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movies-digest        Friday, December 27 2002        Volume 02 : Number 395



[MV] ADAPTATION / **** (R)
[MV] THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE / *** (PG)
[MV] ABOUT SCHMIDT / ***1/2 (R)
[MV] ANTWONE FISHER / ***1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] please remove from mailing list!!!
[MV] SINGIN' IN THE RAIN / **** (G)
[MV] RABBIT-PROOF FENCE / *** 1/2 (PG)
[MV] CATCH ME IF YOU CAN / *** (PG-13)
[MV] THE HOURS / ***1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] CHICAGO / ***1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] THE LION KING / *** 1/2 (G)

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

Date: 20 Dec 2002 22:21:27 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ADAPTATION / **** (R)

ADAPTATION / **** (R)

December 20, 2002

Charlie/Donald Kaufman:    Nicolas Cage
Susan Orlean:    Meryl Streep
John Laroche:    Chris Cooper
Valerie:    Tilda Swinton
Robert McKee:    Brian Cox
Amelia:    Cara Seymour
Caroline:    Maggie Gyllenhaal

Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Spike Jonze. Written by
Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman. Based on the book The Orchid Thief by
Susan Orlean. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated R (for language, sexuality,
some drug use and violent images). Opening today at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

What a bewilderingly brilliant and entertaining movie this is--a confounding
story about orchid thieves and screenwriters, elegant New Yorkers and
scruffy swamp rats, truth and fiction. "Adaptation" is a movie that leaves
you breathless with curiosity, as it teases itself with the directions it
might take. To watch the film is to be actively involved in the challenge of
its creation.

It begins with a book titled The Orchid Thief, based on a New Yorker article
by Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep). She writes about a Florida orchid fancier
named John Laroche (Chris Cooper), who is the latest in a long history of
men so obsessed by orchids that they would steal and kill for them. Laroche
is a con man who believes he has found a foolproof way to poach orchids from
protected Florida Everglades; since they were ancestral Indian lands, he
will hire Indians who can pick the orchids with impunity.

Now that story might make a movie, but it's not the story of "Adaptation."
As the film opens, a screenwriter named Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) has
been hired to adapt the book, and is stuck. There is so much about orchids
in the book, and no obvious dramatic story line. Having penetrated halfway
into the book myself, I understood his problem: It's a great story, but is
it a movie?

Charlie is distraught. His producer, Valerie (Tilda Swinton), is on his
case. Where is the first draft? He hardly has a first page. He relates his
agony in voiceover, and anyone who has ever tried to write will understand
his system of rewards and punishments: Should he wait until he has written a
page to eat the muffin, or ...

Charlie has a brother named Donald (also played by Cage). Donald lacks
Charlie's ethics, his taste, his intelligence. He cheerfully admits that all
he wants to do is write a potboiler and get rich. He attends the
screenwriting seminars of Robert McKee (Brian Cox), who breaks down movie
classics, sucks the marrow from their bones and urges students to copy the
formula. At a moment when Charlie is suicidal with frustration, Donald
triumphantly announces he has sold a screenplay for a million dollars.

What is Charlie to do? To complicate matters, he has developed a fixation,
even a crush, on Susan Orlean. He journeys to New York, shadows her, is too
shy to meet her. She in turn goes to Florida to interview Laroche, who
smells and smokes and has missing front teeth, but whose passion makes him
.. interesting.

And now my plot description will end, as I assure you I have not even hinted
at the diabolical developments still to come. "Adaptation" is some kind of a
filmmaking miracle, a film that is at one and the same time (a) the story of
a movie being made, (b) the story of orchid thievery and criminal
conspiracies, and (c) a deceptive combination of fiction and real life. The
movie has been directed by Spike Jonze, who with Charlie Kaufman as writer
made "Being John Malkovich," the best film of 1999. If you saw that film,
you will (a) know what to expect this time, and (b) be wrong in countless
ways.

There are real people in this film who are really real, like Malkovich,
Jonze, John Cusack and Catherine Keener, playing themselves. People who are
real but are played by actors, like Susan Orlean, Robert McKee, John Laroche
and Charlie Kaufman. People who are apparently not real, like Donald
Kaufman, despite the fact that he shares the screenplay credit. There are
times when we are watching more or less exactly what must (or could) have
happened, and then a time when the film seems to jump the rails and head
straight for the swamps of McKee's theories.

During all of its dazzling twists and turns, the movie remains consistently
fascinating not just because of the direction and writing, but because of
the lighthearted darkness of the performances. Chris Cooper plays a con man
of extraordinary intelligence, who is attractive to a sophisticated New
Yorker because he is so intensely himself in a world where few people are
anybody. Nicolas Cage, as the twins, gets so deeply inside their opposite
characters that we can always tell them apart even though he uses no tricks
of makeup or hair. His narration creates the desperate agony of a man so
smart he understands his problems intimately, yet so neurotic he is captive
to them.

Now as for Meryl Streep, well, it helps to know (since she plays in so many
serious films) that in her private life she is one of the merriest of women,
because here she is able to begin as a studious New Yorker author and end
as, more or less, Katharine Hepburn in "The African Queen."

I sat up during this movie. I leaned forward. I was completely engaged. It
toyed with me, tricked me, played straight with me, then tricked me about
that. Its characters are colorful because they care so intensely; they are
more interested in their obsessions than they are in the movie, if you see
what I mean. And all the time, uncoiling beneath the surface of the film, is
the audacious surprise of the last 20 minutes, in which--well, to say the
movie's ending works on more than one level is not to imply it works on only
two.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 Dec 2002 22:21:42 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE / *** (PG)

THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE / *** (PG)

December 20, 2002

Featuring the voices of:

Eliza Thornberry:    Lacey Chabert
Darwin the Monkey:    Tom Kane
Donnie Thornberry:    Michael Balzary (Flea)
Nigel Thornberry:    Tim Curry
Marianne Thornberry:    Jodi Carlisle
Debbie Thornberry:    Danielle Harris

Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies present a film directed by Cathy
Malkasian and Jeff McGrath. Written by Kate Boutilier. Running time: 88
minutes. Rated PG (for some adventure peril).

BY ROGER EBERT

"The Wild Thornberrys Movie" is a jolly surprise, an energetic and eccentric
animated cartoon about a decidedly peculiar family making a documentary in
Africa. They prowl the plains in their Winnebago, while Mom operates the
camera, Dad lectures on nature and young Eliza Thornberry talks to the
animals.

Yes, by saving a tribal priest from a warthog, she has been given this gift
on one condition--that she not tell anyone (human) about it. Surprisingly,
or perhaps not, the animals are as intelligent and well-spoken as the
humans.

The family is drawn in the cheerful, colorful style of "Rugrats," and indeed
co-director Jeff McGrath even worked on the "Rugrats" TV series. Cathy
Malkasian, the top-billed co-director, has worked on everything from the
"Jumanji" TV series to the Nickelodeon version of the "Thornberrys" itself.

Many kids will already know Eliza (voice of Lacey Chabert) and her family.
Her parents, Nigel and Marianne (Tim Curry and Jodi Carlisle), are British,
but Eliza is all-American, and her older sister, Debbie (Danielle Harris),
sounds like a Valley Girl ("that's so wrong," she says, confronted with the
bright red hind quarters of an ape). Her younger stepbrother, Donnie
Thornberry (Michael Balzary, aka Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers), speaks
an unknown language, incessantly. Eliza's best friend is Darwin the monkey
(Tom Kane), who sounds upper-class British and is an analyst of the passing
scene.

Eliza and Darwin move fearlessly across the plain, protected by her ability
to speak to the animals, and one day she persuades Akela the panther (Alfre
Woodard) to let her take her three cubs to play. Alas, one of the cubs is
snatched by poachers in a helicopter, setting up a thrilling adventure in
which Eliza eventually saves an entire herd of elephants from extinction.

But of course the story I've described could be told in a dreary, plodding
style. The charm of "The Wild Thornberrys Movie" comes from its zany visual
style, the energy of the voiceover actors and the fine balance of action
that is thrilling but not too scary. Eliza is a plucky heroine, determined
and brave, and the poachers never really have a chance.

There are other elements in the movie, including a trip to boarding school
in England, not enjoyed by either Eliza or Darwin, and various innocent
bathroom jokes, mostly involving animals; kids have a special fascination
for such material, I guess, and here it's handled as tastefully as such
tasteless material can be.

The movie reaches just a little further than we expect with the addition of
characters such as Nigel Thornberry's parents (his mother is not amused to
find worms in her tea) and the poachers Bree and Sloan Blackburn (Marisa
Tomei and Rupert Everett), who are not simply villains willing to
exterminate hundreds of elephants, but so unashamed about it that their
attitude is scarier than their actions. Will such people stop at nothing?
Next thing you know, they'll be permitting snowmobiles in our national
parks.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 Dec 2002 22:21:26 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ABOUT SCHMIDT / ***1/2 (R)

ABOUT SCHMIDT / ***1/2 (R)

December 20, 2002

Warren Schmidt:    Jack Nicholson
Jeannie:    Hope Davis
Randall Hertzel:    Dermot Mulroney
Helen Schmidt:    June Squibb
Roberta Hertzel:    Kathy Bates
Larry:    Howard Hesseman
Christina Belford:    Christine Belford

New Line Cinema presents a film directed by Alexander Payne. Written by
Payne and Jim Taylor. Based on the novel by Louis Begley. Running time: 124
minutes. Rated R (for some language and brief nudity).

BY ROGER EBERT

Warren Schmidt is a man without resources. He has no intellectual curiosity.
May never have read a book for pleasure. Lives in a home "decorated" with
sets of collector's items accumulated by his wife, each in the display case
that came with the items. On his retirement day, he is left with nothing but
time on his empty hands. He has spent his entire life working at a job that
could have been done by anybody, or, apparently, nobody. He goes to the
office to see if he can answer any questions that the new guy might have,
but the new guy doesn't. In a lifetime of work, Warren Schmidt has not
accumulated even one piece of information that is needed by his replacement.

"The mass of men," Thoreau famously observed, "lead lives of quiet
desperation." Schmidt is such a man. Jack Nicholson is not such a man, and
is famous for the zest he brings to living. It is an act of self-effacement
that Nicholson is able to inhabit Schmidt and give him life and sadness. It
is not true to say that Nicholson disappears into the character, because he
is always in plain view, the most watchable of actors. His approach is to
renounce all of his mannerisms, even the readiness with which he holds
himself onscreen, and withdraw into the desperation of Schmidt. Usually we
watch Nicholson because of his wicked energy and style; here we are
fascinated by their absence.

"About Schmidt," directed by Alexander Payne, written by Payne and Jim
Taylor, is not about a man who goes on a journey to find himself, because
there is no one to find. When Schmidt gets into his 35-foot Winnebago
Adventurer, which he and his wife Helen thought to use in his retirement, it
is not an act of curiosity but of desperation: He has no place else to turn.

The film's opening scenes show him suffering through a meaningless
retirement dinner and returning home to ask himself, after 42 years of
marriage, "Who is this old woman who is in my house?" His wife might ask the
same question about her old man. They have lived dutiful and obedient lives,
he as an actuary for the Woodman of the World Insurance Co. in Omaha, Neb.,
she as a housewife and mother, and now that the corporate world has
discarded them they have no other role to assume.

Helen (June Squibb) makes an effort to be cheerful, and surprises him with
breakfast in the Adventurer the morning after his retirement dinner, but
breakfast is a cheerless meal when it does not begin a day with a purpose.
Then Helen drops dead. Warren is astonished and bereft, not at the enormity
of his loss, but that he had so little to lose. Here is a man who did not
"plan for retirement."

"About Schmidt" has backed itself into a corner with its hero, who is so
limited it would be torture to watch him for two hours, even played by
Nicholson. The film puts Schmidt on the road, in a reversal of Nicholson's
youthful journey in "Easy Rider." He and the film are in search of life, and
find it in his daughter's plans to marry a man he (correctly) perceives as a
buffoon and a fraud.

The humor in the film comes mostly from the daughter (Hope Davis, fed up
with him) and the family she is marrying into. Schmidt's new in-laws include
Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney), a water-bed salesman and promoter of
pyramid schemes, and his mother Roberta (Kathy Bates), who embraces the life
force with a bone-crushing squeeze. Schmidt, who has hardly has a surprise
in 40 years, now finds himself wrestling with a water bed, and joined in a
hot tub by the topless and terrifyingly available Roberta.

Roberta is intended as a figure of fun, but at least she approaches life
hungrily and with good cheer. This is one of Bates' best performances, as a
woman of outsize charm and personality, who can turn on a dime to reveal
impatience and anger. Her selfishness helps us observe that Schmidt is not a
selfish man, mostly because there is nothing he has that he wants and
nothing he lacks that he cares about.

Schmidt has one relationship in his life that gives him a place to spill out
his fears and discontents. After watching a TV ad for a world childrens'
charity, he "adopts" a 6-year-old Tanzanian named Ndugu. Encouraged to write
to the boy, he spills out his thoughts in long confessional letters. It is
impossible to be sure if he thinks Ndugu can read the letters, or understand
them, or if he has such a painful need to find a listener that Ndugu will
do. Certainly there is no one in America who Schmidt would be able to talk
to with such frankness.

"About Schmidt" is essentially a portrait of a man without qualities,
baffled by the emotions and needs of others. That Jack Nicholson makes this
man so watchable is a tribute not only to his craft, but to his legend: Jack
is so unlike Schmidt that his performance generates a certain awe. Another
actor might have made the character too tragic or passive or empty, but
Nicholson somehow finds within Schmidt a slowing developing hunger, a desire
to start living now that the time is almost gone.

"About Schmidt" is billed as a comedy. It is funny to the degree that
Nicholson is funny playing Schmidt, and funny in terms of some of his
adventures, but at bottom it is tragic. In a mobile home camp, Schmidt is
told by a woman who hardly knows him, "I see inside of you a sad man."

Most teenagers will probably not be drawn to this movie, but they should
attend. Let it be a lesson to them. If they define their lives only in terms
of a good job, a good paycheck and a comfortable suburban existence, they
could end up like Schmidt, dead in the water. They should start paying
attention to that crazy English teacher.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 20 Dec 2002 22:21:29 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] ANTWONE FISHER / ***1/2 (PG-13)

ANTWONE FISHER / ***1/2 (PG-13)

December 20, 2002

Antwone Fisher:    Derek Luke
Cheryl:    Joy Bryant
Jerome Davenport:    Denzel Washington
Berta:    Salli Richardson
Mrs. Tate:    Novella Nelson
Annette:    Vernee Watson Johnson
Eva:    Viola Davis
James:    Earl Billings

Fox Searchlight Pictures presents a film directed by Denzel Washington.
Written by Antwone Fisher. Running time: 113 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for
violence, language and mature thematic material involving child abuse).

BY ROGER EBERT

Antwone Fisher is a good sailor but he has a hair-trigger temper, and it
lands him in the office of the base psychiatrist, Dr. Jerome Davenport. He
refuses to talk. Davenport says he can wait. Naval regulations require them
to have three sessions of therapy, and the first session doesn't start until
Antwone talks. So week after week, Antwone sits there while the doctor does
paperwork, until finally they have a conversation:

"I understand you like to fight."

"That's the only way some people learn."

"But you pay the price for teaching them."

This conversation will continue, in one form or another, until Fisher (Derek
Luke) has returned to the origin of his troubles, and Davenport (Denzel
Washington) has made some discoveries as well. "Antwone Fisher," based on
the true story of the man who wrote the screenplay, is a film that begins
with the everyday lives of naval personnel in San Diego and ends with scenes
so true and heartbreaking that tears welled up in my eyes both times I saw
the film.

I do not cry easily at the movies; years can go past without tears. I have
noticed that when I am deeply affected emotionally, it is not by sadness so
much as by goodness. Antwone Fisher has a confrontation with his past, and a
speech to the mother who abandoned him, and a reunion with his family, that
create great, heartbreaking, joyous moments.

The story behind the film is extraordinary. Fisher was a security guard at
the Sony studio in Hollywood when his screenplay came to the attention of
the producers. Denzel Washington was so impressed he chose it for his
directorial debut. The newcomer Derek Luke, cast in the crucial central role
after dozens of more experienced actors had been auditioned, turned out to
be a friend of Antwone's; he didn't tell that to the filmmakers because he
thought it would hurt his chances. The film is based on truth but some
characters and events have been dramatized, we are told at the end. That is
the case with every "true story."

The film opens with a dream image that will resonate through the film:
Antwone, as a child, is welcomed to a dinner table by all the members of his
family, past and present. He awakens from his dream to the different reality
of life on board an aircraft carrier. He will eventually tell Davenport that
his father was murdered two months before he was born, that his mother was
in prison at the time and abandoned him, and that he was raised in a cruel
foster home. Another blow came when his closest childhood friend was killed
in a robbery. Antwone, who is constitutionally incapable of crime, considers
that an abandonment, too.

As Antwone's weekly sessions continue, he meets another young sailor, Cheryl
Smolley (Joy Bryant). He is shy around her, asks Davenport for tips on
dating, keeps it a secret that he is still a virgin. In a time when movie
romances end in bed within a scene or two, their relationship is sweet and
innocent. He is troubled, he even gets in another fight, but she sees that
he has a good heart and she believes in him.

Davenport argues with the young man that all of his troubles come down to a
need to deal with his past. He needs to return to Ohio and see if he can
find family members. He needs closure. At first Fisher resists these
doctor's orders, but finally, with Cheryl's help, he flies back. And that is
where the preparation of the early scenes pays off in confrontations of
extraordinary power.

Without detailing what happens, I will mention three striking performances
from this part of the movie, by Vernee Watson Johnson as Antwone's aunt, by
Earl Billings as his uncle, and by Viola Davis as his mother. Earlier this
year, Davis appeared as the maid in "Far from Heaven" and as the
space-station psychiatrist in "Solaris." Now this performance. It is hard to
believe it is the same actress. She hardly says a word, as Antwone spills
out his heart in an emotionally shattering speech.

Antwone's story is counterpointed with the story of Dr. Davenport and his
wife, Berta (Salli Richardson). There are issues in their past, too, and in
a sense Davenport and Fisher are in therapy together. There is a sense of
anticlimax when Davenport has his last heartfelt talk with Antwone, because
the film has reached its emotional climax in Ohio and there is nowhere else
we want it to take us. But the relationship between the two men is handled
by Washington, as the director, with close and caring attention. Hard to
believe Derek Luke is a newcomer; easy to believe why Washington decided he
was the right actor to play Antwone Fisher.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 18:55:48 EST
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] please remove from mailing list!!!

please remove [e-mail]

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Date: 27 Dec 2002 17:11:49 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] SINGIN' IN THE RAIN / **** (G)

SINGIN' IN THE RAIN / **** (G)

December 25, 2002 Don Lockwood:     Gene Kelly
Cosmo Brown:     Donald O'Connor
Kathy Seldon:     Debbie Reynolds
Lina Lamont:     Jean Hagen

MGM presents a film directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen. Written by
Adolph Green and Betty Comden. Running time: 102 minutes. Rated G.

BY ROGER EBERT FILM CRITIC

A digitally remastered 50th anniversary edition of "Singin' in the Rain"
opens today and runs through Jan. 3 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N.
Southport. The following is a condensed version of Roger Ebert's Great Movie
essay on "Singin' in the Rain." For the complete version, go to
suntimes.com/ebert.

"Singin' in the Rain" has been voted one of the greatest films of all time
in international critics' polls, and is routinely called the greatest of all
the Hollywood musicals. I don't think there's any doubt about that. There
are other contenders--"Top Hat," "Swing Time," "An American in Paris," "The
Bandwagon," "Oklahoma," "West Side Story"--but "Singin' in the Rain" comes
first because it is not only from Hollywood, it is about Hollywood. It is
set at the moment in the late 1920s when the movies first started to talk,
and many of its best gags involve technical details.

The movie was cobbled together fairly quickly in 1952 to capitalize on the
success of Vincente Minnelli's"An American in Paris"--which won the Academy
Award as the best picture of 1951, and also starred Gene Kelly. The new
movie had an original screenplay by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, and new
songs by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed. But some of the songs, including
the famous title tune, were anything but new.

Maybe because the movie was made quickly and with a certain freedom (and
because it was not based on an expensive stage property), it has a
wonderfully free and improvisational feeling. We know that sequences like
Donald O'Connor's neck-breaking "Make 'Em Laugh" number had to be
painstakingly rehearsed, but it feels like it was made up on the spot. So
does "Moses Supposes," with O'Connor and Kelly dancing on tabletops.

Debbie Reynolds was still a teenager when she starred in the movie, and
there is a light in her eyes to mirror the delight of her character, who is
discovered leaping out of a cake at a party, and soon becomes the offscreen
voice of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), a silent star whose voice is not suited
to talkies, to say the least. The movie's climax, as Reynolds flees from a
theater while Kelly shouts out "Stop that girl!" and tells everyone who she
is, and that he loves her, is one of those bravura romantic scenes that make
you tingle no matter how often you see it.

Although "Singin' in the Rain" has been on video for decades and is often
shown on TV, a big-screen viewing will reveal a richness of color that your
tube may not suggest. The film was photographed in bold basic colors--the
yellow raincoats are an emblem--and Donen and his cast have an energy level
that's also bold, basic and playful. But is this really the greatest
Hollywood musical ever made? In a word, yes.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 27 Dec 2002 17:11:48 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] RABBIT-PROOF FENCE / *** 1/2 (PG)

RABBIT-PROOF FENCE / *** 1/2 (PG)

December 25, 2002 Molly:     Everlyn Sampi
Daisy:     Tianna Sansbury
Mr. Neville:     Kenneth Branagh
Gracie: Laura Monaghan
Moodoo: David Gulpilil

Miramax Films presents a film directed by Phillip Noyce. Written by
Christine Olsen. Based on the book by Doris Pilkington. Running time: 95
minutes. Rated PG (for emotional thematic material).

BY ROGER EBERT FILM CRITIC

The most astonishing words in "Rabbit-Proof Fence" come right at the end,
printed on the screen as a historical footnote. The policies depicted in the
movie were enforced by the Australian government, we are told, until 1970.
Aboriginal children of mixed race were taken by force from their mothers and
raised in training schools that would prepare them for lives as factory
workers or domestic servants. More than a century after slavery was
abolished in the Western world, a Western democracy was still practicing
racism of the most cruel description.

The children's fathers were long gone--white construction workers or
government employees who enjoyed sex with local aboriginal women and then
moved on. But why could the mixed-race children not stay where they were?
The offered explanations are equally vile. One is that a half-white child
must be rescued from a black society. Another was that too many "white
genes" would by their presumed superiority increase the power and ability of
the aborigines to cause trouble by insisting on their rights. A third is
that, by requiring the lighter-skinned children to marry each other,
blackness could eventually be bred out of them. Of course it went without
saying that the "schools" they were held in prepared them only for menial
labor.

The children affected are known today in Australia as the Stolen
Generations. The current Australian government of Prime Minster John Howard
actually still refuses to apologize for these policies. Trent Lott by
comparison is enlightened.

Phillip Noyce's film is fiction based on fact. The screenplay by Christine
Olsen is based on a book by Doris Pilkington, telling the story of the
experiences of her mother, Molly, her aunt Daisy and their cousin Gracie.
Torn from their families by government officials, they were transported some
1,500 miles to a training school, where they huddled together in fear and
grief, separated from everyone and everything they had ever known. When they
tried to use their own language, they were told to stop "jabbering."

At the time of the adventures in the movie, Molly (Everlyn Sampi) is 14,
Daisy (Tianna Sansbury) is 8 and Gracie (Laura Monaghan) is 10. The school
where they are held is not a Dickensian workhouse; by the standards of the
time, it is not unkind (that it inflicts the unimaginable pain of separation
from family and home does not figure into the thinking of the white
educators). The girls cannot abide this strange and lonely place. They run
away, are captured, are placed in solitary confinement. They escape again
and start walking toward their homes. It will be a journey of 1,500 miles.
They have within their heads an instinctive map of the way and are aided by
a fence that stretches for hundreds of miles across the outback, to protect
farmlands from a pestilence of rabbits.

The principal white character in the movie is A.O. Neville (Kenneth
Branagh), who in 1931 was the administrator of the relocation policies and
something of an amateur eugenicist, with theories of race and breeding that
would have won him a ready audience in Nazi Germany. That Australians could
have accepted thinking such as his, and indeed based government policy on
it, indicates the sorry fact that many of them thought aborigines were a
step or two down the evolutionary ladders from modern Europeans. That the
aboriginal societies of Australian and New Zealand were remarkably
sophisticated was hard for the whites to admit--especially because, the more
one credited these native races, the more obvious it was that the land had
been stolen from their possession.

As the three girls flee across the vast landscape, they are pursued by white
authorities and an aboriginal tracker named Moodoo (David Gulpilil), who
seems not especially eager to find them. Along the way, they are helped by
the kindness of strangers, even a white woman named Mavis (Deborah Mailman).
This journey, which evokes some of the same mystery of the outback evoked in
many other Australian films (notably "Walkabout"), is beautiful, harrowing
and sometimes heartbreaking.

The three young stars are all aborigines, untrained actors, and Noyce is
skilled at the way he evokes their thoughts and feelings. Narration helps
fill gaps and supplies details that cannot be explained onscreen. The end of
the journey is not the same for all three girls, and there is more
heartbreak ahead, which would be wrong for me to reveal. But I must say
this. The final scene of the film contains an appearance and a revelation of
astonishing emotional power; not since the last shots of "Schindler's List"
have I been so overcome with the realization that real people, in recent
historical times, had to undergo such inhumanity.

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Date: 27 Dec 2002 17:11:46 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CATCH ME IF YOU CAN / *** (PG-13)

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN / *** (PG-13)

December 25, 2002 Frank Abagnale Jr.:     Leonardo DiCaprio
Carl Hanratty: Tom Hanks
Frank Abagnale Sr.:     Christopher Walken
Paula Abagnale: Nathalie Baye
Prostitute:     Jennifer Garner
Brenda: Amy Adams
Brenda's father:     Martin Sheen

DreamWorks presents a film directed by Steven Spielberg. Written by Jeff
Nathanson. Based on the book by Frank Abagnale Jr. and Stan Redding. Running
time: 140 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some sexual content and brief language).

BY ROGER EBERT

The trailer for "Catch Me If You Can" is so obvious it could have written
itself. It informs us that Frank Abagnale Jr. practiced medicine without
attending medical school, practiced law without a law degree and passed as a
pilot without attending flight school--all for the excellent reason that he
did all of these things before he was 19, and had not even graduated from
high school.

That this is a true story probably goes without saying, since it is too
preposterous to have been invented by a screenwriter. Abagnale also passed
millions of dollars in bogus checks, dazzled women with his wealth and
accomplishments, and was, a lot of the time, basically a sad and lonely
teenager. At the time the only honest relationships in his life were with
his father and with the FBI agent who was chasing him.

In Steven Spielberg's new film, Abagnale is played by Leonardo DiCaprio as a
young man who succeeds at his incredible impersonations by the simple device
of never seeming to try very hard. While an airline employee might be
suspicious of a very young-looking man who insists he is a pilot, what could
be more disarming than a man offered a trip in the jump seat who confesses,
"It's been awhile. Which one is the jump seat?"

DiCaprio, who in recent films such as "The Beach" and "Gangs of New York"
has played dark and troubled characters, is breezy and charming here,
playing a boy who discovers what he is good at, and does it. There is a kind
of genius flowing in the scene where he turns up for classes at a new
school, walks into the classroom to discover that a substitute teacher is
expected and, without missing a beat, writes his name on the blackboard, and
tells the students to shut up and sit down and tell him what chapter they're
on.

It is probably true that most people will take you at face value until they
have reason to do otherwise. I had a friend who had risen to a high level in
her organization and was terrified her secret would be discovered: She never
attended college. My guess, and it proved accurate, was that nobody would
ever think to ask her. It is probably an even better guess that no patient
in a hospital would ask to see a doctor's medical school diploma.

The movie makes some attempt to explain Abagnale's behavior through
adolescent trauma. He is raised by loving parents; his father, Frank Sr.
(Christopher Walken), brought his French mother, Paula (Nathalie Baye), back
from Europe after military service, and Frank Jr.'s childhood is a happy one
until Paula cheats on her husband and walks out. Is that why her son was
driven to impersonation and fraud? Maybe. Or maybe he would have anyway.
Once he discovers how much he can get away with, there is a certain heady
exhilaration in how easily he finds status, respect and babes.

The movie co-stars Tom Hanks as Carl Hanratty, an FBI agent whose mission in
life evolves into capturing Abagnale. As the only person who really has a
comprehensive overview of the scope and versatility of Abagnale's
activities, Hanratty develops--well, not an admiration, but a respect for a
natural criminal talent. There is a scene where he actually has Abagnale at
gunpoint in a motel room, and the kid, a cool customer and quick thinker,
tries impersonating a Secret Service agent who is also on the suspect's
tail. Much of the pleasure of the movie comes from its enjoyment of
Abagnale's strategies. He doesn't seem to plan his cons very well, but to
take advantage of opportunities that fall in his way. At one point, in New
Orleans, he finds himself engaged to the daughter (Amy Adams) of the local
district attorney (Martin Sheen). At a dinner party with his prospective
in-laws, he seems to contradict himself by claiming to be both a doctor and
a lawyer, when he doesn't look old enough to be either. When the D.A.
presses him for an explanation, there is a kind of genius in his guileless
reply: "I passed the bar in California and practiced for a year before
saying, 'Why not try out pediatrics?' "

Uh-huh. And then he makes the mistake of saying he graduated from law school
at Berkeley. Turns out the Sheen character did, too, and quizzes him about a
legendary professor before adding, "Does he still go everywhere with that
little dog?" Here is where Abagnale's quickness saves him. Considering the
30-year age difference between himself and the girl's father, he simply
observes, "The dog died." Yes, although the professor may well have died,
too, and when the D.A. calls his bluff, he responds by being honest
(although that is sort of a lie, too).

This is not a major Spielberg film, although it is an effortlessly watchable
one. Spielberg and his writer, Jeff Nathanson, working from the memoir by
the real Frank Abagnale Jr. and Stan Redding, don't force matters or plumb
for deep significance. The story is a good story, directly told, and such
meaning as it has comes from the irony that the only person who completely
appreciates Abagnale's accomplishments is the man trying to arrest him. At
one point, when the young man calls the FBI agent, Hanratty cuts straight to
the point by observing, "You didn't have anyone else to call."

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 27 Dec 2002 17:11:45 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE HOURS / ***1/2 (PG-13)

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

December 27, 2002

Virginia Woolf:    Nicole Kidman
Laura Brown:    Julianne Moore
Clarissa Vaughan:    Meryl Streep
Richard:    Ed Harris
Leonard Woolf:    Stephen Dillane
Dan Brown:    John C. Reilly

Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Stephen Daldry. Written by
David Hare. Based on the novel by Michael Cunningham. Running time: 114
minutes. Rated PG-13 (for mature thematic elements, some disturbing images
and brief language.)

BY ROGER EBERT

Three women, three times, three places. Three suicide attempts, two
successful. All linked in a way by a novel. In Sussex in 1941, the novelist
Virginia Woolf fills the pockets of her coat with rocks and walks into a
river to drown. In Los Angeles in 1951, Laura Brown fills her purse with
pills and checks into a hotel to kill herself. In New York in 2001, Clarissa
Vaughan watches as the man she was once married to decides whether to let
himself fall out of a window, or not.

The novel is Mrs. Dalloway, written by Woolf in 1925. It takes place in a
day during which a woman has breakfast, buys flowers and prepares to throw a
party. The first story in "The Hours" shows Virginia writing about the
woman, the second shows Laura reading the book, the third shows Clarissa
buying flowers after having said one of the famous lines of the book. All
three stories in "The Hours" begin with breakfast, involve preparations for
parties, end in sadness. Two of the characters in the second story appear
again in the third, but the stories do not flow one from another. Instead,
they all revolve around the fictional character of Mrs. Dalloway, who
presents a brave face to the world but is alone, utterly alone, within
herself, and locked away from the romance she desires.

"The Hours," directed by Stephen Daldry and based on the Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel by Michael Cunningham, doesn't try to force these three
stories to parallel one another. It's more like a meditation on separate
episodes linked by a certain sensibility--that of Woolf, a great novelist
who wrote a little book titled A Room of One's Own that in some ways
initiated modern feminism. Her observation was that throughout history women
did not have a room of their own, but were on call throughout a house
occupied by their husbands and families. Austen wrote her novels, Woolf
observed, in a corner of a room where all the other family activities were
also taking place.

In "The Hours," Woolf (Nicole Kidman) has a room of her own, and the
understanding of her husband, Leonard (Stephen Dillane), a publisher. Laura
(Julianne Moore), whom we meet in the 1950s, is a typical suburban housewife
with a loving and dependable husband (John C. Reilly) she does not love, and
a son who might as well be from outer space. A surprising kiss midway
through her story suggests she might have been happier living as a lesbian.
Clarissa (Meryl Streep), whom we meet in the present, is living as a
lesbian; she and her partner (Allison Janney) are raising a daughter (Claire
Danes) and caring for Clarissa's ex-husband (Ed Harris), now dying of AIDS.
(We may know, although the movie doesn't make a point of it, that Virginia
Woolf was bisexual.)

If this progression of the three stories shows anything, it demonstrates
that personal freedom expanded greatly during the decades involved, but
human responsibilities and guilts remained the governing facts of life. It
also shows that suicides come in different ways for different reasons.
Woolf's suicide comes during a time of clarity and sanity in her struggle
with mental illness; she leaves a note for Leonard saying that she feels the
madness coming on again, and wants to spare him that, out of her love for
him. Laura attempts suicide out of despair; she cannot abide her life, and
sees no way out of it, and the love and gratitude of her husband is simply a
goad. Richard, the Ed Harris character, is in the last painful stages of
dying, and so his suicide takes on still another coloration.

And yet--well, the movie isn't about three approaches to sexuality, or three
approaches to suicide. It may be about three versions of Mrs. Dalloway, who
in the Woolf novel is outwardly a perfect hostess, the wife of a politician,
but who contains other selves within, and earlier may have had lovers of
both sexes. It would be possible to find parallels between Mrs. Dalloway and
"The Hours"--the Ed Harris character might be a victim in the same sense as
the shell-shocked veteran in the novel--but that kind of list-making belongs
in term papers. For a movie audience, "The Hours" doesn't connect in a neat
way, but introduces characters who illuminate mysteries of sex, duty and
love.

I mentioned that two of the characters in the second story appear again in
the third. I will not reveal how that happens, but the fact that it happens
creates an emotional vortex at the end of the film, in which we see that
lives without love are devastated. Virginia and Leonard Woolf loved each
other, and Clarissa treasures both of her lovers. But for the two in the
movie who do not or cannot love, the price is devastating.

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Date: 27 Dec 2002 17:11:44 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] CHICAGO / ***1/2 (PG-13)

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

December 27, 2002

Velma Kelly:    Catherine Zeta-Jones
Roxie Hart:    Renee Zellweger
Billy Flynn:    Richard Gere
Amos Hart:    John C. Reilly
Matron 'Mama' Morton:    Queen Latifah
Mary Sunshine:    Christine Baranski
Bandleader:    Taye Diggs
Kitty Baxter:    Lucy Liu

Miramax Films presents a film directed by Rob Marshall. Written by Bill
Condon. Based on the musical by Fred Ebb, John Kander and Bob Fosse. Running
time: 113 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sexual content and dialogue, violence).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Chicago" continues the reinvention of the musical that started with "Moulin
Rouge." Although modern audiences don't like to see stories interrupted by
songs, apparently they like songs interrupted by stories. The movie is a
dazzling song and dance extravaganza, with just enough words to support the
music and allow everyone to catch their breath between songs. You can watch
it like you listen to an album, over and over; the same phenomenon explains
why "Moulin Rouge" was a bigger hit on DVD than in theaters.

The movie stars sweet-faced Renee Zellweger as Roxie Hart, who kills her
lover and convinces her husband to pay for her defense; and Catherine
Zeta-Jones as Velma Kelly, who broke up her vaudeville sister act by
murdering her husband and her sister while they were engaged in a sport not
licensed for in-laws. Richard Gere is Billy Flynn, the slick, high-priced
attorney who boasts he can beat any rap, for a $5,000 fee. "If Jesus Christ
had lived in Chicago," he explains, "and if he'd had $5,000, and had come to
me--things would have turned out differently."

This story, lightweight but cheerfully lurid, fueled Bob Fosse, John Kander
and Fred Ebb's original stage production of "Chicago," which opened in 1975
and has been playing somewhere or other ever after--since 1997 again on
Broadway. Fosse, who grew up in Chicago in the 1930s and 1940s, lived in a
city where the daily papers roared with the kinds of headlines the movie
loves. Killers were romanticized or vilified, cops and lawyers and reporters
lived in each other's pockets, and newspapers read like pulp fiction.
There's an inspired scene of ventriloquism and puppetry at a press
conference, with all of the characters dangling from strings. For Fosse, the
Chicago of Roxie Hart supplied the perfect peg to hang his famous hat.

The movie doesn't update the musical so much as bring it to a high electric
streamlined gloss. The director Rob Marshall, a stage veteran making his big
screen debut, paces the film with gusto. It's not all breakneck production
numbers, but it's never far from one. And the choreography doesn't copy
Fosse's inimitable style, but it's not far from it, either; the movie
sideswipes imitation on its way to homage.

The decision to use non-singers and non-dancers is always controversial in
musicals, especially in these days when big stars are needed to headline
expensive productions. Of Zellweger and Gere, it can be said that they are
persuasive in their musical roles and well cast as their characters.
Zeta-Jones was, in fact, a professional dancer in London before she decided
to leave the chorus line and take her chances with acting, and her dancing
in the movie is a reminder of the golden days; the film opens with her "All
that Jazz" number, which plays like a promise "Chicago" will have to deliver
on. And what a good idea to cast Queen Latifah in the role of Mama, the
prison matron; she belts out "When You're Good to Mama" with the superb
assurance of a performer who knows what good is and what Mama likes.

The story is inspired by the screaming headlines of the Front Page era and
the decade after. We meet Roxie Hart, married early and unwisely, to Amos
Hart (John C. Reilly), a credulous lunkhead. She has a lover named Fred
Casely (Dominic West), who sweet-talks her with promises of stardom. When
she finds out he's a two-timing liar, she guns him down, and gets a one-way
ticket to Death Row, already inhabited by Velma and overseen by Mama.

Can she get off? Only Billy Flynn (Gere) can pull off a trick like that,
although his price is high and he sings a song in praise of his strategy
("Give 'em the old razzle-dazzle"). Velma has already captured the attention
of newspaper readers, but after the poor sap Amos pays Billy his fee, a
process begins to transform Roxie into a misunderstood heroine. She herself
shows a certain genius in the process, as when she dramatically reveals she
is pregnant with Amos' child, a claim that works only if nobody in the
courtroom can count to nine.

Instead of interrupting the drama with songs, Marshall and screenwriter Bill
Condon stage the songs more or less within Roxie's imagination, where
everything is a little more supercharged than life, and even lawyers can
tap-dance. (To be sure, Gere's own tap dancing is on the level of performers
in the Chicago Bar Association's annual revue). There are a few moments of
straight pathos, including Amos Hart's pathetic disbelief that his Roxie
could have cheated on him; he sings "Mr. Cellophane" about how people see
right through him. But for the most part the film runs on solid-gold
cynicism.

Reilly brings a kind of pathetic sincere naivete to the role--the same tone,
indeed, he brings to a similar husband in "The Hours," where it is also
needed. It's surprising to see the confidence in his singing and dancing,
until you find out he was in musicals all through school. Zellweger is not a
born hoofer, but then again Roxie Hart isn't supposed to be a star; the
whole point is that she isn't, and what Zellweger invaluably contributes to
the role is Roxie's dreamy infatuation with herself, and her quickly growing
mastery of publicity. Velma is supposed to be a singing and dancing star,
and Zeta-Jones delivers with glamor, high style and the delicious confidence
the world forces on you when you are one of its most beautiful inhabitants.
As for Queen Latifah, she's too young to remember Sophie Tucker, but not to
channel her.

"Chicago" is a musical that might have seemed unfilmable, but that was
because it was assumed it had to be transformed into more conventional
terms. By filming it in its own spirit, by making it frankly a stagy
song-and-dance revue, by kidding the stories instead of lingering over them,
the movie is big, brassy fun.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 27 Dec 2002 17:11:52 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE LION KING / *** 1/2 (G)

THE LION KING / *** 1/2 (G)

December 25, 2002

With the voices of:

Simba (cub): Jonahtan Taylor Thomas
Simba (adult): Matthew Broderick
Mufasa: James Earl Jones
Scar: Jeremy Irons
Timon: Nathan Lane
Pumba: Ernie Sabella
Zazu : Rowan Atkinson

Walt Disney Pictures presents a film directed by Roger Allers and Rob
Minkoff. Written by Irene Mecohi, Jonathan Roberts, Linda Woolverton and
Jorgen Klubien. Running time: 89 minutes. Rated G.

BY ROGER EBERT FILM CRITIC

Originally released in 1994, Disney's animated feature "The Lion King" went
on to break box-office records and win two Oscars (for best score and song).
Now, for a special limited engagement, the film has been reformatted for
IMAX screens and its soundtrack has been digitally remixed.

The following is a condensed version of Roger Ebert's review of the original
"Lion King"; for the complete text, go to www.suntimes.com/ebert.

My generation grew up mourning the death of Bambi's mother. Now comes "The
Lion King," with the death of Mufasa, the father of the lion cub who will
someday be king. The Disney animators know that cute little cartoon
characters are not sufficient to manufacture dreams. There have to be dark
corners, frightening moments and ancient archetypes like the crime of
regicide. "The Lion King," which is a superbly drawn animated feature, is
surprisingly solemn in its subject matter, and may even be too intense for
very young children.

"The Lion King" was the first Disney animated feature not based on an
existing story. In another sense, it is based on half the stories in
classical mythology. It tells the tale of the birth, childhood and eventual
manhood of Simba, a lion cub. The cub's birth is announced in the opening
sequence of the movie, called "The Circle of Life," which is an evocative
collaboration of music and animation to show all of the animals of the
African veld gathering to hail their future king. The cute little cub is
held aloft from a dramatic spur of rock, and all his future minions below
hail him, in a staging that looks like the jungle equivalent of a political
rally.

Of course this coming together of zebra and gazelle, monkey and wildebeest,
fudges on the uncomfortable fact that many of these animals survive by
eating one another. And all through "The Lion King," the filmmakers perform
a balancing act between the fantasy of their story and the reality of the
jungle. Early scenes show Simba as a cute, trusting little tike who believes
everyone loves him. He is wrong. He has an enemy--his uncle Scar, the king's
jealous brother, who wants to be king himself one day.

Villains are often the most memorable characters in a Disney animated film,
and Scar is one of the great ones, aided by a pack of yipping hyenas who act
as his storm troopers. With a voice by Jeremy Irons, and facial features
suggestive of Irons' gift for sardonic concealment, Scar is a mannered,
manipulative schemer who succeeds in bringing about the death of the king.

Worse, he convinces Simba that the cub is responsible, and the guilty little
heir slinks off into the wastelands.

It is an unwritten law that animated features have comic relief, usually in
the form of a duet or trio of goofy characters who become buddies with the
hero. This time they are a meerkat named Timon (voice by Nathan Lane) and a
warthog named Pumbaa (Ernie Sabella), who cheer up Simba during his long
exile.

Despite the comic relief, "The Lion King" is a little more subdued than "The
Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and "Aladdin." The central theme is
a grim one: A little cub is dispossessed, and feels responsible for the
death of its father. An uncle betrays a trust.

Basically what we have here is a drama, with comedy occasionally lifting the
mood. The result is a surprising seriousness; this isn't the mindless romp
with cute animals. Although the movie may be frightening and depressing to
the very young, I think it's positive that "The Lion King" deals with real
issues. By processing life's realities in stories, children can prepare
themselves for more difficult lessons later on. The saga of Simba, which in
its deeply buried origins owes something to Greek tragedy and certainly to
"Hamlet," is a learning experience as well as an entertainment.

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