary, for what you believe in.

Lucy Russell, a British actress speaking proper French we imagine her
character learned as a child, plays Grace Elliott as a woman of great
confidence and verve. As a woman she must sit at home and wait for news;
events are decided by men and reported to women. We sense her imagination
placing her in the middle of the action, and we are struck by how much more
clearly she sees the real issues than does the muddled Duke.

"The Lady and the Duke" is the kind of movie one imagines could have been
made in 1792. It centers its action in personal, everyday experience--an
observant woman watches from the center of the maelstrom--and has time and
attention for the conversational styles of an age when evenings were not
spent stultified in front of the television. Watching it, we wonder if
people did not live more keenly then. Certainly Grace Elliott was seldom
bored.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:53 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE SUM OF ALL FEARS / ***1/2 (PG-13)

THE SUM OF ALL FEARS / ***1/2 (PG-13)

May 31, 2002

Jack Ryan:    Ben Affleck
Bill Cabot:    Morgan Freeman
President Fowler:    James Cromwell
John Clark:    Liev Schreiber
Richard Dressler:    Alan Bates
Defense Sec. Becker:    Philip Baker Hall

Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Phil Alden Robinson. Written
by Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne. Based on the novel by Tom Clancy. Running
time: 119 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence, disaster images and brief
strong language). Opening today at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

Oh, for the innocent days when a movie like "The Sum of All Fears" could be
enjoyed as a "thriller." In these dark times, it is not a thriller but a
confirmer, confirming our fears that the world is headed for disaster. The
film is about the detonation of a nuclear device in an American city. No
less an authority than Warren Buffet recently gave a speech in which he
flatly stated that such an event was "inevitable." Movies like "Black
Sunday" could exorcise our fears, but this one works instead to give them
form.

To be sure, Tom Clancy's horrifying vision has been footnoted with the
obligatory Hollywood happy ending, in which world war is averted and an
attractive young couple pledge love while sitting on a blanket in the
sunshine on the White House lawn. We can walk out smiling, unless we
remember that much of Baltimore is radioactive rubble. Human nature is a
wonderful thing. The reason the ending is happy is because we in the
audience assume we'll be the two on the blanket, not the countless who've
been vaporized.

The movie is based on another of Clancy's fearfully factual stories about
Jack Ryan, the CIA agent, this time a good deal younger than Harrison Ford's
Ryan in "A Clear and Present Danger" and played by Ben Affleck. It follows
the ancient convention in which the hero goes everywhere important and
personally performs most of the crucial actions, but it feels less contrived
because Clancy has expertise about warfare and national security issues; the
plot is a device to get us from one packet of information to another.

The story: In 1973, an Israeli airplane carrying a nuclear bomb crashes in
Syria. Many years later, the unexploded bomb is dug up, goes on the black
market, and is sold to a right-wing fanatic who has a theory: "Hitler was
stupid. He fought America and Russia, instead of letting them fight one
another." The fanatic's plan is to start a nuclear exchange between the
superpowers, after which Aryan fascists would pick up the pieces.

The use of the neo-Nazis is politically correct: Best to invent villains who
won't offend any audiences. This movie can play in Syria, Saudi Arabia and
Iraq without getting walkouts. It's more likely that if a bomb ever does go
off in a big city, the perpetrators will be True Believers whose certainty
about the next world gives them, they think, the right to kill us in this
one.

In the film, Ryan becomes a sort of unofficial protege of Bill Cabot (Morgan
Freeman), a high-level CIA official and good guy who maintains a "back
channel" into the Kremlin to avoid just such misunderstandings as occur.
Ryan and Cabot fly to Moscow when a new president assumes power, and the new
Soviet leader (Ciaran Hinds) is shown as a reasonable man who must take
unreasonable actions (like invading Chechnya) to placate the militarists in
his government.

America is being run by President Fowler (tall, Lincolnesque James
Cromwell), who is surrounded by advisors cast with some of the most
convincing character actors in the movies: Philip Baker Hall, Alan Bates,
Bruce McGill, etc. Crucial scenes take place aboard Air Force One after
Baltimore has been bombed, and we see the president and his cabinet not in
cool analytical discussions but all shouting at once. Somehow I am reassured
by the notion that our leaders might be really upset at such a time; anyone
who can be dispassionate about nuclear war is probably able to countenance
one.

There are some frightening special effects in the movie, which I will not
describe, because their unexpected appearance has such an effect. There are
also several parallel story lines, including one involving a particularly
skilled dirty tricks specialist named John Clark (Liev Schreiber) who I am
glad to have on our side. There are also the usual frustrations in which the
man with the truth can't get through because of bureaucracy.

Against these strengths are some weaknesses. I think Jack Ryan's one-man
actions in post-bomb Baltimore are unlikely and way too well-timed. I doubt
he would find evildoers still hanging around the scene of their crime. I am
not sure all of the threads--identifying the plutonium, finding the shipping
manifest and invoice, tracking down the guy who dug up the bomb--could take
place with such gratifying precision. And I smile wearily at the necessity
of supplying Jack with a girlfriend (Bridget Moynahan), who exists only so
that she can (1) be impatient when he is called away from dates on official
business; (2) disbelieve his alibis; (3) be heroic; (4) be worried about
him; (5) be smudged with blood and dirt, and (6) populate the happy ending.
We are so aware of the character's function that we can hardly believe her
as a person.

These details are not fatal to the film. Director Phil Alden Robinson and
his writers, Paul Attanasio and Daniel Pyne, do a spellbinding job of
cranking up the tension, they create a portrait of convincing realism, and
then they add the other stuff because, well, if anybody ever makes a movie
like this without the obligatory Hollywood softeners, audiences might flee
the theater in despair. My own fear is that in the post-apocalyptic future,
"The Sum of All Fears" will be seen as touchingly optimistic.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:43 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CHELSEA WALLS / *** (R)

CHELSEA WALLS / *** (R)

June 7, 2002

Bud: Kris Kristofferson
Terry: Robert Sean Leonard
Mary: Natasha Richardson
Grace: Uma Thurman
Audrey: Rosario Dawson
Frank: Vincent D'Onofrio
Ross: Steve Zahn
Greta: Tuesday Weld
Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Ethan Hawke. Written by Nicole
Burdette, based on her play. Running time: 109 minutes. Rated R (for
language). Opening today at Landmark Century.

BY ROGER EBERT

A rest stop for rare individuals.

- --Motto of the Chelsea Hotel

'Chelsea Walls" is the movie for you, if you have a beaten-up copy of the
Compass paperback edition of Kerouac's On the Road and on page 124 you
underlined the words, "The one thing that we yearn for in our living days,
that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the
remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced only in the
womb and can only be reproduced (through we hate to admit it) in death." If
you underlined the next five words ("But who wants to die?"), you are too
realistic for this movie.

Lacking the paperback, you qualify for the movie if you have ever made a
pilgrimage to the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street in New York and given a
thought to Dylan Thomas, Thomas Wolfe, Arthur C. Clarke, R. Crumb, Brendan
Behan, Gregory Corso, Bob Dylan, or Sid and Nancy, who lived (and in some
cases died) there. You also qualify if you have ever visited the Beat
Bookshop in Boulder, Colo., if you have ever yearned to point the wheel west
and keep driving until you reach the Pacific Coast Highway, or if you have
never written the words "somebody named Lawrence Ferlinghetti."

If you are by now thoroughly bewildered by this review, you will be equally
bewildered by "Chelsea Walls" and had better stay away from it. Ethan
Hawke's movie evokes the innocent spirit of the Beat Generation 50 years
after the fact, and celebrates characters who think it is noble to live in
extravagant poverty while creating Art and leading untidy sex lives. These
people smoke a lot, drink a lot, abuse many substances, and spend either no
time at all or way too much time managing their wardrobes. They live in the
Chelsea Hotel because it is cheap and provides a stage for their
psychodramas.

Countless stories have been set in the Chelsea. Andy Warhol's "Chelsea
Girls" (1967) was filmed there. Plays have between written about it,
including one by Nicole Burdette that inspired this screenplay.
Photographers and painters have recorded its seasons. It is our American
Left Bank, located at one convenient address. That Hawke would have wanted
to direct a movie about it is not surprising; he and his wife, Uma Thurman,
who could relax with easy-money stardom, have a way of sneaking off for
dodgy avant-garde projects. They starred in Richard Linklater's "Tape"
(2001) about three people in a motel room, and now here is the epic version
of the same idea, portraying colorful denizens of the Chelsea in full bloom.

We meet Bud (Kris Kristofferson), a boozy author who uses a typewriter
instead of a computer, perhaps because you can't short it out by spilling a
bottle on it. He has a wife named Greta (Tuesday Weld) and a mistress named
Mary (Natasha Richardson), and is perhaps able to find room for both of them
in his life because neither one can stand to be around him all that long. He
tells them both they are his inspiration. When he's not with the Muse he
loves, he loves the Muse he's with.

Val (Mark Webber) is so young he looks embryonic. He buys lock, stock and
barrel into the mythology of bohemia, and lives with Audrey (Rosario
Dawson). They are both poets. I do not know how good Audrey's poems are
because Dawson reads them in closeup--just her face filling the screen--and
I could not focus on the words. I have seen a lot of closeups in my life but
never one so simply, guilelessly erotic. Have more beautiful lips ever been
photographed?

Frank (Vincent D'Onofrio) is a painter who thinks he can talk Grace
(Thurman) into being his lover. She is not sure. She prefers a vague, absent
lover, never seen, and seems to know she has made the wrong choice but takes
a perverse pride in sticking with it. Ross (Steve Zahn) is a singer whose
brain seems alarmingly fried. Little Jimmy Scott is Skinny Bones, a
down-and-out jazzman. Robert Sean Leonard is Terry, who wants to be a folk
singer. The corridors are also occupied by the lame and the brain-damaged;
every elevator trip includes a harangue by the house philosopher.

Has time passed these people by? Very likely. Greatness resides in ability,
not geography, and it is futile to believe that if Thomas Wolfe wrote Look
Homeward, Angel in Room 831, anyone occupying that room is sure to be
equally inspired. What the movie's characters are seeking is not
inspiration, anyway, but an audience. They stay in the Chelsea because they
are surrounded by others who understand the statements they are making with
their lives. In a society where the average college freshman has already
targeted his entry-level position in the economy, it's a little lonely to
embrace unemployment and the aura of genius. To actors with a romantic edge,
however, it's very attractive: No wonder Matt Dillon sounds so effortlessly
convincing on the audiobook of On the Road.

Hawke shot the film for $100,000 on digital video, in the tradition of
Warhol's fuzzy 16mm photography. Warhol used a split screen, so that while
one of his superstars was doing nothing on the left screen, we could watch
another of his superstars doing nothing on the right screen. Hawke, working
with Burdette's material, has made a movie that by contrast is
action-packed. The characters enjoy playing hooky from life and posing as
the inheritors of bohemia. Hawke's cinematographer, Richard Rutkowski, and
his editor, Adriana Pacheco, weave a mosaic out of the images, avoiding the
temptation of a simple realistic look: The film is patterned with color,
superimposition, strange exposures, poetic transitions, grainy color
palettes.

Movies like this do not grab you by the throat. You have to be receptive.
The first time I saw "Chelsea Walls," in a stuffy room late at night at
Cannes 2001, I found it slow and pointless. This time, I saw it earlier in
the day, fueled by coffee, and I understood that the movie is not about what
the characters do, but about what they are. It may be a waste of time to
spend your life drinking, fornicating, posing as a genius and living off
your friends, but if you've got the money, honey, take off the time.

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