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movies-digest        Thursday, October 31 2002        Volume 02 : Number 378



[MV] BELOW / **1/2 (R)
[MV] THE GREY ZONE / **** (R)
[MV] DAS EXPERIMENT / *** (Not rated)
[MV] PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE / ***1/2 (R)
[MV] HEAVEN / *** (R)
[MV] SKINS / *** (R)
[MV] ABANDON / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] ALL THE QUEEN'S MEN / * (Not rated)
[MV] GHOST SHIP / ** (R)
[MV] THE RING / ** (PG-13)

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:51 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BELOW / **1/2 (R)

BELOW / **1/2 (R)

October 18, 2002

Odell: Matt Davis
Brice: Bruce Greenwood
Claire: Olivia Williams
Loomis: Holt McCallany
Coors: Scott Foley
Weird Wally: Zach Galifianakis
Stumbo: Jason Flemyng
Dimension Films presents a film directed by David Twohy. Written by Twohy,
Lucas Sussman and Darren Aronofsky. Running time: 103 minutes. Rated R (for
language and some violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

Even before the woman is taken on board, the USS Tiger Shark is a submarine
in trouble. The captain has been lost overboard, or at least that's the
story, and tempers run high in the confined space. Then the sub rescues
three drifters in a life raft, one of them a woman, whose presence on board
is agreed by everyone to be bad luck on a sub, although her arrival does
result in the crew wearing cleaner underwear.

Now dangers increase. The sub is tracked by Germans, who drop depth bombs
and later come back to troll for it with giant grappling hooks. There is
fearful damage to the periscope and the control tower. An oil leak threatens
to betray the sub's position. Oxygen is running low, and hydrogen in the air
is a danger to the crew's safety and sanity. And perhaps there is a ghost on
board. The creepy sounds from outside the hull--of seaweed, whale songs and
bouncing depth bombs--increase apprehension.

Yes, a ghost. How else to explain why a record of Benny Goodman's "Sing,
Sing, Sing" seems to play itself at inopportune times--as when the Germans
are listening for the slightest sound from below? And when the late skipper
was a Goodman fan? Of course, there could be a saboteur on board, in
addition to, or perhaps instead of, the ghost.

"Below" is a movie where the story, like the sub, sometimes seems to be
running blind. In its best moments it can evoke fear, and it does a good job
of evoking the claustrophobic terror of a little World War II boat, but the
story line is so eager to supply frightening possibilities that sometimes we
feel jerked around. Isn't it possible for a submarine to be haunted without
turning it into a museum of horror film devices?

Of those devices, the most tiresome is the convention that surprises make
sounds. In most horror movies, including many less clever than "Below,"
there is a visual strategy in which a character is shown in relative closeup
(limiting our ability to see around him) and then startled by the unexpected
appearance of another character or other visual surprise. This moment is
invariably signaled on the soundtrack with a loud, alarming musical chord,
or perhaps by the sound of a knife being sharpened. But surprises don't make
sounds, and the cliche has become so tiresome that I submit a director might
be able to create a more frightening sequence by playing the unexpected
appearance in total silence.

There are a lot of surprise apparitions in "Below," and many times when we
expect them even when they don't arrive. Consider the effective sequence in
which four divers have to penetrate the ballast space between the inner and
outer hulls to search for the oil leak. Will they find a ghostly body, or
what?

The acting skipper of the ship is Brice (Bruce Greenwood). The absence of
the former skipper is a secret at first, and the explanations for his
disappearance are contradictory; even by the end of the movie, we are not
sure we have the correct story. Has he returned to haunt the boat? Oxygen
deprivation can encourage hallucinations.

The bad-luck woman on board, Claire (Olivia Williams), turns out to be a
nurse from a sunken hospital ship. Who sunk that ship with its big red
cross, and why? And what about the two survivors in the boat with her? What
are their stories? Although the arrival of a woman on board inspires some
heavy-handed scenes in which some men seem to be warming up for an assault,
that plot thread is quickly abandoned, and Claire begins to take a
surprisingly active role in the onboard discussions. Siding with her is
Odell (Matt Davis), maybe because he agrees, maybe because he likes her.
Brice's command of the ship may include decisions made with a hidden agenda.

The movie is skillfully made by David Twohy, whose "The Arrival" (1996) was
an uncommonly intelligent science fiction thriller about a hidden alien plot
against Earth. But his overpraised "Pitch Black" (2000), which launched Vin
Diesel, was weakened by the same faults as "Below." It had too many
obligatory startles, too many unclear possibilities and not enough
definition of the crucial players. But Twohy showed with "The Arrival" that
he is a gifted director. "Below" has ambitions to be better than average,
but doesn't pull itself together and insist on realizing them.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:45 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE GREY ZONE / **** (R)

THE GREY ZONE / **** (R)

October 25, 2002

Hoffman: David Arquette
Schlermer: Daniel Benzali
Abramowics: Steve Buscemi
Rosenthal: David Chandler
Dr. Nyiszli: Allan Corduner
Muhsfeldt: Harvey Keitel
Rosa: Natasha Lyonne
Dina: Mira Sorvino
Lions Gate Films presents a film written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson.
Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (for strong Holocaust violence, nudity
and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

"How can you know what you'd really do to stay alive, until you're asked? I
know now that the answer for most of us is--anything."

So says a member of the Sonderkommandos, a group of Jews at the Auschwitz
II-Birkenau death camp, who sent their fellow Jews to die in the gas
chambers, and then disposed of the ashes afterward. For this duty they were
given clean sheets, extra food, cigarettes and an extra four months of life.
With the end of the war obviously drawing closer, four months might mean
survival. Would you refuse this opportunity? Would I?

Tim Blake Nelson's "The Grey Zone" considers moral choices within a closed
system that is wholly evil. If everyone in the death camp is destined to
die, is it the good man's duty to die on schedule, or is it his duty to
himself to grasp any straw? Since both choices seem certain to end in death,
is it more noble to refuse, or cooperate? Is hope itself a form of
resistance?

These are questions no truthful person can answer without having been there.
The film is inspired by the uprising of Oct. 7, 1944, when members of the
12th Sonder-kommando succeeded in blowing up two of the four crematoria at
the death camp; because the ovens were never replaced, lives were saved. But
other lives were lost as the Nazis used physical and mental torture to try
to find out how the prisoners got their hands on gunpowder and weapons.

I have seen a lot of films about the Holocaust, but I have never seen one so
immediate, unblinking and painful in its materials. "The Grey Zone" deals
with the daily details of the work gangs--who lied to prisoners, led them
into gas chambers, killed them, incinerated their bodies, and disposed of
the remains. All of the steps in this process are made perfectly clear in a
sequence, which begins with one victim accusing his Jewish guard of lying to
them all, and ends with the desperate sound of hands banging against the
inside of the steel doors. "Cargo," the workers called the bodies they dealt
with. "We have a lot of cargo today."

The film has been adapted by Nelson from his play, and is based on part on
the book Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, by Miklos Nyiszli, a
Jewish doctor who cooperated on experiments with the notorious Dr. Josef
Mengele, and is portrayed in the film by Allan Corduner. Is it a fact of
human nature, that we are hard-wired to act for our own survival? That those
able to sacrifice themselves for an ethical ideal are extraordinary
exceptions to the rule? Consider a scene late in the film when Rosa and Dina
(Natasha Lyonne and Mira Sorvino), two women prisoners who worked in a
nearby munitions factory, are tortured to reveal the secret of the
gunpowder. When ordinary methods fail, they are lined up in front of their
fellow prisoners. The interrogator repeats his questions, and every time
they do not answer, his arm comes down and another prisoner is shot through
the head.

What is the right thing to do? Betray the secrets and those who
collaborated? Or allow still more prisoners to be murdered? And if all will
die eventually anyway, how does that affect the choice? Is it better to die
now, with a bullet to the brain, than after more weeks of dread? Or is any
life at all worth having?

The film stars David Arquette, Daniel Benzali, Steve Buscemi and David
Chandler as the leaders of the Sonderkommandos, and Harvey Keitel as
Muhsfeldt, an alcoholic Nazi officer in command of their unit. Although
these faces are familiar, the actors disappear into their roles. The Jewish
work force continues its grim task of exterminating fellow Jews, while
working on its secret plans for a revolt.

Then an extraordinary thing happens. In a gas chamber, a young girl (Kamelia
Grigorova) is found still alive. Arquette rescues her from a truck before
she can be taken to be burned, and now the Jews are faced with a subset of
their larger dilemma: Is this one life worth saving if the girl jeopardizes
the entire revolt? Perhaps not, but in a world where there seem to be no
choices, she presents one, and even Dr. Nyiszli, so beloved by Mengele,
helps to save the girl's life. It is as if this single life symbolizes all
the others.

In a sense, the murders committed by the Nazis were not as evil as the
twisted thought that went into them, and the mental anguish they caused for
the victims. Death occurs thoughtlessly in nature every day. But death with
sadistic forethought, death with a scenario forcing the victims into
impossible choices, and into the knowledge that those choices are
inescapable, is mercilessly evil. The Arquette character talks of one
victim: "I knew him. We were neighbors. In 20 minutes his whole family and
all of its future was gone from this earth." That victim's knowledge of his
loss was worse than death.

"The Grey Zone" is pitiless, bleak and despairing. There cannot be a happy
ending, except that the war eventually ended. That is no consolation for its
victims. It is a film about making choices that seem to make no difference,
about attempting to act with honor in a closed system where honor lies dead.
One can think: If nobody else knows, at least I will know. Yes, but then you
will be dead, and then who will know? And what did it get you? On the other
hand, to live with the knowledge that you behaved shamefully is another kind
of death--the death of the human need to regard ourselves with favor. "The
Grey Zone" refers to a world where everyone is covered with the gray ash of
the dead, and it has been like that for so long they do not even notice
anymore.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:38 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] DAS EXPERIMENT / *** (Not rated)

DAS EXPERIMENT / *** (Not rated)

October 25, 2002

Tarek Fahd, Number 77: Mortiz Bleibtreu
Berus: Justus von Dohnanyi
Steinhoff, Number 38: Christian Berkel
Schutte, Number 82: Oliver Stokowski
Joe, Number 69: Wotan Wilke Mohring
Number 53: Stephan Szasz
Number 40: Polat Dal
Number 21: Danny Richter
Number 15: Ralf Muller
Dora: Maren Eggert
Samuel Goldwyn Films presents a film directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel.
Written by Don Bohlinger, Christoph Darnstadt and Mario Giordano. Based on
the novel Black Box by Giordano. Running time: 114 minutes. No MPAA rating.
In German with English subtitles.

BY ROGER EBERT

Human behavior is determined to some degree by the uniforms we wear. An army
might march more easily in sweat pants, but it wouldn't have the same sense
of purpose. School uniforms enlist kids in the "student body." Catholic nuns
saw recruitment fall off when they modernized their habits. If you want to
figure out what someone thinks of himself, examine the uniform he is
wearing. Gene Siskel amused himself by looking at people on the street and
thinking: When they left home this morning, they thought they looked good in
that.

"Das Experiment," a new film from Germany, suggests that uniforms and the
roles they assign amplify underlying psychological tendencies. In the
experiment, 20 men are recruited to spend two weeks in a prison environment.
Eight are made into guards and given quasi-military uniforms. Twelve become
prisoners and wear nightshirts with numbers sewn on them. All 20 know they
are merely volunteers working for a $1,700 paycheck.

The movie is based on a novel, Black Box, by Mario Giordano. The novel was
probably inspired by the famous Stanford Prison Experiment of 1971, a
classic of role-playing. On that experiment's Web site, its director, Philip
G. Zimbardo, writes:

"How we went about testing these questions and what we found may astound
you. Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life
had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the
situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few
days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and
showed signs of extreme stress."

So there, I've given away the plot. Some critics of "Das Experiment"
question the fact that the guards become cruel so quickly, but the real-life
experiment bears that out. What is fascinating is how most of the members of
both groups tend to follow charismatic leaders. None of the other guards is
as sadistic as Berus (Justus von Dohnanyi) and none of the other prisoners
is as rebellious as Tarek Fahd (Mortiz Bleibtreu), who remembers, "My father
would say, 'Don't do this,' and I'd do it."

Perhaps uniforms turn us into packs, led by the top dog. There are a few
strays. One prisoner seems custom-made to be a victim, but another, a man
with military experience, holds back and tries to analyze the situation and
provide cool guidance. But he's more or less powerless because--well, the
guards are in charge. One of the guards has misgivings about what is
happening, but it takes a lot of nerve to defy the pack.

It would make perfect sense for the guards to say, "Look, we're all in this
together and we all want the $1,700 at the end of the two weeks. So let's
make it easy on ourselves." But at Stanford as in this movie (and in life),
that is not human nature. The outcome of the experiment is clear from the
setup. We would be astonished if the guards became humane.

What impressed me is how effective the movie was, even though the outcome is
a foregone conclusion. That's a tribute to the director, Oliver
Hirschbiegel, and the actors, who have been chosen with the same kind of
typecasting that perhaps occurs in life. The sadist looks mean. The rebel
looks like a trouble-maker. The military guy looks competent. The victim
looks submissive. We see them and read them. Is it the same in life?

By halfway through, I was surprised how involved I was, and I see that I
stopped taking notes at about that point--stopped thinking objectively and
began to identify. Of course I identified with the trouble-maker. But give
me a uniform and who knows what I would have done. The fact that the movie
is German inspires thoughts about the Holocaust: The Nazi command structure
needed only strong leaders at the top for Hitler to find, as one book called
them, willing executioners in the ranks. But is the syndrome limited to Nazi
Germany? This movie argues not.

Thinking of World War II, we're reminded not only of the Nazi uniforms,
which were fetishistic, but of the genial sloppiness of the average American
G.I., as unforgettably portrayed by the great Bill Mauldin. His Willie and
Joe, unshaven, their helmets askew, cigarettes dangling from their lips,
resented authority, but they won the war.

The Stanford Prison Experiment can be found on the Web at www.prisonexp.org.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:00 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE / ***1/2 (R)

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE / ***1/2 (R)

October 18, 2002

Barry Egan: Adam Sandler
Lena Leonard: Emily Watson
Dean Trumbell: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Lance: Luis Guzman
Elizabeth: Mary Lynn Rajskub
Revolution Studios and New Line Cinema present a film written and directed
by Paul Thomas Anderson. Running time: 89 minutes. Rated R (for strong
language including a scene of sexual dialogue).

BY ROGER EBERT

There is a new Adam Sandler on view in "Punch-Drunk Love"--angry, sad,
desperate. In voice and mannerisms he is the same childlike, love-starved
Adam Sandler we've seen in a series of dim comedies, but this film, by
seeing him in a new light, encourages us to look again at those films. Given
a director and a screenplay that sees through the Sandler persona, that
understands it as the disguise of a suffering outsider, Sandler reveals
depths and tones we may have suspected but couldn't bring into focus.

The way to criticize a movie, Godard famously said, is to make another
movie. In that sense "Punch-Drunk Love" is film criticism. Paul Thomas
Anderson says he loves Sandler's comedies--they cheer him up on lonely
Saturday nights--but as the director of "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" he
must have been able to sense something missing in them, some unexpressed
need. The Sandler characters are almost oppressively nice, like needy
puppies, and yet they conceal a masked hostility to society, a
passive-aggressive need to go against the flow, a gift for offending others
while in the very process of being ingratiating.

In "Punch-Drunk Love," Sandler plays Barry Egan, an executive in a company
with a product line of novelty toiletries. Barry has seven sisters, who are
all on his case at every moment, and he desperately wishes they would stop
invading his privacy, ordering him around and putting him down. He tries at
a family gathering to be congenial and friendly, but we can see the tension
in his smiling lips and darting eyes, and suddenly he explodes, kicking out
the glass patio doors.

This is a pattern. He presents to the world a face of cheerful blandness,
and then erupts in terrifying displays of frustrated violence. He does not
even begin to understand himself. He seems always on guard, unsure,
obscurely threatened. His outbursts here help to explain the curiously
violent passages in his previous film, "Mr. Deeds," which was a remake of a
benign Frank Capra comedy. It's as if Sandler is Hannibal Lecter in a Jerry
Lewis body.

Most of Sandler's plots are based on predictable, production-line formulas,
and after "Punch-Drunk Love" I may begin seeing them as traps containing a
resentful captive. The quirky behavior may be a way of calling out for help.
In "Big Daddy," for example, the broad outlines are familiar, but not the
creepy way his character trains his adopted 5-year-old to be hostile. At one
point, ho, ho, they toss tree branches into the path of middle-aged in-line
skaters, causing some nasty falls. The hostility veiled as humor in the
typical Sandler comedy is revealed in "Punch-Drunk Love" as--hostility.

The film is exhilarating to watch because Sandler, liberated from the
constraints of formula, reveals unexpected depths as an actor. Watching this
film, you can imagine him in Dennis Hopper roles. He has darkness, obsession
and power. His world is hedged around with mystery and challenge. Consider
an opening scene, when he is at work hours before the others have arrived,
and sees a harmonium dumped in the street in front of his office. It is at
once the most innocent and ominous of objects; he runs from it and then
peeks around a corner to see if it is still there.

In the Paul Thomas Anderson universe, people meet through serendipity and
need, not because they are fulfilling their plot assignments. Barry meets
Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a sweet executive with intently focused eyes,
who asks him to look after her broken-down car and later goes out on a
dinner date with him. They like each other right away. During the dinner he
gets up from his table, goes to the men's room and in a blind rage breaks
everything he can. "Your hand is bleeding," she gently observes, and after
they are thrown out of the restaurant, she carries on as if the evening is
still normal.

Barry is meanwhile enraged by an ongoing battle he is having with a Utah
phone-sex company. He called the number and was billed for the call, but he
was unable to talk easily with the woman at the other end, or even quite
conceive of what she wanted him to do. Then she pulled a scam using his
credit card number, and this leads to mutual threats and obscenities over
the phone, and to a visit from the porn company's "four blond brothers," who
want to intimidate him and extract cash.

Barry is frightened. He knows Lena is going on a business trip to Hawaii.
They definitely have chemistry. This would be an ideal time to get off the
mainland. He has discovered a loophole in a Healthy Choice promotion that
will allow him to earn countless American Airlines frequent flier miles at
very little cost. (This part of the story is based on fact.) It is typical
of an Anderson film that Barry, having hit on his mileage scheme, cannot use
his miles so quickly, and so simply buys a ticket to Honolulu and meets Lena
for a picture-postcard rendezvous on Waikiki Beach. Here and elsewhere,
Anderson bathes the screen in romantic colors and fills the soundtrack with
lush orchestrations.

I feel liberated in films where I have absolutely no idea what will happen
next. Lena and Barry are odd enough that anything could happen in their
relationship. A face-to-face meeting with the Utah porn king (Anderson
regular Philip Seymour Hoffman) and another meeting with the four blond
brothers are equally unpredictable. And always there is Barry's quick,
terrifying anger, a time bomb ticking away beneath every scene.

"Punch-Drunk Love" is above all a portrait of a personality type. Barry Egan
has been damaged, perhaps beyond repair, by what he sees as the depredations
of his domineering sisters. It drives him crazy when people nose into his
business. He cannot stand to be trifled with. His world is entered by
alarming omens and situations that baffle him. The character is vividly seen
and the film sympathizes with him in his extremity.

Paul Thomas Anderson has referred to "Punch-Drunk Love" as "an art house
Adam Sandler film." It may be the key to all of the Adam Sandler films, and
may liberate Sandler for a new direction in his work. He can't go on making
those moronic comedies forever, can he? Who would have guessed he had such
uncharted depths?

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:55 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] HEAVEN / *** (R)

HEAVEN / *** (R)

October 18, 2002

Philippa: Cate Blanchett
Filippo: Giovanni Ribisi
Filippo's father: Remo Girone
Regina: Stefania Rocca
Miramax Films presents a film directed by Tom Tykwer. Written by Krzysztof
Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz. Running time: 96 minutes. Rated R (for
a scene of sexuality). In English and Italian with English subtitles.

BY ROGER EBERT

There is a moment early in "Heaven" when the character played by Cate
Blanchett is told something she did not expect to hear. This news piles
grief upon unbearable grief, and she cries out in pain. She is a good woman
who is prepared to sacrifice her life against evil, but through a great
misfortune she has done evil herself.

Blanchett plays Philippa, a teacher of English in Turin, Italy. She has seen
drugs kill her husband and some of her students. Her complaints to the
police have been ignored. She knows the man behind the Turin drug traffic,
and one day she plants a bomb in his office. A cleaning lady removes it with
the trash and it explodes in an elevator, killing the cleaner plus a man and
his two children. Four innocent dead.

Philippa has lost her husband and her students, and stands ready to lose her
freedom. But the death of these four crushes her. We are reminded of
"Running on Empty," the 1988 Sidney Lumet film about anti-war radicals in
America who did not know there would be someone in the building they chose
to blow up. As she sits in police headquarters, undergoing a
cross-examination, unaware that one of the men in the room is himself
connected to the drug trade, she makes a conquest.

His name is Filippo (Giovanni Ribisi). He is a rookie cop, the son of a
veteran officer. When Philippa insists on testifying in her native tongue,
Filippo offers to act as her translator. This is after she heard the
horrifying news, and passed out, and grasped his hand as she came to, and he
fell in love with her.

After the 10 films of "The Decalogue" and the great trilogy "Blue," "White"
and "Red," the Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski and his writing partner,
Krzysztof Piesiewicz, began writing a new trilogy: "Heaven," "Purgatory" and
"Hell." Kieslowski died in 1996 before the project could be filmed. Many
good screenplays have died with their authors, but occasionally a director
will step forward to rescue a colleague's work, as Steven Spielberg did with
Stanley Kubrick's "A.I." and now as Tom Tykwer has done with "Heaven."

This is, and isn't, the sort of project Tykwer is identified with. It is
more thoughtful, proceeds more deliberately, than the mercurial haste of
"Run Lola Run" and "The Princess and the Warrior." At the same time, it has
a belief in fateful meetings that occur as a side effect of violence or
chance, as both of those films do. And it contains the same sort of defiant
romanticism, in which a courageous woman tries to alter her fate by sheer
will power.

Philippa and Filippo have almost identical names for a reason, and later
when they shave their heads and dress alike, it is because they share a
common lifeline. It is not a case of merger so much as of Filippo being
assumed into Philippa. She is older, stronger, braver, and he invests the
capital of his life in her account. He betrays his uniform to do whatever he
can to help her escape.

After she agrees to his brilliant plan, she tells him: "Do you know why I
said I agree? I don't want to escape punishment. I want to kill him."
Him--the man behind the drugs. Whether she gets her wish is not the point.
What she focuses on is her original plan; if she can finally carry it out,
she will have made amends, however inadequately, for the innocents who died.

Kieslowski was fascinated by moral paradoxes, by good leading to evil and
back again. In "The Decalogue," a child's brilliance at the computer leads
to a drowning. A woman wants to know if her husband will die, because if he
will not, she will have her lover's baby aborted. A wife breaks it off with
her lover--but her husband tarnishes her decision by spying on it. To do
good is sometimes to cause evil. We can make plans, but we can't count on
the consequences.

The ending of "Heaven" is disappointing. It becomes just what it should not
be, the story of an escape. I wonder if Kieslowski and Piesiewicz ended
their version this way, in a fable of innocence regained. The tough ending
would have had Philippa and Filippo paying for their crimes. It would not
have been an unhappy ending for them; they are fully prepared to take the
consequences, and that is what's most admirable about them.

Still, many lesser films--almost all commercial films these days, in
fact--contrive happy endings. This one is poetic in its sadness, and
Blanchett's performance confirms her power once again. She never goes for an
effect here, never protects herself, just plays the character straight ahead
as a woman forced by grief and rage into a rash action, and then living with
the consequences. We require theology to get to the bottom of the story: It
is wrong to commit an immoral act in order to bring about a good outcome. No
matter how beneficial the result, it is still a sin. This is a good movie
that could have been great if it had ended in a form of penance.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:01 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SKINS / *** (R)

SKINS / *** (R)

October 18, 2002

Mogie Yellow Lodge: Graham Greene
Rudy Yellow Lodge: Eric Schweig
Verdell Weasel Tail: Gary Farmer
Teen Mogie: Nathaniel Arcand
First Look Pictures presents a film directed by Chris Eyre. Written by
Jennifer D. Lyne. Based on the novel by Adrian C. Louis. Running time: 87
minutes. Rated R (for language and violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Skins" tells the story of two brothers, both Sioux, one a cop, one an
alcoholic "whose mind got short-circuited in Vietnam." They live on the Pine
Ridge reservation, in the shadow of Mount Rushmore and not far from the site
of the massacre at Wounded Knee. America's founding fathers were carved, the
film informs us, into a mountain that was sacred to the Sioux, and that
knowledge sets up a final scene of uncommon power.

The movie is almost brutal in its depiction of life at Pine Ridge, where
alcoholism is nine times the national average and life expectancy 50
percent. Director Chris Eyre, whose previous film was the much-loved "Smoke
Signals" (1998), has turned from comedy to tragedy and is unblinking in his
portrait of a community where poverty and despair are daily realities.

Rudy Yellow Lodge (Eric Schweig), the policeman, is well-liked in a job that
combines law enforcement with social work. His brother Mogie (Graham Greene)
is the town drunk, but his tirades against society reveal the eloquence of a
mind that still knows how to see injustice. Mogie and his buddy Verdell
Weasel Tail (Gary Farmer) sit in the sun on the town's main street, drinking
and providing a running commentary that sometimes cuts too close to the
truth.

Flashbacks show that both brothers were abused as children, by an alcoholic
father. Mogie probably began life with more going for him, but Vietnam and
drinking have flattened him, and it's his kid brother who wears the uniform
and draws the paycheck. Those facts are established fairly early, and we
think we can foresee the movie's general direction, when Eyre surprises us
with a revelation about Rudy: He is a vigilante.

A man is beaten to death in an abandoned house. Rudy discovers the two
shiftless kids who did it, disguises himself, and breaks their legs with a
baseball bat. Angered by white-owned businesses across the reservation
border that make big profits selling booze to the Indians on the day the
welfare checks arrive, he torches one of the businesses--only to find he has
endangered his brother's life in the process. His protest, direct and angry,
is as impotent as every other form of expression seems to be.

When "Skins" premiered at Sundance last January, Eyre was criticized by some
for painting a negative portrait of his community. Justin Lin, whose "Better
Luck Tomorrow" showed affluent Asian-American teenagers succeeding at a life
of crime, was also attacked for not taking a more positive point of view.
Recently the wonderful comedy "Barbershop" has been criticized because one
character does a comic riff aimed at African-American icons.

In all three cases, the critics are dead wrong, because they would limit the
artists in their community to impotent feel-good messages instead of
applauding their freedom of expression. In all three cases, the critics are
also tone-deaf, because they cannot distinguish what the movies depict from
how they depict it. That is particularly true with some of the critics of
"Barbershop," who say they have not seen the film. If they did, the
audience's joyous laughter might help them understand the context of the
controversial dialogue, and the way in which it is answered.

"Skins" is a portrait of a community almost without resources to save
itself. We know from "Smoke Signals" that Eyre also sees another side to his
people, but the anger and stark reality he uses here are potent weapons. The
movie is not about a crime plot, not about whether Rudy gets caught, not
about how things work out. It is about regret. Graham Greene achieves the
difficult task of giving a touching performance even though his character is
usually drunk, and it is the regret he expresses, to his son and to his
brother, that carries the movie's burden of sadness. To see this movie is to
understand why the faces on Mount Rushmore are so painful and galling to the
first Americans. The movie's final image is haunting.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:49 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ABANDON / **1/2 (PG-13)

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

October 18, 2002

Catherine Burke: Katie Holmes
Det. Wade Handler: Benjamin     Bratt
Embry Langan: Charlie Hunnam
Mousy Julie: Melanie Lynskey
Samantha: Zooey Deschanel
Paramount Pictures presents a film written and directed by Stephen Gaghan.
Running time: 93 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for drug and alcohol content,
sexuality, some violence and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Abandon" is a moody, effective thriller for about 80 percent of the way,
and then our hands close on air. If you walk out before the ending, you'll
think it's better than it is. Or maybe I'm being unfair: Maybe a rational
ending with a reasonable explanation would have seemed boring. Maybe this is
the ending the movie needed, but it seems so arbitrary as it materializes
out of thin air.

Or maybe I'm still being unfair. Maybe it doesn't come from thin air.
Students of Ebert's Bigger Little Movie Glossary will be familiar with the
Law of Economy of Characters, which states that no movie introduces a
character unnecessarily, so that the apparently superfluous character is the
one to keep an eye on. That rule doesn't precisely apply here, but it's
relevant in a reverse sort of way. Think of the Purloined Letter.

Enough of this. The movie finally did not satisfy me, and so I cannot
recommend it, but there is a lot to praise, beginning with Katie Holmes'
performance as Catherine Burke, a smart and articulate student who is on the
fast track to a corporate boardroom. She's a student at an unnamed
university (McGill in Montreal provided the locations), has just aced an
interview with a big firm, studies hard, doesn't date. Her ex-boyfriend
Embry Langan (Charlie Hunnam) vanished mysteriously two years ago, but then
he was the kind of weirdo genius who was always pulling stunts like that.

The key question: Did Embry disappear himself, or was he disappeared? Det.
Wade Handler (Benjamin Bratt) is on the case, and although Catherine at
first cuts him off, she starts to like the guy. Meanwhile, in what is not as
much of a spoiler as it might appear, Embry reappears on campus, and starts
stalking Catherine. That's all of the plot you'll get from me. I want to
talk about casting, dialogue and the film's general intelligence. This is a
movie that convincingly portrays the way students talk, think, get wasted,
philosophize and hang around on a college campus. I emphasize that because
when "The Rules of Attraction" opened a week ago, I questioned its scenes in
which topless lesbians were ignored by male students at campus parties. I
have here a letter from Joseph Gallo of Auburn, Ala., who says such a sight
is not uncommon on his campus. Uh, huh.

The students in "Abandon" talk smart. Especially Catherine. Watch the way
Katie Holmes handles that interview with the high-powered corporate
recruiters. It could be used as a training film. Watch her body language and
word choices when she rejects an advance from her counselor. Notice the
scene where a friend invites her to attend an "anti-globalization rally." In
an ordinary movie, a line like that would be boilerplate, designed to move
the plot to its next event. In this movie, Catherine responds. She has an
opinion about anti-globalization. Astonishing.

The movie was written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, who won an Oscar for
the "Traffic" screenplay and is making his directorial debut. Gaghan has
written such convincing characters, including the snotty know-it-all played
by Melanie Lynskey and the best friends played by Zooey Deschanel and
Gabrielle Union, that it's kind of a shame this is a thriller. A real campus
movie, about fears and ambitions, could have been made from this material.
Deschanel's drunk scene with the cop is an example of material that is
spot-on.

But the movie is a thriller, and so we must watch as the human elements and
the intelligence, which have absorbed and entertained us, are ground up in
the requirements of the Shocking Climax. Too bad. Here is a movie that never
steps wrong until the final scenes, and then, having answered all of our
questions up until then, closes with questions even it, I suspect, cannot
answer.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:31 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ALL THE QUEEN'S MEN / * (Not rated)

ALL THE QUEEN'S MEN / * (Not rated)

October 25, 2002

Steven O'Rourke: Matt LeBlanc
Tony Parker: Eddie Izzard
Archie: James Cosmo
Romy: Nicolette Krebitz
Gen. Lansdorf: Udo Kier
Johnno: David Birkin
Col. Aitken: Edward Fox
Strand Releasing presents a film directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. Written by
Digby Wolfe, Joseph Manduke and June Roberts. Running time: 105 minutes. In
German and English with English subtitles. No MPAA rating.

BY ROGER EBERT

"All the Queen's Men" is a perfectly good idea for a comedy, but it just
plain doesn't work. It's dead in the water. I can imagine it working well in
a different time, with a different cast, in black and white instead of
color--but I can't imagine it working like this.

The movie tells the story of the "Poof Platoon," a group of four Allied
soldiers parachuted into Berlin in drag to infiltrate the all-woman factory
where the Enigma machine is being manufactured. This story is said to be
based on fact. If it is, I am amazed that such promising material would
yield such pitiful results. To impersonate a woman and a German at the same
time would have been so difficult and dangerous that it's amazing how the
movie turns it into a goofy lark.

The film stars Matt LeBlanc from "Friends," who is criminally miscast as
Steven O'Rourke, a U.S. officer famous for never quite completing heroic
missions. He is teamed with a drag artist named Tony (Eddie Izzard), an
ancient major named Archie (James Cosmo) and a scholar named Johnno (David
Birkin). After brief lessons in hair, makeup, undergarments and espionage,
they're dropped into Berlin during an air raid and try to make contact with
a resistance leader.

This underground hero turns out to be the lovely and fragrant Romy
(Nicolette Krebitz), a librarian who for the convenience of the plot lives
in a loft under the roof of the library, so that (during one of many
unbelievable scenes) the spies are able to lift a skylight window in order
to eavesdrop on an interrogation.

The plot requires them to infiltrate the factory, steal an Enigma machine
and return to England with it. Anyone who has seen "Enigma," "U-571" or the
various TV documentaries about the Enigma machine will be aware that by the
time of this movie, the British already had possession of an Enigma machine,
but to follow that line of inquiry too far in this movie is not wise. The
movie has an answer to it, but it comes so late in the film that although it
makes sense technically, the damage has already been done.

The four misfit transvestites totter about Berlin looking like (very bad)
Andrews Sisters imitators, and O'Rourke falls in love with the librarian
Romy. How it becomes clear that he is not a woman is not nearly as
interesting as how anyone could possibly have thought he was a woman in the
first place. He plays a woman as if determined, in every scene, to signal to
the audience that he's absolutely straight and only kidding. His voice, with
its uncanny similarity to Sylvester Stallone's, doesn't help.

The action in the movie would be ludicrous anyway, but is even more peculiar
in a cross-dressing comedy. There's a long sequence in which Tony, the
Izzard character, does a marked-down Marlene Dietrich before a wildly
enthusiastic audience of Nazis. Surely they know he is, if not a spy, at
least a drag queen? I'm not so sure. I fear the movie makes it appear the
Nazis think he is a sexy woman, something that will come as surprise to
anyone who is familiar with Eddie Izzard, including Eddie Izzard.

Watching the movie, it occurred to me that Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon were
not any more convincing as women in "Some Like It Hot." And yet we bought
them in that comedy, and it remains a classic. Why did they work, while the
Queen's Men manifestly do not? Apart from the inescapable difference in
actual talent, could it have anything to do with the use of color?

Black and white is better suited to many kinds of comedy, because it
underlines the dialogue and movement while diminishing the importance of
fashions and eliminating the emotional content of various colors. Billy
Wilder fought for b&w on "Some Like It Hot" because he thought his drag
queens would never be accepted by the audience in color, and he was right.

The casting is also a problem. Matt LeBlanc does not belong in this movie in
any role other than, possibly, that of a Nazi who believes Eddie Izzard is a
woman. He is all wrong for the lead, with no lightness, no humor, no
sympathy for his fellow spies and no comic timing. I can imagine this movie
as a b&w British comedy, circa 1960, with Peter Sellers, Kenneth
Williams, et al., but at this time, with this cast, this movie is hopeless.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:39 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.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:02 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE RING / ** (PG-13)

THE RING / ** (PG-13)

October 18, 2002

Rachel Keller:    Naomi Watts
Noah:    Martin Henderson
Richard Morgan:     Brian Cox
Aidan:    David Dorfman
Ruth:     Lindsay Frost
Katie:      Amber Tamblyn
DreamWorks presents a film directed by Gore Verbinski. Written by Ehren
Kruger. Based on the novel by Koji Suzuki. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated
PG-13 (for thematic elements, disturbing images, language and some drug
references).

BY ROGER EBERT

Rarely has a more serious effort produced a less serious result than in "The
Ring," the kind of dread dark horror film where you better hope nobody in
the audience snickers, because the film teeters right on the edge of the
ridiculous.

Enormous craft has been put into the movie, which looks just great, but the
story goes beyond contrivance into the dizzy realms of the absurd. And
although there is no way for everything to be explained (and many events
lack any possible explanation), the movie's ending explains and explains and
explains, until finally you'd rather just give it a pass than sit through
one more tedious flashback.

The story involves a video that brings certain death. You look at it, the
phone rings, and you find out you have seven days to live. A prologue shows
some teenage victims of the dread curse, and then newspaper reporter Rachel
Keller (Naomi Watts) gets on the case, helped by eerie drawings by her young
son, Aidan (David Dorfman).

The story has been recycled from a popular Japanese thriller by Hideo
Nakata, which was held off the market in this country to clear the field for
this remake. Alas, the same idea was ripped off in August by "feardotcom,"
also a bad movie, but more plain fun than "The Ring," and with a climax that
used brilliant visual effects while this one drags on endlessly.

I dare not reveal too much of the story but will say that the video does
indeed bring death in a week, something we are reminded of as Rachel tries
to solve the case while titles tick off the days. A single mom, she enlists
Aidan's father, a video geek named Noah (Martin Henderson) to analyze the
deadly tape. He tags along for the adventure, which inevitably leads to
their learning to care for one another, I guess, although the movie is not
big on relationships. Her investigation leads her to a remote cottage on an
island and to the weird, hostile man (Brian Cox) who lives there. And then
the explanations start to pile up.

This is Naomi Watts' first move since "Mulholland Drive" and I was going to
complain that we essentially learn nothing about her character except that
she's a newspaper reporter--but then I remembered that in "Mulholland Drive"
we essentially learned nothing except that she was a small-town girl in
Hollywood, and by the end of the movie we weren't even sure we had learned
that. "Mulholland Drive," however, evoked juicy emotions and dimensions that
"The Ring" is lacking, and involved us in a puzzle that was intriguing
instead of simply tedious.

There are a couple of moments when we think "The Ring" is going to end, and
it doesn't. One is that old reliable where the heroine, soaking wet and
saved from death, says "I want to go home," and the hero cushions her head
on his shoulder. But no, there's more. Another is when Aidan says, "You
didn't let her out, did you?" That would have been a nice ironic closer, but
the movie spells out the entire backstory in merciless detail, until when
we're finally walking out of the theater, we're almost ashamed to find
ourselves wondering, hey, who was that on the phone?

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