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movies-digest        Thursday, October 31 2002        Volume 02 : Number 377



[MV] GHOST SHIP / ** (R)
[MV] FORMULA 51 / * (R)
[MV] BLOODY SUNDAY / ***1/2 (R)
[MV] PAID IN FULL / **1/2 (R)
[MV] AUTO FOCUS / **** (R)
[MV] REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES / ***1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] WAKING UP IN RENO / *1/2 (R)
[MV] NAQOYQATSI / *** (PG)
[MV] THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE / *** (PG-13)
[MV] IN PRAISE OF LOVE / * (Not rated)

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

Date: 25 Oct 2002 16:17:02 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] GHOST SHIP / ** (R)

GHOST SHIP / ** (R)

October 25, 2002

Murphy: Gabriel Byrne
Epps: Julianna Margulies
Dodge: Ron Eldard
Ferriman: Desmond Harrington
Greer: Isaiah Washington
Santos: Alex Dimitriades
Munder: Karl Urban
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Steve Beck. Written by
Mark Hanlon and John Pogue. Based on a story by Hanlon. Running time: 88
minutes. Rated R (for strong violence/gore, language and sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Ghost Ship" recycles all the usual haunted house material, but because it's
about a haunted ocean liner, it very nearly redeems itself. Yes, doors open
by themselves to reveal hanging corpses. Yes, there's a glimpse of a
character who shouldn't be there. Yes, there's a cigarette burning in an
ashtray that hasn't been used in 40 years. And yes, there's a struggle
between greed and prudence as the dangers pile up.

These are all usual elements in haunted house movies, but here they take
place aboard the deserted--or seemingly deserted--hulk of the Antonia Graza,
an Italian luxury liner that disappeared without a trace during a 1962
cruise to America and has now been discovered 40 years later, floating in
the Bering Strait. A salvage crew led by Gabriel Byrne and Julianna
Margulies sets out to capture this trophy, which could be worth a fortune.

Echoes from long-ago geography classes haunted me as I watched the film,
because the Bering Sea, of course, is in the North Pacific, and if the
Antonia Graza disappeared from the North Atlantic, it must have succeeded in
sailing unattended and unnoticed through the Panama Canal. Or perhaps it
rounded Cape Horn, or the Cape of Good Hope. Maybe its unlikely position is
like a warning that this ship no longer plays by the rules of the physical
universe.

The salvage crew is told about the ship by Ferriman (Desmond Harrington), a
weather spotter for the Royal Canadian Air Force. He got some photos of it,
and tips them off in return for a finder's fee. On board the salvage tug are
Murphy the skipper (Byrne), Epps the co-owner (Margulies), and crew members
Greer (Isaiah Washington), Dodge (Ron Eldard), Munder (Karl Urban) and
Santos (Alex Dimitriades). Under the time-honored code of horror movies,
they will disappear in horrible ways in inverse proportion to their
billing--although of course there's also the possibility they'll turn up
again.

The most absorbing passages in the film involve their exploration of the
deserted liner. The quality of the art direction and photography actually
evoke some of the same creepy, haunting majesty of those documentaries about
descents to the grave of the Titanic. There's more scariness because we know
how the original passengers and crew members died (that opening scene has a
grisly humor), and because the ship still seems haunted--not only by that
sad-eyed little girl, but perhaps by others.

The mystery eventually yields an explanation, if not a solution, and there
is the obligatory twist in the last shot, which encourages us to reinterpret
everything in diabolical terms and to think hard about the meanings of
certain names. But the appeal of "Ghost Ship" is all in the process, not in
the climax. I liked the vast old empty ballroom, the deserted corridors and
the sense of a party that ended long ago (the effect is of a nautical
version of Miss Havisham's sealed room). I knew that there would be
unexpected shocks, sudden noises and cadaverous materializations, but I have
long grown immune to such mechanical thrills (unless they are done well, of
course). I just dug the atmosphere.

Is the film worth seeing? Depends. It breaks no new ground as horror movies
go, but it does introduce an intriguing location, and it's well made
technically. It's better than you expect but not as good as you hope.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:54 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] FORMULA 51 / * (R)

FORMULA 51 / * (R)

October 18, 2002

Elmo McElroy: Samuel L. Jackson
Felix DeSouza: Robert Carlyle
Dakota Phillips: Emily Mortimer
The Lizard: Meat Loaf
Det. Virgil Kane: Sean Pertwee
Leopold Durant: Ricky Tomlinson
Iki: Rhys Ifans
Screen Gems presents a film directed by Ronny Yu. Written by Stel Pavlou.
Running time: 92 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence, language, drug
content and some sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Pulp Fiction" and "Trainspotting" were two of the most influential movies
of the last 10 years, but unfortunately their greatest influence has been on
ripoffs of each other--movies like "Formula 51," which is like a fourth-rate
"Pulp Fiction" with accents you can't understand. Here instead of the
descent into the filthiest toilet in Scotland we get a trip through the most
bilious intestinal tract in Liverpool; instead of a debate about Cheese
Royales we get a debate about the semantics of the word "bollocks"; the
F-word occupies 50 percent of all sentences, and in the opening scenes
Samuel L. Jackson wears another one of those Afro wigs.

Jackson plays Elmo McElroy, a reminder that only eight of the 74 movies with
characters named Elmo have been any good. In the prologue, he graduates from
college with a pharmaceutical degree, is busted for pot, loses his license,
and 30 years later is the world's most brilliant inventor of illegal drugs.

Now he has a product named "P.O.S. Formula 51," which he says is 51 times
stronger than crack, heroin, you name it. Instead of selling it to a
druglord named The Lizard (Meat Loaf), he stages a spectacular surprise for
Mr. Lizard and his friends, and flies to Liverpool, trailed by Dakota
Phillips (Emily Mortimer), a skilled hit woman hired by The Lizard to kill
him, or maybe keep him alive, depending on The Lizard's latest information.

In Liverpool we meet Felix DeSouza (Robert Carlyle), a reminder that only
six of the 200 movies with a character named Felix have been any good. (The
stats for "Dakota" are also discouraging, but this is a line of inquiry with
limited dividends.) Felix has been dispatched by the Liverpudlian drug king
Leopold Durant (Ricky Tomlinson), whose hemorrhoids require that a flunky
follow him around with an inner tube that makes whoopee-type whistles
whenever the screenplay requires.

The movie is not a comedy so much as a farce, grabbing desperately for funny
details wherever possible. The Jackson character, for example, wears a kilt
for most of the movie. My online correspondent Ian Waldron-Mantgani, a
critic who lives in Liverpool but doesn't give the home team a break, points
out that the movie closes with the words "No one ever found out why he wore
a kilt," and then explains why he wore the kilt. "You get the idea how much
thought went into this movie," Waldron-Mantgani writes, with admirable
restraint.

Many of the jokes involve Felix's fanatic support of the Liverpool football
club, and a final confrontation takes place in an executive box of the
stadium. Devices like this almost always play as a desperate attempt to
inject local color, especially when the movie shows almost nothing of the
game, so that Americans will not be baffled by what they call football.
There are lots of violent shoot-outs and explosions, a kinduva love affair
between Felix and Dakota, and an ending that crosses a red herring, a
McGuffin and a shaggy dog.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:34 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BLOODY SUNDAY / ***1/2 (R)

BLOODY SUNDAY / ***1/2 (R)

October 25, 2002

Ivan Cooper: James Nesbitt
Maj. Gen. Ford: Tim Pigott-Smith
Brigadier MacLellan: Nicholas Farrell
Chief Supt. Lagan: Gerard McSorley
Frances: Kathy Kiera Clarke
Kevin McCorry: Allan Gildea
Eamonn McCann: Gerard Crossan
Paramount Classics presents a film written and directed by Paul Greengrass.
Based on the book by Don Mullan. Running time: 110 minutes. Rated R (for
violence and language). Opening today at Webster Place and Evanston CineArts
6.

BY ROGER EBERT

Both sides agree that on Jan. 30, 1972, a civil rights march in Derry,
Northern Ireland, ended with a confrontation between some of the marchers
and British army paratroopers. At the end of the day, 13 marchers were dead
and 14 in the hospital, one of whom later died. No British soldiers were
killed. An official inquiry declared that the soldiers had returned the fire
of armed marchers. Some of the soldiers involved were later decorated by the
crown.

Beyond this agreement, there is a disagreement so deep and bitter that 30
years later "Bloody Sunday" is still an open wound in the long, contested
history of the British in Northern Ireland. A new inquiry into the events of
the day was opened in 1998 and still continues today. Paul Greengrass' film
"Bloody Sunday," which shared the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival
this year, is made in the form of a documentary. It covers about 24 hours,
starting on Saturday evening, and its central character is Ivan Cooper
(James Nesbitt), a civil rights leader in Derry. He was a Protestant MP from
the nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party. Most of the 10,000 marchers
on that Sunday would be Catholic; that a Protestant led them, and stood
beside such firebrands as Bernadette Devlin, indicates the division in the
north between those who stood in solidarity with their co-religionists, and
those of all faiths who simply wanted the British out of Northern Ireland.

Cooper is played by Nesbitt as a thoroughly admirable man, optimistic,
tireless, who walks fearlessly through dangerous streets and has a good word
for everyone. He knows the day's march has been banned by the British
government but expects no trouble because it will be peaceful and
non-violent. As Cooper hands out leaflets in the streets, Greengrass
intercuts preparations by the British army, which from the top down is
determined to make a strong stand against "hooliganism." More than two dozen
British soldiers have been killed by the Provisional IRA in recent months,
and this is a chance to crack down.

Greengrass also establishes a few other characters, including a young man
who kisses his girlfriend goodbye and promises his mother no harm will come
to him--always ominous signs in a movie. And we meet the Derry police chief
(Gerard McSorley), who is alarmed by the fierce resolve of the soldiers and
asks, not unreasonably, if it wouldn't be wiser to simply permit the march,
since it is obviously going to proceed anyway. Greengrass re-creates events
with stunning reality. (When he shows a movie marquee advertising "Sunday
Bloody Sunday," it's a small glitch because it seems like a calculated shot
in a movie that feels like cinema verite.) He is aided by the presence of
thousands of extras, who volunteered to be in the movie (some of them
marched on Bloody Sunday and are in a way playing themselves). Northern
Ireland is still a tinderbox where this film could not possibly be made;
streets in a poor area of Dublin were used.

Cooper and the other leaders are on the bed of a truck which leads the
column of marchers, and from their vantage point we can see that when the
march turns right, away from the army's position, some hot-headed marchers
turn left and begin to throw rocks at the soldiers. In the army's HQ, where
Maj. Gen. Ford (Tim Pigott-Smith) is in charge, an order is given to respond
firmly. Communications are confused, orders are distorted as they pass down
the chain of command, and soon rubber bullets and gas grenades are replaced
by the snap of real bullets.

Greengrass shows marchers trying to restrain a few of their fellows who are
armed. His film is clear, however, in its belief that the British fired
first and in cold blood, and he shows one wounded marcher being executed
with a bullet in the back. One of the marchers is apparently inspired by
Gerald Donaghey, whose case became famous. After being wounded, he was
searched twice, once by doctors, and then taken to an army area where he
died. Soldiers then found nail bombs in his pockets that had been
"overlooked" in two previous searches. For Greengrass, this is part of a
desperate attempt by the army to plant evidence and justify a massacre. Of
course, there are two sides to the story of Bloody Sunday, although the
score (Army 14, Marchers 0) is significant. The Greengrass view reflects
both the theories and the anger of the anti-British factions, and the army's
smugness after being cleared in the original investigation was only
inflammatory. "Bloody Sunday" is one view of what happened that day, a very
effective one. And as an act of filmmaking, it is superb: A sense of
immediate and present reality permeates every scene.

The official Web site of the current inquiry into Bloody Sunday may be found
at www.bloody-sunday-inquiry.org.uk. To read Thomas Kinsella's famous poem
about the 1972 event, "Butcher's Dozen," go to
www.usm.maine.edu/~mcgrath/poems/butchrs.htm.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:42 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] PAID IN FULL / **1/2 (R)

PAID IN FULL / **1/2 (R)

October 25, 2002

Ace: Wood Harris
Mitch: Mekhi Phifer
Rico: Cam'ron
Pip: Chi McBride
Lulu: Esai Morales
Dimension Films presents a film directed by Charles Stone III. Written by
Matthew Cirulnick and Thulani Davis, based on a screenplay by Azie Faison
Jr. and Austin Phillips. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for violence,
pervasive language, some strong sexuality and drug content).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Paid in Full" tells the story of the rise and fall of a gifted young
businessman. His career might have taken place at Enron, as a talented
manager, staging a fake energy crisis to steal from California consumers.
But opportunity finds us where we live, and Ace lives in Harlem and lacks an
MBA, so he becomes a drug dealer. The skills involved are much the same as
at Enron: Lie to the customers, hide or fake the income, shuffle the books
and pay off powerful friends. It is useful, in viewing a movie like "Paid in
Full," to understand that it is about business, not drugs. Breaking the law
is simply an unfortunate side effect of wanting to make more money than can
be done legally.

Because many drug dealers and consumers are poor and powerless, laws come
down on them more ferociously than on the white-collar criminals whose
misdeeds are on a larger scale. Three strikes and you're out, while three
lucrative bankruptcies and you're barely up and running. "Paid in Full"
might have been fascinating if it had intercut between Ace's career and the
adventures of an Enron executive of about the same age. I guess in a way
that's what "Traffic" did.

"Paid in Full" takes place in the 1980s and is based on the true stories of
famous drug lords (Alpo, A.Z. and Rich Porter) during that era of expanding
crack addiction. Names are changed. Ace, based on A.Z. is played by Wood
Harris, is a deliveryman man for a dry cleaner named Pip (Chi McBride).
Moving on the streets all day, it is impossible for him to miss seeing the
good fortune of drug dealers, and he learns of the fortunes to be made by
delivering something other than pressed pants.

He tells his story himself, in a narration like the ones in "GoodFellas" or
"Casino," and in an early scene we see money that has become so meaningless
that small fortunes are bet on tossing crumpled paper at wastebaskets. When
another dealer (Kevin Carroll) goes off to the pen, Ace moves quickly to
grab his territory, and soon has so much money that his life demonstrates
one of the drawbacks of growing up in poverty: You lack the skills to spend
it fast enough. he prospers, learning from the more experienced Lulu (Esai
Morales). Then another young hotshot (Cam'ron) comes along, and Ace becomes
the veteran who's a target.

The movie is ambitious, has good energy and is well-acted, but tells a
familiar story in a familiar way. The parallels to Brian De Palma's
"Scarface" are underlined by scenes from that movie which are watched by the
characters in this one. The trajectory is well-known: poverty, success,
riches, and then death or jail. This plot describes countless lives, and is
so common because the laws against drugs do such a good job of supporting
the price and making the business so lucrative. The difference between drugs
and corporate swindles, obviously, is that with drugs the profits are real.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:33 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] AUTO FOCUS / **** (R)

AUTO FOCUS / **** (R)

October 25, 2002

Bob Crane: Greg Kinnear
John Carpenter: Willem Dafoe
Patricia Crane: Maria Bello
Anne Crane: Rita Wilson
Lenny: Ron Leibman
Feldman: Bruce Solomon
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film directed by Paul Schrader. Written by
Michael Gerbosi. Based on the book The Murder of Bob Crane by Robert
Graysmith. Running time: 107 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexuality, nudity,
language, some drug use and violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

Eddie Cantor once told Bob Crane, "likability is 90 percent of the battle."
It seems to be 100 percent of Bob Crane's battle; there is nothing there
except likability--no values, no self-awareness, no judgment, no
perspective, not even an instinct for survival. Just likability, and the
need to be liked in a sexual way every single day. Paul Schrader's "Auto
Focus," based on Crane's life, is a deep portrait of a shallow man, lonely
and empty, going through the motions of having a good time.

The broad outlines of Crane's rise and fall are well known. How he was a Los
Angeles DJ who became a TV star after being cast in the lead of "Hogan's
Heroes," a comedy set in a Nazi prison camp. How his career tanked after the
show left the air. How he toured on the dinner theater circuit, destroyed
two marriages, and was so addicted to sex that his life was scandalous even
by Hollywood standards. How he was found bludgeoned to death in 1978 in a
Scottsdale, Ariz., motel room.

Crane is survived by four children, including sons from his first and second
marriages who differ in an almost biblical way, the older appearing in this
movie, the younger threatening a lawsuit against it, yet running a Web site
retailing his father's sex life. So strange was Crane's view of his
behavior, so disconnected from reality, that I almost imagine he would have
seen nothing wrong with his second son's sales of photos and videotapes of
his father having sex. "It's healthy," Crane argues in defense of his
promiscuity, although we're not sure if he really thinks that, or really
thinks anything.

The movie is a hypnotic portrait of this sad, compulsive life. The director,
Paul Schrader, is no stranger to stories about men trapped in sexual
miscalculation; he wrote "Taxi Driver" and wrote and directed "American
Gigolo." He sees Crane as an empty vessel, filled first with fame and then
with desire. Because he was on TV, he finds that women want to sleep with
him, and seems to oblige them almost out of good manners. There is no lust
or passion in this film, only mechanical courtship followed by desultory
sex. You can catch the women looking at him and asking themselves if there
is anybody at home. Even his wives are puzzled.

Greg Kinnear gives a creepy, brilliant performance as a man lacking in all
insight. He has the likability part down pat. There is a scene in a
nightclub where Crane asks the bartender to turn the TV to a rerun of
"Hogan's Heroes." When a woman realizes that Hogan himself is in the room,
notice how impeccable Kinnear's timing and manner are, as he fakes false
modesty and pretends to be flattered by her attention. Crane was not a
complex man, but that should not blind us to the subtlety and complexity of
Kinnear's performance.

Willem Dafoe is the co-star, as John Carpenter, a tech-head in the days when
Hollywood was just learning that television could be taped and replayed by
devices in the consumer price range. Carpenter hangs around sets flattering
the stars, lending them the newest Sony gadgets, wiring their cars for
stereo and their dressing rooms for instant replays. He is the very
embodiment of Mephistopheles, offering Crane exactly what he wants to be
offered.

The turning point in Crane's life comes on a night when Carpenter invites
him to a strip club. Crane is proud of his drumming, and Carpenter suggests
that the star could "sit in" with the house band. Soon Crane is sitting in
at strip clubs every night of the week, returning late or not at all to his
first wife Anne (Rita Wilson). Sensing something is wrong, he meets a priest
one morning for breakfast, but is somehow not interested when the priest
suggests he could "sit in" with a parish musical group.

Dafoe plays Carpenter as ingratiating, complimentary, sly, seductive and
enigmatically needy. Despite their denials, is there something homosexual in
their relationship? The two men become constant companions, apart from a
little tiff when Crane examines a video and notices Carpenter's hand in the
wrong place. "It's an orgy!" Carpenter explains, and soon the men are on the
prowl again. The video equipment has a curious relevance to their sexual
activities; do they have sex for its own sake, or to record it for later
editing and viewing? From its earliest days, home video has had an intimate
buried relationship with sex. If Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson ever think to
ask themselves why they taped their wedding night, this movie might suggest
some answers.

The film is wall-to-wall with sex, but contains no eroticism. The women are
never really in focus. They drift in and out of range, as the two men hunt
through swinger's magazines, attend swapping parties, haunt strip clubs and
troll themselves like bait through bars. If there is a shadow on their
idyll, it is that Crane condescends to Carpenter, and does not understand
the other man's desperate need for recognition.

The film is pitch-perfect in its decor, music, clothes, cars, language and
values. It takes place during those heady years between the introduction of
the Pill and the specter of AIDS, when men shaped as adolescents by Playboy
in the 1950s now found some of their fantasies within reach. The movie
understands how celebrity can make women available--and how, for some men,
it is impossible to say no to an available woman. They are hard-wired, and
judgment has nothing to do with it. We can feel sorry for Bob Crane but in a
strange way, because he is so clueless, it is hard to blame him; we are
reminded of the old joke in which God tells Adam he has a brain and a penis,
but only enough blood to operate one of them at a time.

The movie's moral counterpoint is provided by Ron Leibman, as Lenny, Crane's
manager. He gets him the job on "Hogan's Heroes" and even, improbably, the
lead in a Disney film named "Superdad." But Crane is reckless in the way he
allows photographs and tapes of his sexual performances to float out of his
control. On the Disney set one day, Lenny visits to warn Crane about his
notorious behavior, but Crane can't hear him, can't listen. He drifts toward
his doom, unconscious, lost in a sexual fog.

Crane families in legal dispute over biopic

Bob Crane's two sons are on opposite sides in a legal dispute about the
biopic "Auto Focus." Robert David Crane, the son by the first marriage,
supports the movie, appears in it and is listed in the credits as "Bob Crane
Jr." Robert Scott Crane, from the second marriage, says it is filled with
inaccuracies, and has started a Web site to oppose it. The site somewhat
undermines its own position by offering for sale photographs and videos
taken by Crane of his sexual indiscretions.

"There is no such person as Bob Crane Jr.," says Lee Blackman, the Los
Angeles attorney representing the second wife, Patricia, and her son. "Both
sons had Robert as a first name, and different middle names. Bob Crane's own
middle name was Edward." In life, he told me, the older son is called Bobby,
and the younger, his client, is Scotty.

By taking money for his participation in the movie and billing himself Bob
Crane Jr., he said, Bobby has compromised himself. (In the movie, the older
son has a small role as a Christian TV interviewer.)

But what about his client Scotty's Web site, with the Crane sex tapes for
sale?

"He is trying to set the record straight. The Web site only came into
existence because of the film. For example, on Scotty's site you will find
the Scottsdale coroner's autopsy on Bob Crane, clearly indicating he never
had a penile implant, although the movie claims he did. You will see that
his movies were really just homemade comedies: He would edit the sex stuff
with cutaways to Jack Benny or Johnny Carson, and a musical soundtrack."

Other complaints by Blackman and his clients:

* "He was reconciled with Patricia, his second wife, at the time of his
death. The movie shows her drinking in the middle of the day, but she has an
allergic reaction to hard liquor."

* "DNA tests have proven Scotty is Bob Crane's son, despite implications in
the movie that he is not."

* "Bob Crane was not a dark monster. The night he was killed, he was editing
'Star Wars' for Scotty, to take out the violence."

* "He didn't meet John Carpenter [the Willem Dafoe character] until 1975.
The movie has him meeting him in 1965. It implies Bob needed Carpenter to
teach him all that technical stuff, but in fact Bob Crane was very
knowledgeable about home electronics, and was making home movies even in the
1950s."

"Legally," said Blackman, "you can defame the dead. This movie has massive
quantities of defamation. We're trying to work with the distributor, Sony,
to tweak the film in a couple of little places to make it more accurate.
When it's released, if it still contains actionable material, we'll
determine what to do."

Roger Ebert

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:43 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES / ***1/2 (PG-13)

REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES / ***1/2 (PG-13)

October 25, 2002

Ana: America Ferrera
Carmen: Lupe Ontiveros
Estela: Ingrid Oliu
Mr. Guzman: George Lopez
Jimmy: Brian Sites
Pancha: Soledad St. Hilaire
HBO Films and Newmarket Films present a film directed by Patricia Cardoso.
Written by Josefina Lopez and George LaVoo. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated
PG-13 (for sexual content and some language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Ana's boyfriend, Jimmy, tells her, "You're not fat. You're beautiful." She
is both. "Real Women Have Curves" doesn't argue that Ana is beautiful on the
"inside," like the Gwyneth Paltrow character in "Shallow Hal," but that she
is beautiful inside and out--love handles, big boobs, round cheeks and all.
"Turn the lights on," she shyly tells Jimmy. "I want you to see me. See,
this is what I look like."

Ana has learned to accept herself. It is more than her mother can do. Carmen
(Lupe Ontiveros) is fat, too, and hates herself for it, and wants her
daughter to share her feelings. Ana is smart and could get a college
scholarship, but Carmen insists she go to work in a dress factory run by a
family member: It's her duty to the family, apparently, to sacrifice her
future. The fact that the dress factory is pleasant and friendly doesn't
change the reality that it's a dead end; you are at the wrong end of the
economy when you make dresses for $18 so that they can be sold for $600.

Ana is a Mexican American, played by America Ferrera, an 18-year-old in her
first movie role. Ferrera is a wonder: natural, unforced, sweet, passionate
and always real. Her battle with her mother is convincing in the movie
because the director, Patricia Cardoso, doesn't force it into shrill
melodrama but keeps it within the boundaries of a plausible family fight. It
is a tribute to the great Lupe Ontiveros that Carmen is able to suggest her
love for her daughter even when it is very hard to see.

There have been several movies recently about the second generation of
children of immigrants--Indian, Filipino, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese--and
they follow broad outlines borrowed from life. The parents try to enforce
conditions of their homeland on the kids, who are becoming Americanized at
blinding speed. While Carmen is insisting on her daughter's virginity, Ana
is buying condoms. She insists in a view of her life that is not her
parents'. That includes college.

If this movie had been made 10 years ago, it might have been shrill,
insistent and dramatic--overplaying its hand. Cardoso and her writers,
Josefina Lopez and George LaVoo, are more relaxed, more able to feel
affection for all of the characters. Yes, her parents want Ana to work in
the dress shop of their older daughter, and yes, they fear losing
her--because they sense if she goes away to college she will return as a
different person. But the parents are not monsters, and we sense that their
love will prevail over their fears.

The film focuses on Ana at a crucial moment, right after high school, when
she has decided with a level head and clear eyes to come of age on her own
terms. Her parents would not approve of Jimmy, an Anglo, but Ana knows he is
a good boy and she feels tender toward him. She also knows he will not be
the last boy she dates; she is mature enough to understand herself and the
stormy weathers of teenage love. When they have sex, there is a sense in
which they are giving each other the gift of a sweet initiation, with
respect and tenderness, instead of losing their innocence roughly to
strangers in a way without love.

The film's portrait of the dressmaking factory is done with great good
humor. Yes, it is very hot there. Yes, the hours are long and the pay is
poor. But the women are happy to have jobs and paychecks, and because they
like one another there is a lot of laughter. That leads to one of the
sunniest, funniest, happiest scenes in a long time. On a hot day, Ana takes
off her blouse, and then so do the other women, giggling at their daring,
and the music swells up as their exuberance flows over. They are all plump,
but Ana, who has a healthy self-image, leads them in celebrating their
bodies.

I am so relieved that the MPAA rated this movie PG-13. So often they bar
those under 17 from the very movies they could benefit from the most. "Real
Women Have Curves" is enormously entertaining for moviegoers of any age (it
won the Audience Award at Sundance 2002). But for young women depressed
because they don't look like skinny models, this film is a breath of common
sense and fresh air. "Real Women Have Curves" is a reminder of how rarely
the women in the movies are real. After the almost excruciating attention
paid to the world-class beauties in a movie like "White Oleander" (a film in
which the more the women suffered the better they looked), how refreshing to
see America Ferrera light up the room with a smile from the heart.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:48 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] WAKING UP IN RENO / *1/2 (R)

WAKING UP IN RENO / *1/2 (R)

October 25, 2002

Lonnie Earl: Billy Bob Thornton
Candy: Charlize Theron
Roy: Patrick Swayze
Darlene: Natasha Richardson
Russell Whitehead: Brent Briscoe
Boyd: Mark Fauser
Ronnie: Wayne Federman
Fred Bush: Chelcie Ross
Miramax Films presents a film directed by Jordan Brady. Written by Brent
Briscoe and Mark Fauser. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for language
and some sexual content).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Waking Up in Reno" is another one of those road comedies where Southern
roots are supposed to make boring people seem colorful. If these characters
were from Minneapolis or Denver, no way anyone would make a film about them.
But because they're from Little Rock, Ark., and wear stuff made out of
snakeskin and carry their own cases of Pabst into the hotel room, they're
movie-worthy.

Well, they could be, if they had anything really at risk. But the movie is
way too gentle to back them into a corner. They're nice people whose
problems are all solved with sitcom dialogue, and the profoundly traditional
screenplay makes sure that love and family triumph in the end. Surprising,
that Billy Bob Thornton, Charlize Theron, Natasha Richardson and Patrick
Swayze would fall for this, but Swayze did make "Road House," so maybe it's
not so surprising in his case.

Thornton stars as Lonnie Earl, a Little Rock car dealer who appears in his
own commercials and cheats on his wife, Darlene (Richardson). He cheats with
Candy (Theron), the wife of his best friend, Roy (Swayze). Actually, they
only cheat twice, but if that's like only being a little bit pregnant, maybe
she is.

The two couples decide to pull a brand new SUV off of Lonnie Earl's lot and
take a trip to Reno, Nev., with stops along the way in Texas (where Lonnie
Earl wants to win a 72-ounce-steak-eating contest) and maybe at the Grand
Canyon. Others have their dreams, too; Darlene has always had a special
place in her heart for Tony Orlando, ever since she saw him on the Jerry
Lewis telethon. And that's the sort of dialogue detail that's supposed to
tip us off how down-home and lovable these people are: They like Tony
Orlando, they watch Jerry Lewis. We sense that director Jordan Brady and
writers Brent Briscoe and Mark Fauser don't like Tony Orlando and Jerry
Lewis as much as the characters do, but the movie's not mean enough to say
so, and so any comic point is lost.

That kind of disconnect happens all through the movie: The filmmakers create
satirical characters and then play them straight. We're actually expected to
sympathize with these caricatures, as Lonnie Earl barely survives the
72-ounce steak and they arrive in Reno for run-ins with the hotel bell boys
and the hooker in the bar.

Consider the scene where the helpful bellboy hauls their luggage into their
suite and then loiters suggestively for a tip. "Oh, I get it," says Lonnie
Earl. "You want your dollar." And he gives him one. The problem here is that
no real-life Little Rock car dealer would conceivably believe that the
correct tip for luggage for four people would be one dollar. Lonnie Earl
must be moderately wealthy, has traveled, has tipped before, is not entirely
clueless. But the movie short-changes his character to get an easy (and very
cheap) laugh.

The action in Reno mostly centers around Candy's attempts to get pregnant,
her monitoring of her ovular temperature, Roy's obligation to leap into
action at every prompt, and the revelation that ... well, without going into
details, let's say secrets are revealed that would more wisely have been
left concealed, and that Lonnie Earl, Roy, Candy and Darlene find themselves
in a situation that in the real world could lead to violence but here is
settled in about the same way that the Mertzes worked things out with Lucy
and Ricky.

Yes, the characters are pleasant. Yes, in some grudging way we are happy
that they're happy. No, we do not get teary-eyed with sentiment when the
movie evokes the Grand Canyon in an attempt to demonstrate that the problems
of four little people don't amount to a hill of beans. At the end of the
movie titled "Grand Canyon" (1991), I actually was emotionally touched as
the characters looked out over the awesome immensity. But then they were
real characters, and nothing in "Waking Up in Reno" ever inspired me to
think of its inhabitants as anything more than markers in a screenplay.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:41 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] NAQOYQATSI / *** (PG)

NAQOYQATSI / *** (PG)

October 25, 2002

Miramax Films presents a documentary written and directed by Godfrey Reggio.
Running time: 89 minutes. Rated PG.(for violent and disturbing images, and
for brief nudity). Opening today at the Biograph Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

'N aqoyqatsi" is the final film in Godfrey Reggio's "qatsi" trilogy, a
series of impressionistic documentaries contrasting the nobility of nature
with the despoliation of mankind. The titles come from the Hopi Indian
language. "Koyaanisqatsi" (1983) translated as "life out of balance."
"Powaqqatsi" (1988) means "life in transition." And now comes "Naqoyqatsi,"
or "war as a way of life."

Like the others, "Naqoyqatsi" consists of images (450 of them, Reggio said
at the Telluride premiere). We see quick streams of briefly glimpsed
symbols, abstractions, digital code, trademarks, newsreels, found images,
abandoned buildings and cityscapes, and snippets of TV and photography. An
early image shows the Tower of Babel; the implication is that the confusion
of spoken tongues has been made worse by the addition of visual and digital
languages.

"Koyaanisqatsi," with its dramatic fast-forward style of hurtling images,
made a considerable impact at the time. Clouds raced up mountainsides,
traffic flowed like streams of light through city streets. The technique was
immediately ripped off by TV commercials, so that the film's novelty is no
longer obvious. Now that he has arrived at the third part of his trilogy,
indeed, Reggio's method looks familiar, and that is partly the fault of his
own success. Here, he uses speedup less and relies more on quickly cut
montages. It's a version of the technique used in Chuck Workman's films on
the Oscarcast, the ones that marry countless shots from the movies; Reggio
doctors his images with distortion, overlays, tints and other kinds of
digital alteration.

The thinking behind these films is deep but not profound. They're
ritualistic grief at what man has done to the planet. "The logical flaw," as
I pointed out in my review of "Powaqqatsi," is that "Reggio's images of
beauty are always found in a world entirely without man--without even the
Hopi Indians. Reggio seems to think that man himself is some kind of virus
infecting the planet--that we would enjoy the earth more, in other words, if
we weren't here."

Although "Naqoyqatsi" has been some 10 years in the making, it takes on an
especially somber coloration after 9/11. Images of marching troops,
missiles, bomb explosions and human misery are intercut with trademarks (the
Enron trademark flashes past), politicians and huddled masses, and we
understand that war is now our way of life. But hasn't war always been a
fact of life for mankind? We are led to the uncomfortable conclusion that to
bring peace to the planet, we should leave it.

This line of reasoning may, however, be missing the point. In reviewing all
three Reggio films, I have assumed he was telling us something with his
images, and that I could understand it and analyze it. That overlooks what
may be the key element of the films, the sound tracks by composer Philip
Glass (this time joined by Yo-Yo Ma, who also contributes a solo). Can it be
that these films are, in the very best sense of the word, music videos? The
movie is not simply "scored" by Glass; his music is a vital component of
every frame, fully equal with the visuals, and you can watch these films
again and again, just as you can listen to a favorite album.

Perhaps the solution is to stop analyzing the images altogether and set
ourselves free from them. Just as it is a heresy to paraphrase classical
music by discovering "stories" or "messages," perhaps "Naqoyqatsi" and its
brothers need to be experienced as background to our own streams of
consciousness--nudges to set us thinking about the same concerns that Reggio
has. I have problems with "Naqoyqatsi" as a film, but as a music video it's
rather remarkable.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:46 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE / *** (PG-13)

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE / *** (PG-13)

October 25, 2002

Regina Lambert: Thandie Newton
Joshua Peters: Mark Wahlberg
Mr. Bartholomew: Tim Robbins
Il-Sang Lee: Joong-Hoon Park
Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Demme. Written by
Demme, Steve Schmidt, Peter Joshua and Jessica Bendinger. Running time: 104
minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some violence and sexual content/nudity).

BY ROGER EBERT

Regina Lambert has been married for three months. She returns to Paris to
find her apartment vandalized and her husband missing. A police official
produces her husband's passport--and another, and another. He had many looks
and many identities, and is missing in all of them. And now she seems
surrounded by unsavory people with a dangerous interest in finding his $6
million. They say she knows where it is. Thank goodness for good, kind
Joshua Peters, who turns up protectively whenever he's needed.

This story, right down to the names, will be familiar to lovers of
"Charade," Stanley Donen's 1963 film starring Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant.
Now Jonathan Demme recycles it in "The Truth About Charlie," with Thandie
Newton and Mark Wahlberg in the starring roles. Wahlberg will never be
confused with Cary Grant but Newton, now ... Newton, with her fragile
beauty, her flawless complexion, her beautiful head perched atop that
extraordinary neck ... well, you can see how Demme thought of Hepburn when
he cast her.

"Charade" is considered in many quarters to be a masterpiece (no less than
the 168th best film of all time, according to the Internet Movie Database).
I saw it recently on the sparkling Criterion DVD, enjoyed it, remember it
fondly, but do not find it a desecration that Demme wanted to remake it.
There are some films that are ineffably themselves, like "The Third Man,"
and cannot possibly be remade. Others depend on plots so silly and
effervescent that they can be used over and over, as vehicles for new
generations of actors. "Charade" is in the latter category. If it is true
that there will never be another Audrey Hepburn, and it is, I submit it is
also true that there will never be another Thandie Newton.

I saw her first in "Flirting" (1991), made when she was 18. It was a glowing
masterpiece about adolescent love. She has been in 15 films since then, but
you may not remember her. She was the lost child in Demme's "Beloved"
(1998), looking like a ghost and not herself, and she played Sally Hemings,
Thomas Jefferson's slave and lover, in the unsuccessful "Jefferson in Paris"
(1995). I liked her in Bertolucci's "Besieged" (1998), although the film
didn't work and he photographed her with almost unseemly interest. She was
in the overlooked but very good "Gridlock'd" (1997), Tupac Shakur's last
film. If you have seen her at all, it may have been in "Mission: Impossible
II," opposite Tom Cruise.

She carries "The Truth About Charlie," as she must, because all of the other
characters revolve around her, sometimes literally. Wahlberg has top billing
but that must be a contractual thing; she is the center of the picture, and
the news is, she is a star. She has that presence and glow. The plot is
essentially a backdrop, as it was in "Charade," for Paris, suspense, romance
and star power,

I am not sure the plot matters enough to be kept a secret, but I will try
not to give away too much. Essentially, Charlie was a deceptive, two-timing
louse who made some unfortunate friends. Now that he has gone several
strange people emerge from the woodwork, some to threaten Regina, some, like
Mr. Bartholomew (Tim Robbins) to help and advise her. There is an Asian
named Il-Sang Lee (Joong-Hoon Park) and a femme fatale named Lola (Lisa Gay
Hamilton), and a police commandant (Christine Boisson) who appears to seek
only the truth. And there is the omnipresent, always helpful Joshua Peters
(Wahlberg), who was Peter Joshua in "Charade," but there you go.

These people all serve one function: To propel Regina past locations in
Paris, from the Champs Elysses to the flea market at Cligancourt, and to
accompany her through several costume changes and assorted dangers and
escapes. "The history of the cinema," said Jean-Luc Godard, "is of boys
photographing girls." There is more to it than that, but both "The Truth
About Charlie" and "Charade" prove that is enough.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:57 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] IN PRAISE OF LOVE / * (Not rated)

IN PRAISE OF LOVE / * (Not rated)

October 18, 2002

Edgar: Bruno Putzulu
Elle: Cecile Camp
Grandfather: Jean Davy
Grandmother: Francoise Verny
Servant: Philippe Loyrette
Eglantine: Audrey Klebaner
Perceval: Jeremy Lippman
Manhattan Pictures Interna-tional presents a film written and directed by
Jean-Luc Godard. Running time: 98 minutes. No MPAA rating. In French with
English subtitles.

BY ROGER EBERT

What strange confusion besets Jean-Luc Godard? He stumbles through the
wreckage of this film like a baffled Lear, seeking to exercise power that is
no longer his. "In Praise of Love" plays like an attempt to reconstruct an
ideal film that might once have existed in his mind, but is there no more.

Yes, I praised the film in an article from the 2001 Cannes Film Festival,
but have now seen it again, and no longer agree with those words. Seeing
Godard's usual trademarks and preoccupations, I called it "a bittersweet
summation of one of the key careers in modern cinema," and so it is, but I
no longer think it is a successful one.

Godard was the colossus of the French New Wave. His films helped invent
modern cinema. They were bold, unconventional, convincing. To see
"Breathless," "My Life to Live" or "Weekend" is to be struck by a powerful
and original mind. In the late 1960s he entered his Maoist period, making a
group of films ("Wind from the East," "Vladimir and Rosa," "Pravda") that
were ideologically silly but still stylistically intriguing; those films (I
learn from Milos Stehlik of Facets Cinematheque, who has tried to find them)
have apparently been suppressed by their maker.

Then, after a near-fatal traffic accident, came the Godard who turned away
from the theatrical cinema and made impenetrable videos. In recent years
have come films both successful ("Hail, Mary") and not, and now a film like
"In Praise of Love," which in style and tone looks like he is trying to
return to his early films but has lost the way.

Perhaps at Cannes I was responding to memories of Godard's greatness. He has
always been fascinated with typography, with naming the sections of his
films and treating words like objects (he once had his Maoist heroes
barricade themselves behind a wall of Little Red Books). Here he repeatedly
uses intertitles, and while as a device it is good to see again, the actual
words, reflected on, have little connection to the scenes they separate.

He wants to remind us "In Praise of Love" is self-consciously a movie: He
uses not only the section titles, but offscreen interrogators, polemical
statements, narrative confusion, a split between the black and white of the
first half and the saturated video color of the second. What he lacks is a
port of entry for the viewer. Defenses of the film are tortured rhetorical
exercises in which critics assemble Godard's materials and try to paraphrase
them to make sense. Few ordinary audience members, however experienced, can
hope to emerge from this film with a coherent view of what Godard was
attempting.

If you agree with Noam Chomsky, you will have the feeling that you would
agree with this film if only you could understand it. Godard's
anti-Americanism is familiar by now, but has spun off into flywheel
territory. What are we to make of the long dialogue attempting to prove that
the United States of America is a country without a name? Yes, he is right
that there are both North and South Americas. Yes, Brazil has united states.
Yes, Mexico has states and is in North America. Therefore, we have no name.
This is the kind of tiresome language game schoolchildren play.

It is also painful to see him attack Hollywood as worthless and without
history, when (as Charles Taylor points out on Salon.com), Godard was one of
those who taught us about our film history; with his fellow New Wavers, he
resurrected film noir, named it, celebrated it, even gave its directors bit
parts in his films. Now that history (his as well as ours) has disappeared
from his mind.

His attacks on Steven Spielberg are painful and unfair. Some of the
fragments of his film involve a Spielberg company trying to buy the memories
of Holocaust survivors for a Hollywood film (it will star, we learn,
Juliette Binoche, who appeared in "Hail Mary" but has now apparently gone
over to the dark side). Elsewhere in the film he accuses Spielberg of having
made millions from "Schindler's List" while Mrs. Schindler lives in
Argentina in poverty. One muses: (1) Has Godard, having also used her, sent
her any money? (2) Has Godard or any other director living or dead done more
than Spielberg, with his Holocaust Project, to honor and preserve the
memories of the survivors? (3) Has Godard so lost the ability to go to the
movies that, having once loved the works of Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray,
he cannot view a Spielberg film except through a prism of anger?

Critics are often asked if they ever change their minds about a movie. I
hope we can grow and learn. I do not "review" films seen at festivals, but
"report" on them--because in the hothouse atmosphere of seeing three to five
films a day, most of them important, one cannot always step back and catch a
breath. At Cannes I saw the surface of "In Praise of Love," remembered
Godard's early work, and was cheered by the film. After a second viewing,
looking beneath the surface, I see so little there: It is all remembered
rote work, used to conceal old tricks, facile name-calling, the loss of
hope, and emptiness.

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