From: owner-movies-digest@lists.xmission.com (movies-digest) To: movies-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: movies-digest V2 #353 Reply-To: movies-digest Sender: owner-movies-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-movies-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk movies-digest Monday, May 20 2002 Volume 02 : Number 353 [MV] THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13) [MV] UNFAITHFUL / *** (R) [MV] BARAN / ***1/2 (PG) [MV] HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13) [MV] SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13) [MV] THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated) [MV] JASON X / 1/2* (R) [MV] LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13) [MV] THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13) [MV] WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:13 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13) THE NEW GUY / ** (PG-13) May 10, 2002 Dizzy/Gil: DJ Qualls Bear Harrison: Lyle Lovett Luther: Eddie Griffin Danielle: Eliza Dushku Nora: Zooey Deschanel Columbia Pictures/Revolution Studios presents a film directed by Ed Decter. Written by David Kendall. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexual content, language, vulgarity, crude humor and mild drug references). Opening today at local theaters. BY ROGER EBERT DJ Qualls stars in "The New Guy" as a high school misfit who switches schools and gets a fresh start. At Rocky Creek, he was the target of cruel jokes almost daily (sample: being tied to a chair while wearing false breasts), but now, at Eastland High and with a new haircut, he is seen as a cool hero. The point is, he explains with relief, "today nobody stuffed me in my locker or singed off my ass hairs." The movie made from this material is quirkier than I would have expected, considering that the building blocks have been scavenged from the trash heap of earlier teenage comedies. Much of the credit goes to Qualls (from "Road Trip"), who not only plays the son of Lyle Lovett in this movie but looks biologically descended from him, no mean feat. He has a goofy grin and an offhand way with dialogue that make him much more likable than your usual teenage comedy hero. Known at one school by his nickname Dizzy and at the other by his first name Gil, D/G does not approach the dating game with high expectations. Here's how he asks a popular girl out on a date: "Maybe sometime if you would like to drink coffee near me, I would pay." There is a school scandal at Rocky Creek when a librarian does something painful and embarrassing I cannot describe here to that part of his anatomy I cannot name, and he ends up in prison. (His condition or crime--I am not sure--is described as Tourette's syndrome, which is either a misdiagnosis, a mispronunciation, or an example of Tourette's in action.) Yes, prison. The movie begins with a direct-to-camera narration by Luther (Eddie Griffin), who is in prison for undisclosed reasons and is the narrator of this film for reasons even more deeply concealed. Perhaps my attention strayed, but I was unable to discern any connection between Luther and the other characters, and was baffled by how Dizzy/Gil was in prison whenever he needed to get advice from Luther, and then out again whenever it was necessary for him to rejoin the story in progress. Perhaps a subplot, or even a whole movie, is missing from the middle. In any event, Dizzy/Gil is seen as a neat guy at the new school, especially after he unfurls a giant American flag at football practice and stands in front of it dressed as George C. Scott in "Patton" and delivers a speech so rousing that the team wins for the first time in five years. He also steals a horse and rides around on it more than is necessary. The movie has all the shots you would expect in a movie of this sort: cheerleaders, football heroics, pratfalls. Some of them are cruel, as when a bully stuffs a midget in a trash can and rolls it downhill. Others are predictably vulgar, as when Dizzy snatches a surveillance camera from the wall and (aided by its extension cord of infinite length) uses it to send a live broadcast into every classroom of a hated teacher struggling with a particularly difficult bowel movement. Sometimes even verbal humor is attempted, as when a high school counselor (Illeana Douglas) tells our hero he is in denial, and helpfully explains, "Denial is not just a river in Egypt.'' I don't know why this movie was made or who it was made for. It is however not assembly-line fodder, and seems occasionally to be the work of inmates who have escaped from the Hollywood High School Movie Asylum. It makes little sense, fails as often as it succeeds, and yet is not hateful and is sometimes quite cheerfully original. And DJ Qualls is a kid you can't help but like--a statement I do not believe I have ever before made about the hero of a teenage vulgarian movie. Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:20 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] UNFAITHFUL / *** (R) UNFAITHFUL / *** (R) May 10, 2002 Connie Sumner: Diane Lane Edward Sumner: Richard Gere Paul Martel: Olivier Martinez Charlie Sumner: Erik Per Sullivan Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Adrian Lyne. Written by Alvin Sargent and William Broyles Jr, based on a script by Claude Chabrol. Running time: 123 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality, partial nudity, language and a scene of violence). BY ROGER EBERT The heart has its reasons, said the French philosopher Pascal, quoted by the American philosopher Woody Allen. It is a useful insight when no other reasons seem apparent. Connie Sumner's heart and other organs have their reasons for straying outside a happy marriage in "Unfaithful,'' but the movie doesn't say what they are. This is not necessarily a bad thing, sparing us tortured Freudian explanations and labored plot points. It is almost always more interesting to observe behavior than to listen to reasons. Connie (Diane Lane) and her husband, Edward (Richard Gere), live with their 9-year-old son, Charlie (Erik Per Sullivan), in one of those Westchester County houses that has a room for every mood. They are happy together, or at least the movie supplies us with no reasons why they are unhappy. One windy day she drives into New York City, is literally blown down on top of a rare book dealer named Paul Martel (Olivier Martinez), and is invited upstairs for Band-Aids and a cup of tea. He occupies a large flat filled with shelves of books and art objects. Martel is your average Calvin Klein model as a bibliophile. He has the Spanish looks, the French accent, the permanent three-day beard, and the strength to suspend a woman indefinitely in any position while making love. He is also cool in his seduction methods. Instead of making a crude pass, he asks her to accept a book as a gift from him, and directs her down an aisle to the last book on the end of the second shelf from the top, where he tells her what page to turn to, and then joins her in reciting the words there: Be happy for this moment, for this moment is your life. Does it occur to Connie that Martel planted that book for just such an occasion as this? No, because she likes to be treated in such a way, and soon she's on the phone with a transparent ruse to get up to his apartment again, where Martel overcomes her temporary stall in bed by commanding her: Hit me! That breaks the logjam, and soon they're involved in a passionate affair that involves arduous sex in his apartment and quick sex in restrooms, movie theaters and corridors. (The movie they go to see is Tati's "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday,'' which, despite its stature on my list of The Great Movies, fails to compete with furtive experiments that would no doubt have Hulot puffing furiously at his pipe.) Edward senses that something is wrong. There are clues, but mostly he picks up on her mood, and eventually hires a man to shadow her. Discovering where Martel lives, he visits there one day, and what happens then I will not reveal. What does not happen then, I am happy to reveal, is that the movie doesn't turn into a standard thriller in which death stalks Westchester County and the wife and husband fear murder by each other, or by Martel. That's what's intriguing about the film: Instead of pumping up the plot with recycled manufactured thrills, it's content to contemplate two reasonably sane adults who get themselves into an almost insoluble dilemma. "Unfaithful" contains, as all movies involving suburban families are required to contain, a scene where the parents sit proudly in the audience while their child performs bravely in a school play. But there are no detectives lurking in the shadows to arrest them, and no killers skulking in the parking lot with knives or tire-irons. No, the meaning of the scene is simply, movingly, that these two people in desperate trouble are nevertheless able to smile at their son on the stage. The movie was directed by Adrian Lyne, best known for higher-voltage films like "Fatal Attraction" and "Indecent Proposal.'' This film is based on "La Femme Infidele" (1969) by Claude Chabrol, which itself is an update of Madame Bovary. Lyne's film is juicier and more passionate than Chabrol's, but both share the fairly daring idea of showing a plot that is entirely about illicit passion and its consequences in a happy marriage. Although cops turn up from time to time in "Unfaithful," this is not a crime story, but a marital tragedy. Richard Gere and Diane Lane are well-suited to the roles, exuding a kind of serene materialism that seems happily settled in suburbia. It is all the more shocking when Lane revisits Martel's apartment because there is no suggestion that she is unhappy with Gere, starved for sex, or especially impulsive. She goes back up there because--well, because she wants to. He's quite a guy. On one visit he shows her The Joy of Cooking in Braille. And then his fingers brush hers as if he's reading The Joy of Sex on her skin. Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:28 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BARAN / ***1/2 (PG) BARAN / ***1/2 (PG) May 3, 2002 Lateef: Hossein Abedini Rahmat/Baran: Zahra Bahrami Memar: Mohammad Reza Naji Bric-a-brac trader: Hossein Mahjoub Soltan: Abbas Rahimi Najaf: Gholam Ali Bakhsi Miramax Films presents a film written and directed by Majid Majidi. Running time: 99 minutes. In Farsi and Dari with English subtitles. Rated PG.(for language and brief violence). BY ROGER EBERT What are they like, over there in Iran? Are they all glowering fanatics, stewing in resentment of America? What's your mental image? When a land is distant, unknown and labeled as an enemy, it's easy to think in simple terms. No doubt Iranians are as quick to think evil about us as we are to think evil about them. The intriguing thing about an Iranian movie like "Baran" is that it gives human faces to these strangers. It could be a useful learning tool for those who have not traveled widely, who never see foreign films, who reduce whole nations to labels. The movie is a romantic fable about a construction worker. His name is Lateef (Hossein Abedini), and he labors on a building site not far from the border with Afghanistan. All of the labor here is manual, including hauling 50-pound bags of cement up a series of ramps. Lateef doesn't actually work very hard, since he is Iranian and most of the labor is being done by underpaid refugees from Afghanistan. Lateef is the tea boy, bringing hot cups to the workers and drinking more than his own share. We learn at the beginning of the movie that millions of Afghanis have poured into Iran as refugees. Since it is illegal to hire them, they work secretly for low wages, like undocumented Mexicans in America. Many are fleeing the Taliban for the comparatively greater freedom and prosperity of Iran, a distinction that may seem small to us, but not to them. (The title cards carrying this information were already in place when the film debuted at the 2001 Montreal and Toronto festivals, and were not added post-9/11.) One day there is an accident on the site. A man named Najaf injures his leg, and that is a catastrophe, because he has five children to feed in the squatters' camp where his family lives. Najaf sends his son Rahmat (Zahra Bahrami) to take his place, but the son is small, slight and young, and staggers under the burden of the concrete sacks. So Memar, the construction boss, who pays low wages but is not unkind, gives Rahmat the job of tea boy and reassigns Lateef to real work. Lateef is lazy, immature, resentful. He trashes the kitchen in revenge, and makes things hard for Rahmat. Yet at the same time he finds something intriguing about the new tea boy, and eventually Lateef discovers the secret: The boy is a girl. So desperate for money was Rahmat's family that in a society where women are strictly forbidden from mixing with men on a job like this, a deception was planned. In keeping the secret, Lateef begins his journey to manhood and tolerance. The outlines of "Baran," as they emerge, seem as much like an ancient fable as a modern story. Middle Eastern society, so insistent on the division between men and women, has a literature filled with stories about men and women in disguise, passing through each other's worlds. The vast gulf between Lateef and Rahmat is dramatized by the way they essentially fall in love without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, watching conditions on the work site and seeing raids by government agents looking for illegal workers, we get an idea of Iran's ground-level economy. My description perhaps makes the film sound grim and gray, covered with a silt of concrete dust. Not at all. It is the latest work by Majid Majidi, whose "The Children of Heaven" (1997) was a heartwarming fable about a brother and sister who lose a pair of shoes and try to hide this calamity from their parents. The director uses natural colors and painterly compositions to make even the most spartan locations look beautiful, and as Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com observes: "Majidi uses sunlight, a completely free resource if you can time your filmmaking around it, as a dazzling special effect." What happens between Rahmat and Lateef I will leave you to discover. There are many surprises along the way, one of the best involving a man Lateef meets during a long journey--an itinerant shoemaker, who has thoughtful observations about life. "Baran" is the latest in a flowering of good films from Iran, and gives voice to the moderates there. It shows people existing and growing in the cracks of their society's inflexible walls. Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:40 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13) HOLLYWOOD ENDING / **1/2 (PG-13) May 3, 2002 Val Waxman: Woody Allen Ellie: Tea Leoni Ed: George Hamilton Lori: Debra Messing Al Hack: Mark Rydell Hal: Treat Williams DreamWorks presents a film written and directed by Woody Allen. Running time: 114 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some drug references and sexual material). BY ROGER EBERT Val Waxman is a movie director going through a slow period in his career. Maybe it's more like a slow decade. He left his last movie project, explaining, "I quit over a big thing." What was that? "They fired me." Then he gets a big break, Galaxie Studios has just green-lighted "The City that Never Sleeps," and his ex-wife has convinced the studio head that Val, despite his laundry list of psychosomatic anxieties and neurotic tics, is the right guy to direct it. Woody Allen's new comedy "Hollywood Ending" quickly adds a complication to this setup: Waxman goes blind. It may all be in his mind, but he can't see a thing. For his ever-smiling agent Al Hack (Mark Rydell), this is insufficient cause to leave the project. Al says he will glide through the picture at Waxman's elbow, and no one will ever notice. When the studio demurs at the agent being on the set, Al and Val recruit another seeing-eye man: The business student (Barney Cheng) who has been hired as the translator for the Chinese cinematographer. The translator says he'll blend right in: "I will practice casual banter." Further complications: Waxman's ex-wife Ellie (Tea Leoni) is now engaged to Hal (Treat Williams), the head of Galaxie Studios. Waxman casts his current squeeze, Lori (Debra Messing), for a supporting role in the movie, but while Lori is away at a spa getting in shape, co-star Sharon (Tiffani Thiessen) moves on Waxman. In his dressing room, she removes her robe while explaining that she is eager to perform sexual favors for all of her directors (Waxman, who cannot see her abundant cleavage, helpfully suggests she advertise this willingness in the Directors' Guild magazine). What is Val Waxman's movie about? We have no idea. Neither does Waxman, who agrees with every suggestion so he won't have to make any decisions. He's not only blind but apparently has ears that don't work in stereo, since he can't tell where people are standing by the sound of their voices, and spends much of his time gazing into space. No one notices this, maybe because directors are such gods on movies that they can get away with anything. The situation is funny and Allen of course populates it with zingy one-liners, orchestrated with much waving of the hands (he's a virtuoso of body language). But somehow the movie doesn't get over the top. It uses the blindness gimmick in fairly obvious ways, and doesn't bring it to another level--to build on the blindness instead of just depending on it. When Waxman confesses his handicap to the wrong woman--a celebrity journalist--because he thinks he's sitting next to someone he can trust, that's very funny. But too often he's just seen with a vacant stare, trying to bluff his way through conversations. Why not use the realities of a movie set to suggest predicaments for the secretly blind? Would Val always need to take his translator into the honey wagon with him? Could there be tragic misunderstandings in the catering line? Would he wander unknowingly into a shot? How about the cinematographer offering him a choice of lenses, and he chooses the lens cap? David Mamet's "State and Main" does a better job of twisting the realities of a movie into the materials of comedy. Because Allen is a great verbal wit and because he's effortlessly ingratiating, I had a good time at the movie even while not really buying it. I enjoyed Tea Leoni's sunny disposition, although she spends too much time being the peacemaker between the two men in her life and not enough time playing a character who is funny in herself. George Hamilton, as a tanned studio flunky, suggests a familiar Hollywood type, the guy who is drawing a big salary for being on the set without anybody being quite sure what he's there for (he carries a golf club to give himself an identity--the guy who carries the golf club). And Mark Rydell smiles and smiles and smiles, as an agent who reasons that anything he has 10 percent of must be an unqualified good thing. As Waxman's seeing eyes, Barney Cheng adds a nice element: Not only is Waxman blind, but he is being given an inexact description of the world through the translator's English, which is always slightly off-track. I liked the movie without loving it. It's not great Woody Allen, like "Sweet and Lowdown" or "Bullets Over Broadway," but it's smart and sly, and the blindness is an audacious idea. It also has moments when you can hear Allen editorializing in the dialogue. My favorite is this exchange: "He has made some very financially successful American films." "That should tell you everything you need to know about him." Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:20:54 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13) SPIDER-MAN / **1/2 (PG-13) May 3, 2002 Spider-Man/Peter Parker: Tobey Maguire Green Goblin/ Norman Osborn: Willem Dafoe Mary Jane: Kirsten Dunst Harry Osborn: James Franco Ben Parker: Cliff Robertson May Parker: Rosemary Harris Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Sam Raimi. Written by David Koepp. Based on the Marvel comic by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Running time: 121 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for stylized violence and action). BY ROGER EBERT Imagine "Superman" with a Clark Kent more charismatic than the Man of Steel, and you'll understand how "Spider-Man" goes wrong. Tobey Maguire is pitch-perfect as the socially retarded Peter Parker, but when he becomes Spider-Man, the film turns to action sequences that zip along like perfunctory cartoons. Not even during Spidey's first experimental outings do we feel that flesh and blood are contending with gravity. Spidey soars too quickly through the skies of Manhattan; he's as convincing as Mighty Mouse. The appeal of the best sequences in the Superman and Batman movies is that they lend weight and importance to comic-book images. Within the ground rules set by each movie, they even have plausibility. As a reader of the Spider-Man comics, I admired the vertiginous frames showing Spidey dangling from terrifying heights. He had the powers of a spider and the instincts of a human being, but the movie is split between a plausible Peter Parker and an inconsequential superhero. Consider a sequence early in the film, after Peter Parker is bitten by a mutant spider and discovers his new powers. His hand is sticky. He doesn't need glasses anymore. He was scrawny yesterday, but today he's got muscles. The movie shows him becoming aware of these facts, but insufficiently amazed (or frightened) by them. He learns how to spin and toss webbing, and finds that he can make enormous leaps. And then there's a scene where he's like a kid with a new toy, jumping from one rooftop to another, making giant leaps, whooping with joy. Remember the first time you saw the characters defy gravity in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? They transcended gravity, but they didn't dismiss it: They seemed to possess weight, dimension and presence. Spider-Man as he leaps across the rooftops is landing too lightly, rebounding too much like a bouncing ball. He looks like a video game figure, not like a person having an amazing experience. The other super-being in the movie is the Green Goblin, who surfs the skies in jet-shoes. He, too, looks like a drawing being moved quickly around a frame, instead of like a character who has mastered a daring form of locomotion. He's handicapped, too, by his face, which looks like a high-tech action figure with a mouth that doesn't move. I understand why it's immobile (we're looking at a mask), but I'm not persuaded; the movie could simply ordain that the Green Goblin's exterior shell has a face that's mobile, and the character would become more interesting. (True, Spider-Man has no mouth, and Peter Parker barely opens his--the words slip out through a reluctant slit.) The film tells Spidey's origin story--who Peter Parker is, who Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) and Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson) are, how Peter's an outcast at school, how he burns with unrequited love for Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), how he peddles photos of Spider-Man to cigar-chomping editor J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons). Peter Parker was crucial in the evolution of Marvel comics because he was fallible and had recognizable human traits. He was a nerd, a loner, socially inept, insecure, a poor kid being raised by relatives. Maguire gets all of that just right, and I enjoyed the way Dunst is able to modulate her gradually increasing interest in this loser who begins to seem attractive to her. I also liked the complexity of the villain, who in his Dr. Jekyll manifestation is brilliant tycoon Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) and in his Mr. Hyde persona is a cackling psychopath. Osborn's son Harry (James Franco) is a rich kid, embarrassed by his dad's wealth, who is Peter's best and only friend, and Norman is affectionate toward Peter even while their alter-egos are deadly enemies. That works, and there's an effective scene where Osborn has a conversation with his invisible dark side. The origin story is well told, and the characters will not disappoint anyone who values the original comic books. It's in the action scenes that things fall apart. Consider the scene where Spider-Man is given a cruel choice between saving Mary Jane or a cable car full of school kids. He tries to save both, so that everyone dangles from webbing that seems about to pull loose. The visuals here could have given an impression of the enormous weights and tensions involved, but instead the scene seems more like a bloodless storyboard of the idea. In other CGI scenes, Spidey swoops from great heights to street level and soars back up among the skyscrapers again with such dizzying speed that it seems less like a stunt than like a fast-forward version of a stunt. I have one question about the Peter Parker character: Does the movie go too far with his extreme social paralysis? Peter tells Mary Jane he just wants to be friends. "Only a friend?" she repeats. "That's all I have to give," he says. How so? Impotent? Spidey-sense has skewed his sexual instincts? Afraid his hands will get stuck? Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:07 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated) THE PIANO TEACHER / ***1/2 (Not rated) April 26, 2002 Erika Kohut: Isabelle Huppert The Mother: Annie Girardot Walter Klemmer: Benoit Magimel Mrs. Schober: Susanne Lothar Dr. Blonskij: Udo Samel Anna Schober: Anna Sigalevitch Mme Blonskij: Cornelia Kondgen Baritone: Thomas Weinhappel Kino International presents a film written and directed by Michael Haneke. Based on the novel by Elfriede Jelinek. Running time: 130 minutes. No MPAA rating (intended for adults). In French with English subtitles. Opening today at Landmark Century. BY ROGER EBERT There is a self-assurance in Isabelle Huppert that defies all explanation. I interviewed her in 1977, asking her how she got her start in the movies. She knocked on the door of a Paris studio, she said, and announced, "I am here." Was she kidding? I peered at her. I thought not. In Michael Haneke's "The Piano Teacher," which won three awards at Cannes 2001 (best actress, actor and film), she plays a bold woman with a secret wound. She is Erika Kohut, 40ish, a respected instructor at a conservatory of music in Vienna. Demanding, severe, distant, unsmiling, she leads a secret life of self-mutilation. That she sleeps in the same bed with her domineering mother is no doubt a clue--but to what? Erika is fascinated with the sexual weaknesses and tastes of men. There is a scene where she visits a porn shop in Vienna, creating an uncomfortable tension by her very presence. The male clients are presumably there to indulge their fantasies about women, but faced with a real one, they look away, disturbed or ashamed. If she were obviously a prostitute, they could handle that, but she's apparently there to indulge her own tastes, and that takes all the fun out of it, for them. She returns their furtive glances with a shriveling gaze. She has a handsome young student named Walter (Benoit Magimel). She notices him in a particular way. They have a clash of wills. He makes it clear he is interested in her. Not long after, in one of the school's restrooms, they have a sexual encounter--all the more electrifying because while she shocks him with her brazen behavior, she refuses to actually have sex with him. She wants the upper hand. What games does she want to play? A detailed and subtle plan of revenge against her mother is involved, and Walter, who is not really into sadomasochism, allows himself to be enlisted out of curiosity, or perhaps because he hopes she will yield to him at the end of the scenario. Does it work out that way? Some audience members will dislike the ending, but with a film like this any conventional ending would be a cop-out. Most sexual relationships in the movies have a limited number of possible outcomes, but this one is a mystery. Another mystery is, what's wrong with Erika? She is not simply an adventuress, a sexual experimenter, a risk-taker. Some buried pathology is at work. Walter's idle thoughts about an experienced older woman have turned into nightmares about experiences he doesn't even want to know about. Huppert often plays repressed, closed-off, sexually alert women. At 47, she looks curiously as she did at 22; she is thin, with fine, freckled skin that does not seem to weather, and seems destined to be one of those women who was never really young and then never really ages. Many of her roles involve women it is not safe to scorn. Magimel won his best actor award for standing up to her force. He doesn't play the standard movie character we'd expect in this role (the immature twentysomething boy who flowers under the tutelage of an older woman). Instead, he's a capable, confident young man who thinks he has met hidden wildness and then finds it is madness. The movie seems even more highly charged because it is wrapped in an elegant package. These are smart people. They talk about music as if they understand it, they duel with their minds as well as their bodies, and Haneke photographs them in two kinds of spaces: Sometimes they're in elegant, formal conservatory settings, and at other times in frankly vulgar places where quick release can be snatched from strangers. There is an old saying: Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. "The Piano Teacher" has a more ominous lesson: Be especially careful with someone who has asked for you. Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:19 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] JASON X / 1/2* (R) JASON X / 1/2* (R) April 26, 2002 Jason Voorhees: Kane Hodder Rowan: Lexa Doig Kay-Em 14: Lisa Ryder Tsunaron: Chuck Campbell Professor Lowe: Jonathan Potts Sergeant Brodski: Peter Mensah New Line Cinema presents a film directed by Jim Isaac. Written by Todd Farmer. Running time: 93 minutes. Rated R (for strong horror violence, language and some sexuality). BY ROGER EBERT This sucks on so many levels. - --Dialogue from "Jason X" Rare for a movie to so frankly describe itself. "Jason X" sucks on the levels of storytelling, character development, suspense, special effects, originality, punctuation, neatness and aptness of thought. Only its title works. And I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the name "Jason X" is Copyrighted (c)2002, World Wrestling Federation, and that Jason's real name is Dwayne Johnson. No, wait, that was last week's movie. "Jason X" is technically "Friday the 13th, Part 10." It takes place centuries in the future, when Earth is a wasteland and a spaceship from Earth II has returned to the Camp Crystal Lake Research Facility and discovered two cryogenically frozen bodies, one of them holding a machete and wearing a hockey mask. The other body belongs to Rowan (Lexa Doig), a researcher who is thawed out and told it is now the year 2455: "That's 455 years in the future!" Assuming that the opening scenes take place now, you do the math and come up with 453 years in the future. The missing two years are easily explained: I learn from the Classic Horror Reviews Web site that the movie was originally scheduled to be released on Halloween 2000, and was then bumped to March 2001, summer 2001 and Halloween 2001 before finally opening on the 16th anniversary of Chernobyl, another famous meltdown. The movie is a low-rent retread of the "Alien" pictures, with a monster attacking a spaceship crew; one of the characters, Dallas, is even named in homage to the earlier series. The movie's premise: Jason, who has a "unique ability to regenerate lost and damaged tissue," comes back to life and goes on a rampage, killing the ship's plentiful supply of sex-crazed students and staff members. Once you know that the ship contains many dark corners and that the crew members wander off alone as stupidly as the campers as Camp Crystal Lake did summer after summer, you know as much about the plot as the writers do. With "Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones" opening in mid-May, there's been a lot of talk lately about how good computer-generated special effects have become. On the basis of the effects in "Jason X" and the (much more entertaining) "Scorpion King," we could also chat about how bad they are getting. Perhaps audiences do not require realistic illusions, but simply the illusion of realistic illusions. Shabby special effects can have their own charm. Consider a scene where the space ship is about to dock with Solaris, a gigantic mother ship, or a city in space, or whatever. Various controls go haywire because Jason has thrown people through them, and the ship fails to find its landing slot and instead crashes into Solaris, slicing off the top of a geodesic dome and crunching the sides of skyscrapers (why Solaris has a city-style skyline in outer space I do not presume to ask). This sequence is hilariously unconvincing. But never mind. Consider this optimistic dialogue by Professor Lowe (Jonathan Potts), the greedy top scientist who wants to cash in on Jason: "Everyone OK? We just over-shot it. We'll turn around." Uh, huh. We're waiting for the reaction from Solaris Air Traffic Control, when a dull thud echoes through the ship, and the characters realize Solaris has just exploded. Fine, but how could they hear it? Students of "Alien" will know that in space, no one can hear you blow up. The characters follow the usual rules from Camp Crystal Lake, which require the crew members to split up, go down dark corridors by themselves, and call out each other's names with the sickening certainty that they will not reply. Characters are skewered on giant screws, cut in half, punctured by swords, get their heads torn off, and worse. A veteran pilot remains calm: "You weren't alive during the Microsoft conflict. We were beating each other with our own severed limbs." There is one good effects shot, in which a scientist's face is held in super-cooled liquid until it freezes and then smashed into smithereens against a wall. There is also an interesting transformation, as the on-board regenerator restores Jason and even supplies him with superhero armor and a new face to replace his hockey mask and ratty Army surplus duds. I left the movie knowing one thing for sure: There will be a "Jason XI"--or, given the IQ level of the series, "Jason X, Part 2." Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:35 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13) LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT / * (PG-13) April 26, 2002 Lanie Kerrigan: Angelina Jolie Deborah Connors: Stockard Channing Pete: Edward Burns Andrea: Melissa Errico Prophet Jack: Tony Shalhoub Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Stephen Herek. Written John Scott Shepherd and Dana Stevens. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexual content, brief violence and language). BY ROGER EBERT Someone once said, live every day as if it will be your last. Not just someone once said that. Everyone once said it, over and over again, although "Life or Something Like It" thinks it's a fresh insight. This is an ungainly movie, ill-fitting, with its elbows sticking out where the knees should be. To quote another ancient proverb, A camel is a horse designed by a committee. "Life or Something Like It" is the movie designed by the camel. The movie stars Angelina Jolie as Lanie Kerrigan, a bubbly blond Seattle TV reporter whose ignorance of TV is equaled only by the movie's. I don't know how the filmmakers got their start, but they obviously didn't come up through television. Even a viewer knows more than this. Example: Sexy Pete the cameraman (Edward Burns) wants to play a trick on Lanie, so he fiddles with her microphone during a stand-up report from the street, and her voice comes out like Mickey Mouse's squeak--like when you talk with helium in your mouth. Everybody laughs at her. Except, see, your voice comes out of your body, and when it goes through the air, it sounds like your voice to the people standing around. When it goes into the microphone, it kind of stays inside there, and is recorded on videotape, which is not simultaneously played back live to a street crowd. Lanie dreams of going to New York to work on "AM USA," the network show. She gets her big invitation after attracting "national attention" by covering a strike and leading the workers in singing "Can't Get No Satisfaction" while she dances in front of them, during a tiny lapse in journalistic objectivity. Meanwhile, she is afraid she will die, because a mad street person named Prophet Jack has predicted the Seattle team will win, there will be a hailstorm tomorrow morning, and Lanie will die next Thursday. They win, it hails, Lanie believes she will die. This leads to a romantic crisis. She is engaged to Cal Cooper (Christian Kane), a pitcher with the Seattle Mariners. He's in the field, he looks lovingly at her, she smiles encouragingly, the pitch is thrown, the opposing team batter hits a home run, and she jumps up and applauds. If he sees that, she may not last until Thursday. Meanwhile, she apparently hates Pete the sexy cameraman, although when Cal is out of town and she thinks she's going to die, they make love, and then we find out, belatedly, they've made love before. The screenplay keeps doubling back to add overlooked info. Cal comes back to town and she wants a heart-to-heart, but instead he takes her to the ballpark, where the friendly groundskeeper (who hangs around all night in every baseball movie for just such an opportunity) turns on the lights so Cal can throw her a few pitches. Is she moved by this loving gesture? Nope: "Your cure for my emotional crisis is batting practice?" This is the only turning-on-the-lights-in-the-empty-ballpark scene in history that ends unhappily. Lanie and Pete the sexy cameraman become lovers, until Pete whipsaws overnight into an insulted, wounded man who is hurt because she wants to go to New York instead of stay in Seattle with him and his young son. This about-face exists only so they can break up so they can get back together again later. It also inspires a scene in the station's equipment room, where Jolie tests the theoretical limits of hysterical overacting. Lanie's "AM USA" debut involves interviewing the network's biggest star, a Barbara Walters-type (Stockard Channing), on the star's 25th anniversary. So earth-shaking is this interview, the "AM USA" anchor breathlessly announces, "We welcome our viewers on the West Coast for this special live edition!" It's 7 a.m. in New York. That makes it 4 a.m. on the West Coast. If you lived in Seattle, would you set your alarm to 4 a.m. to see Barbara Walters plugging her network special? Lanie begins the interview, pauses, and is silent for 30 seconds while deeply thinking. She finally asks, "Was it worth everything?" What? "Giving up marriage and children for a career?" Tears roll down Channing's cheeks. Pandemonium. Great interview. Network president wants to hire Lanie on the spot. Has never before heard anyone asked, "Was it worth it?" The question of whether a woman can have both a career and a family is controversial in "Life or Something Like It"--even when posed by Ms. Jolie, who successfully combines tomb-raiding with Billy Bob Thornton. I want to close with the mystery of Lanie's father, who is always found stationed in an easy chair in his living room, where he receives visits from his daughters, who feel guilty because since Mom died they have not been able to communicate with Dad, who, apparently as a result, just sits there waiting for his daughters to come back and feel guilty some more. Eventually there's an uptick in his mood, and he admits he has always been proud of Lanie and will "call in sick" so he can watch Lanie on "AM USA." Until then I thought he was sick. Maybe he's just tired because he's on the night shift, which is why he would be at work at 4 a.m. Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:43 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13) THE CAT'S MEOW / *** (PG-13) April 26, 2002 Marion Davies: Kirsten Dunst William Randolph Hearst: Edward Herrmann Thomas Ince: Cary Elwes Charlie Chaplin: Eddie Izzard Louella Parsons: Jennifer Tilly Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Written by Steven Peros. Running time: 112 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for sexuality, a scene of violence and brief drug use). BY ROGER EBERT William Randolph Hearst did, or did not, get away with murder on board his private yacht Oneida on Nov. 15, 1924. If he did, there is no question he was powerful enough to cover it up. Hearst was the carnivorous media tycoon of the age, proprietor of newspapers, magazines, radio stations, wire services, movie production companies, a private castle, and his mistress, Marion Davies, an actress of great but perhaps not exclusive charms. He was above the law not so much because of clout or bribery but because of awe; the law enforcement officials of the day were so keenly aware of their inferior social status that they lacked the nerve to approach him. The silent movies of the time are filled with scenes in which cops arrest a millionaire, discover who he is, respectfully tip their hats to him, and apologize. On that day in 1924, the Hollywood producer Thomas Ince possibly died, or was murdered, on board the Oneida. Or perhaps not. According to one story, he was shot dead by Hearst through an unfortunate misunderstanding; Hearst mistook him for Charlie Chaplin, and thought Chaplin was having an affair with Davies. Other theories say Hearst accidentally stuck Ince with a hat pin, precipitating a heart attack. Or that Ince drank some bad rotgut. There is even the possibility that Ince died at home. There was no autopsy, so the official cause of death was never determined. No guests on the yacht were ever questioned; indeed, no one can agree about who was on the yacht during its cruise. In Hollywood at the time, whispers about Ince's death and Hearst's involvement were easily heard, and the story told in Peter Bogdanovich's "The Cat's Meow" is, the film tells us, "the whisper heard most often." Bogdanovich is not much interested in the scandal as a scandal. He uses it more as a prism through which to view Hollywood in the 1920s, when the new medium had generated such wealth and power that its giants, like Chaplin, were gods in a way no later stars could ever be. Hearst (Edward Herrmann) liked to act the beneficent host, and on the Oneida for that cruise were the studio head Ince (Cary Elwes), the stars Davies (Kirsten Dunst) and Chaplin (Eddie Izzard), the British wit Elinor Glyn (Joanna Lumley), and an ambitious young gossip columnist named Louella Parsons (Jennifer Tilly). There were also various stuffed shirts and their wives, and a tame society doctor. In this company Hearst is an insecure loner, an innocent barely the equal of the life of sin he has chosen for himself. He has the Oneida bugged with hidden microphones, and scarcely has time to join his guests because he needs to hurry away and eavesdrop on what they say about him in his absence. Davies knows about the microphones and knows all about Willie; she was a loyal mistress who loved her man and stood by him to the end. Whether she did have an affair with Chaplin is often speculated. According to this scenario, she may have, and Willie finds one of her brooches in Chaplin's stateroom (after tearing it apart in a scene mirroring Charles Foster Kane's famous destruction of Susan's bedroom in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane"). Bogdanovich has an exact way of conveying the forced and metronomic gaiety on the yacht, where guests are theoretically limited to one drink before dinner, Davies has to order the band to play the Charleston to cover awkward silences, every guest has a personal agenda, and at night, as guests creep from one stateroom to another and deck planks creak, they seem to be living in an English country house mystery--"Gosford Yacht." Apart from its theory about the mistaken death of Ince and its cover-up, the movie's most intriguing theory is that Parsons witnessed it, which might explain her lifetime contract with the Hearst papers. In the exquisite wording of a veiled blackmail threat, she tells the tycoon: "We're at the point in our careers where we both need real security." Since she was making peanuts and he was one of the richest men in the world, one can only admire the nuance of "our careers." The film is darkly atmospheric, with Herrmann quietly suggesting the sadness and obsession beneath Hearst's forced avuncular chortles. Dunst is as good, in her way, as Dorothy Comingore in "Citizen Kane" in showing a woman who is more loyal and affectionate than her lover deserves. Lumley's zingers as Glyn cut right through the hypocritical grease. Tilly, we suspect, has the right angle on Parsons' chutzpah. There is a detail easy to miss toward the end of the film that suggests as well as anything what power Hearst had. After the society doctor ascertains that Ince, still alive, has a bullet in his brain, Hearst orders the yacht to moor at San Diego, and then dispatches the dying producer by private ambulance--not to a local hospital, but to his home in Los Angeles! Hearst is on the phone to the future widow, suggesting a cover story, long before the pathetic victim arrives home. Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ Date: 20 May 2002 23:21:50 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R) WORLD TRAVELER / ** (R) April 26, 2002 Cal: Billy Crudup Dulcie: Julianne Moore Carl: Cleavant Derricks Richard: David Keith Jack: James LeGros ThinkFilm presents a film written and directed by Bart Freundlich. Running time: 104 minutes. Rated R (for language and some sexuality). BY ROGER EBERT Cal drags a woman out of a bar to look at the stars and listen to his rants about the universe. She pulls loose and asks, "Do you get away with this crap because you look like that?" Later in the film two kids will ask him if he's a movie star. He's good-looking, in a morose, tormented way, but it's more than that; Cal is charismatic, and strangers are fascinated by his aura of doom and emptiness. There is another new movie, "About a Boy," with a hero who complains that he's a "blank." The dialogue is needed in "World Traveler." Although others are fascinated by Cal's loneliness, with his drinking, his lack of a plan, his superficial charm, he is a blank. Early in the film he walks out on his marriage, on the third birthday of his son. Taking the family station wagon, he drives west across the United States and into the emptiness of his soul. Cal is played by Billy Crudup, one of the best actors in the movies, but there needs to be something there for an actor to play, and Cal is like a moony poet who embraces angst as its own reward. Throwing back Jack Daniels in the saloons of the night, he doesn't have a complaint so much as celebrate one. When we discover that his own father walked out on Cal and his mother, that reads like a motivation but doesn't play like one. It seems too neat--the Creative Writing explanation for his misery. The film, written and directed by Bart Freundlich, is a road picture, with Cal meeting and leaving a series of other lonely souls without ever achieving closure. It's as if he glimpses them through the windows of his passing car. There's a young hitchhiker who implies an offer of sex, which he doesn't accept. A construction worker named Carl (Cleavant Derricks) who wants friendship and thinks Cal offers it, but is mistaken. A high school classmate (James LeGros, bitingly effective) who provides us with evidence that Cal has been an emotional hit-and-run artist for a long time. Finally there is Dulcie (Julianne Moore), who is drunk and passed out in a bar. Cal throws her over his shoulder and hauls her back to his motel room, to save her from arrest. She involves him in her own madness. Both sense they're acting out interior dramas from obscure emotional needs, and there is a slo-mo scene on a carnival ride that plays like a parody of a good time. Nelson Algren advised, "Never sleep with a woman whose troubles are greater than your own," and Cal would be wise to heed him. There are moments of sudden truth in the film; Freundlich, who also made "The Myth of Fingerprints" (1997), about an almost heroically depressed family at Thanksgiving, can create and write characters, even if he doesn't always know where to take them. The construction buddy Carl and his wife (Mary McCormack) spring into focus with a few lines of dialogue. Cal persuades Carl, a recovering alcoholic, to get drunk with him, and help him pick up two women in a bar. The next day Carl says his wife is angry at him, and brings her to life with one line of dialogue: "She's mad about the drinking--and the objectification of women." Later, drunk again, Cal meets Carl's wife, who says, "In all the years I've been married to Carl, I've never heard him talk about anyone the way he talks about you." She loves Carl, we see, so much she is moved that he has found a friend. But then Cal tries to make a pass, and the wife looks cold and level at him: "You're not his friend." Cal isn't anybody's friend. Near the end of his journey, in the Western mountains, he meets his father (David Keith). The role is thankless, but Keith does everything possible, and more, to keep the father from being as much a cipher as the son. One senses in "World Traveler" and in his earlier film that Freundlich bears a grievous but obscure complaint against fathers, and circles it obsessively, without making contact. Copyright © Chicago Sun-Times Inc. [ To leave the movies mailing list, send the message "unsubscribe ] [ movies" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ] ------------------------------ End of movies-digest V2 #353 **************************** [ To quit the movies-digest mailing list (big mistake), send the message ] [ "unsubscribe movies-digest" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ]