ftp.xmission.com/2014.06.ftp.xmission.com.tar/ftp.xmission.com/pub/lists/movies/archive/v02.n360

Internet Message Format | 2002-06-12 | 53KB

From: [e-mail] (movies-digest)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: movies-digest V2 #360
Reply-To: movies-digest
Sender: [e-mail]
Errors-To: [e-mail]
Precedence: bulk


movies-digest         Thursday, June 13 2002         Volume 02 : Number 360



[MV] LATE MARRIAGE / *** (Not rated)
[MV] DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD / *1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] BARTLEBY / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] ENOUGH / *1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] INSOMNIA / ***1/2 (R)
[MV] SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON / *** (G)
[MV] THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG)
[MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13)
[MV] HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] JASON X / 1/2* (R)

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:51 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LATE MARRIAGE / *** (Not rated)

LATE MARRIAGE / *** (Not rated)

May 31, 2002

Zaza: Lior Loui Ashkenazi
Judith: Ronit Elkabetz
Yasha (father): Moni Moshonov
Lily (mother): Lili Kosashvili
Ilana: Aya Steinovits Laor
Transfax Film Productions presents a film written and directed by Dover
Kosashvili. In Hebrew and Georgian with English subtitles. Running time: 100
minutes. No MPAA rating. Opening today at the Music Box Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

When children are grown they must be set free to lead their own lives.
Otherwise it's no longer a parent guiding a child, but one adult insisting
on authority over another. Wise parents step back before they cross this
line. Wise children rebel against parents who do not. "Late Marriage" is
about parents who insist on running the life of their 31-year-old son, and a
son who lets them. The characters deserve their misery.

The film is set in Israel, within a community of Jewish immigrants from the
former Soviet republic of Georgia. Zaza at 31 has still not filled his
obligation to marry and produce children. His parents have marched a parade
of potential wives past him, without success. His secret is that he's in
love with Judith, a divorcee from Morocco, four years older, with a
daughter. His parents would never approve of Zaza marrying such a woman.

As the movie opens, Zaza and his family descend on the home of Ilana, a
sulky 17-year-old who has been proposed as a prospective bride. There may be
a difference in age and education, but at least she is single, childless,
and arguably a virgin. In a scene of excruciating social comedy, the two
families arrange themselves in the living room and discuss Zaza and Ilana as
if they were this week's Tupperware specials. Then Ilana is produced and the
would-be couple dispatched to her bedroom "to get to know one another."

"Is that a dress or a nightgown?" Zaza (Lior Loui Ashkenazi) asks her when
they are alone. "What do you think?" asks Ilana (Aya Steinovits Laor). She
shows him her portfolio and confides her desire to be a dress designer. She
seems to be designing for the hostesses in an Havana hooker bar, circa 1959.
"I want a rich man," she tells him. Obviously he will not do, but they fall
on her bed and neck for a while until summoned back to the family council.

Zaza's parents find out about Judith (Ronit Elkabetz), the divorcee. They
stake out her house and eventually break in upon the romantic couple,
calling Judith a whore and demanding that the relationship end. Does Zaza
stand up to his mother, Lily (Lili Kosashvili, the director's own mother)?
No, he doesn't, and Judith sees this, and wisely drops him because there is
no future for her.

The contest between arranged marriages and romantic love is being waged in
novels and movies all over those parts of the world where parents select the
spouses of their children. Art is on the side of romance, tradition on the
side of the parents. Sometimes, as in Mira Nair's wonderful "Monsoon
Wedding," set in Delhi, there is a happy medium when the arranged couple
falls in love. But look at Rohinton Mistry's new novel, Family Matters,
about a man who spends a lifetime of misery after having a widow foisted on
him by a family that disapproves of the Christian woman from Goa he truly
loves.

The most important sequence in "Late Marriage" is a refreshingly frank sex
scene involving Zaza and Judith. We don't often see sex like this on the
screen. The scene is not about passion, performance or technique, but about
(listen carefully) familiarity and affection. They know each other's bodies.
They have a long history of lovemaking, and you can see how little movements
and gestures are part of a shared physical history. Watching this scene, we
realize that most sex scenes in the movies play like auditions.

"Late Marriage" is not a one-level film, and one of its most revealing
moments shows the strong-minded mother expressing respect for the equally
iron-willed Judith. These women understand one another, and the mother even
realistically discusses the chances that her Zaza will defy her and choose
the divorcee. The mother would, if forced to, actually accept that--but Zaza
is too frightened of her to intuit that there is a crack in his mother's
heart of stone.

I know couples whose marriages were arranged and who are blissful. I know
couples who married for love and are miserable. I am not saying one way is
right and another wrong. The message of "Late Marriage," I think, is that
when a marriage is decided by the parents crushing the will of the child, it
is wrong for the child and unfair to the new spouse. I have more thoughts on
this subject, but have just remembered this is not the advice column, so I
will close with the best all-purpose advice I have heard on this subject:
Never marry anyone you could not sit next to during a three-day bus trip.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:45 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.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:56 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BARTLEBY / **1/2 (PG-13)

BARTLEBY / **1/2 (PG-13)

May 24, 2002

The Boss: David Paymer
Bartleby: Crispin Glover
Vivian: Glenne Headly
Rocky: Joe Piscopo
Ernie: Maury Chaykin
Frank Waxman: Seymour Cassel
Book Publisher: Carrie Snodgress
Mayor: Dick Martin
Outrider Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Parker. Written by
Parker and Catherine DiNapoli. Based on the story "Bartleby the Scrivener"
by Herman Melville. Running time: 82 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sexual
content).

BY ROGER EBERT

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Thoreau

The life work of the employees in the Public Record Office can be easily
described: They take enormous quantities of printed documents they have no
interest in, and they file them. They are surrounded by the monument to
their labor: lots of file cabinets. No wonder they go mad. Vivian distracts
herself by flirting. Rocky pretends he has the inside line on everything.
For Ernie, changing the toner cartridge in a Xerox machine is an invitation
to disaster. Their boss patiently oversees their cheerless existence trying
not to contemplate the devastating meaningless of the office.

One day a new employee is hired. His name is Bartleby. The Boss asks him to
do something. "I would prefer not to," Bartleby says. That becomes his reply
to every request. He would prefer not to. He would prefer not to work, not
to file, not to obey, not to respond, NOT to. What he prefers to do is stand
in the center of the office with his neck cocked at an odd angle, staring at
the ceiling.

The Boss is checkmated. Bartleby is not doing bad work; he isn't working at
all. His refusal to work subverts the entire work ethic of the organization.
Everyone in the office--Vivian, Rocky, Ernie and the Boss himself--would
prefer not to work. But that way madness lies. Our civilization is founded
on its ability to get people to do things they would prefer not to do.

"Bartleby," is set in the present day in a vast monolithic office building
that crouches atop a hill like an Acropolis dedicated to bureaucracy. It is
based on "Bartleby the Scrivener," a famous story published in 1856 by
Herman Melville, who not only wrote Moby Dick but labored for many empty
years as a clerk in a customs house. Although the story is nearly 150 years
old, it is correct to observe, as A.O. Scott does in the New York Times,
that Melville anticipated Kafka--and Dilbert. This kind of office work
exists outside time.

David Paymer plays The Boss, a sad-eyed man who has a private office of his
own, its prestige undermined by the fact that his window directly overlooks
a Dumpster. Glenne Headly is Vivian, who flirts because if a man shows
interest in her, that may be evidence that she exists. Joe Piscopo is Rocky,
who dresses flamboyantly to imply he is not as colorless as his job. Maury
Chaykin is the hopeless nebbish Ernie, who elevates strategic incompetence
to an art form.

And Crispin Glover is Bartleby. The teen star of the '80s appears here like
a ghost, pale and immobile, arrested by some private grief or fear. When he
says, "I would prefer not to," it doesn't sound like insubordination,
rebellion or resistance, but like a flat statement of fact--a fact so
overwhelming it brings all possible alternatives to a dead halt.

The film has been directed by Jonathan Parker; he adapted the Melville story
with Catherine DiNapoli. It's his first work, and a promising one. I admire
it and yet cannot recommend it, because it overstays its natural running
time. The Melville short story was short because it needed to be short--to
make its point and then stop dead without compromise or consideration.
"Bartleby" is short for a feature film, at 82 minutes, but might have been
more successful at 50 or 60 minutes. Too bad there seems to be an
unbreakable rule against features that short, or short subjects that long.
In a perfect world, "Bartleby" would establish the office and its workers,
introduce Bartleby, develop response to the work, and stop. Side stories,
such as Vivian's attraction to the city manager (Seymour Cassel), would not
be necessary.

And yet there is a kind of uncompromising, implacable simplicity to
"Bartleby" that inspires admiration. In a world where most movies are about
exciting people doing thrilling things, here is a film about as job that is
living death, and a man who prefers not to do it. My friend McHugh worked
his way through college at Acme Pest Control of Bloomington, Ind. One day
while he was crawling under a house with a spray gun, a housewife invited
him into the kitchen for a lemonade. As he drank it, while covered in
cobwebs and mud, she told her son, "Study your lessons hard, Jimmy, or
you'll end up like him." Or like Bartleby.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:49:59 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ENOUGH / *1/2 (PG-13)

ENOUGH / *1/2 (PG-13)

May 24, 2002

Slim: Jennifer Lopez
Mitch: Billy Campbell
Ginny: Juliette Lewis
Gracie: Tessa Allen
Joe: Dan Futterman
Robbie: Noah Wyle
Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Michael Apted. Written by
Nicholas Kazan. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for intense scenes
of domestic violence, some sensuality and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Enough" is a nasty item masquerading as a feminist revenge picture. It's a
step or two above "I Spit On Your Grave," but uses the same structure, in
which a man victimizes a woman for the first half of the film, and then the
woman turns the tables in an extended sequence of graphic violence. It's
surprising to see a director like Michael Apted and an actress like Jennifer
Lopez associated with such tacky material.

It is possible to imagine this story being told in a good film, but that
would involve a different screenplay. Nicholas Kazan's script makes the evil
husband (Billy Campbell) such an unlikely caricature of hard-breathing
sadistic testosterone that he cannot possibly be a real human being. Of
course there are men who beat their wives and torture them with cruel mind
games, but do they satirize themselves as the heavy in a B movie? The
husband's swings of personality and mood are so sudden, and his motivation
makes so little sense, that he has no existence beyond the stereotyped Evil
Rich White Male. The fact that he preys on a poor Latino waitress is just
one more cynical cliche.

The story: Jennifer Lopez plays Slim, a waitress in a diner where she shares
obligatory sisterhood and bonding with Ginny (Juliette Lewis), another
waitress. A male customer tries to get her to go on a date, and almost
succeeds before another customer named Mitch (Campbell) blows the whistle
and reveals the first man was only trying to win a bet. In the movie's
headlong rush of events, Slim and Mitch are soon married, buy a big house,
have a cute child, and then Slim discovers Mitch is having affairs, and he
growls at her: "I am, and always will be, a person who gets what he wants."
He starts slapping her around.

Although their child is now 3 or 4, this is a Mitch she has not seen before
in their marriage. Where did this Mitch come from? How did he restrain
himself from pounding and strangling her during all of the early years? Why
did she think herself happy until now? The answer, of course, is that Mitch
turns on a dime when the screenplay requires him to. He even starts talking
differently.

The plot (spoiler warning) now involves Slim's attempts to hide herself and
the child from Mitch. She flees to Michigan and hooks up with a
battered-wife group, but Mitch, like the hero of a mad slasher movie, is
always able to track her down. Along the way, Slim appeals for help to the
father (Fred Ward) who has never acknowledged her, and the father's dialogue
is so hilariously over the top in its cruelty that the scene abandons all
hope of working seriously and simply functions as haywire dramaturgy.

Slim gets discouraging advice from a lawyer ("There is nothing you can do.
He will win."). And then she gets training in self-defense from a martial
arts instructor. Both of these characters are African-American, following
the movie's simplistic moral color-coding. The day when the evil husband is
black and the self-defense instructor is white will not arrive in our
lifetimes.

The last act of the movie consists of Slim outsmarting her husband with a
series of clever ploys in which she stage-manages an escape route, sets a
booby trap for his SUV, and then lures him into a confrontation where she
beats the Shinola out of him, at length, with much blood, lots of stunt
work, breakaway furniture, etc. The movie in time-honored horror movie
tradition doesn't allow Mitch to really be dead the first time. There is a
plot twist showing that Slim can't really kill him--she's the heroine, after
all--and then he lurches back into action like the slasher in many an
exploitation movie, and is destroyed more or less by accident. During this
action scene, Slim finds time for plenty of dialogue explaining that any
court will find she was acting in self-defense.

All of this would be bad enough without the performance of Tessa Allen as
Gracie, the young daughter. She has one of those squeaky itsy-bitsy piped-up
voices that combines with babyish dialogue to make her more or less
insufferable; after the ninth or 10th scream of "Mommy! Mommy!" we hope that
she will be shipped off to an excellent day care center for the rest of the
story.

Jennifer Lopez is one of my favorite actresses, but not here, where the
dialogue requires her to be passionate and overwrought in a way that is
simply not believable, maybe because no one could take this cartoon of a
story seriously. No doubt she saw "Enough" as an opportunity to play a heavy
dramatic role, but there is nothing more dangerous than a heavy role in a
lightweight screenplay, and this material is such a melodramatic soap opera
that the slick production values seem like a waste of effort.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:10 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] INSOMNIA / ***1/2 (R)

INSOMNIA / ***1/2 (R)

May 24, 2002

Will Dormer: Al Pacino
Walter Finch: Robin Williams
Ellie Burr: Hilary Swank
Hap Eckhart: Martin Donovan
Rachel Clement: Maura Tierney
Randy Stetz: Jonathan Jackson
Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Christopher Nolan. Written by
Hillary Seitz, based on a screenplay by Nikolaj Frobenius and Erik
Skjoldbjaerg. Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (for language, some
violence and brief nudity).

BY ROGER EBERT

He looks exhausted when he gets off the plane. Troubles are preying on him.
An investigation by internal affairs in Los Angeles may end his police
career. And now here he is in--where the hell is this?--Nightmute, Alaska,
land of the midnight sun, investigating a brutal murder. The fuels driving
Detective Will Dormer are fear and exhaustion. They get worse.

Al Pacino plays the veteran cop, looking like a man who has lost all hope.
His partner Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan) is younger, more resilient and may
be prepared to tell the internal affairs investigators what they want to
know--information that would bring the older man down. They have been sent
up north to help with a local investigation, flying into Nightmute in a
two-engine prop plane that skims low over jagged ice ridges. They'll be
assisting a local cop named Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank), who is still fresh
with the newness of her job.

"Insomnia," the first film directed by Christopher Nolan since his famous
"Memento" (2001), is a remake of a Norwegian film of the same name, made in
1998 by Erik Skjoldbjaerg. That was a strong, atmospheric, dread-heavy film,
and so is this one. Unlike most remakes, the Nolan "Insomnia" is not a pale
retread, but a re-examination of the material, like a new production of a
good play. Stellan Skarsgard, who starred in the earlier film, took an
existential approach to the character; he seemed weighed down by the moral
morass he was trapped in. Pacino takes a more physical approach: How much
longer can he carry this burden?

The story involves an unexpected development a third of the way through, and
then the introduction of a character we do not really expect to meet, not
like this. The development is the same in both movies; the character is much
more important in this new version, adding a dimension I found fascinating.
Spoilers will occur in the next paragraph, so be warned.

The pivotal event in both films, filmed much alike, is a shoot-out in a
thick fog during a stakeout. The Pacino character sets a trap for the
killer, but the suspect slips away in the fog, and then Pacino, seeing an
indistinct figure loom before him, shoots and kills Hap, his partner from
L.A. It is easy enough to pin the murder on the escaping killer, except that
one person knows for sure who did it: the escaping killer himself.

In the Norwegian film, the local female detective begins to develop a
circumstantial case against the veteran cop. In a nice development in the
rewrite (credited to original authors Nikolaj Frobenius and Skjoldbjaerg,
working with Hillary Seitz), the killer introduces himself into the case as
sort of Pacino's self-appointed silent partner.

The face of the killer, the first time we see it, comes as a shock, because
by now we may have forgotten Robin Williams was even in the film. He plays
Walter Finch, who does not really consider himself a murderer, although his
killing was cruel and brutal. These things happen. Everyone should be
forgiven one lapse. Right, detective? Pacino, sleepless in a land where the
sun mercilessly never sets, is trapped: If he arrests Finch, he exposes
himself and his own cover-up. And the local detective seems to suspect
something.

Unusual, for a thriller to hinge on issues of morality and guilt, and
Nolan's remake doesn't avoid the obligatory Hollywood requirement that all
thrillers must end in a shoot-out. There is also a scene involving a chase
across floating logs, and a scene where a character is trapped underwater.
These are thrown in as--what? Sops for the cinematically impaired, I
suppose. Only a studio executive could explain why we need perfunctory
action, just for action's sake, in a film where the psychological suspense
is so high.

Pacino and Williams are very good together. Their scenes work because
Pacino's character, in regarding Williams, is forced to look at a mirror of
his own self-deception. The two faces are a study in contrasts. Pacino is
lined, weary, dark circles under his eyes, his jaw slack with fatigue.
Williams has the smooth, open face of a true believer, a man convinced of
his own case. In this film and "One-Hour Photo," which played at Sundance
2002 and will be released later in the year, Williams reminds us that he is
a considerable dramatic talent--and that while, over the years, he has
chosen to appear in some comedic turkeys ("Death to Smoochy" leaps to mind),
his serious films are almost always good ones.

Why Nolan took on this remake is easy to understand. "Memento" was one of a
kind; the thought of another film based on a similar enigma is exhausting.
"Insomnia" is a film with a lot of room for the director, who establishes a
distinctive far-north location, a world where the complexities of the big
city are smoothed out into clear choices. The fact that it is always
daylight is important: The dilemma of this cop is that he feels people are
always looking at him, and he has nowhere to hide, not even in his
nightmares.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:13 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON / *** (G)

SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON / *** (G)

May 24, 2002

Featuring the voices of:
Narrator: Matt Damon
The Colonel: James Cromwell
Little Creek: Daniel Studi
DreamWorks Pictures presents a film directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook.
Written by John Fusco. Running time: 82 minutes. Rated G.

BY ROGER EBERT

The animals do not speak in "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron," and I think
that's important to the film's success. It elevates the story from a
children's fantasy to one wider audiences can enjoy, because although the
stallion's adventures are admittedly pumped-up melodrama, the hero is
nevertheless a horse and not a human with four legs. There is a whole level
of cuteness that the movie avoids, and a kind of narrative strength it gains
in the process.

The latest animated release from DreamWorks tells the story of Spirit, a
wild mustang stallion, who runs free on the great Western plains before he
ventures into the domain of man and is captured by U.S. Cavalry troops. They
think they can tame him. They are wrong, although the gruff-voiced colonel
(voice of James Cromwell) makes the stallion into a personal obsession.

Spirit does not want to be broken, shod or inducted into the Army, and his
salvation comes through Little Creek (voice of Daniel Studi), an Indian
brave who helps him escape and rides him to freedom. The pursuit by the
cavalry is one of several sequences in the film where animation frees chase
scenes to run wild, as Spirit and his would-be captors careen down canyons
and through towering rock walls, dock under obstacles and end up in a river.

Watching the film, I was reminded of Jack London's classic novel White Fang,
so unfairly categorized as a children's story even though the book (and the
excellent 1991 film) used the dog as a character in a parable for adults.
White Fang and Spirit represent hold-outs against the taming of the
frontier; invaders want to possess them, but they do not see themselves as
property.

All of which philosophy will no doubt come as news to the cheering kids I
saw the movie with, who enjoyed it, I'm sure, on its most basic level, as a
big, bold, colorful adventure about a wide-eyed horse with a stubborn
streak. That Spirit does not talk (except for some minimal thoughts that we
overhear on voice-over) doesn't mean he doesn't communicate, and the
animators pay great attention to body language and facial expressions in
scenes where Spirit is frightened of a blacksmith, in love with a mare, and
the partner of the Indian brave (whom he accepts after a lengthy battle of
the wills).

There is also a scene of perfect wordless communication between Spirit and a
small Indian child who fearlessly approaches the stallion at a time when he
feels little but alarm about humans. The two creatures, one giant, one tiny,
tentatively reach out to each other, and the child's absolute trust is
somehow communicated to the horse. I remembered the great scene in "The
Black Stallion" (1979) where the boy and the horse edge together from the
far sides of the wide screen.

In the absence of much dialogue, the songs by rocker Bryan Adams fill in
some of the narrative gaps, and although some of them simply comment on the
action (a practice I find annoying), they are in the spirit of the story.
The film is short at 82 minutes, but surprisingly moving, and has a couple
of really thrilling sequences, one involving a train wreck and the other a
daring leap across a chasm. Uncluttered by comic supporting characters and
cute sidekicks, "Spirit" is more pure and direct than most of the stories we
see in animation--a fable I suspect younger viewers will strongly identify
with.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:19 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG)

THE MYSTIC MASSEUR / *** (PG)

May 17, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:23 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS / *** (PG-13)

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

May 10, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:41 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13)

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

May 3, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:48 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] JASON X / 1/2* (R)

JASON X / 1/2* (R)

April 26, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

End of movies-digest V2 #360
****************************

[ To quit the movies-digest mailing list (big mistake), send the message     ]
[ "unsubscribe movies-digest" (without the quotes) to [e-mail] ]