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movies-digest        Friday, February 21 2003        Volume 02 : Number 398



[MV] BIKER BOYZ / ** (PG-13)
[MV] THE QUIET AMERICAN/ **** (R)
[MV] THE RECRUIT / **1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] Shallow Hal - question
Re: [MV] Shallow Hal - question
[MV] LOST IN LA MANCHA/ *** (R)
[MV] THE JUNGLE BOOK 2/ *1/2 (G)
[MV] DAREDEVIL / *** (PG-13)
[MV] GODS AND GENERALS / *1/2 (PG-13)
[MV] DARK BLUE / *** (R)
[MV] THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE / ZERO STARS (R)
[MV] THE SON (LE FILS) / **** (Not rated)

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

Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:39 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] BIKER BOYZ / ** (PG-13)

BIKER BOYZ / ** (PG-13)

January 31, 2003

Smoke:    Laurence Fishburne
Kid:    Derek Luke
Soul Train:    Orlando Jones
Dogg:    Kid Rock
Anita:    Vanessa Bell Calloway
Motherland:    Djimon Hounsou
Queenie:    Lisa Bonet
Stuntman:    Brendan Fehr
Wood:    Larenz Tate
DreamWorks presents a film written and directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood.
Running time: 111 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence, sexual content and
language).

BY ROGER EBERT

"Biker Boyz" has an idea, but not an approach. The idea comes from an
article in Los Angeles New Times about motorcycle clubs that meet for
scheduled but illegal road races. The members are affluent enough to
maintain expensive bikes (even mechanics are on the payroll) and polite
enough that the movie's language slipped in under the ropes at PG-13.

Many but not all of the boyz are African-American; some are still literally
boyz but others are men in their 40s, and the (unexplored) subtext is that
these are successful men who enjoy the excitement of street racing. Not much
mention is made of jobs, but you can't buy and maintain these machines
without a good one.

We meet Smoke (Laurence Fishburne), longtime undefeated champion of street
racing, and his mechanic Slick Will (Eriq La Salle). Slick's son is Kid
(Derek Luke). Smoke's longtime fierce competitor is Dogg (Kid Rock). Races
involve money (bets go to $5,000) and, even more significantly, racing
helmets: If you lose, you hand over your helmet to the guy who beat you.

All of this is intriguing material, but the movie doesn't do much with it.
There are several races in the film, but they don't generate the kind of
pulse-quickening suspense that the races did in "The Fast and the Furious,"
a four-wheel street-racing picture, did. As a general rule the right people
win for the right reasons, and during some of the races the spectators
inexplicably cluster at the starting line, so there's time for soul-to-soul
conversations at the finish line.

Some of those involve a secret revealed halfway through the film; stop
reading now unless you want to learn that Kid's mother Anita (Vanessa Bell
Calloway) tells him, after the death of the man he thinks is his father,
that Smoke is his real father. This leads to less trauma and more niceness
than you might think, in a movie that is gentler and tamer than the ads
might suggest. Even insults, when they are traded, seem more written than
felt.

This is the third film I've seen Derek Luke in, after "Antwone Fisher" and
the Sundance 2003 hit "Pieces of April." It's his least significant role,
and yet confirms his presence: He's a rising star, all right, with a
particular way of holding back, as if sizing up a situation to find the best
entry point. Like Denzel Washington, who cast him as Antwone, he'll spend
most of his career playing nice guys. (Does he have a "Training Day" in him?
I can't tell from here.)

Laurence Fishburne is a strong presence in the central role, but the
character isn't very interesting; he's good at racing, he's not a bad man,
he has few complexities. Vanessa Bell Calloway, a crucial woman in both
men's lives, has a kind of sultry power that suggests if she ever got in a
bike, she'd have all the helmets.

I think what happened here is that the filmmakers were fascinated by the
original article, did some research that hooked them on this world, and then
trusted the world would be enough to power the movie. It isn't. We need a
stronger conflict, as we had in "The Fast and the Furious," and better and
more special effects (the crashes all seem to happen at a distance). The
father-son scenes have an earnestness and sincerity that would be right in
another kind of movie, but seem like sidebars to the main story.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:37 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE QUIET AMERICAN/ **** (R)

THE QUIET AMERICAN/ **** (R)

February 7, 2003

Thomas Fowler:    Michael Caine
Alden Pyle:    Brendan Fraser Phuong:    Do Hai Yen
Inspector Vigot:    Rade Sherbedgia
Hinh:    Tzi Ma
Joe Tunney:    Robert Stanton Bill Granger:    Holmes Osborne General The:    Quang
Hai
Mr. Muoi:    Ferdinand Hoang

Miramax Films presents a film directed by Phillip Noyce. Written by
Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan. Based on the novel by Graham
Greene. Running time: 118 minutes. Rated R (for images of violence and some
language). Opening today at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

The Englishman is sad and lonely. He suffers from the indignity of growing
too old for romance while not yet free of yearning. He is in love for one
last time. He doesn't even fully understand it is love until he is about to
lose it. He is a newspaper correspondent in Saigon, and she is a dance-hall
girl 30 or 40 years younger. She loves him because he pays her to. This
arrangement suits them both. He tells himself he is "helping" her. Well, he
is, and she is helping him.

His name is Fowler, and he is played by Michael Caine in a performance that
seems to descend perfectly formed. There is no artifice in it, no unneeded
energy, no tricks, no effort. It is there. Her name is Phuong (Do Hai Yen),
and like all beautiful women who reveal little of their true feelings, she
makes it possible for him to project his own upon her. He loves her for what
he can tell himself about her.

Between them steps Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), the quiet young American who
has come to Vietnam, he believes, to save it. Eventually he also believes he
will save Phuong. Young men like old ones find it easy to believe hired love
is real, and so believe a girl like Phuong would prefer a young man to an
old one, when all youth represents is more work.

Graham Greene's novel The Quiet American (1955) told the story of this
triangle against the background of America's adventure in Vietnam in the
early 1950s--when, he shows us, the CIA used pleasant, presentable agents
like Pyle to pose as "aid workers" while arranging terrorist acts that would
justify our intervention there.

The novel inspired a 1958 Hollywood version in which the director Joseph
Mankiewicz turned the story on its head, making Fowler the bad guy and Pyle
the hero. Did the CIA have a hand in funding that film? Stranger things have
happened: The animated version of "Animal Farm" (1948) was paid for by a CIA
front, and twisted Orwell's fable about totalitarianism both East and West
into a simplistic anti-communist cartoon.

Now comes another version of "The Quiet American," this one directed by the
Australian Phillip Noyce and truer to the Greene novel. It is a film with a
political point of view, but often its characters lose sight of that, in
their fascination with each other and with the girl. A question every viewer
will have to answer at the end is whether a final death is the result of
moral conviction, or romantic compulsion.

The film is narrated by Caine's character, in that conversational voice
weary with wisdom; we are reminded of the tired cynicism of the opening
narration in the great film of Greene's The Third Man. Pyle has "a face with
no history, no problems," Fowler tells us; his own face is a map of both.
"I'm just a reporter," he says. "I offer no point of view, I take no action,
I don't get involved." Indeed, he has scarcely filed a story in the past
year for his paper, the Times of London; he is too absorbed in Phuong, and
opium.

The irony is that Pyle, who he actually likes at first, jars him into action
and involvement. What he finally cannot abide is the younger man's cheerful
certainty that he is absolutely right: "Saving the country and saving a
woman would be the same thing to a man like that."

As luck would have it, "The Quiet American" was planned for release in the
autumn of 2001. It was shelved after 9/11, when Miramax president Harvey
Weinstein decided, no doubt correctly, that the national mood was not ripe
for a film pointing out that the United States is guilty of terrorist acts
of its own. Caine appealed to Weinstein, who a year later allowed the film
to be shown at the Toronto Film Festival, where it was so well received by
the public and critics that Miramax opened it for Oscar consideration in
December. Now it goes into national release, on what appears to be the eve
of another dubious war.

It would be unfortunate if people went to the movie, or stayed away, because
of its political beliefs. There is no longer much controversy about the
CIA's hand in stirring the Vietnam pot, and the movie is not an expose but
another of Greene's stories about a worn-down, morally exhausted man
clinging to shreds of hope in a world whose cynicism has long since rendered
him obsolete. Both men "love" Phuong, but for Pyle she is less crucial.
Fowler, on the other hand, admits: "I know I'm not essential to Phuong, but
if I were to lose her, for me that would be the beginning of death." What
Phuong herself thinks is not the point with either man, since they are both
convinced she wants them.

Fraser, who often stars as a walking cartoon ("Dudley Do-Right," "George of
the Jungle") has shown in other pictures, like "Gods and Monsters," that he
is a gifted actor, and here he finds just the right balance between
confidence and blindness: What he does is evil, but he is convinced it is
good, and has a simple, sunny view that maddens an old hand like Fowler. The
two characters work well together because there is an undercurrent of
commonality: They are both floating in the last currents of colonialism, in
which life in Saigon can be very good, unless you get killed.

Noyce made two great pictures close together, this one and "Rabbit-Proof
Fence," which I reviewed last December. He feels anger as he tells this
story, but he conceals it, because the story as it stands is enough. Some
viewers will not even intercept the political message. It was that way with
Greene: The politics were in the very weave of the cloth, not worth talking
about. Here, in a rare Western feature shot in Vietnam, with real locations
and sets that look well-worn enough to be real, with wonderful performances,
he suggests a world view more mature and knowing than the simplistic pieties
that provide the public face of foreign policy.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 07 Feb 2003 21:21:46 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE RECRUIT / **1/2 (PG-13)

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

January 31, 2003

Walter Burke:    Al Pacino
James Clayton:    Colin Farrell
Layla:    Bridget Moynahan
Zack:    Gabriel Macht
Ronnie:    Mike Realba
Instructor No. 1:    Dom Fiore
Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Roger Donaldson. Written by
Roger Towne, Kurt Wimmer and Mitch Glazer. Running time: 105 minutes. Rated
PG-13 (for violence, sexuality and language).

BY ROGER EBERT

'The Recruit" reveals that the training process of the Central Intelligence
Agency is like a fraternity initiation, but more dangerous. At one point
would-be agents are given a time limit to walk into a singles bar and report
back to the parking lot with a partner willing to have sex with them. Uh,
huh. As for the Company's years of embarrassments and enemy spies within the
ranks? "We reveal our failures but not our successes," the senior instructor
tells the new recruits. Quick, can you think of any event in recent world
history that bears the stamp of a CIA success?

The senior instructor is Walter Burke, played by Al Pacino in a performance
that is just plain fun to watch, gruff, blunt, with a weathered charm. He
recruits an MIT whiz-kid named James Clayton (Colin Farrell), who turns down
a big offer from Dell Computers because he wants to know more about the fate
of his late father, a CIA agent. Or maybe because he uses a Macintosh.

Clayton is taken to The Farm, a rustic hideaway somewhere in Ontario,
doubling for Virginia, where during the entrance exam he locks eyes with the
lovely and fragrant Layla (Bridget Moynahan). He also meets Zack (Gabriel
Macht), a former Miami cop who speaks English, Spanish and Farsi.

The training process involves a series of Bondian sequences in which the
agents learn such skills as blowing up cars: (a) throw bomb under car; (b)
detonate. They are also taught about biodegradable listening devices,
weapons usage and how to shadow someone. And they are told of an agency
superweapon that (I think I heard this right) can plug into an electric
socket and disable every digital device connected to the grid. Agents: Be
sure Mr. Coffee has completed his brewing cycle before employing weapon.

The early scenes in the film are entertaining, yes, because Pacino works his
character for all its grizzled charm, and Colin Farrell is not only
enormously likeable but fascinates us with his permanent four-day beard. His
chemistry with Layla is real enough, but come on: When he walks into that
bar to pick up someone, doesn't it occur to him that it is hardly a
coincidence that Layla is already there? Mata Hari would make mincemeat of
this guy, but the girl shows promise; as Marlene Dietrich usefully observed,
"It took more than one man to change my name to Shanghai Lily."

Still, it's intriguing to see these young trainees learning their job, and
to hear Pacino's observations, which are epigrammatic ("I don't have
answers. Only secrets."), hard-boiled ("They show you your medal. You don't
even get to take it home."), complacent ("Our cause is just") and helpful
("Nothing is what it seems. Trust no one."). Pacino's character wisely
sticks to political generalities, so that the film can play in foreign
markets; the closest it comes to current events is in the mention of Farsi,
which is the language of Iran, although, as Michael Caine likes to say, not
many people know that.

The first two acts of the film are fun because they're all setup and
build-up, and because the romance between James and Layla is no more
cornball and contrived than it absolutely has to be. The third act is a
mess. It saddles Pacino with the thankless role of the Talking Killer (not
that he necessarily kills). That's the guy who has to stand there and
explain the complexities of the plot when any real CIA veteran would just
blow the other guy away. By the time Pacino wraps things up, we're realizing
that the mantras "Nothing is what it seems" and "Trust no one," if taken
seriously, reveal the entire plot. There is however a neat little
misunderstanding at the end that earns a chuckle.

The movie was directed by Roger Donaldson, who does political thrillers
about as well as anyone; his "Thirteen Days" (2001), about the Cuban missile
crisis, and "No Way Out" (1987), about a scandal in the Pentagon, were
gripping and intelligent, and "The Recruit" is so well directed and acted
that only a churl such as myself would question its sanity. It's the kind of
movie you can sit back and enjoy, as long as you don't make the mistake of
thinking too much.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 21:16:23 -0500
From: Gene Ehrich <[e-mail]>
Subject: [MV] Shallow Hal - question

Does anybody know if Gwyneth Paltrow played the part of her fat self (with
makeup of course)


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

Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2003 23:17:57 -0500
From: Heather <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: [MV] Shallow Hal - question

Yes, Gwyneth Paltrow wore a fat suit, to play her fat self.  However,
a large woman stood in for Platrow, during some of the body shots (like
the diving board shot).

Gene Ehrich wrote:

> Does anybody know if Gwyneth Paltrow played the part of her fat self (with
> makeup of course)
>
> [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ]
> [ movies" (without the quotes) to [e-mail]          ]


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

Date: 16 Feb 2003 04:30:16 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] LOST IN LA MANCHA/ *** (R)

LOST IN LA MANCHA/ *** (R)

February 14, 2003

Featuring Terry Gilliam, Jean Rochefort, Bernard Bouix, Rene Cleitman,
Johnny Depp, Benjamin Fernandez, Toni Grisoni, Vanessa Paradis and Philip A.
Patterson.

IFC presents a documentary written and directed by Keith Fulton and Louis
Pepe. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for language). Opening today at
local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanes, spout
Till you have drench'd our steeples...

History does not record whether these words of King Lear passed through
Terry Gilliam's mind as his beloved film about Don Quixote turned to ashes.
It is hard to believe they did not. "Lost in La Mancha," which started life
as one of those documentaries you get free on a DVD, ended as the record of
swift and devastating disaster.

Gilliam, the director of such films as "Brazil," "12 Monkeys" and "The
Fisher King," arrived in Spain in August 2000 to begin filming a project he
had been preparing for 10 years. "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" would star
Johnny Depp as a modern-day hero who is transported back in time, and finds
himself acting as Sancho Panza to old Don Quixote, who tilts at windmills
and remains the most bravely romantic figure in Western literature.

"The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" was budgeted at $32 million, making it the
most expensive production ever financed only with European money, although,
as Gilliam observes, that's "far below what a film like this would usually
cost."

In the title role, he had cast Jean Rochefort, the tall, angular French star
of more than 100 films, including "The Tall Blond Man With One Black Shoe"
and "The Hairdresser's Husband." Rochefort arrives on the set looking
suitably gaunt and romantic, and showing off the English he has learned
during seven months of lessons.

The first day of the shoot begins ominously, Someone has forgotten to
rehearse the extras, who are yoked to Depp in a chain gang. F-16 fighter
planes roar overhead, spoiling shot after shot. Gilliam's optimism remains
unchecked, and we get a notion of the film from his sketches and
storyboards, and his conferences with members of the production team.
There's an amusing episode when he casts three men as giants.

Day two involves a change of location and an adjustment in the shooting
schedule. The actors have arrived late in Spain, but are on hand, and as
Gilliam and his first assistant director, Philip Patterson, juggle the
schedule, a location becomes too windy and dusty. And then all hell breaks
loose.

Thunderheads form overhead, and rain begins to fall. Then hail. Winds blow
over sets, tents, props. A flash flood crashes down the mountain and turns
the area into a muddy quagmire. The damned jets continue to fly. Gilliam and
his team regroup and are able to cobble together a shot involving Don
Quixote on his horse. But "did you see Jean Rochefort's face as he was
riding on the horse? He was in pain."

So much pain, as it develops, that although the actor is an experienced
horseman, he can not mount the horse alone, and needs two men and an hour of
struggle to get himself down from it. Rochefort flies off to Paris to see
his doctors, and the company shuts down, except for a day when they go
through some motions to impress a busload of doomed visiting investors.

Rochefort will be gone three days, a week, 10 days, indefinitely. His
problem is described as two herniated discs. Or perhaps prostate trouble.
Like vultures, the insurance agents begin to gather, followed by the
completion bond guarantors, who step in when a film goes over budget. There
are discussions, not with the optimism of Don Quixote, about what
constitutes an act of God.

Midway through the second week of the shooting schedule, with brutal
swiftness, "The Man Who Killed Quixote" is shut down. Some films end with a
whimper; this one banged into a stone wall. The camera often rests on
Gilliam's face, as the enormity of the disaster sinks in. "The movie already
exists in here," he says, tapping his head. "I have visualized it so many
times..." But that is the only place it will ever exist.

Many films play dice with nature. I once stood in a barren field outside
Durango, Colo., as workers placed thousands of melons on the ground, because
the melon crop had failed, and the movie was about a melon farmer. I watched
on the Amazon as an expensive light and all of its rigging slowly leaned
over and fell forever beneath the waters. Once in the Ukraine, I waited for
days with 20,000 extras, all members of the Red Army, who were dressed as
Napoleon's Old Guard--and who could not be filmed without a lens that was
being held up in customs.

There are many sad sights in "Lost in La Mancha." One comes when the
producers try to evoke the oldest rule in the book: "Fire the first
assistant director." Gilliam stands firm behind his longtime assistant
Patterson. It is not his fault. Day by day, it becomes increasingly clear
that the film will never be made. Finally comes the shot of props being
sealed into cardboard shipping boxes and sealed with tape. Maybe they are
destined for eBay.

Other men have tilted at Quixote's windmill. Orson Welles famously spent
years trying to piece together a film of the material, even after some of
his actors had died. Peter O'Toole starred in "Man of La Mancha" (1972), not
a good movie. Of that production I wrote: "I've always thought there was a
flaw in the logic of 'Man of La Mancha.' What good does it do to dream the
impossible dream when all you're doing anyway is killing time until the
Inquisition chops your block off?"

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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

Date: 16 Feb 2003 04:30:17 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE JUNGLE BOOK 2/ *1/2 (G)

THE JUNGLE BOOK 2/ *1/2 (G)

February 14, 2003

Featuring the voices of:

Baloo:    John Goodman Mowgli:    Haley Joel Osment
Shanti:    Mae Whitman
Ranjan:    Connor Funk
Bagheera:    Bob Joles
Shere Khan:    Tony Jay
Mowgli's Father:    John Rhys-Davies
Lucky:    Phil Collins

Walt Disney Pictures presents an animated film directed by Steve Trenbirth.
Written by Karl Geurs. Running time: 72 minutes. Rated G. Opening today at
local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

"The Jungle Book 2" is so thin and unsatisfying, it seems like the
made-for-DVD version, not a theatrical release. Clocking in at 72 minutes
and repeating the recycled song "The Bare Necessities" three if not four
times, it offers a bare-bones plot in which Mowgli wanders off into the
jungle, is threatened by a tiger and a snake, is protected by a bear, takes
care of his little girlfriend, and sings and dances with Baloo.

There's none of the complexity here, in story or style, we expect in this
new golden age of animation. It's a throwback in which cute animals of no
depth or nuance play with the hero or threaten him in not very scary ways.

As the film opens, Mowgli (who once, long ago and at another level of
literacy, was the hero of stories by Rudyard Kipling) lives in a village and
is forbidden to cross the river. But "you can take boy out of the jungle,
but you can't take the jungle out of boy," we learn. Whoever wrote that
dialogue must have gone home weary after a hard day's work.

Mowgli (voice of Haley Joel Osment) and his little village playmate Shanti
(voice of Mae Whitman) do, however, venture into the forest, where Mowgli's
old friend Baloo the Bear (John Goodman) is delighted to see him, although a
little jealous of all the attention he is paying to Shanti. Maybe Baloo
should discuss this problem with a counselor. They dance and sing and peel
mangos and then Mowgli and/or Shanti wander off alone to be threatened by
the tiger and the snake (whose coils are cleverly animated), and to be
rescued by Baloo, with a reprise or two of "The Bare Necessities."

In a time that has given us Miyazaki's great animated film "Spirited Away"
(also a Disney release), parents have some kind of duty to take a close look
at the films on offer. I got in an argument at Sundance with a Salt Lake
City man who sells software that automatically censors DVDs in order to
remove offending scenes and language. (Theoretically there could be a
version of "Fight Club" suitable for grade-schoolers, although it would be
very short.) By this yardstick, "The Jungle Book 2" is inoffensive and
harmless.

But it is not nutritious. A new book argues that the average American child
spends twice as much time watching television than interacting with his
parents, and movies like "The Jungle Book 2" are dimwitted baby-sitters, not
growth experiences. If kids grow up on the movie equivalent of fast food,
they will form an addiction to that instant action high and will never
develop the attention span they need to love worthwhile fiction.

Disney can do better, will do better, usually does better. To release this
film theatrically is a compromise of its traditions and standards. If you
have a child in the target age range, keep them at home, rent an animated
classic or Miyazaki's great "My Neighbor Totoro" and do them a favor.

Roger Ebert's review of "My Neighbor Totoro" is in his Great Movies series
at www.suntimes.com/ebert.

Copyright ⌐ Chicago Sun-Times Inc.

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Date: 16 Feb 2003 04:30:14 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] DAREDEVIL / *** (PG-13)

DAREDEVIL / *** (PG-13)

February 14, 2003

Matt Murdock/Daredevil:    Ben Affleck
Elektra:    Jennifer Garner
Kingpin/Fisk:    Michael Clarke Duncan Bullseye:    Colin Farrell Franklin
Nelson:    Jon Favreau
Urich:    Joe Pantoliano Jack Murdock:    David Keith
Young Matt:    Scott Terra

Twentieth Century Fox and Regency Enterprises present a film written and
directed by Mark Steven Johnson. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for
action/violence and some sensuality). Opening today at local theaters.

BY ROGER EBERT

T he origin is usually similar: A traumatic event in childhood, often
involving the loss of parents, leaves the future superhero scarred in some
ways but with preternatural powers in others. "Daredevil" came out of the
Marvel Comics stable in the same period as "Spider-Man" and both were
altered by accidents, which gave Peter Parker his spidey-sense, and blinded
Matt Murdock but made his other four senses hypersensitive. They grew up
together in Marvel comics, sometimes sharing the same adventures, but you
won't see them fraternizing in the movies because their rights are owned by
different studios.

"Daredevil" stars Ben Affleck as the superhero, wearing one of those molded
body suits that defines his six-pack abs but, unlike Batman's, doesn't give
him dime-sized nipples. His mask extends over his eyes, which are not needed
since his other senses fan out in a kind of radar, allowing him to visualize
his surroundings and "see" things even in darkness.

By day (I love that "by day"), he is a lawyer in the Hell's Kitchen area of
Manhattan. By night, he tells us, he prowls the alleys and rooftops, seeking
out evildoers. Of these there is no shortage, although most of the city's
more lucrative crime is controlled by the Kingpin (Michael Clarke Duncan)
and his chief minister, Bullseye (Colin Farrell).

There must be a woman, and in "Daredevil" there is one (only one, among all
those major make characters, although the fragrant Ellen Pompeo has a
slink-on). She is Elektra Natchios (Jennifer Garner), who, like her
classical namesake, wants to avenge the death of her father. By day, she is,
well, pretty much as she is by night. She and Daredevil are powerfully
attracted to each other, and even share some PG-13 sex, which is a relief
because when superheroes have sex at the R level, I am always afraid someone
will get hurt. There is a rather beautiful scene where he asks her to stand
in the rain because his ears are so sensitive they can create an image of
her face from the sound of the raindrops.

Matt Murdock's law partner is Franklin "Foggy" Nelson (Jon Favreau). He has
little suspicion of who he is sharing an office with, although he is a quick
study. Another key character is Ben Urich (Joe Pantoliano), who works for
the New York Post, the newspaper of choice for superheroes.

Daredevil has the ability to dive off tall buildings, swoop through the air,
bounce off stuff, land lightly and so forth. There is an explanation for
this ability, but I tend to tune out such explanations because, after all,
what do they really explain? I don't care what you say, it's Superman's cape
that makes him fly. Comic fans, however, study the mythology and methodology
with the intensity of academics. It is reassuring, in this world of
inexplicabilities, to master a limited subject within a self-contained
universe. Understand, truly understand, why Daredevil defies gravity, and
the location of the missing matter making up 90 percent of the universe can
wait for another day.

But these are just the kinds of idle thoughts I entertain during a movie
like "Daredevil," which may have been what the Vatican had in mind when it
issued that statement giving its limited approval of Harry Potter, as long
as you don't start believing in him. Daredevil describes himself as a
"guardian devil," and that means there are guardian angels, and that means
God exists and, by a process of logical deduction, that Matt Murdock is a
Catholic. Please address your correspondence to Rome.

The movie is actually pretty good. Affleck and Garner probe for the
believable corners of their characters, do not overact, are given
semi-particular dialogue, and are in a very good-looking movie. Most of the
tension takes place between the characters, not the props. There is, of
course, a fancy formal ball to which everyone is invited (Commissioner
Gordon must have been at the rival affair across town).

Affleck is at home in plots of this size, having recently just tried to save
Baltimore from nuclear annihilation and the world from "Armageddon," but
Garner, Farrell and Duncan are relatively newer to action epics, although
Garner did see Affleck off at the station when he took the trail from Pearl
Harbor to New York, and Duncan was Balthazar in "The Scorpion King." They
play their roles more or less as if they were real, which is a novelty in a
movie like this, and Duncan in particular has a presence that makes the
camera want to take a step back and protect its groin.

The movie is, in short, your money's worth, better than we expect, more fun
than we deserve. I am getting a little worn out describing the origin
stories and powers of superheroes, and their relationships to archvillains,
gnashing henchmen and brave, muscular female pals.

They weep, they grow, they astonish, they overcome, they remain vulnerable,
and their enemies spend inordinate time on wardrobe, grooming and props, and
behaving as if their milk of human kindness has turned to cottage cheese.
Some of their movies, like this one, are better than others.

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Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:16 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] GODS AND GENERALS / *1/2 (PG-13)

GODS AND GENERALS / *1/2 (PG-13)

February 21, 2003

Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson: Stephen Lang
Gen. Robert E. Lee: Robert Duvall
Lt. Col. Joshua Chamberlain:     Jeff Daniels
Sgt. Thomas Chamberlain: C. Thomas Howell
Sgt. "Buster" Kilrain:     Kevin Conway
Gen. John Bell Hood:     Patrick Gorman
Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock: Brian Mallon

Warner Bros. Pictures presents a film written and directed by Ronald F.
Maxwell. Based on the book by Jeffrey M. Shaara. Running time: 220 minutes.
Rated PG-13 (for sustained battle sequences).

BY ROGER EBERT

Here is a Civil War movie that Trent Lott might enjoy. Less enlightened than
"Gone With the Wind," obsessed with military strategy, impartial between
South and North, religiously devout, it waits 70 minutes before introducing
the first of its two speaking roles for African Americans; "Stonewall"
Jackson assures his black cook that the South will free him, and the cook
looks cautiously optimistic. If World War II were handled this way, there'd
be hell to pay.

The movie is essentially about brave men on both sides who fought and died
so that ... well, so that they could fight and die. They are led by generals
of blinding brilliance and nobility, although one Northern general makes a
stupid error and the movie shows hundreds of his men being slaughtered at
great length as the result of it.

The Northerners, one Southerner explains, are mostly Republican profiteers
who can go home to their businesses and families if they're voted out of
office after the conflict, while the Southerners are fighting for their
homes. Slavery is not the issue, in this view, because it would have
withered away anyway, although a liberal professor from Maine (Jeff Daniels)
makes a speech explaining it is wrong. So we get that cleared up right
there, or for sure at Strom Thurmond's birthday party.

The conflict is handled with solemnity worthy of a memorial service. The
music, when it is not funereal, sounds like the band playing during the
commencement exercises at a sad university. Countless extras line up, march
forward and shoot at each other. They die like flies. That part is accurate,
although the stench, the blood and the cries of pain are tastefully held to
the PG-13 standard. What we know about the war from the photographs of
Mathew Brady, the poems of Walt Whitman and the documentaries of Ken Burns
is not duplicated here.

Oh, it is a competently made film. Civil War buffs may love it. Every group
of fighting men is identified by subtitles, to such a degree that I
wondered, fleetingly, if they were being played by Civil War Re-enactment
hobbyists who would want to nudge their friends when their group appeared on
the screen. Much is made of the film's total and obsessive historical
accuracy; the costumes, flags, battle plans and ordnance are all doubtless
flawless, although there could have been no Sgt. "Buster" Kilrain in the
20th Maine, for the unavoidable reason that "Buster" was never used as a
name until Buster Keaton used it.

The actors do what they can, although you can sense them winding up to
deliver pithy quotations. Robert Duvall, playing Gen. Robert E. Lee, learns
of Jackson's battlefield amputation and reflects sadly, "He has lost his
left arm, and I have lost my right." His eyes almost twinkle as he envisions
that one ending up in Bartlett's. Stephen Lang, playing Jackson, has a
deathbed scene so wordy, as he issues commands to imaginary subordinates and
then prepares himself to cross over the river, that he seems to be stalling.
Except for Lee, a nonbeliever, both sides trust in God, just like at the
Super Bowl.

Donzaleigh Abernathy plays the other African-American speaking role, that of
a maid named Martha who attempts to jump the gun on Reconstruction by
staying behind when her white employers evacuate and telling the arriving
Union troops it is her own house. Later, when they commandeer it as a
hospital, she looks a little resentful. This episode, like many others, is
kept so resolutely at the cameo level that we realize material of such scope
and breadth can be shoehorned into 3-1/2 hours only by sacrificing depth.

"Gods and Generals" is the kind of movie beloved by people who never go to
the movies, because they are primarily interested in something else--the
Civil War, for example--and think historical accuracy is a virtue instead of
an attribute. The film plays like a special issue of American Heritage. Ted
Turner is one of its prime movers and gives himself an instantly
recognizable cameo appearance. Since sneak previews must already have
informed him that his sudden appearance draws a laugh, apparently he can
live with that.

Note: The same director, Ron Maxwell, made the much superior "Gettysburg"
(1993), and at the end informs us that the third title in the trilogy will
be "The Last Full Measure." Another line from the same source may serve as a
warning: "The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here."

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Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:14 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] DARK BLUE / *** (R)

DARK BLUE / *** (R)

February 21, 2003

Sgt. Eldon Perry Jr. :    Kurt Russell
Bobby Keough :    Scott Speedman
Deputy Chief Holland:    Ving Rhames
Jack Van Meter:    Brendan Gleeson
Sgt. Beth Williamson:    Michael Michele
Sally Perry:     Lolita Davidovich

United Artists presents a film directed by Ron Shelton. Written by David
Ayer. Based on a story by James Ellroy. Running time: 116 minutes. Rated R
(for violence, language and brief sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

Two cops. One a veteran, one a rookie. One corrupt, the other still
learning. Two sets of bad guys, one pair guilty of a heartless crime, the
other pair guilty, but not of this crime. Two women, one a disillusioned
wife, the other a disillusioned girlfriend. Two superior officers, one
rotten, the other determined to bring him down. All the action takes place
in the final days before the Rodney King verdict was announced in April
1992, and in the immediate aftermath, when the LAPD abandoned some
neighborhoods to looters and arsonists.

"Dark Blue" is a formula picture in its broad outlines, but a very
particular film in its characters and details. It doesn't redeem the formula
or even tinker with it very much, but in a performance by Kurt Russell and
in some location work on the angry streets, it has something to say and an
urgent way of saying it.

The movie is based on a story by James Ellroy, a novelist who knows Los
Angeles like the back of his hand, just after it has been stepped on. The
screenplay for "L.A. Confidential" came from him, and a lot of hard-boiled
fiction, punched out in short paragraphs, as if he has to keep ducking. He's
been trying to get this story made into a movie for so long it was
originally set during the Watts Riots. The update works better, because the
King verdict fits more neatly with his police department ripe for reform.

Russell and Scott Speedman star as Perry and Keough, two detectives who
prowl the streets like free-lance buccaneers; we know this type and even the
veteran-rookie relationship from "Training Day," "Narc" and many other
movies. The older cop explains you have to play tough to get things done,
and the younger one tries to go along, even though he keeps failing the
Hemingway test (it's immoral if you feel bad after you do it). They're the
street agents, in a sense, of top cop Jack Van Meter (Brendan Gleeson). He
has a couple of snitches he's protecting, and after they murder four people
in a convenience store robbery, he orders Perry and Keough to frame and kill
a couple of sex criminals for the crimes. Now young Keough, having balked at
his first chance to execute a perp in the streets, gets a second chance.

The movie surrounds this situation with a lot of other material--too much,
so that it sometimes feels hurried. Perry is married to one of those cop
wives (Lolita Davidovich) who is stuck with the thankless task of telling
him he just doesn't see her anymore ("You care more about the people you
hate"). Keough is dating a young black woman (Michael Michelle) who insists
they not tell each other their last names. A man who sleeps with a woman who
will not reveal her last name is marginally to be preferred, I suppose, to a
man who will sleep with a woman who tells her his name but he forgets it in
the morning.

The good cop, Deputy Chief Arthur Holland, played by Ving Rhames, knows Van
Meter is crooked and has to decide whether to stay and prove it, or take an
offer to become police chief of Cleveland. Meanwhile, the clock ticks toward
an "innocent" verdict for the cops who were videotaped while beating Rodney
King. (This does not stop the police academy from scheduling a promotion
ceremony at the very same time, so that everyone will be in the same room
when they are required for the big scene).

I'm making the film sound too obvious. It follows well-worn pathways, but it
has a literate, colloquial screenplay by David Ayer ("Training Day," "The
Fast and the Furious"), whose dialogue sounds as if someone might actually
say it, and the direction is by Ron Shelton ("Blaze," "Bull Durham"), who
marches us right up to cliches and then pulls them out from under us.

Above all, the movie has the Kurt Russell performance going for it. Every
time I see Russell or Val Kilmer in a role, I'm reminded of their
"Tombstone" (1993), which got lost in the year-end holiday shuffle and never
got the recognition it deserved. Russell has reserves he can draw on when he
needs them, and he needs them here, as Perry descends into self-disgust and
then, finally, understands the world and the role he has chosen. There is a
late shot in which we look over his character's shoulder as Los Angeles
burns all the way to the horizon. It takes a lot of set-up to get away with
a pay-off like that, but Shelton and Russell earn it.

"Dark Blue" is not a great movie, but it has moments that go off the meter
and find visceral impact. The characters driving through the riot-torn
streets of Los Angeles provide some of them, and the savage, self-hating
irony of Russell's late dialogue provides the rest. It is a clanging
coincidence that the LAPD would be indicted just at the moment it was being
exonerated, but then that's what the movies are for, sometimes: To provide
the outcomes that history overlooked.

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Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:39 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE / ZERO STARS (R)

THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE / ZERO STARS (R)

February 21, 2003

David Gale:    Kevin Spacey
Bitsey Bloom:    Kate Winslet
Constance Harraway : Laura Linney
Zack:    Gabriel Mann
Dusty:    Matt Craven
Berlin:    Rhona Mitra
Braxton Belyeu:    Leon Rippy
Duke Grover:    Jim Beaver

Universal Pictures and Intermedia Films present a film directed by Alan
Parker. Written by Charles Randolph. Running time: 130 minutes. Rated R (for
violent images, nudity, language and sexuality).

BY ROGER EBERT

"The Life of David Gale" tells the story of a famous opponent of capital
punishment who, in what he must find an absurdly ironic development, finds
himself on Death Row in Texas, charged with the murder of a woman who was
also opposed to capital punishment. This is a plot, if ever there was one,
to illustrate King Lear's complaint, "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the
gods; They kill us for their sport." I am aware this is the second time in
two weeks I have been compelled to quote Lear, but there are times when
Eminem simply will not do.

David Gale is an understandably bitter man, played by Kevin Spacey, who
protests his innocence to a reporter named Bitsey Bloom (Kate Winslet), whom
he has summoned to Texas for that purpose. He claims to have been framed by
right-wing supporters of capital punishment because his death would provide
such poetic irony in support of the noose, the gas or the chair. Far from
killing Constance Harraway (Laura Linney), he says, he had every reason not
to, and he explains that to Bitsey in flashbacks that make up about half of
the story.

Bitsey becomes convinced of David's innocence. She is joined in her
investigation by the eager and sexy intern Zack (Gabriel Mann), and they
become aware that they are being followed everywhere in a pickup truck by a
gaunt-faced fellow in a cowboy hat, who is either a right-wing death-penalty
supporter who really killed the dead woman, or somebody else. If he is
somebody else, then he is obviously following them around with the
MacGuffin, in this case a videotape suggesting disturbing aspects of the
death of Constance.

The man in the cowboy hat illustrates my recently renamed Principle of the
Unassigned Character, formerly known less elegantly as the Law of Economy of
Character Development. This principle teaches us that the prominent
character who seems to be extraneous to the action will probably hold the
key to it. The cowboy lives in one of those tumble-down shacks filled with
flies and peanut butter, with old calendars on the walls. The yard has more
bedsprings than the house has beds.

The acting in "The Life of David Gale" is splendidly done but serves a
meretricious cause. The direction is by the British director Alan Parker,
who at one point had never made a movie I wholly disapproved of. Now has he
ever. The secrets of the plot must remain unrevealed by me, so that you can
be offended by them yourself, but let it be said this movie is about as
corrupt, intellectually bankrupt and morally dishonest as it could possibly
be without David Gale actually hiring himself out as a joker at the court of
Saddam Hussein.

I am sure the filmmakers believe their film is against the death penalty. I
believe it supports it and hopes to discredit the opponents of the penalty
as unprincipled fraudsters. What I do not understand is the final revelation
on the videotape. Surely David Gale knows that Bitsey Bloom cannot keep it
private without violating the ethics of journalism and sacrificing the
biggest story of her career. So it serves no functional purpose except to
give a cheap thrill to the audience slackjaws. It is shameful.

One of the things that annoys me is that the story is set in Texas and not
just in any old state--a state like Arkansas, for example, where the 1996
documentary "Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills"
convincingly explains why three innocent kids are in prison because they
wore black and listened to heavy metal, while the likely killer keeps
pushing himself onscreen and wildly signaling his guilt. Nor is it set in
our own state of Illinois, where Death Row was run so shabbily that former
Gov. George Ryan finally threw up his hands and declared the whole system
rotten.

No, the movie is set in Texas, which in a good year all by itself carries
out half the executions in America. Death Row in Texas is like the Roach
Motel: Roach checks in, doesn't check out. When George W. Bush was Texas
governor, he claimed to carefully consider each and every execution,
although a study of his office calendar shows he budgeted 15 minutes per
condemned man (we cannot guess how many of these minutes were devoted to
pouring himself a cup of coffee before settling down to the job). Still,
when you're killing someone every other week and there's an average of 400
more waiting their turn, you have to move right along.

Spacey and Parker are honorable men. Why did they go to Texas and make this
silly movie? The last shot made me want to throw something at the
screen--maybe Spacey and Parker.

You can make movies that support capital punishment ("The Executioner's
Song") or oppose it ("Dead Man Walking") or are conflicted ("In Cold
Blood"). But while Texas continues to warehouse condemned men with a system
involving lawyers who are drunk, asleep or absent; confessions that are
beaten out of the helpless, and juries that overwhelmingly prefer to execute
black defendants instead of white ones, you can't make this movie. Not in
Texas.

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Date: 22 Feb 2003 02:17:41 GMT
From: [e-mail]
Subject: [MV] THE SON (LE FILS) / **** (Not rated)

THE SON (LE FILS) / **** (Not rated)

February 21, 2003

Olivier:    Olivier Gourmet
Francis:    Morgan Marinne
Magali:    Isabella Soupart
Philippo:    Remy Renaud
Omar:    Nassim Hassaini
Raoul:    Kevin Leroy
Steve:    Felicien Pitsaer

New Yorker Films presents a film written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc
Dardenne. No MPAA rating (no objectionable material). Running time: 103
minutes. In French with English subtitles.

BY ROGER EBERT

"The Son" is complete, self-contained and final. All the critic can bring to
it is his admiration. It needs no insight or explanation. It sees everything
and explains all. It is as assured and flawless a telling of sadness and joy
as I have ever seen.

I agree with Stanley Kauffmann in The New Republic, that a second viewing
only underlines the film's greatness, but I would not want to have missed my
first viewing, so I will write carefully. The directors, Jean-Pierre and Luc
Dardenne, do not make the slightest effort to mislead or deceive us. Nor do
they make any effort to explain. They simply (not so simply) show, and we
lean forward, hushed, reading the faces, watching the actions, intent on
sharing the feelings of the characters.

Let me describe a very early sequence in enough detail for you to appreciate
how the brothers work. Olivier (Olivier Gourmet), a Belgian carpenter,
supervises a shop where teenage boys work. He corrects a boy using a power
saw. We wonder, because we have been beaten down by formula films, if
someone is going to lose a finger or a hand. No. The plank is going to be
cut correctly.

A woman comes into the shop and asks Olivier if he can take another
apprentice. No, he has too many already. He suggests the welding shop. The
moment the woman and the young applicant leave, Olivier slips from the shop
and, astonishingly, scurries after them like a feral animal and spies on
them through a door opening and the angle of a corridor. A little later,
strong and agile, he leaps up onto a metal cabinet to steal a look through a
high window.

Then he tells the woman he will take the boy after all. She says the boy is
in the shower room. The hand-held camera, which follows Olivier everywhere,
usually in close medium shot, follows him as he looks around a corner (we
intuit it is a corner; two walls form an apparent join). Is he watching the
boy take a shower? Is Olivier gay? No. We have seen too many movies. He is
simply looking at the boy asleep, fully clothed, on the floor of the shower
room. After a long, absorbed look, he wakes up the boy and tells him he has
a job.

Now you must absolutely stop reading and go see the film. Walk out of the
house today, tonight, and see it, if you are open to simplicity, depth,
maturity, silence, in a film that sounds in the echo-chambers of the heart.
"The Son" is a great film. If you find you cannot respond to it, that is the
degree to which you have room to grow. I am not being arrogant; I grew
during this film. It taught me things about the cinema I did not know.

What did I learn? How this movie is only possible because of the way it was
made, and would have been impossible with traditional narrative styles. Like
rigorous documentarians, the Dardenne brothers follow Olivier, learning
everything they know about him by watching him. They do not point, underline
or send signals by music. There are no reaction shots because the entire
movie is their reaction shot. The brothers make the consciousness of the
Olivier character into the auteur of the film.

.. So now you have seen the film. If you were spellbound, moved by its
terror and love, struck that the visual style is the only possible one for
this story, then let us agree that rarely has a film told us less and told
us all, both at once.

Olivier trains wards of the Belgian state--gives them a craft after they are
released from a juvenile home. Francis (Morgan Marinne) was in such a home
from his 11th to 16th years. Olivier asks him what his crime was. He stole a
car radio.

"And got five years?"

"There was a death."

"What kind of a death?"

There was a child in the car who Francis did not see. The child began to cry
and would not let go of Francis, who was frightened and "grabbed him by the
throat."

"Strangled him," Olivier corrects.

"I didn't mean to," Francis says.

"Do you regret what you did?"

"Obviously."

"Why obviously?"

"Five years locked up. That's worth regretting."

You have seen the film and know what Olivier knows about this death. You
have seen it and know the man and boy are at a remote lumber yard on a
Sunday. You have seen it and know how hard the noises are in the movie, the
heavy planks banging down one upon another. How it hurts even to hear them.
The film does not use these sounds or the towers of lumber to create
suspense or anything else. It simply respects the nature of lumber, as
Olivier does and is teaching Francis to do. You expect, because you have
been trained by formula films, an accident or an act of violence. What you
could not expect is the breathtaking spiritual beauty of the ending of the
film, which is nevertheless no less banal than everything that has gone
before.

Olivier Gourmet won the award for best actor at Cannes 2002. He plays an
ordinary man behaving at all times in an ordinary way. Here is the key:
ordinary for him. The word for his behavior--not his performance, his
behavior--is "exemplary." We use the word to mean "praiseworthy." Its first
meaning is "fit for imitation."

Everything that Olivier does is exemplary. Walk like this. Hold yourself
just so. Measure exactly. Do not use the steel hammer when the wooden mallet
is required. Center the nail. Smooth first with the file, then with the
sandpaper. Balance the plank and lean into the ladder. Pay for your own
apple turnover. Hold a woman who needs to be calmed. Praise a woman who has
found she is pregnant. Find out the truth before you tell the truth. Do not
use words to discuss what cannot be explained. Be willing to say, "I don't
know." Be willing to have a son and teach him a trade. Be willing to be a
father.

A recent movie got a laugh by saying there is a rule in "The Godfather" to
cover every situation. There can never be that many rules. "The Son" is
about a man who needs no rules because he respects his trade and knows his
tools. His trade is life. His tools are his loss and his hope.

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