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movies-digest         Friday, December 6 2002         Volume 02 : Number 393



[MV] TREASURE PLANET / ** 1/2 (PG)
[MV] SOLARIS / *** 1/2 (R)
[MV] THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE/ ****
[MV] ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU/ ** (NR)
[MV] SOLARIS / *** 1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] ANALYZE THAT / ** (R)
[MV] THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER / *** (Not rated)
[MV] EQUILIBRIUM / *** (R)
[MV] PERSONAL VELOCITY / ***1/2 (R)

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

Date: 27 Nov 2002 15:41:57 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] TREASURE PLANET / ** 1/2 (PG)

TREASURE PLANET / ** 1/2 (PG)

November 27, 2002

With the voices of:

Jim Hawkins (speaking)     Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Jim Hawkins (singing)     John Rzeznik
John Silver      Brian Murray
Dr. Doppler     David Hyde Pierce
B.E.N.     Martin Short
Capt. Amelia      Emma Thompson
Arrow      Roscoe Lee Browne
Scroop     Michael Wincott

Billy Bones      Patrick McGoohan
Sarah     Laurie Metcalf

Walt Disney Pictures presents a film directed by Ron Clements and John
Musker. Written by Clements, Musker and Rob Edwards. Based on the novel
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated
PG (for adventure action and peril). Opening today at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT FILM CRITIC

Walt Disney's "Treasure Planet" has zest and humor and some lovable
supporting characters, but do we really need this zapped-up version of the
Robert Louis Stevenson classic? Eighteenth century galleons and pirate ships
go sailing through the stars, and it somehow just doesn't look right. The
film wants to be a pirate movie dressed in "Star Wars" garb, but the pants
are too short and the elbows stick out. For anyone who grew up on Disney's
1950 "Treasure Island," or remembers the 1934 Victor Fleming classic, this
one feels like an impostor.

I am not concerned about technical matters. I do not question why space
ships of the future would look like sailing ships of the past. I can believe
they could be powered by both rockets and solar winds. It does not bother me
that deep space turns out to be breathable. I do not wonder why
swashbuckling is still in style, in an era of ray guns and laser beams. I
accept all of that. It's just that I wonder why I have to. Why not make an
animated version of the classic Treasure Island ? Why not challenge the kids
with a version of an actual book written by a great writer, instead of
catering to them with what looks like the prototype for a video game?

These are, I suppose, the objections of a hidebound reactionary. I believe
that one should review the movie that has been made, not the movie one
wishes had been made, and here I violate my own rule. But there was
something in me that ... resisted ... this movie. I hope it did not blind me
to its undeniable charms.

There is, to begin with, a likable hero named Jim Hawkins, whose speaking
voice is by Joseph Gordon-Levitt and singing voice by John Rzeznik (of
rock's Goo Goo Dolls). Jim is a nice enough kid when we first see him being
read to by his mother in his standard-issue Disney fatherless home. But he
grows up into a troublemaker, and it is only the possession of a holographic
treasure map and the journey in this movie that season him into a fine young
man.

Hoping to sail away to a planet where "the treasures of a thousand worlds"
have been deposited, Jim signs on as a cabin boy under the cat-eyed Capt.
Amelia (voice by Emma Thompson), and is soon befriended by the cook, John
Silver (Brian Murray), a cyborg whose right arm contains an amazing
collection of attachments and gadgets. Also on board is the wealthy Dr.
Doppler (David Hyde Pierce), who is financing the voyage. (His doglike
appearance and Amelia's feline nature make us wonder, when romance blooms,
whether theirs is a relationship likely to last.)

I will not be spoiling much, I assume, to suggest that John Silver is more
than a cook, and less than a friend. He has mutiny in mind. And the troubles
on board the ship are backdropped by troubles in space, where a black hole
threatens, and there is a "space storm" as dangerous as any in the
Caribbean.

It is obligatory in all Disney animated features that there be some sort of
cute miniature sidekick, and the peppy little creature this time is Morph, a
blue blob that can assume almost any shape, is cuddly and frisky, and takes
sides. Another supporting character is B.E.N. (Martin Short), a cybernetic
navigator who apparently has some fried memory boards, and lots of
one-liners. He would be obnoxious unless you liked creatures like him, which
I do.

Disney experiments with its animation methods in the movie (which is being
released simultaneously in regular theaters and on the big IMAX screens,
which have recently brought such an awesome presence to "Fantasia" and
"Beauty & the Beast"). The foreground characters are two-dimensional in
the classical animated style, but the backgrounds are 3-D and
computer-generated ("painted," the Web site assures us, but with a computer
stylus rather than a brush). Some may find a clash between the two styles,
but the backgrounds function as, well, backgrounds, and I accepted them
without question.

I'm aware that many, maybe most, of the audience members for this film will
never have heard of Robert Louis Stevenson. They may learn in the opening
sequence that he once wrote a book named Treasure Island, but when this book
is opened by Jim's mother, it contains no old-fashioned words, only pop-up
moving images. For these people, the loss of the story's literary roots may
be meaningless. They may wonder what old sailing ships are doing in a
futuristic universe, but then there's a lot to wonder about in all animated
adventures, isn't there, since none of them are plausible. My guess is that
most audiences will enjoy this film more than I did. I remain stubbornly
convinced that pirate ships and ocean storms and real whales (as opposed to
space whales) are exciting enough. Even more exciting, because they're less
gimmicky. But there I go again.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 27 Nov 2002 15:41:56 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SOLARIS / *** 1/2 (R)

SOLARIS / *** 1/2 (R)

November 27, 2002

Chris Kelvin    George Clooney
Rheya Kelvin    Natascha McElhone
Snow    Jeremy Davies
Helen Gordon    Viola Davis
Gibarian    Ulrich Tukur
Berton    Morgan Rusler

20th Century Fox presents a film written, directed, photographed and edited
by Steven Soderbergh. Based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem. Running time: 99
minutes. Rated R (for some sexuality/nudity).

Solaris" tells the story of a planet that reads minds, and obliges its
visitors by devising and providing people they have lost, and miss. The
Catch-22 is that the planet knows no more than its visitors know about these
absent people. As the film opens, two astronauts have died in a space
station circling the planet, and the survivors have sent back alarming
messages. A psychiatrist named Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is sent to the
station, and when he awakens after his first night on board, his wife, Rheya
(Natascha McElhone), is in bed with him. Some time earlier on earth, she had
committed suicide.

"She's not human," Kelvin is warned by Dr. Helen Gordon (Viola Davis), one
of the surviving crew members. Kelvin knows this materialization cannot be
his wife, yet is confronted with a person who seems palpably real, shares
memories with him and is flesh and blood. The other survivor, the goofy Snow
(Jeremy Davies), asks, "I wonder if they can get pregnant?"

This story originated with a Polish novel by Stanislaw Lem that is
considered one of the major adornments of science fiction. It was made into
a 1972 movie of the same name by the Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky. Now
Steven Soderbergh has retold it in the kind of smart film that has people
arguing about it on their way out of the theater.

The movie needs science fiction to supply the planet and the space station,
which furnish the premise and concentrate the action, but it is essentially
a psychological drama. When Kelvin arrives on the space station, he finds
the survivors seriously spooked. Soderbergh directs Jeremy Davies to
escalate his usual style of tics and stutters, to the point where a word can
hardly be uttered without his hands waving to evoke it from the air.

Even scarier is Gordon, the scientist played by Viola Davis, who has seen
whatever catastrophe overtook the station and does not consider Kelvin part
of the solution. In his gullibility will he believe his wife has somehow
really been resurrected? And ... what does the planet want? Why does it do
this? As a favor, or as a way of luring us into accepting manifestations of
its own ego and need? Will the human race eventually be replaced by the
Solaris version?

Clooney has successfully survived being named People magazine's sexiest man
alive by deliberately choosing projects that ignore that image. His alliance
with Soderbergh, both as an actor and co-producer, shows a taste for
challenge. Here, as Kelvin, he is intelligent, withdrawn, sad, puzzled.
Certain this seems to be his wife, and although he knows intellectually that
she is not, still--to destroy her would be ... inhuman. The screenplay
develops a painful paradox out of that reality.

The genius of Lem's underlying idea is that the duplicates, or replicants,
or whatever we choose to call them, are self-conscious and seem to carry on
with free will from the moment they are evoked by the planet. Rheya, for
example, says, "I'm not the person I remember. I don't remember experiencing
these things." And later, "I'm suicidal because that's how you remember me."

In other words, Kelvin gets back not his dead wife, but a being who
incorporates all he knows about his dead wife, and nothing else, and starts
over from there. She has no secrets because he did not know her secrets. If
she is suicidal, it is because he thought she was. The deep irony here is
that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even
without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What
we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy
is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel,
but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them.

At a time when many American movies pump up every fugitive emotion into a
clanging assault on the audience, Soderbergh's "Solaris" is quiet and
introspective. There are some shocks and surprises, but this is not "Alien."
It is a workshop for a discussion of human identity. It considers not only
how we relate to others, but how we relate to our ideas of others--so that a
completely phony, non-human replica of a dead wife can inspire the same
feelings that the wife herself once did. That is a peculiarity of humans: We
feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is
why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars. Our
idea of humanity bewitches us, while humanity itself stays safely sealed
away into its billions of separate containers, or "people."

When I saw Tarkovsky's original film, I felt absorbed in it, as if it were a
sponge. It was slow, mysterious, confusing, and I have never forgotten it.
Soderbergh's version is more clean and spare, more easily readable, but it
pays full attention to the ideas and doesn't compromise. Tarkovsky was a
genius, but one who demanded great patience from his audience as he
ponderously marched toward his goals. The Soderbergh version is like the
same story freed from the weight of Tarkovsky's solemnity. And it evokes one
of the rarest of movie emotions, ironic regret.

Tarkovsky's 1972 "Solaris" has just been released on DVD from the Criterion
Collection.





News

|

Sports

|

Business

|

Entertainment

|

Lifestyles

|

Classifieds

Visit our online partners:

Daily Southtown      Pioneer Press


Suburban Chicago Newspapers

Post-Tribune

Star Newspapers

Jerusalem Post

Daily Telegraph

Copyright 2002, Digital Chicago Inc.



Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 29 Nov 2002 11:02:30 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE/ ****

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE/ ****

November 29, 2002

Bennett Marco    Frank Sinatra
Raymond Shaw    Laurence Harvey
Rosie    Janet Leigh
Raymond's mother    Angela Lansbury
Chunjin    Henry Silva
Sen. John Iselin    James Gregory
Jocie    Leslie Parrish
Sen. Thomas Jordan    John     McGiver
Yen Lo    Khigh Dhiegh
Cpl. Melvin    James Edwards

United Artists presents a film directed by John Frankenheimer. Written by
George Axelrod, based on the novel by Richard Condon. No MPAA rating.
Running time: 126 minutes. Opening today at the Music Box Theatre.

BY ROGER EBERT

A newly restored 35mm print of "The Manchurian Candidate" begins a one-week
engagement today at the Music Box Theatre. This review, revised and updated,
originally appeared when the movie was re-released in 1988.

H ere is a movie that was made 40 years ago, and it feels as if it was made
yesterday. Not a moment of "The Manchurian Candidate" lacks edge and tension
and a cynical spin--and what's even more surprising is how the film now
plays as a political comedy as well as a thriller. After being suppressed
for years, after becoming an unseen legend that never turned up on TV or on
home video, John Frankenheimer's 1962 masterpiece was re-released in 1988,
to emerge as one of the best and brightest of American films.

The story is a matter of many levels, some of them frightening, some pointed
with satirical barbs. In a riveting opening sequence, a group of American
combat infantrymen are shown being brainwashed by a confident Chinese
Communist hypnotist, who has them so surely under his control that one man
is ordered to strangle his buddy and cheerfully complies.

Two members of the group get our special attention: the characters played by
Frank Sinatra and Laurence Harvey. Harvey seems to be the main target of the
Chinese scheme, which is to return him to American society as a war hero,
and then allow him to lead a normal life until he is triggered by a buried
hypnotic suggestion and turned into an assassin completely brainwashed to
take orders from his enemy controller. Harvey does indeed re-enter society,
where he is the son of a conservative dowager (Angela Lansbury) and the
stepson of her husband (James Gregory), who is a leading candidate for his
party's presidential nomination. More than that I choose not to reveal.

Meanwhile, Sinatra also returns to civilian life but is haunted by
nightmares in which he dimly recalls the terrifying details of the
brainwashing. He contacts Harvey (who is not, we must remember, a conscious
assassin but merely a brainwashed victim). Sinatra also becomes central to a
Pentagon investigation of a possible plot that affected all the members of
his platoon--which disappeared on patrol and returned telling the same
fabricated story.

Midway in his investigation, Sinatra meets and falls in love with a woman
played by Janet Leigh, and their relationship provides the movie with what
looks to me like a subtle, tantalizing suggestion of an additional level of
intrigue. They meet in the parlor car of a train, where Sinatra, shaking,
cannot light a cigarette and knocks over the table with his drink on it.
Leigh follows him to the space between cars, lights a cigarette for him and
engages him in a very weird conversation, after which they fall in love and
she quickly ditches her fiance. What's going on here? My notion is that
Sinatra's character is a Manchurian killer, too--one allowed to remember
details of Harvey's brainwashing because that would make him seem more
credible. And Leigh? She is Sinatra's controller.

This possible scenario simply adds another level to a movie already rich in
intrigue. The depths to which the Lansbury character will sink in this movie
must be seen to be believed, and the actress generates a smothering Momism
that defines the type. By the end of the film, so many different people have
used so many different strategies on Harvey's overtaxed brain that he is
almost literally a zombie, unable to know what to believe, incapable of
telling who can be trusted.

"The Manchurian Candidate" got glowing reviews when it was first released in
1962 (Pauline Kael wrote, "It may be the most sophisticated political satire
ever made in Hollywood"). But then it was shelved in a dispute between
United Artists and Sinatra, who held a controlling interest in the film and
thought the studio was using funny bookkeeping to keep it out of the profit
column. For more than 25 years, memories of "The Manchurian Candidate"
tantalized those who saw it at the time. Was it really as good as it seemed?
It was.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 29 Nov 2002 11:02:26 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU/ ** (NR)

ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU/ ** (NR)

November 29, 2002

Yuichi Hasumi    Hayato Ichihara
Shusuke Hoshino    Shugo Oshinari
Yoko Kuno    Ayumi Ito
Tabito Takao    Takao Osawa
Shimabukuro    Miwako Ichikawa
Izumi Hoshino    Izumi Inamori
Tsuda Shiori    Yu Aoi

Cowboy Pictures presents a film written and directed by Shunji Iwai. In
Japanese with English subtitles. Running time: 146 minutes. No MPAA rating.
Opening today at Facets Cinematheque.

BY ROGER EBERT

'A ll About Lily Chou-Chou" is like an ancient text that requires modern
commentary. It's not an old film (it's cutting edge Japanese techno-angst)
but it's so enigmatic, oblique and meandering that it's like coded religious
texts that requires monks to decipher. In this case, the monks are the
critics. They won't tell you anything you haven't figured out for yourself,
but they will confirm that there's no more to the movie than you thought
there was. This movie is maddening. It conveys a simple message in a visual
style that is willfully overwrought.

The story: Lily Chou-Chou is a Japanese pop idol, who must be real, since
she appears in concert, but who we never see. Ironically, then, one of her
songs consists of repetitions of "I see you and you see me." She is idolized
by Yuichi (Hayato Ichihara), a student in high school. He has a crush on the
real-life Yoko (Ayumi Ito), a gifted pianist. Both Yuichi and Yoko are the
targets of cliques of school bullies.

For a while, Yuichi has a friend, Hoshino (Shugo Oshinari), a fellow student
who turns into a sadist and forces Yuichi to steal money and give it to him.
Hoshino has another sideline: He pimps Shiori (Yu Aoi) to prostitute herself
with businessmen, and makes her give him most of the money. Shiori has a
secret crush on Yuichi, but is under Hoshino's control and pathetically
confides on the telephone, "Lately, when I think of men I think of
customers."

The elements are in place for a powerful story of alienated Japanese
teenagers, but the writer-director, Shunji Iwai, cannot bring himself to
make the story accessible to ordinary audiences. He and his cinematographer,
Noboru Shinoda, are in love with their lightweight digital camera, and give
us jerky hand-held out-of-focus shots. Some sequences are so
incomprehensible they play as complete abstractions. I know, it's a style.
It's a style that was interesting for a brief season and is now tiresome and
pretentious.

Either you make an experimental film that cuts loose from narrative,
characters and comprehensible cinematography, or you do not. Iwai seems to
want to tell the story of his characters, and it could be a compelling one
(some of the scenes have are poignant or wounding), but he cannot allow
himself to make the film in a way that can communicate. That would be, I
guess, a compromise. He has made a film that few reasonable ticket-buyers
will have the patience to endure. It will be appreciated by a handful of
highly evolved film watchers who can generate a simultaneous analysis in
their minds, but what is the point, really, in making a film that closes out
most moviegoers?

The world that swims murkily to the surface of "All About Lily Chou-Chou" is
certainly a frightening one, eclipsing even the anomie of the Columbine
killers. These students drift without values or interests, devoting all the
passion of their young lives to creatures who may exist only on the
Internet. Shiori has sex with strangers for pay, but is too shy to tell
Yuichi she likes him. Yuichi's life has been turned into hell by Hoshino,
who seems to act not so much out of hatred as boredom. The film's teachers
and adults care, but are hopelessly misinformed about what is really going
on.

There is a movie here somewhere. Shunji Iwai has gone to a great deal of
trouble to obscure it. "Lily Chou-Chou" has been compared by some to
Truffaut's "The 400 Blows," which was also stylistically groundbreaking in
its time, but Truffaut broke with traditional styles in order to communicate
better, not to avoid communicating at all.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 29 Nov 2002 17:02:35 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SOLARIS / *** 1/2 (PG-13)

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

November 27, 2002

Chris Kelvin    George Clooney
Rheya Kelvin    Natascha McElhone
Snow    Jeremy Davies
Helen Gordon    Viola Davis
Gibarian    Ulrich Tukur
Berton    Morgan Rusler

20th Century Fox presents a film written, directed, photographed and edited
by Steven Soderbergh. Based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem. Running time: 99
minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sexuality/nudity).

Solaris" tells the story of a planet that reads minds, and obliges its
visitors by devising and providing people they have lost, and miss. The
Catch-22 is that the planet knows no more than its visitors know about these
absent people. As the film opens, two astronauts have died in a space
station circling the planet, and the survivors have sent back alarming
messages. A psychiatrist named Chris Kelvin (George Clooney) is sent to the
station, and when he awakens after his first night on board, his wife, Rheya
(Natascha McElhone), is in bed with him. Some time earlier on earth, she had
committed suicide.

"She's not human," Kelvin is warned by Dr. Helen Gordon (Viola Davis), one
of the surviving crew members. Kelvin knows this materialization cannot be
his wife, yet is confronted with a person who seems palpably real, shares
memories with him and is flesh and blood. The other survivor, the goofy Snow
(Jeremy Davies), asks, "I wonder if they can get pregnant?"

This story originated with a Polish novel by Stanislaw Lem that is
considered one of the major adornments of science fiction. It was made into
a 1972 movie of the same name by the Russian master Andrei Tarkovsky. Now
Steven Soderbergh has retold it in the kind of smart film that has people
arguing about it on their way out of the theater.

The movie needs science fiction to supply the planet and the space station,
which furnish the premise and concentrate the action, but it is essentially
a psychological drama. When Kelvin arrives on the space station, he finds
the survivors seriously spooked. Soderbergh directs Jeremy Davies to
escalate his usual style of tics and stutters, to the point where a word can
hardly be uttered without his hands waving to evoke it from the air.

Even scarier is Gordon, the scientist played by Viola Davis, who has seen
whatever catastrophe overtook the station and does not consider Kelvin part
of the solution. In his gullibility will he believe his wife has somehow
really been resurrected? And ... what does the planet want? Why does it do
this? As a favor, or as a way of luring us into accepting manifestations of
its own ego and need? Will the human race eventually be replaced by the
Solaris version?

Clooney has successfully survived being named People magazine's sexiest man
alive by deliberately choosing projects that ignore that image. His alliance
with Soderbergh, both as an actor and co-producer, shows a taste for
challenge. Here, as Kelvin, he is intelligent, withdrawn, sad, puzzled.
Certain this seems to be his wife, and although he knows intellectually that
she is not, still--to destroy her would be ... inhuman. The screenplay
develops a painful paradox out of that reality.

The genius of Lem's underlying idea is that the duplicates, or replicants,
or whatever we choose to call them, are self-conscious and seem to carry on
with free will from the moment they are evoked by the planet. Rheya, for
example, says, "I'm not the person I remember. I don't remember experiencing
these things." And later, "I'm suicidal because that's how you remember me."

In other words, Kelvin gets back not his dead wife, but a being who
incorporates all he knows about his dead wife, and nothing else, and starts
over from there. She has no secrets because he did not know her secrets. If
she is suicidal, it is because he thought she was. The deep irony here is
that all of our relationships in the real world are exactly like that, even
without the benefit of Solaris. We do not know the actual other person. What
we know is the sum of everything we think we know about them. Even empathy
is perhaps of no use; we think it helps us understand how other people feel,
but maybe it only tells us how we would feel, if we were them.

At a time when many American movies pump up every fugitive emotion into a
clanging assault on the audience, Soderbergh's "Solaris" is quiet and
introspective. There are some shocks and surprises, but this is not "Alien."
It is a workshop for a discussion of human identity. It considers not only
how we relate to others, but how we relate to our ideas of others--so that a
completely phony, non-human replica of a dead wife can inspire the same
feelings that the wife herself once did. That is a peculiarity of humans: We
feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is
why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars. Our
idea of humanity bewitches us, while humanity itself stays safely sealed
away into its billions of separate containers, or "people."

When I saw Tarkovsky's original film, I felt absorbed in it, as if it were a
sponge. It was slow, mysterious, confusing, and I have never forgotten it.
Soderbergh's version is more clean and spare, more easily readable, but it
pays full attention to the ideas and doesn't compromise. Tarkovsky was a
genius, but one who demanded great patience from his audience as he
ponderously marched toward his goals. The Soderbergh version is like the
same story freed from the weight of Tarkovsky's solemnity. And it evokes one
of the rarest of movie emotions, ironic regret.

Tarkovsky's 1972 "Solaris" has just been released on DVD from the Criterion
Collection.





News

|

Sports

|

Business

|

Entertainment

|

Lifestyles

|

Classifieds

Visit our online partners:

Daily Southtown      Pioneer Press


Suburban Chicago Newspapers

Post-Tribune

Star Newspapers

Jerusalem Post

Daily Telegraph

Copyright 2002, Digital Chicago Inc.



Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

[ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
[ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]

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

Date: 06 Dec 2002 17:28:41 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ANALYZE THAT / ** (R)

ANALYZE THAT / ** (R)

December 6, 2002

Paul Vitti:    Robert De Niro
Ben Sobel:    Billy Crystal
Laura Sobel:    Lisa Kudrow
Jelly:    Joe Viterelli
Patti LoPresti:    Cathy Moriarty-Gentile
Masiello:    Pat Cooper
Wiseguy:    Joseph Bono

Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film directed by Harold Ramis. Written by
Peter Tolan, Peter Steinfeld and Ramis. Running time: 95 minutes. Rated R
(for language and some sexual content).

BY ROGER EBERT

The success of "Analyze This" (1999) made "Analyze That" inevitable, but was
it necessary? What seemed like a clever idea the first time feels like a
retread the second, as mob boss Paul Vitti (Robert De Niro) goes back into
therapy with Dr. Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal). The first film more or less
exhausted the possibilities of this idea, as the second one illustrates.

"Analyze This" was never more than a sitcom, but the casting gave it an
aura. De Niro as a neurotic mobster was a funny idea, and Crystal as a
shrink was good casting because of his ability to seem smart even during
panic attacks. Lisa Kudrow, then the shrink's girlfriend, now his wife, has
a nice off-balance disbelieving way with dialogue that plays against Crystal
instead of merely out-shouting him, and there was also the mammoth presence
of Joe Viterelli, as Jelly, the boss' loyal chauffeur and sidekick.

All of that worked the first time, and it kind of works, sometimes, in the
second film. But the story has the ring of contrivance. If the first film
seemed to flow naturally from the premise, this one seems to slink uneasily
onto the screen, aware that it feels exactly like a facile, superficial
recycling job.

As the film opens, Sobel is attending his father's funeral, but takes a cell
call from Sing Sing, right there in the front row at temple. Turns out Vitti
has turned goofy and does nothing all day but sing songs from "West Side
Story." Is he crazy, or faking it? Whether he's faking it or not, he knows
all the words. He gets no less goofy after he's released into the custody of
Sobel and his wife Laura (Kudrow), and placed under their supervision--in
their home. Laura hates this idea, but the FBI insists on it: Vitti's good
behavior is Sobel's responsibility.

The film then descends into an unconvincing, contrived heist subplot, with
Sobel linked with the robbers. And Cathy Moriarty (De Niro's wife in "Raging
Bull") turns up as the head of a rival gang, in a rivalry that never seems
anything more than the excuse for some routine mob-war threat routines.
Harold Ramis, who directed and co-wrote (as he did with the first film) is a
gifted filmmaker, the author of many great laughs in the movies, but he
should reflect that there is a reason most sequels are not directed by the
same men who made the originals: A movie that inspires a sequel, if it is
any good, incorporates qualities that cannot be duplicated.

What we get in "Analyze That" are several talented actors delivering their
familiar screen personas in the service of an idiotic plot. There is
undeniable pleasure to be had in hearing De Niro say, yet once again,
"You're good. No! You're good!" to Crystal, and watching De Niro use that
beatific smile as if his character is saintly to bestow such praise (a
compliment from De Niro is somewhat like being knighted). And Crystal, in
this character as in life, is able to suggest that his mind runs so rapidly
it spits out the truth before his better judgment can advise him. Kudrow,
sadly underused here, plays not the wife who doesn't understand, but the
wife who understands all too well.

There is also the question of Joe Viterelli as Jelly. Writing about his work
in the first movie, I saw him playing not just a mobster, but "an older man
who is weary after many years in service, but loyal and patient with his
weirdo boss." The sad thing about "Analyze That" is that Viterelli is
invited back but not made to feel welcome at the party. We miss the sense
that De Niro counts on him, that he comes as part of the package. Now De
Niro's focus is on Crystal. And if Vitti and Sobel are a double act, the
point of the movie is missing.

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Date: 06 Dec 2002 17:28:59 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER / *** (Not rated)

THE TRIALS OF HENRY KISSINGER / *** (Not rated)

December 6, 2002

Featuring: Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, William Safire, Seymour Hersh,
Anna Chennault and Barbara Howar.

First Run Features presents a documentary directed by Eugene Jarecki.
Written by Alex Gibney, based on the book by Christopher Hitchens. Narrated
by Brian Cox. Running time: 80 minutes. No MPAA rating.

BY ROGER EBERT

The odds are excellent that President Bush did not see this film before
appointing Henry Kissinger as the head of a special commission to examine
shortcomings of U.S. Intelligence in the period before 9/11. 'The Trials of
Henry Kissinger' charges Kissinger himself with authorizing illegal
terrorist acts on behalf of the United States. Did Bush put the fox in
charge of the hen house?

Yes, the film is told from a hostile point of view: It's based on a book by
the New Left author Christopher Hitchens, who has made Kissinger-bashing a
second career. But many of the facts in it are matters of public record. And
it is widely believed, and not just on the left, that Kissinger directly or
indirectly brought about the death of the democratically elected Chilean
president Salvador Allende. And he is currently the defendant, as Hitchens
pointed out recently on Slate.com, in a civil suit filed in Washington,
D.C., charging that Kissinger gave the order for the assassination of the
Chilean general Rene Schneider, who would not support the U.S. call for a
military coup. "Every single document in the prosecution case," Hitchens
notes, "is a U.S.-government declassified paper."

I am your humble scribe and have no personal knowledge or the truth or
falsity of these charges. I note, however, that it may be unwise to assign a
man with such a complex image to investigate terrorism. By appointing him to
head the investigation into possible failures of U.S. intelligence in the
months before 9/11, the President, having resisted such an investigation for
more than a year, shows he doesn't really care what anyone thinks.

"The Trials of Henry Kissinger," directed by Eugene Jarecki and based on the
Hitchens' 2001 book The Trial of Henry Kissinger, plays like a brief for a
war crimes trial against the former secretary of state. It also plays like a
roast, with easy jibes about his appetite for dating starlets and his avid
careerism (at one point, we learn, he assured friends he would be the White
House foreign policy advisor no matter whether Nixon or Humphrey was
elected). The movie is not above cheap shots, as when it sets sequences to
music.

The film's technique is partisan. It provides Kissinger's critics, including
Hitchens, William Shawcross and Seymour Hersh, with ample time to spell out
their charges against Kissinger (samples: he lied to Congress about the
bombing of Cambodia, and lengthened the war in Vietnam by sending a secret
message to the North Vietnamese that they'd get a better deal if they waited
until Nixon was in office). Then Kissinger's defenders are seen and heard,
but hardly given equal time. It feels somehow as if the filmmakers have
chosen just the words they want, and the context be damned; sophisticated
media-watchers will note the editing tricks and suspect the film's motives.

That was also a charge against Hitchens' book: That he was such a rabid
hater of Kissinger that he overstated his case, convicting Kissinger of what
he suspected as well as what he could prove. More balanced criticisms of
Kissinger were drowned out in the resulting controversy, and Hitchens, an
easy target, drew attention away from harder targets that might have been
less easily answered.

The film is nevertheless fascinating to watch as a portrait of political
celebrity and ego. "Power is the greatest aphrodisiac," Kissinger famously
said, and he famously proved the truth of that epigram. In the years before
his marriage he was seen with a parade of babes on his arm, including Jill
St. John, Candice Bergen, Samantha Eggar, Shirley MacLaine, Marlo Thomas
and, yes, Zsa Zsa Gabor. He dined out often and well in New York, Washington
and world capitals, and his outgoing social life was in distinct contrast
with the buttoned-down style of his boss, Nixon.

The movie shows him as a man lustful not so much for sex as for the
appearance of conquest (many of his dates were at pains to report they were
deposited chastely back home at the end of the evening). He liked the
limelight, the power, the access, and he successfully tended the legend that
he was indispensable to American foreign policy--so much so that he got
credit for some of Nixon's initiatives, such as the opening to China.

He meanwhile exercised great power, not always with discretion if the film
is to be believed. There is an agonizing sound bite in which he regretfully
observes that there is not always a clear choice between good and evil.
Sometimes indeed evil must be done to bring about the greater good. All very
well, but if the people of Chile elect a government we don't like, does that
give us the right to overthrow it? And even if it does, does that make the
man who thought so a wise choice to investigate our current intelligence
about terrorism?

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Date: 06 Dec 2002 17:28:51 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] EQUILIBRIUM / *** (R)

EQUILIBRIUM / *** (R)

December 6, 2002

John Preston:    Christian Bale
Mary O'Brien:     Emily Watson
Brandt:    Taye Diggs
Dupont:    Angus MacFadyen
Partridge:    Sean Bean
Polygraph Technician:    Oliver Brandl
Rebel Leader:    Francesco Cabras

Dimension Films presents a film written and directed by Kurt Wimmer. Running
time: 106 minutes. Rated R (for violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Equilibrium'' would be a mindless action picture, except that it has a
mind. It doesn't do a lot of deep thinking, but unlike many futuristic
combos of sf and f/x, it does make a statement: Freedom of opinion is a
threat to totalitarian systems. Dictatorships of both the left and right are
frightened by the idea of their citizens thinking too much, or having too
much fun.

The movie deals with this notion in the most effective way, by burying it in
the story and almost drowning it with entertainment. In a free society many,
maybe most, audience members will hardly notice the message. But there are
nations and religions that would find this movie dangerous. You know who you
are.

The movie is set in the 21st century--hey! that's our century!--at a time
after the Third World War. That war was caused, it is believed, because
citizens felt too much and too deeply. They got all worked up and started
bombing each other. To assure world peace and the survival of the human
race, everyone has been put on obligatory doses of Prozium, a drug that
dampens the emotions and shuts down our sensual side. (Hint: The working
title of this movie was "Librium.")

In the movie, enforcers known as Clerics have the mandate to murder those
who are considered Sense Offenders. This is a rich irony, since True
Believers, not Free Thinkers, are the ones eager to go to war over their
beliefs. If you believe you have the right to kill someone because of your
theology, you are going about God's work in your way, not His.

Christian Bale stars in "Equilibrium," as Cleric John Preston, partnered
with Partridge (Sean Bean) as a top-level enforcer. Nobody can look
dispassionate in the face of outrageous provocation better than Bale, and he
proves it here after his own wife is incinerated for Sense Offenses. "What
did you feel?" he is asked. "I didn't feel anything," he replies, and we
believe him, although perhaps this provides a clue about his wife's need to
Offend.

Preston is a top operative, but is hiding something. We see him pocketing a
book that turns out to be the collected poetry of W.B. Yeats, a notorious
Sense Offender. He has kept it, he explains, to better understand the enemy
(the same reason censors have historically needed to study pornography). His
duties bring him into contact with Mary O'Brien (Emily Watson), and he
feels--well, it doesn't matter what he feels. To feel at all is the offense.
Knowing that, but remembering Mary, he deliberately stops taking his
Prozium: He loves being a Cleric, but, oh, you id.

If "Equilibrium" has a plot borrowed from 1984, Brave New World and other
dystopian novels, it has gunfights and martial arts borrowed from the latest
advances in special effects. More rounds of ammunition are expended in this
film than in any film I can remember, and I remember "The Transporter."

I learn from Nick Nunziata at CHUD.com that the form of battle used in the
movie is "Gun-Kata," which is "a martial art completely based around guns."
I credit Nunziata because I think he may have invented this term. The
fighters transcribe the usual arcs in mid-air and do impossible acrobatics,
but mostly use guns instead of fists and feet. That would seem to be
cheating, and involves a lot of extra work (it is much easier to shoot
someone without doing a back-flip), but since the result is loud and violent
it is no doubt worth it.

There is an opening sequence in which Preston and Partridge approach an
apartment where Offenders are holed up, and Preston orders the lights to be
turned out in the apartment. Then he enters in the dark. As nearly as I
could tell, he is in the middle of the floor, surrounded by Offenders with
guns. A violent gun battle breaks out, jerkily illuminated by flashes of the
guns, and everyone is killed but Preston. There is nothing about this scene
that even attempts to be plausible, confirming a suspicion I have long held,
that the heroes of action movies are protected by secret hexes and cannot be
killed by bullets.

There are a lot more similar battles, which are pure kinetic energy, made of
light, noise and quick cutting. They seem to have been assembled for victims
of Attention Deficit Syndrome, who are a large voting block at the box
office these days. The dispassionate observer such as myself, refusing to
Sense Offense my way through such scenes, can nevertheless admire them as a
technical exercise.

What I like is the sneaky way Kurt Wimmer's movie advances its philosophy in
between gun battles. It argues, if I am correct, that it is good to feel
passion and lust, to love people and desire them, and to experience
voluptuous pleasure through great works of music and art. In an early scene
Cleric Preston blow-torches the "Mona Lisa," the one painting you can be
pretty sure most moviegoers will recognize. But in no time he is feeling joy
and love, and because he is the hero, this must be good, even though his
replacement partner, Cleric Brandt (Taye Diggs), suspects him, and wants to
expose him.

The rebel group in "Equilibrium" preserves art and music (there is a
touching scene where Preston listens to a jazz record), and we are reminded
of Bradbury and Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451," where book lovers committed
banned volumes to memory. One is tempted to look benevolently upon
"Equilibrium" and assume thought control can't happen here, but of course it
can, which is why it is useful to have an action picture in which the Sense
Offenders are the good guys.

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Date: 06 Dec 2002 17:28:56 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] PERSONAL VELOCITY / ***1/2 (R)

PERSONAL VELOCITY / ***1/2 (R)

December 6, 2002

Delia:    Kyra Sedgwick
Greta:    Parker Posey
Paula:    Fairuza Balk
May Wurtzle:    Nicole Murphy
Lee:    Tim Guinee
Avram:    Ron Leibman
Vincent:    Seth Gilliam
Kurt Wurtzle:    David Warshofsky
Pete Shunt:    Brian Tarantina
Fay:    Mara Hobel
Mylert:    Leo Fitzpatrick
Mr. Gelb:    Wallace Shawn
Narrator (voice): John Ventimiglia

United Artists presents a film written and directed by Rebecca Miller.
Running time: 86 minutes. Rated R (for brief violence, some strong sexuality
and language). Opening today at Landmark Century.

BY ROGER EBERT

Wandering through a bookstore a few weeks ago, I picked up The Best American
Short Stories 2002, and it launched me into a mara-thon of short story
reading: The O. Henry Prize Awards 2002, the collected stories of Alice
Munro, Ha Jin, Michael Chabon and William Trevor, and even one evening the
works of Mr. Henry himself, long waiting on a distant shelf.

I mention this because it was a well-timed preparation for Rebecca Miller's
"Personal Velocity," which films three of her own short stories in segments
of about half an hour. This was the Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance
2002. I was in the mood for these focused, economic stories, in which we
plunge into the middle of a life, witness crucial developments, and end with
a moment of bittersweet insight into the character. If novels and feature
films are about the arc of a life or at least a significant portion of one,
short stories and films are about unexpected moments of truth: "epiphanies,"
James Joyce called them.

Miller's characters are Delia (Kyra Sedgwick), Greta (Parker Posey) and
Paula (Fairuza Balk). These three actresses almost always appear in
interesting work, often from the indie segment, and their casting is a clue
about the movie: It is likely to be about specific, not generic, women, and
in one way or another they will be defiantly out of step. They also share
big problems about men: fathers, husbands, lovers, dates.

Delia is a battered wife, once famed as a high school slut. Greta edits
cookbooks, until a famous novelist asks her to handle his next novel. Paula
is running away from her life when she picks up a hitchhiker who is running
away from a worse one. All three women have problems with men, and none of
them find the solution in this film--which is, I think, a recommendation.

Paula's segment touched me the most. Balk's Paula is a resilient woman with
much to be resilient about. She's pregnant. She has just narrowly escaped
one of those senseless accidents that can forever change your life. Shaken,
she gets in her car and starts driving and finds herself at her mother's
home. Her mother's new husband is a jerk, and her mother won't defend her
daughter against him. Paula picks up a sullen, sad, withdrawn young
hitchhiker and gets a sudden insight both into what has happened to him--and
how it has wounded and hardened him. What she learns is that she still has
feelings, can care, is not as crippled as she thinks.

Parker Posey is a natural comedian, and that is a gift she draws on in the
not very funny story of Greta, a cookbook editor who is engaged to a
fact-checker at the New Yorker. When the famous novelist comes along, he is
looking for both an editor and a lover. Will she be loyal to her boyfriend,
who her father thinks is a loser? Is the question complicated by this
opportunity with a winner? Because she has never felt very deeply about
anything in life, this decision looks easier to her than it should.

The first story, about Delia, stars Kyra Sedgwick as a woman who is at first
intrigued when her sex life turns a little rough, until she discovers that
once her husband gets the taste for hurting her, he likes it. She flees with
her children, lives for a time in a friend's garage, gets a job at a diner,
and then is propositioned in an oily, callow way by the owner's son (Leo
Fitzpatrick). He is amazed when she calls his bluff and says yes. He is more
amazed by the contemptuous, dismissive way she deals with his lust. The
segment ends with her regarding him thoughtfully, as if considering her
future, or her past.

These stories are commented on by a narrator (John Ventimiglia), who uses
Miller's prose to draw larger lessons and look for deeper currents. Miller
(the daughter of the playwright Arthur) refuses to draw morals for her
characters. They are not yet through learning, and life has more lessons for
them. We see them so sharply, however, in the few days we glimpse each one.
The actors are gifted at establishing character with just a few well-chosen
strokes (as a short story writer must also be able to do). We learn as much
about each of these women in half an hour as we learn about most movie
characters in two hours. More, really, because the movie doesn't pretend to
solve their situations, only to dramatize them.

Much has been made of the Sundance award-winning cinematography by Ellen
Kuras, because it is digital, and cheerfully makes that obvious. No doubt
the quickness and economy of digital made the film possible. But I didn't
much think about the cinematography while watching the film--or if I did, I
had the same thoughts I would have had while watching 35mm. My thoughts were
focused on the characters. That is a compliment to Kuras and Miller. If I
had been thinking about the visual medium, they would have been doing
something wrong.

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