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movies-digest         Thursday, June 13 2002         Volume 02 : Number 362



[MV] WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R)
[MV] THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13)
[MV] LUCKY BREAK / *** (PG-13)
[MV] THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13)
[MV] THE SCORPION KING / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] BEHIND THE SUN / ** (PG-13)
[MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)
[MV] MURDER BY NUMBERS / *** (R)
[MV] THE LAST WALTZ / *** (PG)
[MV] MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING / *** (PG)
[MV] SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13)

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:54 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R)

WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R)

April 26, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:52 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13)

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

April 26, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:51:03 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LUCKY BREAK / *** (PG-13)

LUCKY BREAK / *** (PG-13)

April 19, 2002

Jimmy: James Nesbitt
Annabel: Olivia Williams
Cliff: Timothy Spall
Roger: Bill Nighy
Rudy: Lennie James
Graham Mortimer: Christopher     Plummer
Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Peter Cattaneo. Written by
Ronan Bennett. Running time: 109 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for brief strong
language and some sexual references).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Lucky Break" is the new film by Peter Cattaneo, whose "The Full Monty" is
the little British comedy that added a useful expression to the language.
This movie is set in prison but uses much the same formula: A group of guys
without much hope decide to band together and put on a show. This time they
stage a musical comedy written by the prison warden, which means that
instead of stripping, they perform in costume. I am not sure if this is the
half monty, or no monty at all.

British prisons are no doubt depressing and violent places in real life, but
in "Lucky Break," the recent "Borstal Boy" and the summer 2001 movie
"Greenfingers," they are not only benign places with benevolent governors,
but provide remarkable access to attractive young women. Jimmy, the hero of
"Lucky Break," finds abundant time to fall in love with Annabel (Olivia
Williams), the prison anger-management counselor. Brendan Behan, the hero of
the biopic "Borstal Boy," has a youthful romance with Liz, the warden's
daughter. And in "Greenfingers," which is about a prize-winning team of
prison gardeners, one of the green-thumbsmen falls in love with the daughter
of a famous TV garden lady. Only in these movies is prison a great place for
a wayward lad to go in order to meet the right girl.

"Lucky Break" stars James Nesbitt and Lennie James as Jimmy and Rudy,
partners in an ill-conceived bank robbery that lands them both in prison.
The prison governor (Christopher Plummer) is an amateur playwright who has
written a musical based on the life of Admiral Nelson, whose statue provides
a congenial resting place for pigeons in Trafalgar Square. The lads agree to
join in a prison production of the musical after learning that the play will
be staged in the old prison chapel--which they consider the ideal place from
which to launch a prison break.

Much of the humor of the film comes from the production of "Nelson, the
Musical," with book and lyrics by the invaluable actor and comic writer
Stephen Fry; we hear a lot of the songs, see enough of scenes to get an idea
of the awfulness, and hardly notice as the prison break segues into a movie
about opening night and backstage romance.

I am not sure that the average prisoner has unlimited opportunities to spend
time alone with beautiful young anger-management counselors, warden's
daughters or assistant TV gardeners, but in "Lucky Break," so generous is
the private time that Jimmy and Annabel even share a candlelight dinner. To
be sure, a can of sardines is all that's served, but it's the thought that
counts.

The key supporting role is by Timothy Spall, sort of a plump, British Steve
Buscemi--a sad sack with a mournful face and the air of always trying to
cheer himself up. What keeps him going is his love for his young son; this
whole subplot is more serious and touching than the rest of the film,
although it leads to a scene perhaps more depressing than a comedy should be
asked to sustain.

The climax of the film, as in "The Full Monty," is the long-awaited stage
performance, which goes on as various subplots solve themselves, or not,
backstage. There is not much here that comes as a blinding plot revelation,
but the movie has a raffish charm and good-hearted characters, and like "The
Full Monty" it makes good use of the desperation beneath the comedy.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:35 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13)

THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13)

May 10, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:51:15 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE SCORPION KING / **1/2 (PG-13)

THE SCORPION KING / **1/2 (PG-13)

April 19, 2002

Mathayus: The Rock
Memnon: Steven Brand
Balthazar: Michael Clarke Duncan
The Sorceress: Kelly Hu
Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Chuck Russell. Written by
Stephen Sommers, William Osborne and David Hayter. Running time: 94 minutes.
Rated PG-13 (for intense sequences of action violence and some sensuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

Where do you think you are going with my horse?
To Gomorrah. Nothing we can say will stop him.
- --Dialogue in "The Scorpion King"

A nd a wise move, too, because "The Scorpion King" is set "thousands of
years before the Pyramids," so property values in Gomorrah were a good value
for anyone willing to buy and hold. Here is a movie that embraces its
goofiness like a Get Out of Jail Free card. The plot is recycled out of
previous recycling jobs, the special effects are bad enough that you can
grin at them, and the dialogue sounds like the pre-Pyramidal desert warriors
are channeling a Fox sitcom (the hero refers to his camel as "my ride").

The film stars The Rock, famous as a WWF wrestling star (Vince McMahon takes
a producer's credit), and on the basis of this movie, he can definitely star
in movies like this. This story takes place so long ago in prehistory that
The Rock was a hero and had not yet turned into the villain of "The Mummy
Returns" (2001), and we can clearly see his face and muscular physique--an
improvement over the earlier film, in which his scenes mostly consisted of
his face being attached to a scorpion so large it looked like a giant
lobster. How gigantic was the lobster? It would take a buffalo to play the
Turf.

The story: An evil Scorpion King named Memnon (Steven Brand) uses the
talents of a sorceress (Kelly Hu) to map his battle plans, and has conquered
most of his enemies. Then we meet three Arkadians, professional assassins
who have been "trained for generations in the deadly art," which indicates
their training began even before they were born. The Arkadian leader
Mathayus, played by The Rock, is such a powerful man that early in the film
he shoots a guy with an arrow and the force of the arrow sends the guy
crashing through a wall and flying through the air. (No wonder he warns,
"Don't touch the bow.")

How The Rock morphs from this character into the "Mummy Returns" character
is a mystery to me, and, I am sure, to him. Along the trail Mathayus loses
some allies and gains others, including a Nubian giant (Michael Clarke
Duncan), a scientist who has invented gunpowder, a clever kid and a
wisecracking horse thief. The scene where they vow to kill the Scorpion King
is especially impressive, as Mathayus intones, "As long as one of us still
breathes, the sorcerer will die!" See if you can spot the logical loophole.

Mathayus and his team invade the desert stronghold of Memnon, where the
sorceress, who comes from or perhaps is the first in a long line of James
Bond heroines, sets eyes on him and wonders why she's bothering with the
scrawny king. Special effects send Mathayus and others catapulting into
harems, falling from castle walls and narrowly missing death by fire,
scorpion, poisonous cobra, swordplay, arrows, explosion and being buried up
to the neck in the sand near colonies of fire ants. And that's not even
counting the Valley of the Death, which inspires the neo-Mametian dialogue:
"No one goes to the Valley of the Death. That's why it's called the Valley
of the Death."

Of all the special effects in the movie, the most impressive are the ones
that keep the breasts of the many nubile maidens covered to within one
centimeter of the PG-13 guidelines. Hu, a beautiful woman who looks as if
she is trying to remember the good things her agent told her would happen if
she took this role, has especially clever long, flowing hair, which cascades
down over her breasts instead of up over her head, even when she is
descending a waterfall.

Did I enjoy this movie? Yeah, I did, although not quite enough to recommend
it. Because it tries too hard to be hyper and not hard enough to be clever.
It is what it is, though, and pretty good at it. Those who would dislike the
movie are unlikely to attend it (does anybody go to see The Rock in "The
Scorpion King" by accident?). For its target audience, looking for a few
laughs, martial arts and stuff that blows up real good, it will be exactly
what they expected. It has high energy, the action never stops, the dialogue
knows it's funny, and The Rock has the authority to play the role and the
fortitude to keep a straight face. I expect him to become a durable action
star. There's something about the way he eats those fire ants that lets you
know he's thinking, "If I ever escape from this predicament, I'm gonna come
back here and fix me up a real mess of fire ants, instead of just chewing on
a few at a time."

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:56 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BEHIND THE SUN / ** (PG-13)

BEHIND THE SUN / ** (PG-13)

April 19, 2002

Father: Jose Dumont
Tonio: Rodrigo Santoro
Mother: Rita Assemany
Pacu: Ravi Ramos Lacerda
Salustiano: Luiz Carlos Vasconcelos
Miramax Films presents a film directed by Walter Salles. Written by Salles,
Karim Ainouz and Sergio Machado. Based on the book Broken April by Ismail
Kadare. Running time: 91 minutes. In Portuguese with English subtitles.
Rated PG-13 (for some violence and a scene of sexuality). Opening today at
Landmark Century.

BY ROGER EBERT

'B ehind the Sun" describes a blood feud elevated to the dignity of tragedy.
It takes place in a rural area of Brazil, but it could be set instead in the
Middle East, in Bosnia, in India, in Africa, in any of those places where
people kill each other because of who their parents were. Religion, which is
often cited as a justification for these killings, is just a smoke screen
for tribalism. The killings spring out of a universal human tendency to
dislike anyone who is not like we are.

The movie takes place in 1910. Two families live on either side of a cane
field. The Ferreiras are richer, live in a sprawling villa, have an extended
family. The Breves family is poorer, humble, hard-working. Since time
immemorial there has been a feud between these two families, springing from
some long-forgotten disagreement over land. Over time a set of ground rules
has grown up: First a Ferreira man (or a Breves man) kills a Breves (or a
Ferreira) man, and then the tables are turned.

If it only amounted to that, all the Breves and Ferreiras would be dead, or
one side would have won. Certain customs somewhat slow the pace of the
killing. When someone has been killed, his blood-stained shirt is left out
in the sun to dry, and there is a truce until the red has turned yellow.
Despite the predictable timetable that would seem to operate, the next
victim is somehow always unprepared, as we see when a young Breves stalks
his quarry one night after a shirt has turned yellow.

We meet Pacu, "the Kid" (Ravi Ramos Lacerda), youngest son of the Breves
family, who knows that since his adored older brother Tonio (Rodrigo
Santoro) has killed a Ferreira, it is only a matter of time until the blood
fades and Tonio is killed. While the ominous waiting period continues, a
troupe of itinerant circus performers passes through, and the Kid meets the
ringmaster and his sultry fire-eating star. They give him a picture book
about the sea, which, wouldn't you know, encourages him to dream about a
world different from the one he knows.

The circus itself offers an alternative vision, not that the cheerless sugar
cane feud doesn't make anything look preferable. Tonio meets the
fire-breather and is thunderstruck by love, and there is the possibility
that, yes, he might run away with the circus. More than this I dare not
reveal, except to hint that the age-old fate of the two families must play
out under the implacable sun.

"Behind the Sun" is a good-looking movie, directed by Walter Salles, who was
much praised for his 1999 Oscar-nominated "Central Station," also about a
young boy whose life is scarred by the cruelty of his elders. It has some of
the simplicity and starkness of classical tragedy, but what made me
impatient was its fascination with the macho bloodlust of the two families.
Since neither family has evolved to the point where it can see the futility
of killing and the pointlessness of their deadly ritual, it was hard for me
to keep from feeling they were getting what they deserved.

Sure, I hoped Tonio would get the girl and the Kid would see the ocean, but
these are limited people and we can care about them only if we buy into
their endless cycle of revenge and reprisal. After a certain point, no one
is right and no one is wrong, both sides have boundless grievances, and it's
the audience that wants to run away with the circus.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:25 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING / *** (R)

May 10, 2002

Don: Bob Jay Mills
Donatella: Petra Westen
Marion: Tacey Adams
Joe: Al Schuermann
Chuck: Zia
Don Jr.: Andrew Eichner
Mike: Jerry O'Conner
Barry: Scooter Stephan
Universal Focus presents a film written and directed by Frank Novak. Running
time: 90 minutes. Rated R (for pervasive language, domestic violence and
drug content). Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

BY ROGER EBERT

I watch the guests on "Jerry Springer" with the fascination of an ambulance
driver at Demo Derby. Where do these people come from? Their dialogue may be
"suggested" but their lives are all too evidently real, and they have
tumbled right through the safety net of taste and self-respect and gone
spiraling down, down into the pit of amoral vulgarity. Now comes "Good
Housekeeping," a film about how the people on Springer live when they're not
on camera.

No, it's not a documentary. It was written and directed by Frank Novak,
otherwise a trendy Los Angeles furniture manufacturer, who regards his white
trash characters with deadpan neutrality. How is the audience expected to
react? Consider this dialogue:

Don: "Maybe if we cut her in half we could get her in there."

Chuck: "We can't cut her in half!"

Don: "So what are you? Mr. Politically Correct?"

Don and Chuck are brothers. Don (Bob Jay Mills) uneasily shares his house
with his wife Donatella (Petra Westen), while Chuck (credited only as Zia)
sleeps with his girlfriend Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan) in Don's car.

Things are not good between Don and Donatella, and he uses 2x4s and
plasterboard to build a wall that cuts the house in two ("She got way more
square feet than I got," he tells the cops during one of their frequent
visits). Realizing he has forgotten something, Don cuts a crawl hole in the
wall so that Don Jr. (Andrew Eichner) can commute between parents. Soon
Donatella's new lesbian lover Marion (Tacey Adams) is poking her head
through the hole to discuss the "parameters" Don is setting for his son.

Donatella is a forklift operator. Don is self-employed as a trader of action
figures, with a specialty in Pinhead and other Hellraiser characters. When
Chuck tries to sell him a Sad-Eye Doll, he responds like a pro: "Couldn't
you Swap-Meet it? I'm not gonna put that on my table and drag down my other
merch." Don Jr. has less respect for action figures and occasionally saws
off their heads.

Terrible things happen to the many cars in this extended family, both by
accident and on purpose. One of the funniest sequences shows a big blond
family friend, desperately hung-over, methodically crunching into every
other car in the driveway before she runs over the mailbox. Don lives in
fear of Donatella running him down, and at one point discusses his defense
with a gun-show trader (Al Schuermann), who scoffs, "You would use a .38 to
defend yourself?" He comes back with real protection against vehicular
manslaughter: a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

Marion, the well-mannered lesbian lover, is the source of many of the film's
biggest laughs because of the incongruity of her crush on Donatella. She
watches Donatella smoke, eat, talk and blow her nose all at the same time,
and her only reaction is to eat all the more politely, in the hope of
setting an example. Marion is an accountant at the factory where Donatella
works; she dresses in chic business suits, has smart horn-rim glasses and a
stylish haircut, and plunges into Springerland with an arsenal of liberal
cliches. At one point, after a nasty domestic disturbance, she tries to make
peace by inviting Don out to brunch. "There's no way the cops can make you
go to brunch," Don's beer-bellied buddies reassure him.

It is perhaps a warning signal of incipient alcoholism when the family car
has a Breathalyzer permanently attached to the dashboard. Yet Don is not
without standards, and warns his brother against making love in the car
because "I drive Mom to church in it." Family life follows a familiar
pattern. Most evenings end with a fight in the yard, and Novak and his
cinematographer, Alex Vendler, are skilled at getting convincing,
spontaneous performances out of their unknown actors; many scenes, including
the free-for-alls, play with the authenticity of a documentary.

Just as mainstream filmmakers are fascinated by the rich and famous, so
independent filmmakers are drawn to society's hairy underbelly. "Good
Housekeeping" plunges far beneath Todd Solondz's territory and enters the
suburbs of John Waters' universe in its fascination for people who live
without benefit of education, taste, standards, hygiene and shame. Indeed,
all they have enough of are cigarettes, used cars, controlled substances and
four-letter words. The movie is, however, very funny as you peek at it
through the fingers in front of your eyes.

Note: "Good Housekeeping" has had its ups and downs. It won the grand jury
prize at Slamdance 2000, was the only U.S. film chosen for Critic's Week at
Cannes that year, and was picked up for distribution by the Shooting
Gallery--which, alas, went out of business, leaving the film orphaned. "Good
Housekeeping" has its U.S. premiere today through Thursday at the Gene
Siskel Film Center.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:51:06 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] MURDER BY NUMBERS / *** (R)

MURDER BY NUMBERS / *** (R)

April 19, 2002

Cassie Mayweather: Sandra     Bullock
Richard Haywood: Ryan Gosling
Justin Pendleton: Michael Pitt
Sam Kennedy: Ben Chaplin
Lisa: Agnes Bruckner
Ray: Chris Penn
Warner Bros. presents a film directed by Barbet Schroeder. Written by Tony
Gayton. Running time: 119 minutes. Rated R (for violence, language, a sex
scene and brief drug use).

BY ROGER EBERT

Richard and Justin, the high school killers in "Murder by Numbers," may not
have heard of Leopold and Loeb, or seen Hitchcock's "Rope," or studied any
of the other fictional versions ("Compulsion," "Swoon") of the infamous
murder pact between two brainy and amoral young men. But they're channeling
it. "Murder by Numbers" crosses Leopold/Loeb with a police procedural and
adds an interesting touch: Instead of toying with the audience, it toys with
the characters. We have information they desperately desire, and we watch
them dueling in misdirection.

The movie stars Sandra Bullock as Cassie Mayweather, a veteran detective,
experienced enough to trust her hunches and resist the obvious answers. Ben
Chaplin is Sam Kennedy, her by-the-book partner, the kind of cop who gets an
A for every step of his investigation but ends up with the wrong conclusion.
Paired against them are Richard Haywood and Justin Pendleton (Ryan Gosling,
from "The Believer," and Michael Pitt, from "Hedwig and the Angry Inch").
These are two brainy high school kids, fascinated as Leopold and Loeb were
by the possibility of proving their superiority by committing the perfect
murder.

Their plan: Pick a victim completely at random, so that there is no link
between corpse and killers, and leave behind no clues. The film opens with
the suggestion of a suicide pact between the two teenagers, who face each
other, holding revolvers to their heads, in a crumbling gothic building so
improbably close to the edge of a seaside cliff that we intuit someone is
going to be dangling over it by the end of the film.

Bullock's Cassie is the central character, a good cop but a damaged human
being, whose past holds some kind of fearsome grip on her present.

Cassie and Sam are assigned to a creepy case; the body of a middle-aged
female has been found in a wooded area, and close analysis of clues (hair,
strands from a rug) seems to lead back to a suspect. Sam is happy to follow
the clues to their logical conclusion. Cassie isn't so sure, and a chance
meeting with one of the young sociopaths leads to a suspicion: "Something's
not right with that kid."

We learn a lot about police work in "Murder by Numbers," and there's a kind
of fascination in seeing the jigsaw puzzle fall into place, especially since
the audience holds some (but not all) of the key pieces. Many of the best
scenes involve an intellectual and emotional duel between the two young men,
who seem to have paused on the brink of becoming lovers and decided to
sublimate that passion into an arrogant crime. Richard and Justin are
smart--Justin smarter in an intellectual way, Richard better at manipulating
others. The movie wisely reserves details of who did what in the killing,
and why.

These are affluent kids with absent parents, who are their own worst enemies
because their arrogance leads them to play games with the cops to show how
smart they are. They'd be better off posing as vacant-headed slackers. It is
Cassie's intuition that the boys are inviting her attention, are turned on
by the nearness of capture. Meanwhile, of course, her partner and the brass
at the station are eager for a quick solution. A janitor is the obvious
suspect? Arrest the janitor.

The movie has been directed by the versatile Barbet Schroeder, who
alternates between powerful personal films ("Our Lady of the Assassins") and
skillful thrillers ("Single White Female"). When the two strands cross you
get one-of-a-kind films like "Reversal of Fortune" and "Barfly." After the
semi-documentary freedom and scary Colombian locations of "Our Lady of the
Assassins," here's a movie which he directs as an exercise in craft--only
occasionally letting his mordant humor peer through, as in an inexplicable
scene where Cassie is bitten by a monkey.

Bullock does a good job here of working against her natural likability,
creating a character you'd like to like, and could like, if she weren't so
sad, strange and turned in upon herself. She throws herself into police work
not so much because she's dedicated as because she needs the distraction,
needs to keep busy and be good to assure herself of her worth. As she draws
the net closer, and runs into more danger and more official opposition, the
movie more or less helplessly starts thinking to itself about that cliff
above the sea, but at least the climax shows us that Bullock can stay in
character no matter what.

@photo.caption:Ben Chaplin and Sandra Bullock play detectives investigating
the seemingly

inexplicable death of a

middle-age woman in Barbet Schroeder's "Murder by

Numbers.'' --

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:51:12 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE LAST WALTZ / *** (PG)

THE LAST WALTZ / *** (PG)

April 19, 2002

FeaturingThe Band, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris,
Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Robbie Robertson, the Staples, Muddy Waters,
Ronnie Wood, Neil Young and Martin Scorsese.United Artists presents a
concert documentary directed by Martin Scorsese. Running time: 117 minutes.
Rated PG.

BY ROGER EBERT

I wonder if the sadness comes across on the CD. The music probably sounds
happy. But the performers, seen on screen, seem curiously morose, exhausted,
played out. Recently, I was at a memorial concert for the late tenor sax man
Spike Robinson, and the musicians--jazz and big band veterans--were
cheerful, filled with joy, happy to be there. Most of the musicians in "The
Last Waltz" are, on average, 25 years younger than Spike's friends, but they
drag themselves onstage like exhausted veterans of wrong wars.

The rock documentary was filmed by Martin Scorsese at a farewell concert
given on Thanksgiving Day 1976 by The Band, which had been performing since
1960, in recent years as the backup band for Bob Dylan. Now the film is back
in a 25th anniversary restoration. "Sixteen years on the road is long
enough," says Robbie Robertson, the group's leader. "Twenty years is
unthinkable." There is a weight and gravity in his words that suggests he
seriously doubts if he could survive four more years.

Drugs are possibly involved. Memoirs recalling the filming report that
cocaine was everywhere backstage. The overall tenor of the documentary
suggests survivors at the ends of their ropes. They dress in dark, cheerless
clothes, hide behind beards, hats and shades, pound out rote performances of
old hits, don't seem to smile much at their music or each other. There is
the whole pointless road warrior mystique, of hard-living men whose daily
duty it is to play music and get wasted. They look tired of it.

Not all of them. The women (Joni Mitchell, Emmylou Harris) seem immune,
although what Mitchell's song is about I have no clue, and Harris is filmed
in another time and place. Visitors like the Staple Singers are open-faced
and happy. Eric Clapton is in the right place and time. Muddy Waters is on
sublime autopilot. Lawrence Ferlinghetti reads a bad poem, badly, but seems
pleased to be reading it. Neil Diamond seems puzzled to find himself in this
company, grateful to be invited.

But then look at the faces of Neil Young or Van Morrison. Study Robertson,
whose face is kind and whose smile comes easily, but who does not project a
feeling of celebration for the past or anticipation of the future. These are
not musicians at the top of their art, but laborers on the last day of the
job. Look in their eyes. Read their body language.

"The Last Waltz" has inexplicably been called the greatest rock documentary
of all time. Certainly that would be "Woodstock," which heralds the
beginning of the era which The Band gathered to bury. Among 1970s
contemporaries of The Band, one senses joy in the various Rolling Stones
documentaries, in Chuck Berry's "Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll" and in concert
films by the Temptations or Rod Stewart. Not here.

In "The Last Waltz," we have musicians who seem to have bad memories. Who
are hanging on. Scorsese's direction is mostly limited to closeups and
medium shots of performances; he ignores the audience. The movie was made at
the end of a difficult period in his own life, and at a particularly hard
time (the filming coincided with his work on "New York, New York"). This is
not a record of serene men, filled with nostalgia, happy to be among
friends.

At the end, Bob Dylan himself comes on. One senses little connection between
Dylan and The Band. One also wonders what he was thinking as he chose that
oversized white cowboy hat, a hat so absurd that during his entire
performance I could scarcely think of anything else. It is the haberdashery
equivalent of an uplifted middle finger.

The music probably sounds fine on a CD. Certainly it is well-rehearsed. But
the overall sense of the film is of good riddance to a bad time. Even
references to groupies inspire creases of pain on the faces of the
rememberers: The sex must have been as bad as anything else. Watching this
film, the viewer with mercy will be content to allow the musicians to
embrace closure, and will not demand an encore. Yet I give it three stars?
Yes, because the film is such a revealing document of a time.

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:51:08 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING / *** (PG)

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING / *** (PG)

April 19, 2002

Toula Portokalos: Nia Vardalos
Ian Miller: John Corbett
Maria: Lainie Kazan
Gus: Michael Constantine
Nikki: Gia Carides
Nick: Louis Mandylor
Angelo: Joey Fatone
Rodney Miller: Bruce Gray
Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Joel Zwick. Written by Nia
Vardalos. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated PG.(for sensuality and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Everyone in this movie looks like they could be a real person. The romance
involves not impossibly attractive people, but a 30-year-old woman who looks
OK when she pulls herself out of her Frump Phase, and a vegetarian high
school teacher who urgently needs the services of Supercuts. Five minutes
into the film, I relaxed, knowing it was set in the real world, and not in
the Hollywood alternative universe where Julia Roberts can't get a date.

"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is narrated by Toula Portokalos (Nia Vardalos),
who, like all Greek women, she says, was put upon this earth for three
purposes: to marry a Greek man, to have Greek children, and to feed everyone
until the day she dies. Toula is still single, and works in the family
restaurant (Dancing Zorbas), where, as she explains, she is not a waitress,
but a "seating hostess." One day a guy with the spectacularly non-Greek name
of Ian Miller (John Corbett) walks in, and she knows instinctively that
marriage is thinkable.

The movie is warm-hearted in the way a movie can be when it knows its people
inside out. Watching it, I was reminded of Mira Nair's "Monsoon Wedding,"
about an Indian wedding. Both cultures place great emphasis on enormous
extended families, enormous extended weddings, and enormous extended wedding
feasts. Nia Vardalos, who not only stars but based the screenplay on her own
one-woman play, obviously has great affection for her big Greek family, and
a little exasperation, too--and who wouldn't, with a father who walks around
with a spray jar of Windex because he is convinced it will cure anything? Or
a mother who explains, "When I was your age, we didn't have food."

Vardalos was an actress at Chicago's Second City when she wrote the play.
The way the story goes, it was seen by Rita Wilson, a Greek-American
herself, and she convinced her husband, Tom Hanks, that they had to produce
it. So they did, making a small treasure of human comedy. The movie is set
in Chicago but was filmed in Toronto--too bad, because the dating couple
therefore doesn't have a cheezeborger at the Billy Goat.

As the film opens, Toula the heroine is single at 30 and therefore a
failure. Ian Miller causes her heart to leap up in love and desire, and Ian
likes her, too. Really likes her. This isn't one of those formula pictures
where it looks like he's going to dump her. There's enough to worry about
when the families meet. "No one in our family has ever gone out with a
non-Greek," Toula warns him uneasily, and indeed her parents (Lainie Kazan
and Michael Constantine) regard Ian like a lesser life form.

The movie is pretty straightforward: Ian and Toula meet, they date, they
bashfully discover they like one another, the families uneasily coexist, the
wedding becomes inevitable, and it takes place (when Ian's mother brings a
Bundt cake to the wedding, no one has the slightest idea what it is). One
key shot shows the church, with the bride's side jammed, and the groom's
handful of WASP relatives making a pathetic show in their first four rows.
Toula explains to Ian that she has 27 first cousins, and at a pre-nuptial
party, she even introduces some of them: "Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick,
Nick, Nicky--and Gus."

The underlying story of "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" has been played out
countless times as America's immigrants have intermarried. If the lovers
have understanding (or at least reluctantly flexible) parents, love wins the
day and the melting pot bubbles. This is nicely illustrated by Toula's
father, Gus. He specializes in finding the Greek root for any word (even
"kimono"), and delivers a toast in which he explains that "Miller" goes back
to the Greek word for apple, and "Portokalos" is based on the Greek word for
oranges, and so, he concludes triumphantly, "in the end, we're all fruits."

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Date: 13 Jun 2002 20:50:44 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13)

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

May 3, 2002

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

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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