ftp.xmission.com/2014.06.ftp.xmission.com.tar/ftp.xmission.com/pub/lists/movies/archive/v02.n361

Internet Message Format | 2002-06-12 | 51KB

From: [e-mail] (movies-digest)
To: [e-mail]
Subject: movies-digest V2 #361
Reply-To: movies-digest
Sender: [e-mail]
Errors-To: [e-mail]
Precedence: bulk


movies-digest         Thursday, June 13 2002         Volume 02 : Number 361



[MV] THE SALTON SEA / *** (R)
[MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R)
[MV] THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST / *** (PG)
[MV] UNFAITHFUL / *** (R)
[MV] BARAN / ***1/2 (PG)
[MV] LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13)
[MV] ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated)
[MV] STAR WARS -- EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES / ** (PG)

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:21 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE SALTON SEA / *** (R)

THE SALTON SEA / *** (R)

May 17, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 20:50:30 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] NINE QUEENS / *** (R)

NINE QUEENS / *** (R)

May 10, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:15 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST / *** (PG)

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST / *** (PG)

May 24, 2002

Algernon Moncrieff: Rupert     Everett
Jack Worthing: Colin Firth
Cecily Cardew: Reese     Witherspoon
Lady Bracknell: Judi Dench
Gwendolen Fairfax: Frances     O'Connor
Rev. Chasuble: Tom Wilkinson
Miss Prism: Anna Massey
Lane: Edward Fox
Miramax Films presents a film written and directed by Oliver Parker. Based
on the play by Oscar Wilde. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG.(for mild
sensuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

Be careful what you ask for; you might get it. Two weeks ago I deplored the
lack of wit in "Star Wars: Episode II--Attack of the Clones," which has not
one line of quotable dialogue. Now here is "The Importance of Being
Earnest," so thick with wit it plays like a reading from Bartlett's Familiar
Quotations. I will demonstrate. I have here the complete text of the Oscar
Wilde play, which I have downloaded from the Web. I will hit "Page Down" 20
times and quote the first complete line from the top of the screen:

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does.
That's his.

Now the question is, does this sort of thing appeal to you? Try these:

Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is
the use of them?

To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose
both looks like carelessness.

It appeals to me. I yearn for a world in which every drawing room is a
stage, and we but players on it. But does anyone these days know what a
drawing room is? The Universal Studios theme park has decided to abolish its
characters dressed like the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, because "a
majority of people no longer recognize them." I despair. How can people
recognize wit who begin with only a half-measure of it?

Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a comedy constructed out
of thin air. It is not really about anything. There are two romances at the
center, but no one much cares whether the lovers find happiness together.
Their purpose is to make elegant farce out of mistaken identities, the class
system, mannerisms, egos, rivalries, sexual warfare and verbal playfulness.

Oliver Parker's film begins with music that is a little too modern for the
period, circa 1895, following the current fashion in anachronistic movie
scores. It waltzes us into the story of two men who are neither one named
Ernest and who both at various times claim to be. Jack Worthing (Colin
Firth) calls himself Jack in the country and Ernest in town. In the country,
he is the guardian of the charming Miss Cecily Cardew (Reese Witherspoon),
who is the granddaughter of the elderly millionaire who adopted Jack after
finding him as an infant in a handbag he was handed in error at the
cloakroom in Victoria Station. When Jack grows bored with the country, he
cites an imaginary younger brother named Ernest who lives in London and must
be rescued from scrapes with the law.

This imaginary person makes perfect sense to Jack's friend Algernon
Moncrieff (Rupert Everett), who lives in town but has a fictitious friend
named Bunbury who lives in the country and whose ill health provides
Algernon an excuse to get out of town. I have gone into such detail about
these names and alternate identities because the entire play is constructed
out of such silliness, and to explain all of it would require--well, the
play.

In town Jack is much besotted by Gwendolen Fairfax (Frances O'Connor),
daughter of the formidable Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench), Algernon's aunt, who
is willing to consider Jack as a suitor for the girl but nonplussed to learn
that he has no people--none at all--and was indeed left in a bag at the
station. Thus her remark about his carelessness in losing both parents.

Algernon in the meantime insinuates himself into the country estate where
young Cecily is being educated under the watchful eye of Miss Prism (Anna
Massey), the governess; eventually all of the characters gather at the Manor
House, Woolton, where there's some confusion since Algernon has taken the
name Ernest for his visit and proposed to Cecily, so that when Cecily meets
Gwendolen, they both believe they are engaged to Ernest although Cecily of
course doesn't know that in town Gwendolen knows Jack as Ernest.

But now I have been lured into the plot again. The important thing about
"The Importance" is that all depends on the style of the actors, and Oliver
Parker's film is well cast. Reese Witherspoon, using an English accent that
sounds convincing to me, is charming as Jack's tender ward, who of course
falls for Algernon. She is a silly, flighty girl, just right for Algernon,
for whom romance seems valuable primarily as a topic of conversation.
Frances O'Connor is older and more sensuous as Gwendolen, and gently
encourages the shy Jack to argue his case ("Mr. Worthing, what have you got
to say to me?"). Judi Dench keeps a stern eye on the would-be lovers, and a
strong hand on the tiller.

"The Importance of Being Earnest" is above all an exercise in wit. There is
nothing to be learned from it, no moral, no message. It adopts what one
suspects was Wilde's approach to sex--more fun to talk about than to do. As
Algernon observes, romance dies when a proposal is accepted: "The very
essence of romance is uncertainty." Wilde takes this as his guide. When the
play's uncertainties have all been exhausted, the play ends. The last line
("I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital importance of
being earnest") takes on an interesting spin if we know that "earnest" was a
vernacular term for "gay" in 1895. Thus the closing line may subvert the
entire play, although not to the surprise of anyone who has been paying
attention.

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 20:50:37 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] UNFAITHFUL / *** (R)

UNFAITHFUL / *** (R)

May 10, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:39 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BARAN / ***1/2 (PG)

BARAN / ***1/2 (PG)

May 3, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:50 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13)

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

April 26, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What?

"Giving up marriage and children for a career?"

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:17 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ABOUT A BOY / ***1/2 (PG-13)

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

May 17, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:46 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated)

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

April 26, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 20:50:32 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] STAR WARS -- EPISODE 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES / ** (PG)

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

May 10, 2002

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

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 #361
****************************

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