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movies-digest        Saturday, November 2 2002        Volume 02 : Number 388



[MV] IN PRAISE OF LOVE / * (Not rated)
[MV] LAWRENCE OF ARABIA / **** (PG)
[MV] ABANDON / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] BARBERSHOP / *** (PG-13)
[MV] THE BANGER SISTERS / *** (R)
[MV] BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (LA BELLE ET LA BETE) / **** (Not rated)
[MV] RED DRAGON / ***1/2 (R)
[MV] WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD / **1/2 (R)
[MV] THE LAST KISS (L'ULTIMO BACIO)/ **
[MV] MOONLIGHT MILE / **** (PG-13)
[MV] THE GREY ZONE / **** (R)

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

Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:24:37 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] IN PRAISE OF LOVE / * (Not rated)

IN PRAISE OF LOVE / * (Not rated)

October 18, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:14 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LAWRENCE OF ARABIA / **** (PG)

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA / **** (PG)

September 20, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:24:30 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ABANDON / **1/2 (PG-13)

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

October 18, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:19 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: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:16 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE BANGER SISTERS / *** (R)

THE BANGER SISTERS / *** (R)

September 20, 2002

Lavinia: Susan Sarandon
Suzette: Goldie Hawn
Harry: Geoffrey Rush
Raymond: Robin Thomas
Hannah: Erika Christensen
Ginger: Eva Amurri
Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a film written and directed by Bob Dolman.
Running time: 97 minutes. Rated R (for language, sexual content and some
drug use.) Opening today at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

When you get right down to it, "The Banger Sisters" is pretty thin, but you
grin while you're watching it. Later you reflect that it has an obvious
story arc, sketchy minor characters, and awkwardly tries to get down and
provide uplift at the same time. The screenplay could have used an overhaul
before production, but I'm glad I saw it.

I'm glad primarily because of Goldie Hawn. She's infectious and likable in
this movie, but not in that ditzy way we remember. Although she plays a
legendary groupie who, in her day, "rattled" most of the rock stars ("and
roadies") in the business, she plays a woman who has taken her youthful
sense of freedom and combined it with a certain amount of common sense.

Hawn is Suzette. Her co-star, Susan Sarandon, is Lavinia. Together, some
(cough) years ago, they were such legendary groupies that Frank Zappa named
them the Banger Sisters. Hawn has stayed true to her school, and as we meet
her she's bartending in a West Hollywood club where she is more beloved by
the customers than by the owner, who fires her. (She thinks that's not fair:
"See that toilet? Jim Morrison passed out in there one night with me
underneath him.") Broke and without plans, she points her pickup toward
Phoenix for a reunion with Lavinia, whom she hasn't seen in years.

Along the way, in need of gas money, she picks up a lost soul named Harry
(Geoffrey Rush), a screenwriter whose dreams have not come true, and who is
traveling to Phoenix with one bullet in his gun, to shoot his father. Harry
is one of those finicky weirdos who doesn't want anyone upsetting his
routine. The very sight of Suzette, with her silicone treasures, is
disturbing in more ways than he can bear to think of.

In Phoenix, Lavinia lives with her lawyer husband Raymond, (Robin Thomas),
and her two spoiled teenagers, Hannah (Erika Christensen) and Ginger (Eva
Amurri). She is so respectable she doesn't even want to think about her
former life, which her husband knows nothing about. Are you counting the
formulas? And so here we have not one but two Fish Out of Water (Harry and
Suzette), plus two examples (Lavinia and Harry) of that other reliable
element, the repressed sad sack who needs a taste of freedom.

Give the movie a moment's thought, and you see the screenplay's gears
turning. This is a movie that could have been a term paper. But Hawn and
Sarandon hit the ground running, and are so funny and goofy that they
distract and delight us. Lavinia at first resists Suzette's appeal, but then
she realizes, "I'm the same color as the Department of Motor Vehicles--and
you're like a flower." The girls go out for a wild night on the town, and
Suzette brings much-needed reality into the cocooned existence of the two
daughters.

The most underwritten character is Lavinia's husband, Raymond. The movie
doesn't know what to do with him. They let him be a little surprised, a
little shocked, a little too straight, but mostly he just stands there
waiting for dialogue that is never supplied. Comic opportunities were lost
here. And the Geoffrey Rush character, while more filled in, also seems
oddly unnecessary. I can easily imagine the movie without him, and with more
about the family in Phoenix. He is not and never will be a workable life
partner for Suzette, no matter how the movie tries to sentimentalize him.

What Goldie Hawn does is to play Suzette sincerely--as if she really were a
groupie who still holds true to her partying past. Her daughter, Kate
Hudson, of course, played the groupie Penny Lane in "Almost Famous," and
Suzette could be the same character, or her friend, in 2002. The movie's
buried joke is that Suzette, the wild girl from West Hollywood, has more
common sense knowledge about life than the movie's conventional types.
Listen to how she talks to Harry on the phone. I guess you learn something
about human nature after (cough) years as a bartender.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:26 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (LA BELLE ET LA BETE) / **** (Not rated)

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (LA BELLE ET LA BETE) / **** (Not rated)

September 6, 2002

The Beast/Prince: Jean Marais
Beauty: Josette Day
Felicie: Mila Parely
Adelaide: Nan Germon
Ludovic: Michel Auclair
The Merchant: Marcel Andre
Cowboy Pictures presents a film directed by Jean Cocteau. Written by
Cocteau, based on a story by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. In French,
with English subtitles. No MPAA rating. Running time 93 minutes. Opening
today at the Music Box Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

Long before Disney's 1991 film, Jean Cocteau filmed "Beauty and the Beast"
in 1946, in France. It is one of the most magical of all films.

Alive with trick shots and astonishing effects, it gives us a Beast who is
lonely like a man and misunderstood like an animal. Cocteau, a poet and
surrealist, was not making a "children's film" but was adapting a classic
French tale that he felt had a special message after the suffering of World
War II: Anyone who has an unhappy childhood may grow up to be a Beast.

The movie has long been considered one of the best ever made, but has been
rarely seen in America--more rarely still since the Disney animated feature
cornered the market in beauties and beasts. The Disney film is inspired, but
so is Cocteau's, in an entirely different way. And now a newly restored 35mm
print, with missing scenes restored, is opening at the Music Box for one
week. There is probably no better film in town.

Filming at a time when Freudian imagery was cutting edge, Cocteau uses
haunting images to suggest emotions at a boil in the subconscious of his
characters. Consider Beauty's reaction to the first entrance of the Beast,
which is theoretically frightened yet, it you look more closely, orgasmic.

The Beast's dwelling is treated in the Disney film like a vast Gothic
extravaganza. Cocteau sees it more like the setting for a nightmare. And
dream logic prevails in the action. The entrance hall is lined with
candelabra held by living human arms that extend from the walls. The statues
are alive, and their eyes follow the progress of the characters. Gates and
doors open themselves. As Belle first enters the Beast's domain, she seems
to run dreamily a few feet above the floor. Later, her feet do not move at
all, but she glides, as if drawn by a magnetic force. She sees smoke rising
from the Beast's fingertips--a sign that he has killed. When he carries her
into her bed chamber, she wears common clothes on one side of the door, and
a queen's costume on the other.

Jean Marais plays both the Beast and the prince who was turned into the
Beast and is restored again. Odd, how appealing he is as the Beast, and how
shallow as the pompadoured prince. Even Belle notices, and instead of
leaping into the arms of the prince confesses she misses her Beast. (So did
Marlene Dietrich, who held Cocteau's hand during the first screening of the
film. As the prince shimmered into sight and presented himself as Belle's
new lover, she called to the screen, "Where is my beautiful Beast?")

The film's devices penetrate the usual conventions of narrative, and appeal
at a deeper psychic level. Cocteau wanted to appeal through images rather
than words, and although the story seems to be masking deeper and more
disturbing currents. It is not a "children's film," but older children may
find it involves them more deeply than the Disney version, because it is not
just a jolly comic musical but deals, like all fairy tales, with what we
dread and desire.

Adapted from Ebert's essay on "Beauty and the Beast" in his book The Great
Movies, and online at www.suntimes.com/ebert.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:24:59 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] RED DRAGON / ***1/2 (R)

RED DRAGON / ***1/2 (R)

October 4, 2002

Hannibal Lecter: Anthony Hopkins
Will Graham: Edward Norton
Francis Dolarhyde: Ralph Fiennes
Jack Crawford: Harvey Keitel
Reba McClane: Emily Watson
Molly Graham: Mary-Louise Parker
Freddy Lounds: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Universal Pictures presents a film directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Ted
Tally. Based on the book by Thomas Harris. Running time: 124 minutes. Rated
R (for violence, grisly images, language, some nudity and sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Red Dragon" opens with the pleasure of seeing Hannibal Lecter as he was
before leaving civilian life. The camera floats above a symphony orchestra
and down into the audience, and we spot Lecter almost at once, regarding
with displeasure an inferior musician. Interesting, how the director forces
our attention just as a magician forces a card: We notice Lecter because he
is located in a strong point of the screen, because his face is lighted to
make him pop out from the drabness on either side, and because he is looking
directly at the camera.

I felt, a confess, a certain pleasure to find him in the audience. Hannibal
Lecter is one of the most wicked villains in movie history, and one of the
most beloved. We forgive him his trespasses because (1) they are forced upon
him by his nature; (2) most of the time he is helplessly imprisoned, and
providing aid to the FBI, or seeming to, after his peculiar fashion, and (3)
he is droll and literate, dryly humorous, elegantly mannered. In these days
of movie characters who obediently recite the words the plot requires of
them, it's a pleasure to meet a man who can hold up his end of the
conversation.

The opening, with Hannibal still in civilian life, allows a tense early
scene in which the doctor (Anthony Hopkins) receives a late-night visitor,
FBI agent Will Graham (Edward Norton). Graham has been assisted by Lecter in
examining a series of crimes which, he has just realized, involved
cannibalism--and now, as he regards the doctor in the gloom of the shadowed
study, it occurs to him, just as it simultaneously occurs to Lecter, that it
is clear to both of them who this cannibal might be.

Flash forward several years. Lecter is in prison, Graham has taken early
retirement, but now his old FBI boss (Harvey Keitel) wants to recruit him to
solve a pair of serial killings, this time by a man dubbed the Tooth Fairy
because he leaves an unmistakable dental imprint at the scenes of his
crimes. Graham resists, but photos of the dead families and a poignant look
at his own living family do the trick, and he joins the case as a free-lance
adviser. This requires him to examine crime scenes by creeping through them
in pitch darkness in the middle of the night, although there is no reason he
could not visit at noon (except, of course, that he wants to share the
killer's point of view, and also because the film seeds the darkness with
potential danger).

The director is Brett Ratner, who has not achieved the distinction of the
three previous directors of Hannibal Lecter movies (Jonathan Demme on "The
Silence of the Lambs," Ridley Scott on "Hannibal," and Michael Mann on
"Manhunter," the first version of "Red Dragon," made in 1986). Ratner's
credits have included the "Rush Hour" pictures, "Family Man" and "Money
Talks," some with their merits, none suggesting he was qualified to be
Lecter's next director.

To my surprise, he does a sure, stylish job, appreciating the droll humor of
Lecter's predicament, creating a depraved new villain in the Tooth Fairy
(Ralph Fiennes), and using the quiet, intense skills of Norton to create a
character whose old fears feed into his new ones. There is also humor, of
the uneasy he-can't-get-away-with-this variety, in the character of a nosy
scandal-sheet reporter (Philip Seymour Hoffman). The screenplay by Ted
Tally, who wrote "Lambs," also supplies a blind girl in peril (Emily
Watson), and blind girls have worked dependably since the days of silent
pictures.

A movie like "Red Dragon" is all atmosphere and apprehension. Ratner doesn't
give us as much violence or as many sensational shocks as Scott did in
"Hannibal," but that's a plus: Lecter is a character who commands
contemplation and unease, and too much action just releases the tension. To
be sure, Scott was working with a Thomas Harris novel that itself went so
high over the top (remember the quadriplegic murdered with an electric eel?)
that much of it could not be filmed. But this movie, based on Harris' first
novel, has studied "Silence of the Lambs" and knows that the action comes
second to general creepiness. There are stabbings, shootings, fires,
explosions, tortures, mutilations, and a flaming corpse in a wheelchair, but
within reason.

As the "Tooth Fairy" figure, named Francis Dolarhyde, Ralph Fiennes comes as
close as possible to creating a sympathetic monster. What he does is
unspeakable. What has been done to him is unspeakable. Dolarhyde himself is
horrified by his potential, and the character of the blind girl is not
merely a cheap gimmick (although it is that, too), but a device that allows
him to ask just how far he is prepared to go. We are reminded of another
monster and another blind person, in "Bride of Frankenstein" (1932), and in
both cases the monster feels relief because the blind cannot see that he is
a monster. (In photos of a crime scene, ex-agent Graham notices that mirrors
have been broken and shards of the glass put in the eye sockets of
victims--perhaps because the Tooth Fairy cannot stand to look at himself,
but is driven to a frenzy when others can look at him.)

The movie has been photographed by Dante Spinotti, who also filmed Michael
Mann's more cool, stylized version, and here he provides darkness and
saturated colors. The Lecter world is one of dampness, lowering clouds,
early sunsets, chill in the bones. Lecter himself, when he appears, is like
a little fire we can warm before; he smiles benevolently, knows all, accepts
his nature, offers to help, and more often than not has another macabre
scheme under way. The early passages of this movie benefit from our
knowledge that Lecter will sooner or later appear; it's as if the plot is
tiptoeing toward a ledge.

The Lecter character, and the agents who deal with him, and the monsters who
take him as a role model, create an atmosphere that encourages style in the
filmmaking. It is much the same with the best upper-class crime novels.
There is violence, yes, but also a lot of carefully described atmosphere, as
we enter the attractive lives of the rich and vicious: Consider Nero Wolfe,
who, like Hannibal Lecter, hates to interrupt dinner with a murder.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:24:45 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD / **1/2 (R)

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

October 18, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:32 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE LAST KISS (L'ULTIMO BACIO)/ **

THE LAST KISS (L'ULTIMO BACIO)/ **

August 30, 2002

Carlo: Stefano Accorsi
Giulia: Giovanna Mezzogiorno
Anna: Stefania Sandrelli
Francesca: Martina Stella
Alberto: Marco Cocci
Marco: Pierfrancesco Favino
Paolo: Claudio Santamaria
Think Films presents a film written and directed by Gabriele Muccino.
Running time: 114 minutes. In Italian with English subtitles. Rated R (for
language, sexuality and some drug use). Opening today at Landmark Century.

BY ROGER EBERT

"The Last Kiss" is a comedy, I guess, about male panic at the spectre of
adult responsibility. If you're a guy and want to figure out what side of
the question you're on, take this test. You're a young single man. Your
girlfriend announces at a family dinner that she is pregnant. You (a) accept
the joys and responsibilities of fatherhood; (b) climb up into a treehouse
at a wedding to begin a passionate affair with an 18-year-old; (c) join
three buddies in discussing their plan to buy a van and trek across Africa.

Carlo (Stefano Accorsi), the hero of the film, is torn between (b) and (c).
Marriage looms like a trap to him, and he complains to Francesca (Martina
Stella), the 18-year-old, that he fears "the passion is going" from his
life. When his girlfriend Giulia (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) takes him along to
look at a house they could buy, he complains that buying a house seems so
"final." Not encouraging words for a pregnant fiancee to hear. "If I catch
him cheating, I'll kill him," she says, in the ancient tradition of Italian
movie comedy.

But the movie isn't all comedy, and has fugitive ambitions, I fear, to say
something significant about romance and even life. Consider some of Carlo's
friends. Paolo (Claudio Santamaria) is expected to take over his father's
clothing store, has no interest in retail, but is wracked with guilt because
his father is dying and this is his last wish. Marco (Pierfrancesco Favino)
is a serial lover. Adriano (Giorgio Pasotti) is depressed because his
girlfriend has lost all interest in sex after giving birth. Their 30s and
indeed their 40s are breathing hot on the necks of these friends, who cling
to golden memories of adolescence.

There is also the case of Anna (Stefania Sandrelli), Carlo's mother, who is
married to a detached and indifferent psychiatrist, and seeks out a former
lover with hopes of, who knows, maybe now taking the path not chosen. The
lover is delighted to see her for a chat over lunch, but reveals that he has
recently married and is the proud father of a one-year-old. How cruelly age
discriminates against women (at least those prepared to consider it
discrimination and not freedom).

"The Last Kiss" specializes in dramatic exits and entrances. Anna bursts
into her husband's office when he is deep in consultation with a patient,
who seems alarmed that his own house is so clearly not in order. Carlo
awakens with dread after a night spent imprudently, and flees. Giulia makes
a dramatic appearance at a death bed after discovering Carlo lied to her.
And so on.

The problem is that the movie has no idea of it is serious or not. It
combines heartfelt self-analysis with scenes like the one where Carlo is
taken by his teenage squeeze to her friend's birthday, and tries to party
with the kids. This is either funny or sad, not both, but the movie doesn't
know which.

The message behind all of this is difficult to nail down. Mars and Venus?
Adults who haven't grown up? The last fling syndrome? Doing what you want
instead of doing what you must? I have just finished Without Stopping, the
autobiography of the novelist and composer Paul Bowles, who as nearly as I
can tell always did exactly what he wanted, and was married to Jane Bowles,
who did the same. The answer, obviously, is not to choose between marriage
and the van trip through Africa, but to dump the buddies and find a wife who
wants to come along.

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Date: 02 Nov 2002 07:25:02 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: 02 Nov 2002 07:24:26 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE GREY ZONE / **** (R)

THE GREY ZONE / **** (R)

October 25, 2002

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

BY ROGER EBERT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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