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movies-digest        Saturday, November 2 2002        Volume 02 : Number 387



[MV] ELLING / *** (R)
[MV] TUCK EVERLASTING / ** (PG)
[MV] HEAVEN / *** (R)
[MV] SWIMMING / *** (Not rated)
[MV] MIYAZAKI'S SPIRITED AWAY / **** (PG)
[MV] CITY BY THE SEA / *** (R)
[MV] 8 WOMEN / *** (R)
[MV] THE FOUR FEATHERS / ** (PG-13)
[MV] IGBY GOES DOWN / ***1/2 (R)
[MV] FORMULA 51 / * (R)
[MV] STEALING HARVARD / * (PG-13)

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:20 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.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:24:55 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.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:24:35 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] HEAVEN / *** (R)

HEAVEN / *** (R)

October 18, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:25 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SWIMMING / *** (Not rated)

SWIMMING / *** (Not rated)

September 13, 2002

Frankie Wheeler: Lauren Ambrose
Josee: Joelle Carter
Nicola Jenrette: Jennifer Dundas
Heath: Jamie Harrold
Lance: Joshua Harto
Oceanside Pictures presents a film directed by Robert J. Siegel. Written by
Siegel, Liza Bazadona and Grace Woodard. Running time: 98 minutes. No MPAA
rating. Opening today at Landmark Century.

MOVIES BY ROGER EBERT

"Swimming" is above all about a young woman's face, and by casting an
actress whose face projects that woman's doubts and yearnings, it succeeds.
The face belongs to Lauren Ambrose, whom you may know as the young redhead
on "Six Feet Under." She plays Frankie, a teenage girl whose parents took
early retirement, leaving the family burger stand on the boardwalk in Myrtle
Beach, S.C., to Frankie and her older married brother Neil (Josh Pais).

The movie's plot, I fear, is an old reliable: After this summer, nothing
will ever be the same again. What saves it is that this summer is unlike
other summers we've seen in coming-of-age movies. It's different because
Frankie holds her own counsel, doesn't easily reveal her feelings, and is
faced with choices that she's not even sure she has to make.

Frankie is a tomboy, invariably dressed in bib overalls and T-shirts, her
hair tousled, her face freckled, with apple cheeks. Sexuality for her is an
unexplored country. Her best friend is Nicola (Jennifer Dundas), who runs a
piercing stand next to the burger joint. (So sincere is Nicola's dedication
to piercing that when she gets a cut on her forehead she decides a scar
would be cool.) Nicola dresses in an attempt to come across as a sexy blond,
but is loyal: When two cute guys in a car want her to come along but tell
her, "Lose your friend," she won't play.

One day Josee (Joelle Carter) appears in town. Ostensibly the girlfriend of
the hunky lifeguard, she gets a job at the burger joint, even though Neil
decides she is "the worst waitress I have ever seen." Josee is a sexual
creature, who one day out of the blue tells Frankie: "Frankie? I think I
want you. I want your body." Frankie's reaction to this news is not to react
at all. Life continues as before, but with confusing desire simmering
beneath the surface. It is possible that Josee is the first person ever to
have expressed a desire for Frankie, and by doing so she has activated
Frankie's ability to feel desirable.

The summer brings other possibilities. Nicola meets Kalani (Anthony
Ruivivar), a Marine from Hawaii with an imaginary friend, Ted. Frankie meets
Heath (Jamie Harrold), a gawky loner who lives in a van with his dogs and
sells tie-dyed T-shirts, which he dyes himself at a local coin laundry.
Nicola begins to resent all the time Frankie spends with Josee, and tells
her something she doesn't want to know: Josee is cheating with Neil, who has
a young family.

"Swimming" could unfold as a sitcom, or as a desperately sincere drama, but
director Robert J. Siegel and his co-writers, Liza Bazadona and Grace
Woodard, go for something more delicate and subtle. They use Ambrose's
ability to watch and think and not commit, and they allow the summer's
choices and possibilities to unfold within her as if her sexuality is
awakening and stretching for the first time. What happens, and why, is sweet
and innocent, and not pumped up for effect.

Ambrose's effect in the film reminded me of another early performance many
years ago: the work by Cathy Burns in Frank Perry's "Last Summer" (1969).
She, too, played a tomboy whose sexuality is unawakened; a member of a group
with another young woman (Barbara Hershey) who was sexier and bolder, whose
first romance was based more on admiration than lust ("You're so masterful,"
she tells the boy she admires). Often the movies are no more than
opportunities for us to empathize with people we find ourselves in sympathy
with. Ambrose has an extraordinary ability to make us like her and care for
her, and that is the real subject of the movie--in which, by the way, she
never does go swimming.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:15 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] MIYAZAKI'S SPIRITED AWAY / **** (PG)

MIYAZAKI'S SPIRITED AWAY / **** (PG)

September 20, 2002

With the voices of:Chihiro: Daveigh Chase
Yubaba, Zeniba: Suzanne : Pleshette
Haku: Jason Marsden
Kamaji: David Ogden Stiers
Chirhiro's mother: Lauren Holly
Assistant Manager: John     Ratzenberger
Walt Disney Studios presents a film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
U.S. production directed by Kirk Wise. Running time: 124 minutes. Rated
PG.(for some scary moments). Opening today at Landmark Century, McClurg
Court and Evanston CineArts 6.

BY ROGER EBERT

"Miyazaki's Spirited Away" has been compared to "Alice in Wonderland," and
indeed it tells of a 10-year-old girl who wanders into a world of strange
creatures and illogical rules. But it's enchanting and delightful in its own
way, and has a good heart. It is the best animated film of recent years, the
latest work by Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese master who is a god to the
Disney animators.

Because many adults have an irrational reluctance to see an animated film
from Japan (or anywhere else), I begin with reassurances: It has been
flawlessly dubbed into English by John Lasseter ("Toy Story"), it was
co-winner of this year's Berlin Film Festival against "regular" movies, it
passed "Titanic" to become the top-grossing film in Japanese history, and it
is the first film ever to make more than $200 million before opening in
America.

I feel like I'm giving a pitch on an infomercial, but I make these points
because I come bearing news: This is a wonderful film. Don't avoid it
because of what you think you know about animation from Japan. And if you
only go to Disney animation--well, this is being released by Disney.

Miyazaki's works ("My Neighbor Totoro," "Kiki's Delivery Service," "Princess
Mononoke") have a depth and complexity often missing in American animation.
Not fond of computers, he draws thousand of frames himself, and there is a
painterly richness in his work. He's famous for throwaway details at the
edges of the screen (animation is so painstaking that few animators draw
more than is necessary). And he permits himself silences and contemplation,
providing punctuation for the exuberant action and the lovable or sometimes
grotesque characters.

"Spirited Away" is told through the eyes of Chihiro (voice by Daveigh
Chase), a 10-year-old girl, and is more personal, less epic, than "Princess
Mononoke." As the story opens, she's on a trip with her parents, and her
father unwisely takes the family to explore a mysterious tunnel in the
woods. On the other side is what he speculates is an old theme park; but the
food stalls still seem to be functioning, and as Chihiro's parents settle
down for a free meal, she wanders away and comes upon the film's version of
wonderland, which is a towering bathhouse.

A boy named Haku appears as her guide, and warns her that the sorceress who
runs the bathhouse, named Yubaba, will try to steal her name and thus her
identity. Yubaba (Suzanne Pleshette) is an old crone with a huge face; she
looks a little like a Toby mug, and dotes on a grotesquely huge baby named
Boh. Ominously, she renames Chihiro, who wanders through the structure,
which is populated, like "Totoro," with little balls of dust that scurry and
scamper underfoot.

In the innards of the structure, Chihiro comes upon the boiler room,
operated by a man named Kamaji (David Ogden Stiers), who is dressed in a
formal coat and has eight limbs, which he employs in a bewildering variety
of ways. At first he seems as fearsome as the world he occupies, but he has
a good side, is no friend of Yubaba, and perceives Chihiro's goodness.

If Yubaba is the scariest of the characters and Kamaji the most intriguing,
Okutaresama is the one with the most urgent message. He is the spirit of the
river, and his body has absorbed the junk, waste and sludge that has been
thrown into it over the years. At one point, he actually yields up a
discarded bicycle. I was reminded of a throwaway detail in "My Neighbor
Totoro," where a child looks into a bubbling brook, and there is a discarded
bottle at the bottom. No point is made; none needs to be made.

Japanese myths often use shape-shifting, in which bodies reveal themselves
as facades concealing a deeper reality. It's as if animation was invented
for shape-shifting, and Miyazaki does wondrous things with the characters
here. Most alarming for Chihiro, she finds that her parents have turned into
pigs after gobbling up the free lunch. Okutaresama reveals its true nature
after being freed of decades of sludge and discarded household items. Haku
is much more than he seems. Indeed the entire bathhouse seems to be under
spells affected the appearance and nature of its inhabitants.

Miyazaki's drawing style, which descends from the classical Japanese graphic
artists, is a pleasure to regard, with its subtle use of colors, clear
lines, rich detail and its realistic depiction of fantastical elements. He
suggests not just the appearances of his characters, but their natures.
Apart from the stories and dialogue, "Spirited Away" is a pleasure to regard
just for itself. This is one of the year's best films.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:27 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CITY BY THE SEA / *** (R)

CITY BY THE SEA / *** (R)

September 6, 2002

Det. Vincent LaMarca: Robert De Niro
Michelle: Frances McDormand
Joey: James Franco
Reg: George Dzundza
Maggie: Patti LuPone
Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Michael Caton-Jones.
Written by Ken Hixon. Based on a magazine article by Michael McAlary.
Running time: 108 minutes. Rated R (for language, drug use and some
violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

"City by the Sea" tells the sad, fatalistic story of a cop whose father was
a baby-killer, and whose son now seems to be a murderer, too. Robert De Niro
stars as Detective Vincent LaMarca, a pro whose years of hard experience
have made him into a cop who dismisses sociology and psychology and believes
simply that if you did it, you have to pay for it. This code extends to his
father and he will apply it if necessary to his son.

LaMarca works homicide in a shabby beachfront area; Asbury Park, N.J.,
supplied the locations. He knows so much about police work his autopilot is
better than most cops' bright ideas. His partner, Reg (George Dzundza), who
has eaten too many doughnuts over the years, soldiers along with him.
LaMarca walked out on his wife (Patti LuPone) and son 14 years ago, and now
tentatively dates his upstairs neighbor, Michelle (Frances McDormand).

The cop's story is intercut with the life of his son, Joey (James Franco), a
strung-out addict who has worked himself into a fearful situation involving
debt and need. In a confusing struggle, he knifes a drug dealer, and
eventually, inevitably, LaMarca is working the case and discovers that the
killer may have been Joey.

If this story sounds a little too symmetrical and neat, and in a way it
does, real life supplies a rebuttal: "City by the Sea" is based on a true
story, as described by the writer Mike McAlary in a 1997 Esquire article. I
learn from Variety, however, that in fact the murder the son committed was
vicious and premeditated, and not, as it is here, more or less an accident.

The plot takes us places we have been before, right down to the scene where
LaMarca resigns from the force and places his gun and badge on the captain's
desk. There is also the possibility in LaMarca's mind that his son is
innocent--he claims he is--and there is the enormous psychic burden caused
by the fact that LaMarca's own father was convicted of a heartless murder.
The last act of the movie is the sort of cat-and-mouse chase we have seen
before, staged with expertise by director Michael Caton-Jones, but the
movie's heart isn't in the action but in the character of Vince LaMarca.

De Niro has worked so long and so frequently that there is sometimes the
tendency to take him for granted. He is familiar. He has a range dictated by
his face, voice and inescapable mannerisms, but he rarely goes on autopilot
and he makes an effort to newly invent his characters. Here he is a man with
a wounded boy inside. Most of the time the cop routine provides him with a
template for behavior: He keeps his head low, he does his job well. But
inside is the kid who found out his dad was a killer. That provides the
twist when he finds himself on his own son's case. There is hurt here, and
De Niro is too good an actor to reduce it to a plot gimmick. He feels it.

Details of the plot I will not reveal, except to observe that the context of
the murder and the condition of the son leave enough room for the LaMarca
character to believe, or want to believe, that his son may be innocent. That
leads to the scene where he turns in his badge and gun, accusing his boss of
having already made up his mind. And it leaves LaMarca free-floating,
because without the protection of the job he is now nakedly facing a
situation that churns up his own past.

Frances McDormand takes a routine, even obligatory, character and makes her
into an important part of the movie. The female confidant is usually
dispensable in cop movies, except for a few scenes where she provides an ear
for necessary exposition. Not here. McDormand's Michelle likes LaMarca, but
more importantly she worries about him, sees the inner wounds, provides a
balm, and knows about tough love.

"City by the Sea" is not an extraordinary movie. In its workmanship it
aspires not to be remarkable but to be well made, dependable, moving us
because of the hurt in the hero's eyes. A better movie might have abandoned
the crime paraphernalia and focused on the pain between the generations, but
then this director, Caton-Jones, has already made that movie with De Niro.
"This Boy's Life" (1993) had De Niro as a harsh adoptive father and Leonardo
DiCaprio as his resentful son. A better movie, but "City by the Sea" is a
good one.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:01 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] 8 WOMEN / *** (R)

8 WOMEN / *** (R)

September 27, 2002

Mamy: Danielle Darrieux
Gaby: Catherine Deneuve
Augustine: Isabelle Huppert
Suzon: Virginie Ledoyen
Catherine: Ludivine Sagnier
Pierrette: Fanny Ardant
Louise: Emmanuelle Beart
Madame Chanel: Firmine Richard
Focus Features presents a film written and directed by Francois Ozon.
Adapted from the play by Robert Thomas. Running time: 113 minutes. Rated R
(for some sexual content). In French with English subtitles. Opening today
at Pipers Alley, Evanston CineArts 6 and Landmark Renaissance.

BY ROGER EBERT

Here it is at last, the first Agatha Christie musical. Eight women are
isolated in a snowbound cottage, there is a corpse with a knife in his back,
all of the women are potential suspects, plus eight song and dance numbers.
The cast is a roll call of French legends. In alphabetical order: Fanny
Ardant, Emmanuelle Beart, Danielle Darrieux, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle
Huppert, Virginie Ledoyen, Firmine Richard and Ludivine Sagnier.

From the opening shot, the film cheerfully lets us know it's a spoof of
overproduced Hollywood musicals. We pan past tree branches impossibly laden
with picturesque snow and find a charming cottage where guests are just
arriving. Eight women have gathered to celebrate Christmas with Marcel, who
is the husband of Gaby (Deneuve), the son-in-law of Mamy (Darrieux), the
brother-in-law of Aunt Augustine (Huppert), the father of Catherine
(Sagnier) and Suzon (Ledoyen), the employer of the domestic servants Madame
Chanel (Richard) and Louise (Beart), and the brother of the late-arriving
Pierrette (Ardant).

"Monsieur died in his bed with a knife in his back," the assembled company
is informed. And (significant detail required in all isolated rural murders)
"the dogs didn't bark all night." The women absorb this news while dressed
in stunning designer fashions (even the maids look chic) and deployed around
a large, sunny room that looks like nothing so much as a stage set--even to
the detail that all the furniture is behind the actresses most of the time.
Only a couple of brief excursions upstairs prevent the movie from taking
place entirely on this one bright set, where nothing looks used or lived
with.

The artificiality is so jolly that we're not surprised when the first song
begins, because "8 Women" is in no sense serious about murder, its plot, or
anything else. It's an elaborate excuse to have fun with its cast, and we
realize we've been waiting a long time for Catherine Deneuve to come right
out and say of Isabelle Huppert: "I'm beautiful and rich. She's ugly and
poor." I had also just about given up hope of ever seeing Deneuve and Fanny
Ardant rolling around on the floor pulling each other's hair.

In a cast where everybody has fun, Huppert has the most, as Augustine. She
and her mother (Darrieux) have been living rent-free in Marcel's cottage
with her sister (Deneuve), but that has not inspired Augustine to compromise
in her fierce resentment and spinsterish isolation. She stalks around the
set like Whistler's mother, frowning from behind her horn-rims and making
disapproval into a lifestyle.

The other characters quickly fall into approved Agatha Christie patterns.
Young Suzon appoints herself Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps in this case
Hercule Poirot, and begins sniffing out the clues. The sexy Louise is
established as the late Marcel's mistress. Madame Chanel, from French
Africa, has been with the family for years and lives out back in the guest
cottage, where, as it develops, she often plays cards with Pierrette. And
Pierrette herself, who arrives late with the kind of entrance that only the
tall, dark and forcible Ardant could pull off, has secrets which are as
amazing as they are inevitable.

I dare not reveal a shred of the plot. And the movie is all plot--that, and
stylish behavior, and barbed wit, and those musical numbers. Watching "8
Women," you have a silly grin half of the time. Astonishing, that Francois
Ozon, who directed this, also made "Under the Sand" (2001), that melancholy
record of a wife (Charlotte Rampling) whose husband disappears, apparently
drowned, and who refuses to deal with the fact that he is dead.

Movies like "8 Women" are essentially made for movie-lovers. You have to
have seen overdecorated studio musicals, and you have to know who Darrieux
and Deneuve and Beart and Huppert and Ardant are, to get the full flavor. It
also helps if you have seen Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap," now in the
50th year of its London run, with its cast still trapped with the corpse in
the isolated cottage. "Do not give away the secret!" the program notes
exhort. And here, too. Not that the secret is anything more than one more
twist of the plot's pepper mill.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:18 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: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:12 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.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:24:34 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] FORMULA 51 / * (R)

FORMULA 51 / * (R)

October 18, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:23 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] STEALING HARVARD / * (PG-13)

STEALING HARVARD / * (PG-13)

September 13, 2002

John: Jason Lee
Duff: Tom Green
Elaine: Leslie Mann
Mr. Warner: Dennis Farina
Patty: Megan Mullally
Cook: Richard Jenkins
Det. Charles: John C. McGinley
Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Bruce McCulloch. Written by
Peter Tolan. Running time: 83 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for crude and sexual
humor, language and drug references).

BY ROGER EBERT

The laugh in "Stealing Harvard" comes early, when we see the name of the
company where the hero works. It's a home health-care corporation named
Homespital. That made me laugh. It made me smile again when the name turned
up later. And on the laugh-meter, that's about it. This is as lax and limp a
comedy as I've seen in a while, a meander through worn-out material.

Jason Lee, who can be engaging in the right material (like "Chasing Amy" and
"Almost Famous") is bland and disposable here, as John Plummer, a young
Homespital executive. The firm is owned by his fiancee's father (Dennis
Farina), who subjects John to savage cross-examinations on whether he has
slept with his daughter. He lies and says he hasn't. He might be telling the
truth if he said he wishes he hadn't, since the fiancee, Elaine (Leslie
Mann), inexplicably weeps during sex.

Despite his foray into the middle classes, John has not forgotten his
super-slut sister Patty (Megan Mullally), who despite a life of untiring
promiscuity has a daughter, Noreen (Tammy Blanchard), who has been accepted
by Harvard. Carefully preserved home videos show John promising to help with
her tuition, and as it happens Noreen needs $29,000--almost exactly the
amount Elaine has insisted John have in the bank before she will marry him.

Crime is obviously the way to raise the money, according to John's best pal,
Duff (Tom Green), who suggests a break-in at a house where the safe seems to
stand open. The owner is, alas, at home, and there is a painfully unfunny
sequence in which he forces John to dress in drag and "spoon" to remind him
of his late wife. There's another botched robbery in which John and Duff,
wearing ski masks, argue over which one gets to call himself Kyle, and so
on.

Seeing Tom Green reminded me, as how could it not, of his movie "Freddy Got
Fingered" (2001), which was so poorly received by the film critics that it
received only one lonely, apologetic positive review on the Tomatometer. I
gave it--let's see--zero stars. Bad movie, especially the scene where Green
was whirling the newborn infant around his head by its umbilical cord.

But the thing is, I remember "Freddy Got Fingered" more than a year later. I
refer to it sometimes. It is a milestone. And for all its sins, it was at
least an ambitious movie, a go-for-broke attempt to accomplish something. It
failed, but it has not left me convinced that Tom Green doesn't have good
work in him. Anyone with his nerve and total lack of taste is sooner or
later going to make a movie worth seeing.

"Stealing Harvard," on the other hand, is a singularly unambitious product,
content to paddle lazily in the shallows of sitcom formula. It has no edge,
no hunger to be better than it is. It ambles pleasantly through its inanity,
like a guest happy to be at a boring party. When you think of some of the
weird stuff Jason Lee and Tom Green have been in over the years, you wonder
what they did to amuse themselves during the filming.

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