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movies-digest        Thursday, October 31 2002        Volume 02 : Number 380



[MV] feardotcom / ** (R)
[MV] BARBERSHOP / *** (PG-13)
[MV] KNOCKAROUND GUYS / *** (R)
[MV] BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER / 1/2* (R)
[MV] SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13)
[MV] MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13)
[MV] INVINCIBLE / **** (PG-13)
[MV] UNDISPUTED / *** (R)
[MV] SECRET BALLOT / *** (G)
[MV] I'M GOING HOME (JE RENTRE A LA MAISON) / *** (Not Rated)

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:51 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] feardotcom / ** (R)

feardotcom / ** (R)

August 30, 2002

Mike Reilly: Stephen Dorff
Jerry Houston:      Natascha McElhone
Alistair Pratt:    Stephen Rea

Warner Bros. presents a film directed by William Malone. Written by
Josephine Coyle. Based on a story by Moshe Diamant. Running time: 98
minutes. Rated R (for violence including grisly images of torture, nudity
and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Strange, how good "feardotcom" is, and how bad. The screenplay is a mess,
and yet the visuals are so creative this is one of the rare bad films you
might actually want to see. The plot is a bewildering jumble of half-baked
ideas, from which we gather just enough of a glimmer about the story to
understand how it is shot through with contradictions and paradoxes. And yet
I watched in admiration as a self-contained nightmareformed with the
visuals. Not many movies know how to do that.

I'll get to the plot later, or maybe never. Let me talk about what I liked.
The film takes place in a city where it always rains and is nearly always
night, where even people with good jobs live in apartments that look
hammered together after an air raid. Computers and the Internet exist here,
and indeed telephones, televisions and all the other props of the present
day, but windows are broken, walls are punctured, lights flicker, streets
are deserted, and from time to time a dramatic thunderstorm threatens to
sweep everything away. This is like "Dark City" after a hurricane. It is the
kind of city where a man can walk down into a subway and be the only person
there, except for a little girl bouncing her ball against the third rail. Or
.. is the man really alone? Is that his fantasy? Whether it is or not, he
gets slammed by the next train, and the cops are startled by the expression
on his face. It looks, they agree, as if he has just seen something
terrifying. Apparently something even worse than the train. And he is
bleeding from the eyes.

The film's premise is that a Web site exists that channels negative energy
into the mind of the beholder, who self-destructs within 48 hours, a victim
of his or her deepest fear. Our first glimpse of this Web site suggests
nothing more than a reasonably well-designed horror site, with shock-wave
images of dark doorways, screaming lips, rows of knives and so forth. The
movie wisely doesn't attempt to develop the site much more than that,
relying on the reactions of the victims to imply what other terrors it
contains. And it does something else, fairly subtly: It expands the site to
encompass the entire movie, so that by the end all of the characters are
essentially inside the fatal Web experience, and we are, too.

The last 20 minutes are, I might as well say it, brilliant. Not in terms of
what happens, but in terms of how it happens, and how it looks as it
happens. The movie has tended toward the monochromatic all along, but now it
abandons all pretense of admitting the color spectrum, and slides into the
kind of tinting used in silent films: Browns alternate with blues, mostly.

The images play like homage to the best Grand Guignol traditions, to
"Nosferatu" and some of the James Whale and Jacques Tourneur pictures, and
the best moments of the Hammer horror films. Squirming victims are displayed
on the Internet by the sadistic killer, who prepares to autopsy them while
still alive; subscribers to the site, whose crime is that they want to
watch, are addressed by name and are soon paying dearly for their voyeurism.

The movie is extremely violent; it avoided the NC-17 rating and earned an R,
I understand, after multiple trims and appeals, and even now it is one of
the most graphic horror films I've seen. (The classification is "for
violence including grisly images of torture, nudity and language," the
ratings board explains, but you'll be disappointed if you hope to see grisly
images of language).

Stephen Dorff and Natascha McElhone star, as a cop and a public health
inspector, and Stephen Rea, who was so unexpectedly deceived in "The Crying
Game," plays the host of the Web site and the torturer. The movie keeps
trying to make some kind of connection between Rea and the ghostly little
girl, who was his first victim, but if the site is her revenge, why is he
running it? And how can what happens to him in the end not have happened
before? Never mind. Disregard the logic of the plot. Don't even go there.
Don't think to ask how the Internet can channel thoughts and commands into
the minds of its users. Disregard the dialogue (sample: "We will provide a
lesson that reducing relationships to an anonymous electronic impulse is a
perversion").

This is a movie that cannot be taken seriously on the narrative level. But
look at it. Just look at it. Wear some of those Bose sound-defeating
earphones into the theater, or turn off the sound when you watch the DVD. If
the final 20 minutes had been produced by a German impressionist in the
1920s, we'd be calling it a masterpiece. All credit to director William
Malone, cinematographer Christian Sebaldt, production designer Jerome Latour
and art directors Regime Freise and Markus Wollersheim.

Now. Do I recommend the film? Not for the majority of filmgoers, who will
listen to the dialogue, and will expect a plot, and will be angered by the
film's sins against logic (I do not even mention credibility). But if you
have read this far because you are intrigued, because you can understand the
kind of paradox I am describing, then you might very well enjoy
"feardotcom." I give the total movie two stars, but there are some four-star
elements that deserve a better movie. You have to know how to look for them,
but they're there.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:40 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BARBERSHOP / *** (PG-13)

BARBERSHOP / *** (PG-13)

September 13, 2002

Calvin: Ice Cube
Eddie: Cedric the Entertainer
Dinka: Leonard Earl Howze
Isaac: Troy Garity
Terri: Eve
Jimmy: Sean Patrick Thomas
MGM Pictures presents a film directed by Tim Story. Written by Mark Brown,
Don D. Scott and Marshall Todd. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for
language, sexual content and brief drug references).

MOVIES BY ROGER EBERT

I've become embroiled in a controversy recently about whether women engage
in audible and detailed discussions of their sexual activities while sitting
in beauty salons. Doesn't happen, say some of my correspondents, while a
woman from Texas says it happens there all the time--although being from
Michigan, she naturally doesn't join in. I got started on this subject while
reviewing a movie named "Never Again," where there's a scene of sex talk in
a salon that's enough to make your hair curl.

My hunch is that most women don't talk that way in most salons. Do I know?
No, because I've never been in a beauty salon. But now comes "Barbershop" to
argue the question from the male side. The movie takes place during one long
day in a barbershop on Chicago's South Side, where seven barbers (six men,
one woman; six blacks, one white) man the chairs. Judging by this film, the
conversation ranges far beyond sex, but is not above spirited discussions of
booty: who has it, who needs it, who wants it. But sex as a general topic
would be far too limiting for this crowd, and the movie plays like a talk
show where everyone is the host.

The barbershop is owned by Calvin (Ice Cube), who inherited it from his
father. It scrapes by but doesn't feed his hunger for bigger things--like a
recording studio, for example (he dreams of platinum records issuing from
his basement). One day, heedlessly, he sells the shop for $20,000 to Lester
the Loan Shark (Keith David), who promises the word "barbershop" will be
permanently on the store, but privately has in mind a gentleman's club by
the same name.

The barbers and regular customers are devastated by this news. The shop
provides more than employment or service for them; it is community, forum,
friendship, camaraderie, continuity. Realizing his error, Calvin tries to
buy back the shop, but finds the price is now $40,000. So it appears this
will be the last day that the little shop acts as a stage for all the
regulars.

The barbers are perhaps too many to be supported by such a shop, but they
provide a nice cross section: In addition to Calvin, there's old Eddie
(Cedric the Entertainer), who never seems to have a customer but is
installed as chief pontificator; Jimmy (Sean Patrick Thomas), a college
student who tries to impress everyone with his knowledge (are scallops a
mollusk?); Terri (Eve), who knows somebody has been drinking her apple juice
from the refrigerator in the back room; Ricky (Michael Ealy), who has two
strikes against him and will get life for a third; Dinka (Leonard Earl
Howze), from Nigeria, who likes Terri but is too rotund for her tastes, and
Isaac (Troy Garity), the token white barber, who explains that, inside, he's
blacker than some of the others.

A parallel plot involves JD (Anthony Anderson) and Billy (Lahmard Tate), who
stage a spectacularly incompetent theft of an ATM machine that has been
recently installed in the Indian grocery on the corner. Since they
"borrowed" Ricky's van for this job, if they get caught he goes up for life.
The unending conversation in the shop is intercut with JD and Billy
wrestling with the ATM machine, which at one point they even attempt to
check in with at a motel.

If nothing significant gets settled in the rambling barbershop
conversations, at least many issues are aired, and by the end, in classic
sitcom fashion, all problems have been solved. The talk is lively but goes
into overdrive when Eddie is onstage; Cedric the Entertainer has the
confidence, the style and the volume to turn any group into an audience, and
he has a rap about Rosa Parks, Rodney King and O.J. Simpson that brought
down the house at the screening I attended.

The film is ungainly in construction but graceful in delivery. I could have
done without both of the subplots--the loan shark and the ATM thieves--and
simply sat there in Calvin's Barbershop for the entire running time,
listening to these guys talk. There is a kind of music to their
conversations, now a lullaby, now a march, now a requiem, now hip-hop, and
they play with one another like members of an orchestra. The movie's so good
to listen to, it would even work as an audio book.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:09 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] KNOCKAROUND GUYS / *** (R)

KNOCKAROUND GUYS / *** (R)

October 11, 2002

Matty Demaret: Barry Pepper
Taylor Reese: Vin Diesel
Johnny Marbles: Seth Green
Chris Scarpa: Andrew Davoli
Benny Chains: Dennis Hopper
Teddy Deserve: John Malkovich
New Line Cinema presents a film written and directed by Brian Koppelman and
David Levien. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for violence, language and
some drug use).

BY ROGER EBERT

When Matty Demaret is 12, he fails a test. His uncle gives him a gun and
asks him to shoot a squealer. Matty just can't do it. "That's all right,"
his uncle says. "You're just not cut out for it." Matty grows into a young
man determined to make a place for himself in the mob, and hangs around with
other young heirs to a shrinking empire. Their fathers sat around counting
money, but they're expected to work the noon and evening shifts at the
family restaurant.

Matty (Barry Pepper) wants a chance to prove himself. He begs his dad, Benny
Chains (Dennis Hopper), for a job and finally gets one--picking up some
money in Spokane. His friend Johnny Marbles (Seth Green) owns a private
plane, and Matty asks him to fly the money back east. In the small town of
Wibaux, Mont., Johnny Marbles gets rattled by cops in the airport, drops the
bag in a luggage zone and loses it. This is not good.

"Knockaround Guys" is inspired by the same impulse as "The Sopranos." It
considers gangsters in the modern age, beset by progress, unsure of their
roles, undermined by psychobabble. "Used to be there was a way to do things
and things got done," Matty's Uncle Teddy (John Malkovich) complains. "Now
everybody's feelings are involved."

The heart of the movie takes place in Wibaux, a town ruled by a tall,
taciturn, ominous sheriff, played by that unmistakable actor Tom Noonan.
Matty flies out to Montana with backup: his friends Taylor (Vin Diesel) and
Scarpa (Andrew Davoli). They stick out like sore thumbs in the little town.
"Looks like they're multiplying," the sheriff observes to his deputy. He
assumes they're involved with drugs, doesn't much care "as long as they move
on through," but is very interested in the possibility of money.

The movie crosses two formulas--Fish Out of Water and Coming of Age--fairly
effectively. Because it isn't wall-to-wall action but actually bothers to
develop its characters and take an interest in them, it was not at first
considered commercial by its distributor, New Line, and languished on the
shelf for two years until the growing stardom of Diesel ("XXX") and Pepper
("We Were Soldiers") made it marketable. It's more than that--it's
interesting in the way it shows these guys stuck between generations. And it
makes good use of Diesel, who as he develops into an action superstar may
not get roles this juicy for a while. He's a tough guy, yes, a street
fighter, but conflicted and with a kind of wise sadness about human nature.

The movie's basic question, I suppose, is whether the rising generation of
mobsters is so self-conscious it will never gain the confidence of its
ancestors. If it's true that the mob in the 1930s learned how to talk by
studying Warner Bros. crime pictures, it's equally true that "The Sopranos"
and all the other post-Scorsese "GoodFellas" stories bring in an element of
psychological complexity that only confuses an occupation that used to have
a brutal simplicity. "Knockaround Guys" opens with Matty being turned down
for a job because of his infamous last name. It ends with him not living up
to it. "To the regular people, we're nothing but goombas," Matty complains.
"But to our fathers, we're nothing but hound boys."

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:31 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER / 1/2* (R)

BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER / 1/2* (R)

September 20, 2002

Jeremiah Ecks: Antonio     Banderas
Sever: Lucy Liu
Gant/Clark: Gregg Henry
Vinn/Rayne: Talisa Soto
Zane: Roger R. Cross
Ross: Ray Park
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Kaos. Written by Alan
McElroy. Running time: 91 minutes. Rated R (for strong violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

There is nothing wrong with the title "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" that
renaming it "Ballistic" would not have solved. Strange that they would
choose such an ungainly title when, in fact, the movie is not about Ecks
versus Sever but about Ecks and Sever working together against a common
enemy--although Ecks, Sever and the audience take a long time to figure that
out.

The movie is a chaotic mess, overloaded with special effects and explosions,
light on continuity, sanity and coherence. So short is its memory span that
although Sever kills, I dunno, maybe 40 Vancouver police officers in an
opening battle, by the end, when someone says, "She's a killer," Ecks
replies, "She's a mother."

The movie stars Lucy Liu as Sever, a former agent for the Defense
Intelligence Agency, which according to www.dia.mil/ is a branch of the
United States Government. Antonio Banderas is Ecks, a former ace FBI agent
who is coaxed back into service. Sever has lost her child in an attack and
Ecks believes he has lost his wife, so they have something in common, you
see, even though ...

But I'll not reveal that plot secret, and will discuss the curious fact that
both of these U.S. agencies wage what amounts to warfare in Vancouver, which
is actually in a nation named Canada, which has agencies and bureaus of its
own and takes a dim view of machineguns, rocket launchers, plastic
explosives and the other weapons the American agents and their enemies use
to litter the streets of the city with the dead.

Both Sever and Ecks, once they discover this, have the same enemy in common:
Gant (Gregg Henry), a DIA agent who is married to Talisa Sota and raising
her child, although Sever kidnaps the child, who is in fact ... but never
mind, I want to discuss Gant's secret weapon. He has obtained a miniaturized
robot so small it can float in the bloodstream and cause strokes and heart
attacks.

At one point in the movie, a man who will remain nameless is injected with
one of these devices by a dart gun, and it kills him. All very well, but
consider for a moment the problem of cost overruns in these times of
economic uncertainty. A miniaturized assassination robot small enough to
slip through the bloodstream would cost how much? Millions? And it is
delivered by dart? How's this for an idea: use a poison dart, and spend the
surplus on school lunches.

"Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" is an ungainly mess, submerged in mayhem,
occasionally surfacing for cliches. When the FBI goes looking for Ecks, for
example, they find him sitting morosely on a bar stool, drinking and
smoking. That is of course always where sad former agents are found, but the
strange thing is, after years of drinking, he is still in great shape, has
all his karate moves, and goes directly into violent action without even a
tiny tremor of the DTs.

The movie ends in a stock movie location I thought had been retired: A Steam
and Flame Factory, where the combatants stalk each other on catwalks and
from behind steel pillars, while the otherwise deserted factory supplies
vast quantities of flame and steam.

Vancouver itself, for that matter, is mostly deserted, and no wonder, if
word has gotten around that two U.S. agencies and a freelance killer are
holding war games. "Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever" was directed by Wych
Kaosayananda of Thailand, whose pseudonym, you may not be surprised to
learn, is Kaos.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:26 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13)

SWEET HOME ALABAMA / *** (PG-13)

September 27, 2002

Melanie: Reese Witherspoon
Jake: Josh Lucas
Andrew: Patrick Dempsey
Earl: Fred Ward
Pearl: Mary Kay Place
Stella Kay: Jean Smart
Kate: Candice Bergen
Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Andy Tennant. Written by C.
Jay Cox. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some language and
sexual references).

BY ROGER EBERT

Among the pieties that Hollywood preaches but does not believe is the notion
that small towns are preferable to big cities. Film after film rehearses
this belief: Big cities are repositories of greed, alienation and hypocrisy,
while in a small town you will find the front doors left unlocked, peach
pies cooling on the kitchen window sill, and folks down at the diner who all
know your name. "Sweet Home Alabama" is the latest, admittedly charming,
recycling of this ancient myth.

The fact is that few people in Hollywood have voluntarily gone home again
since William Faulkner fled to Mississippi. The screenwriters who retail the
mirage of small towns are relieved to have escaped them. I await a movie
where a New Yorker tries moving to a small town and finds that it just
doesn't reflect his warm-hearted big city values.

Reese Witherspoon, who is the best reason to see "Sweet Home Alabama," stars
as Melanie Carmichael, a small-town girl who moves to the Big Apple and
while still in her 20s becomes a famous fashion designer. She's in love with
Andrew (Patrick Dempsey), a JFK Jr. lookalike whose mother (Candice Bergen)
is mayor of New York. After he proposes to Melanie in Tiffany's, which he
has rented for the occasion, she flies back home to Alabama to take care of
unfinished business.

Specifically, she doesn't want Andrew to discover that she is already
married to a local boy, and that her family doesn't own a moss-dripped
plantation. Her folks live in a luxury mobile home with lots of La-Z-Boys
and knitted afghans (La-Z-Boy: the sign of a home where the man makes the
decisions). Her husband, Jake (Josh Lucas), was her high school sweetheart,
but, looking ahead at a lifetime of dirty diapers and dishes with a loser,
she fled north. His plan: prove himself, to earn her respect and get her
back again. That's why he's never given her the divorce.

When Melanie returns home, she's greeted by the locals, who remember her
high school hijinks (like tying dynamite to a stray cat, ho, ho). Her
parents (Fred Ward and Mary Kay Place), who wile away their days lounging
around the double-wide practicing sitcom dialogue, look on with love and
sympathy, because they know that sooner or later she'll realize that home is
right here. A clue comes when the mayor advises her prospective in-laws to
"go back to your double-wide and fry something."

The Jake character is more complex, as he needs to be, because the
screenplay requires him to keep a secret that common sense insists he
divulge immediately. He must meanwhile undergo a subtle transformation so
that when we first meet him, we think he's a redneck hayseed, and then later
he has transmogrified into a sensitive, intelligent, caring male. Oh, and
his coon dog still likes her.

The JFK Jr. guy, in the meantime, cannot be permitted to become a total
jerk, because the movie's poignancy factor demands that he be Understanding,
as indeed he would be, with a Jackie lookalike mom who is mayor of New York,
a city where in this movie nothing bad has happened in recent memory.

So, OK, we understand how the formula works, even without learning that C.
Jay Cox, the screenwriter, is a student of writing coach Syd Field's
theories (i.e., analyze successful movies and copy their structures). We
know that the movie absolutely requires that Melanie reject bright lights,
big city and return to the embrace of her home town. And we know the odds
are low that Melanie will get the divorce, return to New York and marry the
mayor's son. (Anyone who thinks I have just committed a spoiler will be
unaware of all movies in this genre since "Ma and Pa Kettle.")

But answer me this: What about Melanie as a person, with her own success and
her own ambition? Would a woman with the talent and ambition necessary to
become world-famous in the fashion industry before the age of 30 be able, I
ask you, be willing, be prepared, to renounce it all to become the spouse of
a man who has built a successful business as a (let's say) glass-blower?

The chances of that happening are, I submit, extremely thin, and that is why
"Sweet Home Alabama" works. It is a fantasy, a sweet, light-hearted fairy
tale with Reese Witherspoon at its center. She is as lovable as Doris Day
would have been in this role (in fact, Doris Day was in this role, in
"Please Don't Eat the Daisies"). So I enjoyed Witherspoon and the local
color, but I am so very tired of the underlying premise. Isn't it time for
the movies to reflect reality and show the Melanies of the world fleeing to
New York as fast as they can? Even if Syd Field flunks you?

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:23 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13)

MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13)

September 27, 2002

Joe Nast Jake Gyllenhaal
Ben Floss: Dustin Hoffman
JoJo Floss: Susan Sarandon
Mona Camp: Holly Hunter
Bertie Knox: Ellen Pompeo
Mike Mulcahey: Dabney Coleman
Stan Michaels: Allan Corduner
Ty: Richard T. Jones
Touchstone Pictures and Hyde Park Entertainment present a film written and
directed by Brad Silberling. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for
some sensuality and brief strong language). Opening today at Pipers Alley,
Northbrook Court and Yorktown.

BY ROGER EBERT

After the funeral is over and the mourners have come back to the house for
coffee and cake and have all gone home, the parents and the boyfriend of
Diana, the dead girl, sit by themselves. Her mother criticizes how one
friend expressed her sympathy. And the father asks, what could she say? "Put
yourself in their shoes."

That little scene provides a key to Brad Silberling's "Moonlight Mile." What
do you say when someone dies--someone you cared for? What are the right
words? And what's the right thing to do? Death is the ultimate rebuke to
good manners. The movie, which makes an unusually intense effort to deal
with the process of grief and renewal, is inspired by a loss in Silberling's
own life. The TV actress Rebecca Schaeffer, his girlfriend at the time, was
killed in 1989 by a fan. Silberling has grown very close to her parents in
the years since then, he told me, and more than a decade later he has tried
to use the experience as the starting point for a film.

"Moonlight Mile," which takes place in 1973, opens in an elliptical way. At
first only quiet clues in the dialogue allow us to understand that someone
has died. We meet Joe Nast (Jake Gyllenhaal), the fiance of the dead girl,
and her parents Ben and JoJo Floss (Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon). They
talk not in a sentimental way, but in that strange, detached tone we use
when grief is too painful to express and yet something must be said.

After the funeral and the home visitation, the film follows what in a lesser
film would be called the "healing process." "Moonlight Mile" is too quirky
and observant to be described in psychobabble. Joe stays stuck in the Floss
house, living in an upstairs bedroom, his plans on hold. Ben, who has lost a
daughter, now in a confused way hopes to gain a son, and encourages Joe to
join him in his business as a real estate developer. JoJo, protected by
intelligence and wit, looks closely and suspects a secret Joe is keeping,
which leaves him stranded between the past and future.

Gyllenhaal, who in person is a jokester, in the movies almost always plays
characters who are withdrawn and morose. Remember him in "Donnie Darko,"
"The Good Girl" and "Lovely & Amazing." Here, too, he is a young man
with troubled thoughts. At the post office, and again at a bar where she has
a night job, he meets Bertie Knox (Ellen Pompeo), who sees inside when
others only look at the surface. They begin to talk. She has a loss, too:
Her boyfriend has been missing in action in Vietnam for three years. While
it is possible that they will mend each other's hearts by falling in love,
the movie doesn't simple-mindedly pursue that plot path, but meanders among
the thoughts of the living.

Silberling's screenplay pays full attention to all of the characters. Ben
and JoJo are not simply a backdrop to a romance involving Joe and Bertie.
The movie provides key scenes for all of the characters, in conversation and
in monologue, so that it is not only about Joe's grieving process but about
all four, who have lost different things in different ways.

Anyone regarding the Hoffman character will note that his name is Benjamin
and remember Hoffman's most famous character, in "The Graduate." But Joe is
the Benjamin of this film, and Hoffman's older man has more in common with
another of his famous roles: Willy Loman, the hero of "Death of a Salesman."
Ben occupies a low-rent storefront office on Main Street in Cape Anne,
Mass., but dreams of putting together a group of properties and bringing in
a superstore like Kmart. This will be his big killing, the deal that caps
his career, even though we can see in the eyes of the local rich man (Dabney
Coleman) that Ben is too small to land this fish. Ben's desire to share his
dream with his surrogate son, Joe, also has echoes from the Arthur Miller
tragedy.

Sarandon's JoJo is tart, with a verbal wit to protect her and a jaundiced
view of her husband's prospects. The deepest conversation JoJo has with Joe
("Isn't it funny, that we have the same name?") is about as well done as
such a scene can be. She intuits that Joe is dealing not only with the loss
of Diana's life but with the loss of something else.

Pompeo, a newcomer, plays Bertie with a kind of scary charisma that cannot
be written, only felt. She knows she is attractive to Joe. She knows she
likes him. She knows she is faithful to her old boyfriend. She is frightened
by her own power to attract, especially since she wants to attract even
while she tells herself she doesn't. She is so vulnerable in this movie, so
sweet as she senses Joe's pain and wants to help him.

Holly Hunter is the fifth major player, as the lawyer who is handling the
case against Diana's killer. She embodies the wisdom of the law, which
knows, as laymen do not, that it moves with its own logic regardless of the
feelings of those in the courtroom. She offers practical advice, and then
you can see in her eyes that she wishes she could offer emotional advice
instead.

"Moonlight Mile" gives itself the freedom to feel contradictory things. It
is sentimental but feels free to offend, is analytical and then surrenders
to the illogic of its characters, is about grief and yet permits laughter.
Everyone who has grieved for a loved one will recognize the moment, some
days after the death, when an irreverent remark will release the surprise of
laughter. Sometimes we laugh, that we may not cry. Not many movies know that
truth. "Moonlight Mile" is based on it.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:19 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] INVINCIBLE / **** (PG-13)

INVINCIBLE / **** (PG-13)

October 4, 2002

Hanussen: Tim Roth
Zishe: Jouko Ahola
Marta Farra: Anna Gourari
Master of Ceremonies: Max     Raabe
Benjamin: Jacob Wein
Landwehr: Gustav Peter     Wohler
Fine Line Features presents a film written and directed by Werner Herzog.
Running time: 135 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sexual content and thematic
elements). Opening today at Water Tower.

MOVIES BY ROGER EBERT

Werner Herzog's "Invincible" tells the astonishing story of a Jewish
strongman in Nazi Germany, a man who in his simple goodness believes he can
be the "new Samson" and protect his people. He is a blacksmith in Poland in
1932 when discovered by a talent scout, and soon becomes the headliner in
the Palace of the Occult, in Berlin, which is run by the sinister Hanussen
(Tim Roth), a man who dreams of becoming Minister of the Occult in a Nazi
government.

The strongman, named Zishe Breitbart, is played by a Finnish athlete named
Jouko Ahola, twice winner of the title World's Strongest Man. Much of the
movie's uncanny appeal comes from the contrast between Ahola's performance,
which is entirely without guile, and Roth's performance, which drips with
mannered malevolence. Standing between them is the young woman Marta (Anna
Gourari), who is under Hanussen's psychological power, and who the strongman
loves.

"Invincible" is based, Herzog says, on the true story of Breitbart, whose
great strength contradicted the Nazi myth of Aryan superiority. I can
imagine a dozen ways in which this story could be told badly, but Herzog has
fashioned it into a film of uncommon fascination, in which we often have no
idea at all what could possibly happen next. There are countless movies
about preludes to the Holocaust, but I can't think of one this innocent,
direct and unblinking. In the face of gathering evil, Zishe trusts in human
nature, is proud of his heritage, and believes strength and goodness (which
he confuses) will triumph.

The movie has the power of a great silent film, unafraid of grand gestures
and moral absolutes. Its casting of the major characters is crucial, and
instinctively correct. Tim Roth is a sinister charlatan, posing as a man
with real psychic powers, using trickery and showmanship as he jockeys for
position within the emerging Nazi majority. There is a scene where he
hypnotizes Marta, and as he stares boldly into the camera I wondered, for a
moment, if it was possible to hypnotize a movie audience that way. Late in
the film there is a scene where his secrets are revealed, and he makes a
speech of chilling, absolute cynicism. Another actor in another movie might
have simply gnashed his teeth, but Roth and Herzog take the revelations as
an opportunity to show us the self-hatred beneath the deception.

As for Jouko Ahola, this untrained actor, who seems by nature to be
good-hearted and uncomplicated, may never act again, but he has found the
one perfect role, as Maria Falconetti did in "The Passion of Joan of Arc."
He embodies the simple strongman. The camera can look as closely as it wants
and never find anything false. A naive man from a backward town, not
especially devout, he gets into a fight when Polish customers in a
restaurant insult him and his little brother as Jews. A little later,
entering a circus contest, he watches as the strongman lifts a boulder--and
then puts an end to the contest by, lifting the strongman and the boulder.

The talent scout takes him to see his first movie. Soon he is in Berlin,
where Hanussen sizes him up and says, "We will Aryanize you. A Jew should
never be as strong as you." Zishe is outfitted with a blond wig and Nordic
helmet, and presented as "Siegfried." He becomes a great favor of Nazi
brownshirts in the audience, as Hanussen prattles about "the strength of the
body against the dark powers of the occult." But Zishe's mind works away at
the situation until finally he has his solution, tears off the helmet and
wig, and identities himself as a Jew.

Here as throughout the film Herzog avoids the obvious next scene. Is
Hanussen outraged? To a degree. But then he reports: "There's a line three
blocks long outside! It's the Jews. They all want to see the new Samson."
And then, at a time when Hitler was on the rise but the full measure of
Jewish persecution was not yet in view, the Palace of the Occult turns into
a dangerous pit where audience members are potentially at one another's
throats.

This is the first feature in 10 years from Herzog, one of the great
visionaries among directors. He strains to break the bonds of film structure
in order to surprise us in unexpected ways. His best films unashamedly yearn
to lift us into the mythical and the mystical. "Our civilization is starving
for new images," he once told me, and in "Invincible" there is an image of a
bleak, rocky seashore where the sharp stones are littered with thousands or
millions of bright red crabs, all mindlessly scrabbling away on their crabby
missions. I think this scene may represent the emerging Nazi hordes, but of
course there can be no literal translation. Perhaps Herzog wants to
illustrate the implacable Darwinian struggle from which man can rise with
good heart and purpose.

The strongman in "Invincible" is lovable, and so deeply moving, precisely
because he is not a cog in a plot, has no plan, is involved in no
machinations, but is simply proud of his parents, proud to be a Jew, in love
with the girl, and convinced that God has made him strong for a reason. He
may be wrong in his optimism, but his greatest strength is that he will
never understand that. The Roth character is equally single-minded, but
without hope or purpose--a conniver and manipulator.

Watching "Invincible" was a singular experience for me, because it reminded
me of the fundamental power that the cinema had for us when we were
children. The film exercises the power that fable has for the believing.
Herzog has gotten outside the constraints and conventions of ordinary
narrative, and addresses us where our credulity keeps its secrets.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:13:04 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] UNDISPUTED / *** (R)

UNDISPUTED / *** (R)

August 23, 2002

Monroe Hutchen: Wesley Snipes
James "Iceman" Chambers: Ving Rhames
Emmanuel "Mendy" Ripstein: Peter Falk
James Kroycek: Fisher Stevens
Prison Guard: Michael Rooker
Dick Lipscomb: Denis Arndt
Miramax Films presents a film directed by Walter Hill. Written by Hill and
David Giler. Running time: 96 minutes. Rated R (for strong language).

BY ROGER EBERT

Walter Hill's "Undisputed" is like a 1940s Warner Bros. B picture, and I
mean that as a compliment. With efficiency and laconic skill, it sets up the
situation, peoples it with clearly drawn characters, and heads for a
showdown. There is a kind of pleasure to be had from its directness, from
its lack of gimmicks, from its classical form. And just like in the Warners
pictures, there is also the pleasure of supporting performances from
character actors who come onstage, sing an aria, and leave.

The movie stars Ving Rhames as "Iceman" Chambers, heavyweight champion of
the world, recently convicted of rape in a plot obviously inspired by Mike
Tyson's misadventures. He's sentenced to the maximum-security Sweetwater
Prison in the Mohave Desert, which has an active boxing program. The
Sweetwater champion is Monroe Hutchen (Wesley Snipes), and a showdown
between the two men is inevitable.

First, though, Iceman has to challenge the leader of the most powerful gang
behind bars, and spend some times in solitary as punishment. If he hadn't
done that, he explains, he'd be dead. And Monroe has to hear stories about
how he's not the undisputed champion any longer.

Also resident in this prison is Emmanuel (Mendy) Ripstein (Peter Falk), an
aging Mafioso who still wields enormous clout inside and beyond the prison
walls. He even has his own personal assistant. Ripstein is a fight fan. He
agrees with the prevailing opinion that there must be a bout to settle the
prison championship, and arranged odds with his Vegas contacts. There will
even be a payoff for the two fighters, and Snipes is adamant in negotiating
a bigger percentage for himself. The Iceman seems more concerned with
survival, and Rhames has a direct, unaffected way with his dialogue that is
quietly convincing.

The Falk character is a piece of work. He's like a distillation of Falkness.
He squints, he talks out of the side of his mouth, he has a tough-guy
accent, he has a way of implying authority. And then he has his aria. This
is an unbroken monologue that goes for a minute or two (maybe longer--I was
laughing too hard to count), and it is variations on the two themes of the
F-word and his wife's bad advice. It touches on the competing charms of
California and Florida, comments on state and federal legal details, and
rises to a kind of musical grandeur. The screenplay is by Hill, the
director, and David Giler, who worked together on the "Alien" pictures, but
whether they or Falk wrote this monologue is hard to say; it seems to rise
from another dimension.

Michael Rooker ("Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer") has an important role
as the prison guard who coordinates the boxing matches, protected by the
benign detachment of the warden. He sets a date for the match, and then the
two boxers go into more or less routine training sessions, leading up to the
big fight, which is held inside a steel cage. The fight scenes are
well-choreographed and convincing, and Snipes and Rhames are completely
plausible as boxers.

Walter Hill has devoted his career to men's action pictures. He pitted
Charles Bronson and James Coburn against each other in his first picture,
"Hard Times" (1985), and reinvented the cop buddy movie with Nick Nolte and
Eddie Murphy in "48 HRS." One day I met the soundmen on "Hard Times" and
watched them pounding a leather sofa with Ping-Pong paddles to create the
sounds of blows landing; "Undisputed" evokes the same cheerful spirit.

Some critics of the movie complain that there is no hero, since the Iceman
has been convicted of rape and Monroe of murder. That is more of a strength
than a weakness, depriving us of an obvious favorite and creating a fight
which it is plausible to expect either boxer could win. Of course Monroe is
the underdog, which counts for something, but when you think how obviously
the deck is stacked in most boxing movies, this one has a right to call
itself suspenseful. On the other hand, with mob involvement, the fight could
be fixed. Falk, as Ripstein, has a lovely scene where he expresses himself
on that possibility.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:52 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SECRET BALLOT / *** (G)

SECRET BALLOT / *** (G)

August 30, 2002

Woman: Nassim Abdi
Soldier: Cyrus Ab
Local people: Youssef Habashi, Farrokh Shojaii , Gholbahar Janghali
Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by Babak Payami.
Running time: 105 minutes. Rated G. In Farsi with English subtitles.

BY ROGER EBERT

'Secret Ballot" is a quixotic new Iranian comedy about a female election
agent who is sent to a remote island to collect ballots in a national
election. Because we never find out who or what is being elected, there has
been much puzzlement among critics about what the election symbolizes. I
believe the message is in the messenger: The agent is a woman.

"It's election day, don't you know?" the woman tells a bored soldier
assigned to drive her around. "There's a letter. You have to guard the
ballots."

The soldier studies the letter. "It says an agent will come, not a woman."

"I'm in charge here, mister. I have orders. You must obey or I'll see to it
you remain a soldier forever."

Strong words in a culture where the rights of women are limited. I was
reminded of "In the Heat of the Night," in which the whole point is that the
Sidney Poitier character insists on being treated with respect. This movie
could be titled "They Call Me MISS Election Agent." The plot is secondary to
the fact of the character's gender, and in Iran this movie must play with a
subtext we can only guess.

But what else is going on? Is the movie intended to show us (a) that
democracy exists in Iran, (b) that it is struggling to be born, or (c) that
most people find it irrelevant to their daily lives? There's a little of all
three during the long day the soldier and the woman (both unnamed) spend
together. Some citizens, asked to choose two of 10 names on the ballot,
complain they've never heard of any of them. A fierce old lady shuts her
door to the team, but later sends them food, and her courier observes,
"Granny Baghoo has her own government here." A man in charge of a solar
energy station expresses his opinion with admirable clarity: "I know no one
but God almighty, who makes the sun come up. If I vote for anyone, it must
be God."

If the woman is the Poitier character, the soldier is like the sheriff
played by Rod Steiger. He starts out strongly disapproving of a female
agent, but during the course of the day begins to find her persuasive,
intriguing and sympathetic. By the end of the day, when he casts his ballot,
it is for her, and we're reminded of the sheriff's little smile as Mister
Tibbs gets back on the train.

The director, Babak Payami, has a visual style that is sometimes
astonishing, sometimes frustrating, sometimes both. The first shot is of a
plane dropping a box by parachute over a dry, empty plain. The camera pans
with exquisite subtlety to reveal ... a bed? Can it be a bed, in the middle
of this wilderness? We see that it is. In this hot climate, they sleep
outdoors.

As the soldier drives the agent around the island, events do not build so
much as accumulate. Mourners in a cemetery tell her women are not allowed
inside. Symbol quandary: (a) The fading patriarchy is buried there, or (b)
women cannot even die as equals? In the middle of a deserted, unpopulated
plain, the soldier brings the Jeep to a halt before a red traffic light.
Symbol quandary: (1) Outmoded laws must be ignored, or (b) in a democracy
the law must be respected everywhere?

As the woman continues her discouraging attempt to involve indifferent
islanders in the vote, we are reminded of Dr. Johnson's famous observation
in the 18th century, when women were as much without rights in England as
they are today in the Middle East. After hearing a woman deliver a sermon,
he told Mr. Boswell: "It is not done well, but one is surprised to find it
done at all."

Watching the movie, I reflected on a persistent subgenre of Iranian cinema,
in which characters drive or walk endlessly through enigmatic landscapes,
holding conversations of debatable meaning. Abbas Kiarostami's "The Taste of
Cherry" (1997), a Cannes winner much prized by many critics, not by me,
follows that pattern. "Secret Ballot" brings to it much more interest and
life. Perhaps the lack of cities, names, relationships and plots provides a
certain immunity: A film cannot be criticized for being about what it does
not contain.

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Date: 31 Oct 2002 22:12:43 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] I'M GOING HOME (JE RENTRE A LA MAISON) / *** (Not Rated)

I'M GOING HOME (JE RENTRE A LA MAISON) / *** (Not Rated)

September 13, 2002

Gilbert Valence: Michel Piccoli
Marguerite: Catherine Deneuve
The Director: John Malkovich
Serge: Jean Koeltgen
Milestone Films presents a film written and directed by Manoel de Oliveira.
Running time: 90 minutes. In French and English with English subtitles. No
MPAA rating (contains no offensive material). Opening today at the Music Box
Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

There are a few movies where you can palpably sense the presence of the
director behind the camera, and "I'm Going Home" is one of them. The movie
is about an old actor who has lost many of those he loves but continues to
work. The actor is played by France's great Michel Piccoli, who at 77 has
appeared in 200 movies since 1945. And the director, whose breathing we can
almost hear in our ear, is Manoel de Oliveira of Portugal, who is 94 and
directed his first film in 1931.

When we first see the actor, named Gilbert Valence, he is onstage in a
production of Ionesco's "Exit the King," and the film lingers on speeches in
which the old man rails against his mortality and defines the unending
memorials which he fancies will keep his name alive. After the play, he
learns of a tragic accident that has robbed him of wife, daughter and
son-in-law. "Some time later," we see him living with his young grandson and
the nanny.

Gilbert's offstage life is one of routine, and it is here, in a touch both
subtle and glancing, that de Oliveira makes his most poignant observation
about how we die but life heedlessly goes on without us. Gilbert takes his
coffee every morning in the same Paris cafe, sitting in the same chair at
the same table and always reading the same morning paper, Liberation. As he
gets up to go, another man enters, sits at the same table, and unfolds his
copy of Le Figaro. This happens day after day.

One morning, the other man arrives early and takes another table. But when
Gilbert frees his regular table, he gets up with alacrity to claim it--only
to be headed off by a stranger who sits down first. These little scenes had
a surprising impact on me. I often think of myself as a ghost at places I
have visited: There is "my" cafe and "my" table, and when I return to a city
there is a satisfaction in occupying them again, because it proves my own
continuity. Of course those cafes also "belong" to others I will never know,
and someday I will never return to them, and someday neither will the
others, and someday the cafe will not be there. Yet daily ritual encourages
us to believe that because things have been the same for a long time, they
will always be the same.

The old actor sees a handsome pair of shoes in a store window and buys them.
For a man past a certain age, to buy new shoes is an act of faith. (One is
reminded of the Irish story about the shoe clerk who assured an old man,
"These will see you out.") We see the shoes in closeup as Gilbert talks with
his agent, a venal man who hints that a young actress might like to meet
him. After all, the agent says, when Pablo Casals was in his 80s, he married
a teenage student. "But I am nowhere near my 80s," Gilbert snaps. "And I am
not Casals."

What eventually happens to these shoes is a reminder that we can make plans
but we cannot count on them. There are tender little scenes in which the old
man and his grandson play with battery-powered trucks and enjoy each other's
company, and fraught scenes in which the agent tries to get the actor to
take a tawdry TV show. And a scene from a production of "The Tempest," in
which Gilbert gives Prospero's speech beginning "Our revels now are ended
.."

How the film plays out you will have to see for yourself. Few films seem so
wise and knowing about the fact of age and the approach of the end. And at
his great age, de Oliveira dispenses with the silliness of plot mechanics
and tells his story in a simple, unadorned fashion, as episodes and
observations, trusting us to understand.

In the final scene, as Gilbert leaves a cafe without drinking the wine he
has ordered, the camera lingers to watch another man walk in and order a
beer. Life goes on. You might think that "I'm Going Home," about an artist
at the end of his career, is de Oliveira's own farewell, but no: He made a
new film in 2002, named "The Uncertainty Principle," and it played at Cannes
in May. Some directors burn out early, others flower late. Luis Bunuel began
a remarkable series of 12 great films beginning when he was 61. De Oliveira
has made 13 films since 1990. There is a time when going to the cafe is a
habit, but if you go long enough it becomes a triumph.

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