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movies-digest        Thursday, October 31 2002        Volume 02 : Number 379



[MV] WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD / **1/2 (R)
[MV] WHITE OLEANDER / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] JUST A KISS / * (R)
[MV] IGBY GOES DOWN / ***1/2 (R)
[MV] THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] TUCK EVERLASTING / ** (PG)
[MV] KWIK STOP / ***1/2 (Not rated)
[MV] LAWRENCE OF ARABIA / **** (PG)
[MV] THE FOUR FEATHERS / ** (PG-13)
[MV] ELLING / *** (R)

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:06 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD / **1/2 (R)

WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD / **1/2 (R)

October 18, 2002

Riley: William H. Macy
Leon: Isaiah Washington
Pero: Sam Rockwell
Toto: Michael Jeter
Cosimo: Luis Guzman
Old Man in Prison: John Buck Jr.
Rosalind: Patricia Clarkson
Basil: Andrew Davoli
Carmela: Jennifer Esposito
Jerzy: George Clooney
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film written and directed by Anthony and
Joe Russo. Running time: 86 minutes. Rated R (for language).

BY ROGER EBERT

I wonder if the real problem is that I've seen the original. "Welcome to
Collinwood" is a wacky and eccentric heist comedy with many virtues, but it
is also a remake of "Big Deal on Madonna Street" (1958), a movie much
beloved by me. Some scenes are so close to the original it's kind of
uncanny.

Consider the comic climax of the movie, which comes as the gang is trying to
break through the wall and get the safe. If you've seen "Big Deal," you'll
remember that great scene. If you haven't, I won't spoil it for you. The
surprise element, on top of the humor, makes it something like genius. But
when the scene came along in "Welcome to Collinwood," I knew exactly what
would happen, and so the new movie didn't have a chance. All I could do was
compare and contrast.

Would the scene work for a fresh audience? I don't see why not. I heard good
buzz about "Welcome to Collinwood" at the Toronto Film Festival, and assume
that for those who had not seen "Big Deal on Madonna Street," the scene
worked and the movie was a pleasure. The problem is, so many people have
seen it, one way or another. Made as a satire of "Rififi" (1955), which is
the mother of all heist movies, it is itself the mother of all heist
comedies. "Big Deal" is a regular on cable, is in the Criterion Collection
on DVD, and has been remade many times before, notably by Louis Malle
("Crackers"), Alan Taylor ("Palookaville") and Woody Allen (the middle
section of "Small Time Crooks").

Directed and written by brothers Anthony and Joe Russo, the movie is set in
the seedy Cleveland suburb of Collinwood, which looks unchanged since the
Depression. We meet members of the hamlet's criminal fraternity, who are
incredibly colorful, as if they read Damon Runyon and stay up late taking
notes on old crime movies. They have their own lingo. A malinski is a guy
who will take the rap for you. A bellini is a lucrative job. As the film
opens, a crook named Cosimo (Luis Guzman) hears about a bellini and needs a
malinski.

He shares his knowledge with his girlfriend (Patricia Clarkson) and unwisely
confides in his partner Toto (Michael Jeter, whose character is named after
the Italian comedian who played this role in the original). Word spreads
through the underworld, and while Cosimo fails to find his malinski, the
others sign up for the bellini, which involves a foolproof method to break
into a pawnshop where the safe is said to contain $300,000.

The heist spoof genre is durable. Steven Soderbergh, who produced this film,
directed "Ocean's Eleven" (2001), which was a remake of "Ocean's 11" (1960),
which was a remake of the French film "Bob le Flambeur" (1955). In the Russo
version, I like the sequence where the gang attempts to film the pawnbroker
opening his safe. An arm keeps getting in the way at the crucial moment.
After the screening, one crook observes, "As a film it's a disaster," and
another replies, "It's a documentary. It's supposed to look that way."

The break-in gang consists of Toto (Jeter), single dad Riley (William H.
Macy), Pero (Sam Rockwell), Leon (Isaiah Washington) and Basil (Andrew
Davoli). Romantic distraction comes from Carmela (Jennifer Esposito) and
Leon's sister Michelle (Gabrielle Union), who pair with Pero and Basil.
Their trainer is the retired safecracker Jerzy (George Clooney), who is in a
wheelchair and explains, "I don't go out in the field no more." He charges
them $500 to learn the "circular saw method."

The movie is in love with its dialogue, which is in a more mannered and
colorful style than real crooks probably have the time to master, and spends
too much time lining them all up for conversations. The actual heist is the
high point, just as in the Italian film, and so raffish and disorganized was
the gang that I can see how someone might enjoy this movie, coming to it for
the first time.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:17 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] WHITE OLEANDER / **1/2 (PG-13)

WHITE OLEANDER / **1/2 (PG-13)

October 11, 2002

Astrid Magnussen: Alison Lohman
Starr: Robin Wright Penn
Ingrid Magnussen: Michelle Pfeiffer
Claire Richards: Renee Zellweger
Rena Grushenka: Svetlana Efremova
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Peter Kosminsky. Written
by Mary Agnes Donoghue. Based on the novel by Janet Fitch. Running time: 110
minutes. Rated PG-13 (for mature thematic elements concerning dysfunctional
relationships, drug content, language, sexuality and violence). Opening
today at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

"White Oleander" tells a sad story of crime and foster homes, and makes it
look like the movie version. The film takes the materials of human tragedy
and dresses them in lovely costumes, Southern California locations and star
power. Almost makes it look like fun. The movie's poster shows four women's
faces side by side, all blindingly blond: Alison Lohman, Michelle Pfeiffer,
Robin Wright Penn and Renee Zellweger. We suspect there could be another,
parallel story of the same events, in which the characters look unhinged and
desperate and brunet.

The story is determined to be colorful and melodramatic, like a soap opera
where the characters suffer in ways that look intriguing. When you are a
teenage girl and your mother is jailed for murder and you are shipped to a
series of foster homes, isn't it a little unlikely that each home would play
like an entertaining episode of a miniseries? First you get a sexy foster
mom who was "an alcoholic, a cokehead and dancing topless--and then I was
saved by Jesus," although she still dresses like an off-duty stripper. Then
you get an actress who lives in a sun-drenched beach house in Malibu and
becomes her best friend. Then you get a Russian capitalist who dresses like
a gypsy, uses her foster kids as dumpster-divers, and runs a stall at the
Venice Beach flea market. Aren't there any foster mothers who are old,
tired, a little mean and doing it for the money?

The performances are often touching and deserve a better screenplay. I don't
hold the beauty of the actresses against them, but I wish the movie had not
been so pleased with the way the sunlight comes streaming through their long
blond hair and falls on their flawless skin and little white summer dresses.

The movie is narrated by Astrid Magnussen, played by Lohman in several
different years and weathers of her life. It's an awesome performance but
would benefit from depth and darkness that the movie shies away from. (The
movie is all too appropriately rated PG-13; I suspect full justice cannot be
done to this material short of an R.) Astrid is the daughter of Ingrid
(Pfeiffer), an artist and free spirit who sits on the roof so the desert
winds can find her. "No one had ever seen anyone more beautiful than my
mother," Astrid tells us, but there are ominous hints that Ingrid is not an
ideal mother, as when she skips Parents Night because "what can they tell me
about you that I don't already know?"

Ingrid doesn't date. Doesn't need men. Then makes the mistake of letting
Barry (Billy Connolly) into her life (although so fleeting is his role he is
barely allowed into the movie). She kills him, observing to her daughter,
"He made love to me and then said I had to leave because he had a date."
When you hardly know someone and that's how he treats you, he's not worth
serving 35 years to life.

Astrid then moves on to the series of foster homes, each one so colorful it
could be like the adventure of a Dickens character; the Russian is
unmistakably a descendent of Fagin, and surely only in a Hollywood fantasy
could any of these women qualify as foster mothers. Starr, the former
stripper, seems less like a person than a caricature, although the director,
Peter Kosminsky, has a good eye for detail and shows how her family takes a
jaundiced view of her born-again grandstanding. What happens to bring this
foster experience to an end I will not reveal, except to say that I didn't
for a moment believe it; it involves behavior of a sort the movie seems
obligated to supply but never refers to again.

Astrid's best foster experience is with Claire (Zellweger), whose
performance is the most convincing in the movie. She plays a onetime horror
star, married to a director who is usually absent, and we believe the scenes
she has with Astrid because they come from need and honesty.

They also inspire the best scenes between Astrid and her mother; Pfeiffer
finds just the right note between jealousy and perception when, on visiting
day at the prison, she observes, "You dress like her now." Later she tells
her daughter, "I'd like to meet her." "Why?" "Because you don't want me to."
And later: "How can you stand to live with poor Claire? I would rather see
you in the worst kind of foster home than to live with that woman." The
scenes involving Claire most clearly inspire Astrid's developing ideas about
her mother.

The third foster experience, with Svetlana Efremova playing the Russian
jumble-sale woman, offers a glimpse of the economy's underbelly but is too
choppy and perfunctory to engage us: It feels like it was filmed to add
color and then chopped to reduce the running time. Its only influence on
Astrid is to change her wardrobe and hair color, in what feels more like a
stunt than a character development.

Pfeiffer's role is the most difficult in the movie because she has to
compress her revelations and emotions into the brief visits of her
increasingly dubious daughter. Astrid, who once idealized her mother, now
blames her for the loss of happiness with Claire. But even the movie's big
emotional payoff at the end loses something because, after all, Ingrid did
murder Barry, and so what is presented as a sacrifice on behalf of her
daughter could also be described as simply doing the right thing.

"White Oleander" is based on a novel by Janet Fitch, recommended by Oprah's
Book Club, unread by me. I gather it includes still more colorful foster
home episodes. Amy Aquino plays Miss Martinez, the social worker who drives
Astrid from one foster adventure to the next. She feels like this movie's
version of Michael Anthony, the man who introduced each episode of "The
Millionaire." You can imagine her on the TV series, shipping the heroine to
a different foster home every week.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:11:58 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] JUST A KISS / * (R)

JUST A KISS / * (R)

October 18, 2002

Dag: Ron Eldard
Halley: Kyra Sedgwick
Peter: Patrick Breen
Paula: Marisa Tomei
Rebecca: Marley Shelton
Andre: Taye Diggs
Paramount Classics presents a film directed by Fisher Stevens. Written by
Patrick Breen. Running time: 89 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexual images
and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

If only it were clever, "Just a Kiss" would be too clever by half.

Here is a movie that was apparently made by working its way through a list
of styles, so that we have poignancy jostling against farce, thoughtful
dialogue elbowed aside by one-liners, and a visual style that incorporates
rotoscope animation for no apparent reason except, maybe, that it looks
neat.

"Just a Kiss," directed by the actor Fisher Stevens, begins with a kiss
between two people who should not be kissing and ends after those people,
and their significant others, and assorted insignificant others, undergo
sexual and emotional misunderstandings, survive plane crashes, end up in the
hospital or comatose, etc., while occasionally appearing to be animated like
the characters in "Waking Life."

Now "Waking Life" was an accomplished movie, in which Richard Linklater took
live-action footage of his characters and passed it through a software
program that kept their basic appearances and movements while allowing
artists to overlay an animated layer. It worked. It does not work in "Just a
Kiss," and I'm about to explain why.

In "Waking Life," all of the characters are animated. That is what they are,
and how we accept them, and whatever reality they have is conveyed visually
through the animation. But in "Just a Kiss," the characters are photographed
realistically, so that when they suddenly undergo "rotomation," their
reality is violently displaced and our attention is jerked up to the surface
of the movie. They exist now, not as characters but as animated displays who
used to be characters and may be characters again.

I can imagine a way in which this could work, in a "Roger Rabbit"-type movie
that moves in and out of the cartoon dimension. But it doesn't work here
because it is manifestly and distractingly only a stunt. And the whole
movie, in various ways, has the same problem: It's all surface, without an
entry point into whatever lurks beneath. The characters, dialogue, personal
styles and adventures are all mannerisms. The actors are merely carriers of
the director's contrivances.

Consider, for example, a sequence in which one character on an airplane uses
his cell phone to tell another that he loves her. His phone emits lethal
transmissions which cause the plane to crash. Everyone in first class lives;
everyone in tourist class dies. I smile as I write the words. This would be
a good scene in "Airplane!" What is it doing here, in a movie where we are
possibly expected to care about the characters' romances and infidelities?
To admit farce into a drama is to admit that the drama is farce.

But is it a drama? I haven't a clue. The movie seems to reinvent itself from
moment to moment, darting between styles like a squirrel with too many nuts.
There is one performance that works, sort of, and it is by Marisa Tomei, as
a bartender whose psychic gifts allow her to find meaning in the rings left
by cold beers. She is a crazy homicidal maniac, but, hey, at least that
means that nothing she does is out of character.

As for the other actors, they know Stevens from the indie films they've made
together, and were good sports to volunteer for this project. Ron Eldard,
Kyra Sedgwick, Patrick Breen (who wrote the screenplay), Marley Shelton,
Taye Diggs, Sarita Choudhury and Bruno Amato do what they can with
characters who are reinvented from minute to minute. And Zoe Caldwell, as a
choreographer who is the mother of the Shelton character, has moments of
stunningly effective acting that are so isolated from the rest of the movie
that they appear like the result of channel-surfing.

Note: Eldard's character is named "Dag." On the Internet Movie Database, he
is listed as "Dag Hammerskjold," but on the movie's official site he is only
"named after Dag Hammerskjold." Maybe it's supposed to be ironic that this
Dag survives a plane crash. Whatever. Of course, the movie misspells
Hammarskjold's name, so maybe this character is descended from a person who
was constantly having to explain how he was the Dag Hammerskjold who spelled
his name with an "e."

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:33 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] IGBY GOES DOWN / ***1/2 (R)

IGBY GOES DOWN / ***1/2 (R)

September 20, 2002

Jason 'Igby' Slocumb Jr.: Kieran Culkin
Mimi Slocumb: Susan Sarandon
Oliver Slocumb: Ryan Phillippe
Jason Slocumb: Bill Pullman
D.H. Baines: Jeff Goldblum
Sookie Sapperstein: Claire Danes
Rachel: Amanda Peet
MGM presents a film written and directed by Burr Steers. Running time: 97
minutes. Rated R (for language, sexuality and drug content). Opening today
at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

Holden Caulfield formed the mold and Jason "Igby" Slocumb Jr. fits it
perfectly, in "Igby Goes Down," an inspired example of the story in which
the adolescent hero discovers that the world sucks, people are phonies, and
sex is a consolation. Because the genre is well established, what makes the
movie fresh is smart writing, skewed characters, and the title performance
by Kieran Culkin, who captures just the right note as an advantaged rich boy
who has been raised in discontent.

Igby is the child of a malevolently malfunctioning family. His mother, Mimi
(Susan Sarandon), is a tart, critical, perfectionist mandarin ("I call her
Mimi because Heinous One is a bit cumbersome"). His father, Jason (Bill
Pullman), went through meltdown and is in a mental hospital, staring into
space. His stepfather, D. H. Baines (Jeff Goldblum), is a slick operator who
converts both lofts and the young girls he installs in them. His brother,
Oliver (Ryan Phillippe), is a supercilious Columbia student who regards Igby
as a species of bug. Igby, like Citizen Kane before him, has been thrown out
of all the best schools, and early in the movie he escapes from a military
school and hides out in New York City.

Of course, a boy with his advantages is fortunate even in hideouts. He has
an understanding meeting with his stepfather, finds shelter in one of his
lofts, and soon is on very good terms with Rachel (Amanda Peet), his
father's mistress, who is an artist in every respect, except producing
anything that can be considered art. Through Rachel he meets Sookie
Sapperstein (Claire Danes), a Bennington student who likes him because he
makes her laugh. Among the lessons every young man should learn is this one:
All women who like you because you make them laugh sooner or later stop
laughing, and then why do they like you?

The movie has a fairly convoluted plot, involving who is sleeping with whom,
and why, and who finds out about it, and what happens then. There is also
the problem of the older brother, who does not make women laugh, which may
be his strong point. The Goldblum character is especially intriguing, as a
charmer with unlimited personal style and a hidden vicious streak.

Movies like this depend above all on the texture of the performances, and it
is easy to imagine "Igby Goes Down" as a sitcom in which the characters
don't quite seem to understand the witty things they're saying. All of the
actors here have flair and presence, and get the joke, and because they all
affect a kind of neo-Wildean irony toward everything, they belong in the
same world. It is refreshing to hear Igby refer to his "Razor's Edge
experience" without the movie feeling it is necessary to have him explain
what he is talking about.

The Culkins are approaching brand-name status, but the thing is, the kids
can act. Kieran emerges here as an accomplished, secure comic actor with
poise and timing, and there is still another younger brother, Rory, who
appears as a younger Igby. Kieran's role is not an easy one. He is not
simply a rebellious, misfit teenager with a con man's verbal skills, but
also a wounded survivor of a family that has left him emotionally scarred.
One of the movie's touching scenes has him visiting his father in the mental
hospital, where his father's total incomprehension suggests a scary message:
I don't understand my family or anything else, and I've given up thinking
about it.

Sarandon, as Mimi the Heinous One, treats her boys as if they're straight
men in the ongoing sitcom of her life. That there are tragic secrets
involved, which I will not reveal, makes her all the more frightening: Is
nothing entirely sincere with this woman? Goldblum's sense of possession is
the scariest thing about him, since Igby finds out it's bad to be considered
his property and worse not to be. And Phillippe is pitch-perfect as the
affected college student, whose elevated style and mannered speech seem
designed to hide the same wounds that Igby bears.

There is a lot of sex in the movie, but it is sane sex, which is to say sex
performed by people who seem to have heard of sex and even experienced it
before the present moment. Sex is seen here as part of the process of life,
rather than as the subject of a heightened scene of cinematic
mountain-climbing. Everyone except Igby is fairly casual about it, which is
kind of sad, and among the things Igby has been deprived of in life, one is
an early romance with a sincere girl of about the same age who takes him
seriously. Perhaps the sad inherited family trait among the Slocumbs is
premature sophistication.

The movie was written and directed by Burr Steers (who acted in "Pulp
Fiction" and "The Last Days of Disco," among others). It is an astonishing
filmmaking debut, balancing so many different notes and story elements. What
Steers has not lost sight of, in all the emotional chaos, is heart. The film
opens and closes on different kinds of pain, and by the end Igby has
discovered truths that Holden Caulfield, we feel, could not have handled.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:28 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13)

THE TUXEDO / *1/2 (PG-13)

September 27, 2002

Jimmy Tong: Jackie Chan
Del Blaine: Jennifer Love     Hewitt
Clark Devlin: Jason Isaacs
Banning: Ritchie Coster
Steena: Debi Mazar
DreamWorks Pictures presents a film directed by Kevin Donovan. Written by
Michael J. Wilson and Michael Leeson. Running time: 99 minutes. Rated PG-13
(for action violence, sexual content and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

There is an ancient tradition in action movies that the first scene is a
self-contained shocker with no relevance to the rest of the plot. James Bond
parachutes from a mountainside, Clint Eastwood disarms a robber, etc. Jackie
Chan's "The Tuxedo" opens with a deer urinating in a mountain stream. The
deer, the urine and the stream have nothing to do with the rest of the film.

The movie's plot does involve water. The bad guy wants to add an ingredient
to the world's water supply that will cause victims to dehydrate and die. To
save themselves, they will have to buy the villain's pure water. Since his
opening gambit is to sabotage, I repeat, the world's water supply, he will
dehydrate everyone except those already drinking only bottled water, and so
will inherit a planet of health nuts, which is just as well, since all the
fish and animals and birds will dehydrate, too, and everyone will have to
live on PowerBars.

I have been waiting for a dehydrating villain for some time. My wife is of
the opinion that I do not drink enough water. She believes the proper amount
is a minimum of eight glasses a day. She often regards me balefully and
says, "You're not getting enough water." In hot climates her concern
escalates. In Hawaii last summer she had the grandchildren so worked up they
ran into the bedroom every morning to see if Grandpa Roger had turned to
dust.

The movie's villain, whose name is Banning (Ritchie Coster), has a novel
scheme for distributing the formula, or virus, or secret ingredient, or
whatever it is, that will make water into a dehydrating agent. He plans to
use water striders, those insects that can skate across the surface of a
pond. In his secret laboratory he keeps his ultimate weapon, a powerful
water strider queen.

Do water striders have queens, like bees and ants do? For an authoritative
answer I turned to Dr. May Berenbaum, head of the Department of Entomology
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and founder of the Insect
Fear Film Festival, held every year at the Great University.

She writes: "Water striders are true bugs (i.e., insects with
piercing/sucking mouthparts) that run or skate on the surface of bodies of
water, feeding on the insects that fall onto the water surface. There are
about 500 species of gerrids in the world and, as far as I know, not a
single one of those 500 species is eusocial (i.e., has a complex social
structure with reproductive division of labor and cooperative brood care). I
don't even know of an example of maternal care in the whole group. In short,
the answer to your question is an emphatic 'no!' I can't wait to see this
film. It definitely sounds like a candidate for a future Insect Fear Film
Festival!"

More crushing evidence: Dr. Bruce P. Smith, expert entomologist at Ithaca
College, writes me, "There is no known species of water striders that has
queens. The most closely related insects that do are some colonial aphid
speciies, and the most familiar (and much more distant rleatives) are the
ants, bees, wasps and termites." He adds helpfully, "One mammal does have
queens: the naked mole rats of Africa." Revealing himself as a student of
insect films, he continues, "If my memory is correct, 'Arachnophobia' has a
king spider, but no queen--totally absurd!"

So there you have it. Professors Smith and Berenbaum have spoken. The evil
Banning has spent untold millions on his secret plans for world domination,
and thinks he possesses a water strider queen when he only has a lucky
regular water strider living the life of Riley.

But back to "The Tuxedo." Jackie Chan plays a taxi driver named Jimmy Tong,
who is hired by Debi Mazar to be the chauffeur for Clark Devlin (Jason
Isaacs), a multimillionaire secret agent whose $2 million tuxedo turns him
into a fighting machine (also a dancer, kung-fu expert, etc). After Devlin
is injured by a skateboard bomb, Jackie puts on the suit and soon partners
with agent Del Blaine (Jennifer Love Hewitt), who realizes he has a strange
accent for a man named Clark Devlin, but nevertheless joins him in battle
against Banning.

The movie is silly beyond comprehension, and even if it weren't silly, it
would still be beyond comprehension. It does have its moments, as when the
tuxedo inadvertently cold-cocks James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, and
Jackie Chan has to go onstage in place of the Hardest Working Man in Show
Business. He's very funny as James Brown, although not as funny as James
Brown is.

There's something engaging about Jackie Chan. Even in a bad movie, I like
him, because what you see is so obviously what you get. This time he goes
light on the stunts, at least the stunts he obviously does himself, so that
during the closing credits, there are lots of flubbed lines and times when
the actors break out laughing, but none of those spellbinding shots in which
he misses the bridge, falls off the scaffold, etc. And some of the shots are
computer-generated, which is kind of cheating isn't it, with Jackie Chan?
Luckily, special effects are not frowned upon at the Insect Fear Film
Festival.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:16 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] TUCK EVERLASTING / ** (PG)

TUCK EVERLASTING / ** (PG)

October 11, 2002

Winnie Foster: Alexis Bledel
Angus Tuck: William Hurt
Mae Tuck: Sissy Spacek
Jesse Tuck: Jonathan Jackson
Miles Tuck: Scott Bairstow
Man in the Yellow Suit: Ben Kingsley
Mother Foster: Amy Irving
Robert Foster: Victor Garber
Walt Disney Pictures presents a film directed by Jay Russell. Written by
Jeffrey Lieber and James V. Hart. Based on the book by Natalie Babbitt.
Running time: 90 minutes. Rated PG.(for some violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Tuck Everlasting" is based on a novel well known to middle school students
but not to me, about a romance between two teenagers, one of whom is 104. It
contains a lesson: "Do not fear death--but rather the unlived life." Wise
indeed. But wiser still was Socrates, who said, "The unexamined life is not
worth living." The immortals in "Tuck Everlasting" have not examined their
endless lives, and the teenage mortal scarcely has a thought in her pretty
little head.

The movie, shot in rural Maryland (Blair Witch country), tells of a young
woman named Winnie Foster (Alexis Bledel) who feels stifled by strict family
rules. Her mother (Amy Irving) frowns disapprovingly on just about anything,
but is especially certain that Winnie should never talk to strangers or walk
alone in the woods. One day, Winnie up and walks in the woods, and meets a
young man named Jesse (Jonathan Jackson). He warns her against drinking from
a spring at the foot of a big old tree, and then his older brother Miles
(Scott Bairstow) grabs her and brings her back to their forest cottage on
horseback.

These are the Tucks. Mae and Angus, Mom and Dad, are played by Sissy Spacek
and William Hurt. Years ago, they drank from the spring and have become
immortal. "The spring stops you right where you are," Winnie is told, and
that's why Jesse has been 17 for all these years. Although this is not
explained, it must stop your mental as well as your physical aging, because
at 104, Jesse is not yet desperately bored by being 17. Earlier, Angus Tuck
had spied a stranger in a yellow coat skulking about, and warned the family:
"Any strangers in the woods--getting too close--you know what to do. No
exceptions." So it appears Winnie must die to protect the secret of the
Tucks and their spring. But first Mae Tuck wants to give the poor girl a
square meal, and as it becomes clear that Winnie and Jesse are soft on one
another, the mean Miles teases: "Don't you wish he'd told you before he
kissed you?" (His own mother says Miles is "warm as barbed wire.")

The movie has been handsomely mounted by Jay Russell, whose previous film
was "My Dog Skip" (2000), a classic about childhood that was entirely
lacking the feather-brained sentimentality of "Tuck Everlasting." The new
movie is slow, quiet, sweet and maddening in the way it avoids obvious
questions: Such as, if one sip from the spring grants immortality, why do
the Tucks remain for a century in their cottage in the woods? I know what
I'd do: Spend 10 years apiece in the world's most interesting places. And
don't tell me they're afraid city folk will notice how old they are, since
the boys live in town and Mae visits them every 10 years.

The movie oozes with that kind of self-conscious piety that sometimes comes
with the territory when award-winning young people's books are filmed
("Harry Potter" is an exception). The characters seem to lack ordinary human
instincts and behave according to their archetypal requirements. How else to
consider the Man in the Yellow Suit (Ben Kingsley), who, if he had given the
matter a moment's thought, would know he could stalk the Tucks more
successfully with a brown suit? Winnie's father (Victor Garber) is a rather
distant man, as befits the form for this genre, in which the women are
plucky and the men are either sinister or inessential, unless they are cute
teenage boys, of course.

The movie is too impressed with its own solemn insights to work up much
entertainment value; is too much fable to be convincing as life; is awkward
in the way it tries to convince us Winnie's in danger when we're pretty sure
she's not. Even its lesson is questionable. Is it better to live fully for a
finite time than to be stuck in eternity? The injunction to live life fully
need not come with a time limit. That's why the outcome of the romance is so
unsatisfactory. I dare not reveal what happens, except to say that it need
not happen, that the explanation for it is logically porous, and that many a
young girl has sacrificed more for her love. Besides, just because you're 17
forever doesn't mean life loses all delight. You can get rid of that horse
and carriage and buy a motorcycle.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:10 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] KWIK STOP / ***1/2 (Not rated)

KWIK STOP / ***1/2 (Not rated)

October 11, 2002

Mike: Michael Gilio
Didi: Lara Phillips
Emil: Rich Komenich
Ruthie: Karin Anglin
Clerk: Kris Wolff
Dr. Milk: Eric Curtis Johnson
Sunny: Sunny Seigel
A film written and directed by Michael Gilio. Running time: 110 minutes. No
MPAA rating (intended for mature audiences). Opening today at Facets
Cinematheque.

BY ROGER EBERT

"Kwik Stop" starts out with a shoplifter and a teenager who sees him
stealing. She threatens to turn him over to the cops, but actually all she
wants is to escape from her life in a Chicago suburb. He explains he's going
to Los Angeles to become a movie actor. "Take me with you," she says. "Can I
kiss you?" he says.

At this point, maybe 10 minutes into the story, we think we know more or
less where the movie is going: It'll be a road picture. We are dead wrong.
"Kwik Stop," which never quite gets out of town, blindsides us with
unexpected humor and sadness, and is one of the unsung treasures of recent
independent filmmaking. It's playing at Facets, 1517 W. Fullerton.

The movie is the work of Michael Gilio, who wrote it, directed it and stars
in it as Mike, the guy who thinks he could be a movie star. Gilio in fact is
already an established actor; he played opposite Sidney Poitier in the TV
movie "To Sir with Love 2," and has appeared in four other films, but this
movie proves he's not only an actor but has a genuine filmmaking talent. In
the way it is developed, and seen, and especially in the way it ends, "Kwik
Stop" shows an imagination that flies far beyond the conventions it seems to
begin with.

Mike is a complicated guy. He dreams of going to Los Angeles and breaking
into the movies, yes--but perhaps the dream is more important than actually
doing it. He's like a lot of people who are stuck in the planning stage and
like it there. Didi (Lara Phillips) has no plans, but she has urgent desires
and is prepared to act on them. We learn all we need to know about her home
life in a shot taken from the curb, that watches her go inside to get some
stuff and come back out again, unconcerned that she is leaving town, she
thinks, forever.

Neither one is dumb. They talk about Henry Miller and Harvey Keitel, two
names that suggest you have advanced beyond life's training wheels. Gilio
finds a motel for them with its own disco ball hanging from the ceiling, and
as its twinkle disguises the shabbiness they make and pledge love, and then
the next morning Mike is gone. If this couple is going to make it through
the entire film, we realize, they are going to have to do it without using
the usual cliches.

They meet again. Never mind how. Mike takes Didi to a diner for a meal,
where a waitress named Ruthie (Karin Anglin) greets them with a strangely
skewed attitude. Watch the way Gilio introduces mystery into the scene and
then resolves it, getting humor out of both the mystery and the solution.
The diner scene suggests strangeness deep in Mike's character: He doesn't
need to go to Los Angeles since he stars in his own drama, and doubles back
to be sure he hasn't lost his audience.

Mike and Didi try to burgle a house. Didi is whammed by a homeowner's
baseball bat and ends up imprisoned in the Midwest School for Girls. Mike
has a plan to spring her, which involves Ruthie making what is, under the
circumstances, a truly selfless gesture (she explains she doesn't want to
"waste the time I put into you").

Just as Mike never gets out of town, just as the plot doubles back to pick
up first Didi and then Ruthie, so Emil (Rich Komenich), the homeowner with
the baseball bat, also is not abandoned. "Kwik Stop" is the opposite of the
picaresque journey in which colorful characters are encountered and then
left behind. It gathers them all up and takes them along.

The movie contains genuine surprises, some delightful (like the plan to
spring Didi from the home) and others involving loneliness, loss and
desperation. I cannot say much more without revealing developments that are
unexpected and yet deeply satisfying. Poignancy comes into the movie from an
unexpected source. Depths are revealed where we did not think to find them.
The ending is like the last paragraph of a short story, redefining
everything that went before.

"Kwik Stop," made on a low budget, has all the money it needs to accomplish
everything it wants to do. It has the freedom of serious fiction, which is
not chained to a story arc but follows its characters where they insist on
going. Gilio, Phillips, Komenich and Anglin create that kind of bemused
realism we discover in films that are not about plot but about what these
dreamy people are going to do next. On a weekend when $400 million in slick
mainstream productions are opening, this is the movie to seek out.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:34 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LAWRENCE OF ARABIA / **** (PG)

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA / **** (PG)

September 20, 2002

Lawrence: Peter O'Toole
Prince Feisal: Alec Guinness
Auda Abu Tayi: Anthony Quinn
Gen. Allenby: Jack Hawkins
Turkish Bey: Jose Ferrer
Sherif Ali: Omar Sharif
Col. Brighton: Anthony Quayle
Mr. Dryden: Claude Rains
Jackson Bentley: Arthur Kennedy
Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by David Lean Screenplay by
Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson, inspired by the writings of T.E. Lawrence.
Running time: 216 minutes. Rated PG. Opening today at the Music Box Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

W hat a bold, mad act of genius it was, to make "Lawrence of Arabia," or
even think that it could be made.

In the words years later of one of its stars, Omar Sharif: "If you are the
man with the money and somebody comes to you and says he wants to make a
film that's four hours long, with no stars, and no women, and no love story,
and not much action, either, and he wants to spend a huge amount of money to
go film it in the desert--what would you say?"

But producers took big chances in the early 1960s, and Sam Spiegel went
ahead with David Lean's masterpiece, even though Lean was able to cast Peter
O'Toole in the lead only over Spiegel's fierce protests. O'Toole went on to
win the first of his seven Oscar nominations; the film totaled 10
nominations and won seven Oscars, including Best Picture.

After being treated with shocking neglect for years, the movie has gone
through several restorations and opens Friday at the Music Box looking as
bright and clear as the day it was released. I remember how Robert Harris,
one of the ranking experts on film preservation, who restored the film in
1989, mailed me a rusty, crumpled film can with a note that said, "This is
how we found the print had been treated when we went into the vault."

"Lawrence of Arabia" was shot in 70mm, a format that offers four times as
much detail as 35mm. That makes possible the famous shot where a speck in
the desert eventually draws close enough to be recognized. To see it in this
way, as it was shown recently at the Telluride Film Festival, is to
understand it entirely differently than any impression you could get from
television or video.

For Roger Ebert's full-length review of "Lawrence of Arabia" in the Great
Movies series, go to www.suntimes.com/ebert/greatmovies.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:38 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE FOUR FEATHERS / ** (PG-13)

THE FOUR FEATHERS / ** (PG-13)

September 20, 2002

Harry Faversham: Heath Ledger
Lt. Jack Durrance: Wes Bentley
Ethne Eustace: Kate Hudson
Abou Fatma: Djimon Hounsou
Trench: Michael Sheen
Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Shekhar Kapur. Written by
Michael Schiffer and Hossein Amini. Based on the novel by A.E.W. Mason.
Running time: 127 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for intense battle sequences,
disturbing images, violence and some sensuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

Looking ahead to the Toronto Film Festival, I foolishly wrote that I was
looking forward to Shekhar Kapur's "The Four Feathers" because I was
"intrigued by the notion that a story of British colonialism has now been
retold by an Indian director. We await the revisionist 'Gunga Din.' "
Foolish, because the film is not revisionist at all, but a skilled update of
the same imperialist swashbuckler that's been made into six earlier films
and a TV movie (the classic is the 1939 version, with Ralph Richardson and
C. Aubrey Smith). I do not require Kapur to be a revisionist
anti-imperialist; it's just that I don't expect a director born in India to
be quite so fond of the British Empire. To be sure, his previous film was
the wonderful "Elizabeth" (1998), about Elizabeth I, so perhaps he's an
Anglophile. So am I. It's permitted.

"The Four Feathers" tells the story of Harry Faversham (Heath Ledger), a
young British soldier, circa 1875, whose father is a general and who finds
himself in the army without having much say in the matter. He is engaged to
the comely Ethne Eustace (Kate Hudson), and when his regiment is ordered to
the Sudan he cannot bear to part from her and resigns his commission. He
acts primarily out of love, but of course his comrades consider the timing,
conclude he is a coward and send him three white feathers--the sign of
cowardice. A fourth is added by the patriotic Ethne.

Disowned by his father, renounced by his fiancee, disgraced in society,
Harry must regain his good name. He ships out to the Sudan on his own,
disguises himself as an Arab, and lives anyhow in the desert, shadowing his
former regiment and doing undercover work on their behalf. He is much helped
by the noble Abou Fatma (Djimon Hounsou, from "Amistad"), a desert prince
who selflessly devotes himself to helping and protecting the Englishman, for
reasons I could never quite understand.

The picture is handsomely mounted (the cinematographer is the Oscar winner
Robert Richardson). Red British uniforms contrast with the sand of the
desert, and Oriental details make many frames look like a painting by David
Roberts. Epic battle scenes, including one where the British form a square
and gun down waves of horsemen, are well-staged and thrilling. And Harry is
a dashing hero, if we can distract ourselves from the complete impossibility
of his actions; any man naive enough to think he could resign his commission
on the eve of battle and not be considered a coward is certainly foolish
enough to become a free-lance desert commando--a dry run for T.E. Lawrence.

A newly restored print of "Lawrence of Arabia," as it happens, is opening on
the same day as "The Four Feathers" in many cities, and this is bad luck for
the new picture. If you want to see drama in the desert, you're best off
with the real thing. The problem with "The Four Feathers" is that the
characters are so feckless, the coincidences so blatant and the movie so
innocent of any doubts about the White Man's Burden that Kipling could have
written it--although if he had, there would have been deeper psychology and
better roles for the locals.

Wes Bentley, from "American Beauty," co-stars as Harry's best friend, Lt.
Jack Durrance. He and Hudson are Americans; Ledger is Australian; obviously,
no British actors existed who could fill these roles. Non-British actors are
often skilled at British accents, but the younger ones usually don't have
the right moves or body language. There is an American/Australian manner of
informality, casual demeanor, even slouching, that a certain kind of British
actor can never be caught committing; British society, it is said, is a
stage on which everyone is always playing a role, but Ledger, Hudson and
Bentley seem to be playing dress-up.

I also have problems with the faithful Abou Fatma. Why do the dark-skinned
natives always get to be the best buddy, never the hero? Why would a callow,
badly trained, unequipped English boy be able to walk into the desert and
command the services of a skilled desert warrior as his sidekick? What's in
it for Abou? Movies like this are big on those solemn exchanges of
significant looks during which deep truths remain unspoken, primarily
because there is no way on earth they can be spoken without the cast and
audience joining in uncontrolled laughter.

But I must not dismiss the qualities of the movie. It looks good, it moves
quickly and it is often a jolly good time. As mindless swashbuckling in a
well-designed production, it can't be faulted. The less you know about the
British Empire and human nature, the more you will like it, but then that
can be said of so many movies.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:42 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ELLING / *** (R)

ELLING / *** (R)

September 13, 2002

Elling     Per Christian Ellefsen

Kjell Bjarne     Sven Nordin
Reidun Nordsletten     Marit Pia Jacobsen
Frank Asli     Jorgen Langhelle
Alfons Jorgensen     Per Christensen

First Look Pictures presents a film directed by Petter Naess. Written by
Ingvar Axel Hellstenius and Ingvar Ambjornsen, based on Ambjornsen's novel.
Running time: 89 minutes. In Norwegian with English subtitles. Rated R (for
language and some sexual content).

BY ROGER EBERT

Here are two men, both around 40, with no desire to cope with the world:
Elling, who lived all of his life as a mama's boy and had to be hauled by
the police out of a cupboard, where he was crouched and trembling after his
mother's death, and Kjell Bjarne, who has been institutionalized so long, it
is the only world he knows--although he fantasizes endlessly about nubile
women in other worlds. Elling is assigned as Kjell's roommate in a care
home, and two years later, they are moved into an apartment in Oslo and
given a shot at independent living.

"Elling," the deadpan Norwegian comedy that tells their stories, was
nominated for an Oscar this year in the best foreign film category. It's the
kind of story that in the wrong hands would be cloying and cornball, but
director Petter Naess has the right hands. He gives the movie edge and
darkness, is unsentimental about mental illness, makes his heroes into men
instead of pets, and still manages to find a happy ending.

Elling (Per Christian Ellefsen) is slight, fastidious, fussy and extremely
reluctant to go outdoors. Kjell Bjarne (Sven Nordin) is burly, unkempt, goes
for days without a bath and knows a certain amount about the world, mostly
by hearsay. When their social worker Frank (Jorgen Langhelle) tells them
they must leave the apartment to buy food and eat in restaurants, Elling is
incredulous: What's the use of putting the Norwegian welfare state to all
the expense of renting them a nice flat if they are expected to leave it?

The movie is narrated by Elling, who depends on Kjell Bjarne (always
referred to by both names) and is threatened when Reidun, an upstairs
neighbor, pregnant and drunk, gets Kjell's attention. Yet Elling is a
fiercely honest man who tells both Kjell and Reidun (Marit Pia Jacobsen)
that the other is in love. Then he ventures out into the night to poetry
readings, having written down some words about Reidun's fall on the stairs
and realized, as he puts it, "My God, Elling, all your life you have walked
the earth not knowing you were a poet!"

At a reading, he befriends an old man who turns out to be a famous poet and
to own a wonderful car, a 1958 Buick Century hardtop.

Kjell can fix the car, and soon the four of them are heading for the poet's
country cottage for a weekend at which matters of love and identity will be
settled, not without difficulties, not least when Kjell discovers that
Reidun is prepared to sleep with him but does not suspect he has been
wearing the same underwear for more than a week.

In a subtle, half-visible way, "Elling" follows the movie formula of other
movies about mentally impaired characters (the picnic outing is an
obligatory scene). But "Elling" has no lessons to teach, no insights into
mental illness, no labels, no morals. It is refreshingly undogmatic about
its characters, and indeed Elling and Kjell may not be mentally ill at
all--simply unused to living in the real world. The humor comes from the
contrast between Elling's prim value system, obviously reflecting his
mother's, and Kjell's shambling, disorganized, good-natured assault on life.
If Felix and Oscar had been Norwegian, they might have looked something like
this.

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