From: owner-movies-digest@lists.xmission.com (movies-digest) To: movies-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: movies-digest V2 #355 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 355 [MV] CRUSH / *** (R) [MV] FRAILTY / **** (R) [MV] HUMAN NATURE / *** (R) [MV] MARYAM / ***1/2 (Not rated) [MV] THE SWEETEST THING / *1/2 (R) [MV] BIG TROUBLE / **1/2 (PG-13) [MV] HIGH CRIMES / *** (PG-13) [MV] NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER / * (R) [MV] Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN / **** (Not Rated) [MV] CLOCKSTOPPERS / **1/2 (PG) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 20 May 2002 23:23:41 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] CRUSH / *** (R) CRUSH / *** (R) April 12, 2002 Kate: Andie MacDowell Janine: Imelda Staunton Molly: Anna Chancellor Jed: Kenny Doughty Sony Pictures Classics presents a film written and directed by John McKay. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality and language). BY ROGER EBERT If I were reviewing "Crush" in England, I would work the name of Joanna Trollope into the first sentence, and my readers would immediately be able to identify the terrain. Trollope, a best-seller who is often quite perceptive and touching, writes at the upper range of the category just below serious fiction. She is a good read for those, like myself, who fantasize about living prosperously in the Cotswolds in an old but comfortably remodeled cottage not far from the village green, the churchyard, the tea shop, the bookstore and the rail line to London, while meanwhile growing involved in a web of imprudent adulterous sex. (As a happily married man, you understand, I do not want to perform adulterous imprudent sex, only to be involved in a web with such entertaining neighbors.) This is not England. Few North Americans read Joanna Trollope, and fewer still respond to key words in her vocabulary such as Aga. An Aga cooker-stove is so expensive and versatile, it does everything but peel the potatoes, and its presence in a kitchen tells you so much about the occupants that in the Brit book review pages, the phrase "Aga romance" perfectly categorizes a novel. "Crush" is an Aga romance crossed with modern retro-feminist soft porn, in which liberated women discuss lust as if it were a topic and not a fact. We begin by meeting the three heroines, who are fortysomething professionals and meet once a week to (1) drink gin, (2) smoke cigarettes, (3) eat caramels, and (4) discuss their lousy love lives. My advice to these women: Stop after (3). The characters: Kate (Andie MacDowell) is the American headmistress of the local upscale school, Janine (Imelda Staunton) is a physician, and Molly (Anna Chancellor) is the police chief. That these three professional women at their age would all still be smoking can be explained only by a movie that does not give them enough to do with their hands. One day Kate goes to a funeral, is immeasurably moved by the music, and meets the organist. His name is Jed (Kenny Doughty), and he was once a student of hers. She is between 15 and 18 years older, but their conversation drifts out of the church and into the churchyard, and soon they are performing the old rumpy-pumpy behind a tombstone while the mourners are still stifling their sobs. This is, you will agree, an example of lust. In a rabbit, it would be simple lust. In a headmistress, it is reckless lust. (In a 25-year-old organist, it is what comes from pumping the foot pedals for 30 minutes while observing Andie MacDowell). The movie cannot leave it at lust, however, because then it would be a different movie. So it elevates it into a Love That Was Meant to Be, in which the two lovers overcome differences of age, class and grooming, and determine to spend their lives together. Because they are attractive people and we like them, of course we identify with their foolishness and feel good when romance triumphs. A sixth sense tells us, however, that romance has triumphed a little too early in the movie. The only way for "Crush" to get from its romantic triumph to the end of the film is to supply setbacks, and does it ever. I will not reveal what episodes of bad judgment, bad karma and plain bad luck lead to the ultimate bittersweet denouement, and will distract myself from the temptation by telling you that the pastor of the local church is named the Rev. Gerald Farquar-Marsden, a name to rival Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright. The movie does its best to work us over, with second helpings of love, romance, tragedy, false dawns, real dawns, comic relief, two separate crises during marriage ceremonies, and the lush scenery of the Cotswolds (or, as the Web site refers to the district, "Cotswold"). It's the kind of world where romance begins in tombs among the headstones, or vice versa, and almost immediately requires engraved invitations. Jed is described as being 25 years old and Kate is described as being 40 (cough), but Andie MacDowell is the definition of a dish, and Jed, just by being a church organist, is mature for his age. Besides, what is an age difference of 15 or even 18 years, when my old friend Betty Dodson, at 72, is in the third year of a steamy romance with a 25-year-old? You can look it up at Salon.com, under "sex." 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 23:23:54 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] FRAILTY / **** (R) FRAILTY / **** (R) April 12, 2002 Dad: Bill Paxton Fenton Meiks: Matthew McConaughey Agent Wesley Doyle: Powers Boothe Young Fenton Meiks: Matthew O'Leary Young Adam Meiks: Jeremy Sumpter Lions Gate Films presents a film directed by Bill Paxton. Written by Brent Hanley. Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (for violence and some language). BY ROGER EBERT Heaven protect us from people who believe they can impose their will on us in this world because of what they think they know about the next. "Frailty" is about such a man, a kind and gentle father who is visited by an angel who assigns him to murder demons in human form. We are reminded that Andrea Yates believed she was possessed by Satan and could save her children by drowning them. "Frailty" is as chilling: The father enlists his two sons, who are about 7 and 10, to join him in the murders of victims he brings home. This is not, you understand, an abusive father. He loves his children. He is only following God's instructions: "This is our job now, son. We've got to do this." When the older son, terrified and convinced his father has gone mad, says he'll report him to the police, his father explains, "If you do that, son, I'll die. The angel was clear on this." The pressure that the children are under is unbearable, and tragic, and warps their entire lives. "Frailty" is an extraordinary work, concealing in its depths not only unexpected story turns but also implications, hidden at first, that make it even deeper and more sad. It is the first film directed by the actor Bill Paxton, who also plays the father and succeeds in making "Dad" not a villain but a sincere man lost within his delusions. Matthew McConaughey plays one of his sons as a grown man, and Powers Boothe is the FBI agent who is investigating the "God's Hand" serial murders in Texas when the son comes to him one night, with the body of his brother parked outside in a stolen ambulance. The movie works in so many different ways that it continues to surprise us right until the end. It begins as a police procedural, seems for a time to be a puzzle like "The Usual Suspects," reveals itself as a domestic terror film, evokes pity as well as horror, and reminded me of "The Rapture," another film about a parent who is willing to sacrifice a child in order to follow the literal instructions of her faith. As the film opens, McConaughey appears in the office of FBI agent Wesley Doyle (Boothe), introduces himself as Fenton Meiks, and says he knows who committed the serial killings that have haunted the area for years. His story becomes the narration of two long flashbacks in which we see Paxton as the elder Meiks, and Matthew O'Leary and Jeremy Sumpter as young Fenton and Adam. Their mother is dead; they live in a frame house near the community rose garden, happy and serene, until the night their father wakes them with the news that he has been visited by an angel. The film neither shies away from its horrifying events, nor dwells on them. There is a series of ax murders, but they occur offscreen; this is not a movie about blood, but about obsession. The truly disturbing material involves the two boys, who are played by O'Leary and Sumpter as ordinary, happy kids whose lives turn into nightmares. Young Adam simply believes everything his father tells him. Fenton is old enough to know it's wrong: "Dad's brainwashed you," he tells Adam. "It's all a big lie. He murders people and you help him." The construction of the story circles around the angel's "instructions" in several ways. The sons and father are trapped in a household seemingly ruled by fanaticism. There is, however, the intriguing fact that when Dad touches his victims, he has graphic visions of their sins--he can see vividly why they need to be killed. Are these visions accurate? We see them, too, but it's unclear whether through Dad's eyes or the movie's narrator--if that makes a difference. Whether they are objectively true is something I, at least, believe no man can know for sure about another. Not just by touching them, anyway. But the movie contains one shot, sure to be debated, that suggests God's hand really is directing Dad's murders. Perhaps only a first-time director, an actor who does not depend on directing for his next job, would have had the nerve to make this movie. It is uncompromised. It follows its logic right down into hell. We love movies that play and toy with the supernatural, but are we prepared for one that is an unblinking look at where the logic of the true believer can lead? There was just a glimpse of this mentality on the day after 9/11, when certain TV preachers described it as God's punishment for our sins, before backpedaling when they found such frankness eroded their popularity base. On the basis of this film, Paxton is a gifted director; he and his collaborators, writer Brent Hanley, cinematographer Bill Butler and editor Arnold Glassman, have made a complex film that grips us with the intensity of a simple one. We're with it every step of the way, and discover we hardly suspect where it is going. Note: Watching the film, I was reminded again of the "West Memphis Three" (www.wm3.org), those three Arkansas teenagers convicted of the brutal murder of three children. One faces death and the other two long sentences. The documentaries "Paradise Lost" (1992) and "Paradise Lost 2: Revelations" (2000) make it clear they are probably innocent (a prime suspect all but confesses onscreen), but the three are still in jail because they wore black, listened to heavy metal music, and were railroaded by courts and a community convinced they were Satanists--which must have been evidence enough, since there wasn't much else, and the boys could prove they were elsewhere. 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 23:24:07 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] HUMAN NATURE / *** (R) HUMAN NATURE / *** (R) April 12, 2002 Nathan Bronfman: Tim Robbins Lila Jute: Patricia Arquette Puff: Rhys Ifans Gabrielle: Miranda Otto Nathan's Father: Robert Forster Nathan's Mother: Mary Kay Place Wendall the Therapist: Miguel Sandoval Puff's Father: Toby Huss Fine Line Features presents a film directed by Michel Gondry. Written by Charlie Kaufman. Running time: 96 minutes. Rated R (for sexuality/nudity and language). BY ROGER EBERT Is human life entirely based on sex, or is that only what it seems like on cable television? "Human Nature," a comedy written and produced by the writer and director who made us the great gift of "Being John Malkovich," is a study of three characters in war against their sexual natures. Lila (Patricia Arquette) fled to the woods at the age of 20, after hair entirely covered her body. She becomes a famous reclusive nature writer, a very hairy Annie Dillard, but finally returns to civilization because she's so horny. Puff (Rhys Ifans) is a man who was raised as an ape, thinks he's an ape, and is cheerfully eager on all occasions to act out an ape's sexual desires. And Nathan (Tim Robbins) was a boy raised by parents so strict that his entire sexual drive was sublimated into the desire to train others as mercilessly as he was trained. With these three characters as subjects for investigation, "Human Nature" asks if there is a happy medium between natural impulses and the inhibitions of civilization--or if it is true, as Nathan instructs Puff, "When in doubt, don't ever do what you really want to do." The movie involves these three in a menage a trois that is (as you can imagine) very complicated, and just in order to be comprehensive in its study of human sexual behavior, throws in a cute French lab assistant (Miranda Otto). None of which gives you the slightest idea of the movie's screwball charm. The writer, Charlie Kaufman, must be one madcap kinda guy. I imagine him seeming to wear a funny hat even when he's not. His inventions here lead us down strange comic byways, including Disneyesque song-and-dance numbers in which the hairy Arquette dances nude with the cute little animals of the forest. (Her hair, like Salome's veil, prevents us from seeing quite what we think we're seeing, but the MPAA's eyeballs must have been popping out under the strain.) Early scenes show poor Nathan as a boy, at the dinner table with his parents (Robert Forster and Mary Kay Place), where every meal involves as much cutlery as a diplomatic feast, and using the wrong fork gets the child sent to his room without eating. As an adult, Nathan dedicates his life to training white mice to eat with the right silver, after the male mouse politely pulls out the female mouse's chair for her. Then he gets a really big challenge, when the ape-man (Ifans) comes into his clutches. Nicknaming him Puff, Nathan keeps him in a Plexiglas cage in his lab, and fits Puff with an electrified collar that jolts him with enough juice to send him leaping spasmodically into the air every time he engages in sexual behavior, which is constantly. Lila the hairy girl, meanwhile, has turned herself over to a sympathetic electrologist (Rosie Perez), who fixes her up with Nathan--who does not know she is covered with hair and, if he did, would be sure it was bad manners. The movie has nowhere much to go and nothing much to prove, except that Stephen King is correct and if you can devise the right characters and the right situation, the plot will take care of itself--or not, as the case may be. Ifans is so dogged in the determination of his sex drive, despite the electrical shocks, that when the professor sets his final examination at a Hooters-type place, we're grinning before he gets inside the door. The movie is the feature debut of Michel Gondry, who directed a lot of Bjork's videos and therefore in a sense has worked with characters like these before. His movie is slight without being negligible. If it tried to do anything more, it would fail and perhaps explode, but at this level of manic whimsy, it is just about right. You had better go alone, because in any crowd of four, there will be three who find it over their heads, or under their radar. They would really be better off attending "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," unless you want to go to the trouble of having them fitted with electric collars. 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 23:24:19 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] MARYAM / ***1/2 (Not rated) MARYAM / ***1/2 (Not rated) April 12, 2002 Maryk Armin: Mariam Parris Ali Armin: David Ackert Darius Armin: Shaun Toub Homa Armin: Shohreh Aghdashloo Reza: Maziyar Jobrani Jamie: Victor Jory Streetlight Films presents a film written and directed by Ramin Serry. Running time: 90 minutes. No MPAA rating (suitable for teens). Opening today at the Music Box. BY ROGER EBERT Girls just want to have fun, says Cyndi Lauper, and Maryam, a high school senior, is one of them. Yes, she's an honor student and anchors the news on the in-school TV program, but she also likes to hang out at the roller rink with her slacker boyfriend, and pot and booze are not unknown to her. In New Jersey in 1979, she is a typical teenage girl--until the Iran hostage crisis slaps her with an ethnic label that makes her an outsider at school and a rebel in her own home. Maryam (Mariam Parris) is Iranian-American--or Persian, her father would say. Her parents emigrated from Iran before the fall of the shah, and settled comfortably into suburbia; her father is a doctor, her mother a warm, chatty neighbor, and Maryam (or "Mary," as she calls herself at school) doesn't think much about her Iranian or Muslim heritage. Then two things happen to force her to confront her history. The hostage crisis inspires knee-jerk hostility from her classmates (whose families also come from somewhere else), and her radical cousin Ali arrives from Tehran. Ramin Serry's "Maryam," a film that cares too deeply for its characters to simplify them, doesn't indulge in tired cliches about the generation gap. Maryam's home life is strict but not unreasonable. Her father doesn't want her to date, places great emphasis on her grades, doesn't know about her boyfriend. He is not a cruel or domineering man, and Maryam, to her credit, knows her parents love her. She's caught between trying to be a good daughter and a typical teenager, and has found a workable middle ground before Ali arrives. With Ali comes a history of family tension she knows nothing about. Ali is an orphan, the son of Mary's uncle, and so he must be taken in. It is more complicated than that. Her father, we learn, turned his brother in to the shah's secret police; he felt he had no choice, but is consumed by guilt. The blood-stained backgammon board Ali brings as a "gift" is an ominous reminder of times past. Ali is such an observant Muslim that he cannot touch his cousin Maryam, even to shake her hand. Pressed into service as a chaperone, he finds himself plunged into teenage culture that offends and attracts him. He calls Maryam a "whore" to her mother, but subtly flirts with her. More disturbing is his alliance with a campus radical, and his obsession with the deposed shah, who has just entered a New York hospital for cancer treatment. (Maryam's take on this: "He calls the U.S. the Great Satan. I mean, the guy could lighten up a little.") "Maryam" was made before 9/11, and indeed I first saw it at the 2000 Hawaii Film Festival and invited it to my own Overlooked Film Festival in April 2001. It is, I learned, the somewhat autobiographical story of writer-director Ramin Serry, who grew up in Chicago and was made sharply aware of his Iranian heritage during the 1979 hostage crisis. In the film, Maryam's neighbors put a yellow ribbon around the tree in their front yard, and discontinue their friendly chats and visits. Maryam's boyfriend drops her like a hot potato. She is deposed from her TV show (she suggests her newly arrived cousin might make a good interview; the other students prefer to cover a homecoming controversy). A brick comes through the front window. A public demonstration turns into shouts of "Iranians, go home." Through all of this, the gifted actress Mariam Parris (British, but seamlessly playing American) finds the right notes: wounded, sad, angry, but more balanced than distraught. Whatever hostility Serry felt in 1979 is no doubt much worse today for Arab-Americans, who have, like most immigrants since the Pilgrims, left a native land to seek the American dream. Strange how many Americans, themselves members of groups that were hated a few generations ago, now turn against newcomers. (I could hear the pain in my German-American father's voice as he recalled being yanked out of Lutheran school during World War I and forbidden by his immigrant parents ever to speak German again.) "Maryam" is more timely now than ever. 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 23:24:29 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] THE SWEETEST THING / *1/2 (R) THE SWEETEST THING / *1/2 (R) April 12, 2002 Christina: Cameron Diaz Courtney: Christina Applegate Peter: Thomas Jane Jane: Selma Blair Roger: Jason Bateman Judy: Parker Posey Columbia Pictures presents a film directed by Roger Kumble. Written by Nancy M. Pimental. Running time: 84 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT I like Cameron Diaz. I just plain like her. She's able to convey bubble-brained zaniness about as well as anyone in the movies right now, and then she can switch gears and give you a scary dramatic performance in something like "Vanilla Sky." She's a beauty, but apparently without vanity; how else to account for her appearance in "Being John Malkovich," or her adventures in "There's Something About Mary"? I don't think she gets halfway enough praise for her talent. Consider her in "The Sweetest Thing." This is not a good movie. It's deep-sixed by a compulsion to catalog every bodily fluids gag in "There's Something About Mary" and devise a parallel clone-gag. It knows the words but not the music; while the Farrelly brothers got away with murder, "The Sweetest Thing" commits suicide. And yet there were whole long stretches of it when I didn't much care how bad it was--at least, I wasn't brooding in anger about the film--because Cameron Diaz and her co-stars had thrown themselves into it with such heedless abandon. They don't walk the plank, they tap dance. The movie is about three girls who just wanna have fun. They hang out in clubs, they troll for cute guys, they dress like Maxim cover girls, they study paperback best-sellers on the rules of relationships, and frequently (this comes as no surprise), they end up weeping in one other's arms. Diaz's running-mates, played by Christina Applegate and Selma Blair, are pals and confidantes, and a crisis for one is a crisis for all. The movie's romance involves Diaz meeting Thomas Jane in a dance club; the chemistry is right but he doesn't quite accurately convey that the wedding he is attending on the weekend is his own. This leads to Diaz's ill-fated expedition into the wedding chapel, many misunderstandings, and the kind of Idiot Plot dialogue in which all problems could be instantly solved if the characters were not studiously avoiding stating the obvious. The plot is merely the excuse, however, for an astonishing array of sex and body-plumbing jokes, nearly all of which dream of hitting a home run like "There's Something About Mary," but do not. Consider "Mary's" scene where Diaz has what she thinks is gel in her hair. Funny--because she doesn't know what it really is, and we do. Now consider the scene in this movie where the girls go into a men's room and do not understand that in a men's room a hole in the wall is almost never merely an architectural detail. The pay-off is sad, sticky, and depressing. Or consider a scene where one of the roommates gets "stuck" while performing oral sex. This is intended as a ripoff of the "franks and beans" scene in "Mary," but gets it all wrong. You simply cannot (I am pretty sure about this) get stuck in the way the movie suggests--no, not even if you've got piercings. More to the point, in "Mary" the victim is unseen, and we picture his dilemma. In "Sweetest Thing," the dilemma is seen, sort of (careful framing preserves the R rating), and the image isn't funny. Then we get several dozen neighbors, all singing to inspire the girl to extricate herself; this might have looked good on the page, but it just plain doesn't work, especially not when embellished with the sobbing cop on the doorstep, the gay cop, and other flat notes. More details. Sometimes it is funny when people do not know they may be consuming semen (as in "American Pie") and sometimes it is not, as in the scene at the dry cleaners in this movie. How can you laugh when what you really want to do is hurl? And what about the scene in the ladies' room, where the other girls are curious about Applegate's boobs and she tells them she paid for them and invites them to have a feel, and they do, like shoppers at Kmart? Again, a funny concept. Again, destroyed by bad timing, bad framing and overkill. Because the director, Roger Kumble, doesn't know how to set it up and pay it off with surgical precision, he simply has women pawing Applegate while the scene dies. An unfunny scene only grows worse by pounding in the concept as if we didn't get it. So, as I say, I like Cameron Diaz. I like everyone in this movie (I must not neglect the invaluable Parker Posey, as a terrified bride). I like their energy. I like their willingness. I like the opening shot when Diaz comes sashaying up a San Francisco hill like a dancer from "In Living Color" who thinks she's still on the air. I like her mobile, comic face--she's smart in the way she plays dumb. But the movie I cannot like, because the movie doesn't know how to be liked. It doesn't even know how to be a 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 23:24:41 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] BIG TROUBLE / **1/2 (PG-13) BIG TROUBLE / **1/2 (PG-13) April 5, 2002 Eliot Arnold: Tim Allen Anna Herk: Rene Russo Pat Greer: Omar Epps Henry Algott: Dennis Farina Matt Arnold: Ben Foster Monica Ramiro: Janeane Garofalo Touchstone Pictures presents a film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld. Written by Robert Ramsey and Matthew Stone. Based on the novel by Dave Barry. Running time: 84 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for language, crude humor and sex-related material). BY ROGER EBERT "Big Trouble" is based on a novel by Dave Barry, and I have no trouble believing that. The genius of Dave Barry is that he applies a logical and helpful analysis to a situation that can only be worsened by such intervention. It is impossible, for example, to explain to a policeman why he is wasting his time on your illegal left turn while real criminals go free. Or to the IRS agent that Enron is robbing billions from widows and orphans while he ponders your business-related need to buy lots of CDs. Or to your wife why it is pointless to do the dishes on a daily basis when you can save hot water by letting them accumulate for a week in the dishwasher--which, being airtight, will not stink up the kitchen if you slam it right after adding more dishes. All of these positions, which make perfect sense, only infuriate the cop, tax man, spouse, etc., by applying logic to a situation they have invested with irrational passion. As a sane voice in a world gone mad, Barry alone sees clearly. The Dave Barry figure in "Big Trouble," I think, is Puggy (Jason Lee), a man who when he first addresses the camera seems to be Jesus, until he starts munching Fritos between his words of wisdom, observing, "You really can't beat these when they're fresh." Puggy is a homeless man who was living in the rainy north inside a cardboard box, when an article in Martha Stewart Living inspired him to move to sunny southern Florida. He is the film's omniscient narrator, not because he knows everything in a godlike way, but because he lives outdoors and happens to be ideally positioned during an evening when most of the film's other characters meet at the luxury home of Arthur Herk (Stanley Tucci), who is "one of the few Floridians who actually did vote for Pat Buchanan." (Saddened by the inability of many Republicans to express even token pity about the Jewish senior citizens whose mistaken votes for the Great Foamer tilted the election, I am always happy to have this event recalled.) Arthur Herk is ... ah, but if I begin a plot synopsis, we will be here all day, and I have already squandered three paragraphs with fancy writing. There is a plot in "Big Trouble," quite a logical one actually, with all the threads tied into neat knots at the end, but to explain it would leave you banging your forehead against the newspaper and crying "Why must I know this?" It might be simpler to describe the characters, and let you discover their interactions for yourself. Herk is a rich man who owes money to the wrong people and wants to buy a bomb. Rene Russo is his wife Anna, who no longer remembers why she married this jerk. Zooey Deschanel is their daughter Jenny, who is the target of Matt Arnold (Ben Foster), a school classmate who needs to squirt her with a one-gallon water gun. Tim Allen is Eliot Arnold, Matt's father, who was the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of the Miami Herald until he kicked in the computer screen of an editor who gave him idiotic assignments while refusing to meet his eyes. (It would seem to the casual moviegoer that Eliot Arnold is the Dave Barry figure in the movie, since he closely resembles the author, but, no, it's Puggy.) Then there are Dennis Farina and Jack Kehler as two bit men assigned to kill Arthur Herk. And Janeane Garofalo and Patrick Warburton as two cops who answer a call to the Herk home. And Lars Arenta-Hansen and Daniel London, who have a nuclear bomb they can sell to Arthur Herk. And Omar Epps and Heavy D as FBI agents on the trail of the bomb-sellers. And Sofia Vergara as Nina, the Herks' maid, who Arthur wants to have sex with. She despises Herk but instantly lusts for Puggy--another clue he is the Dave Barry character. And Tom Sizemore and Johnny Knoxville as Snake and Eddie, who try to stick up the bar where the bomb dealers meet Arthur Herk while the FBI stakes it out. (Sample dialogue: "Snake, let's get the hell out of here. I think I hear one of them silent alarms.") There is also a toad whose spit is hallucinogenic. The film has been directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who made "Get Shorty." It's not in that class--indeed, it seems so crowded that it sometimes feels like the casting call for an eventual picture not yet made--but it has its charms. It's the kind of movie you can't quite recommend because it is all windup and not much of a pitch, yet you can't bring yourself to dislike it. A video or airplane or cable movie. Originally scheduled for an autumn opening, it was pulled from the release schedule after 9/11 because it involves terrorists and a nuclear bomb. But these are terrorists and bombs from a simpler and more innocent time. The movie is a reminder of an age when such plots were obviously not to be taken seriously. It's nice to be reminded of that time. 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 23:24:49 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] HIGH CRIMES / *** (PG-13) HIGH CRIMES / *** (PG-13) April 5, 2002 Claire Kubik: Ashley Judd Charlie Grimes: Morgan Freeman Tom: James Caviezel Lt. Embry: Adam Scott Jackie: Amanda Peet Major Waldron: Michael Gaston Brig. Gen. Marks: Bruce Davison Agent Mullins: Tom Bower Twentieth Century Fox presents a film directed by Carl Franklin. Written by Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley. Based on the novel by Joseph Finder. Running time: 115 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for violence, sexual content and language). BY ROGER EBERT Although I believe Ashley Judd could thrive in more challenging roles, and offer "Normal Life" (1996) as an example, her career seems to tilt toward thrillers, with the occasional comedy. She often plays a strong, smart woman who is in more danger than she realizes. Although her characters are eventually screaming as they flee brutal killers in the long tradition of Women in Danger movies, the set-ups show her as competent, resourceful, independent. "High Crimes" is a movie like that. Judd plays Claire Kubik, a high-profile defense attorney for a big firm. When her ex-Army husband (Jim Caviezel) is arrested by the FBI, charged with murder and arraigned before a military tribunal, she defiantly says she will defend him herself. And because she doesn't know her way around military justice, she enlists a lawyer named Grimes (Morgan Freeman) as co-counsel. Grimes is that dependable character, a drunk who is on the wagon but may (i.e., will) fall off under stress. This is the second movie Judd and Freeman have made together (after "Kiss the Girls" in 1997). They're both good at projecting a kind of Southern intelligence that knows its way around the frailties of human nature. Although Freeman refers to himself as the "wild card" in the movie, actually that role belongs to Caviezel, whose very identity is called into question by the military charges. "Is your name Tom Chapman?" Claire asks her husband at one point. She no longer knows the answer. The plot involves a massacre in a Latin American village and a subsequent cover-up. Did Claire's husband gun down innocent civilians, or was he framed by a scary Army vet and his straight-arrow superior? Does the military want justice or a cover-up? We are not given much reason to trust military tribunals--evidence the screenplay was written before 9/11--and the Freeman character intones the familiar refrain, "Military justice is to justice as military music is to music." And yet ... well, maybe there's more to the story. I wouldn't dream of revealing crucial details. I do like the way director Carl Franklin and writers Yuri Zeltser and Cary Bickley, working from Joseph Finder's novel, play both ends against the middle, so that the audience has abundant evidence to believe two completely conflicting theories of what actually happened. In the very season of the DVD release of "Rashomon," which is the template for stories with more than one convincing explanation, here's another example of how Kurosawa's masterpiece continues to inspire movie plots. "High Crimes" works to keep us involved and make us care. Although Freeman's character may indeed start drinking again, it won't be for reasons we can anticipate (of course, like all heroic movie drunks, he retains the exquisite timing to sober up on demand). The unfolding of various versions of the long-ago massacre is handled by Franklin in flashbacks that show how one camera angle can refute what another angle seems to prove. And if we feel, toward the end, a little whiplashed by the plot manipulations, well, that's what the movie promises and that's what the movie delivers. As for Ms. Judd, from the first time I saw her, in "Ruby in Paradise" (1993), I thought she had a unique sympathy with the camera, an ability that cannot be learned but only exercised. In the years, she has often been better than her material--or do her advisers choose mainstream commercial roles for her as the safest course? When she strays out of genre, as she did in "Smoke," "Heat," "Normal Life" and "Simon Birch," she shows how good she is. Of course, she's good in "High Crimes," too, and involves us more than the material really deserves. But this is the kind of movie any studio executive would green-light without a moment's hesitation--always an ominous sign. 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 23:24:57 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER / * (R) NATIONAL LAMPOON'S VAN WILDER / * (R) April 5, 2002 Van Wilder: Ryan Reynolds Gwen: Tara Reid Taj: Kal Penn Vance Wilder Sr.: Tim Matheson Casey: Kim Smith Richard Bagg: Daniel Cosgrove Elliot Grebb: Tom Everett Scott Timmy (The Jumper): Chris Owen Artisan Entertainment presents a film directed by Walt Becker. Written by Brent Goldberg and David Wagner. Running time: 92 minutes. Rated R (for strong sexual content, gross humor, language and some drug use). BY ROGER EBERT Watching "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," I grew nostalgic for the lost innocence of a movie like "American Pie," in which human semen found itself in a pie. In "NatLampVW," dog semen is baked in a pastry. Is it only a matter of time until the heroes of teenage grossout comedies are injecting turtle semen directly through their stomach walls? "National Lampoon's Van Wilder," a pale shadow of "National Lampoon's Animal House," tells the story of Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds), who has been the Biggest Man on Campus for seven glorious undergraduate years. He doesn't want to graduate, and why should he, since he has clout, fame, babes and the adulation of the entire campus (except, of course, for the professor whose parking space he swipes, and the vile fraternity boy who is his sworn enemy). Van Wilder is essentially a nice guy, which is a big risk for a movie like this to take; he raises funds for the swimming team, tries to restrain suicidal students and throws legendary keg parties. Ryan Reynolds is, I suppose, the correct casting choice for Van Wilder, since the character is not a devious slacker but merely a Permanent Student. That makes him, alas, a little boring, and Reynolds (from ABC's "Two Guys and a Girl") brings along no zing: He's a standard leading man when the movie cries out for a manic character actor. Jack Black in this role would have been a home run. Is Van Wilder too good to be true? That's what Gwen (Tara Reid) wonders. She's a journ student who wants to do an in-depth piece about Van for the campus paper. Of course she's the girlfriend of the vile frat boy, and of course her investigation inspires her to admire the real Van Wilder while deploring his public image. Tara Reid is remarkably attractive, as you may remember from "Josie and the Pussycats" and "American Pie 2," but much of the time, she simply seems to be imitating still photos of Renee Zellweger smiling. That leaves, let's see, Kal Penn as Taj, the Indian-American student who lands the job as Van Wilder's assistant, and spends much of his time using a stereotyped accent while reciting lists of synonyms for oral sex. I cannot complain, since the hero's buddy in every movie in this genre is always a sex-crazed zealot, and at least this film uses non-traditional casting. (Casting directors face a Catch-22: They cast a white guy, and everybody wants to know why he had to be white. So they cast an ethnic guy, and everybody complains about the negative stereotype. Maybe the way out is to cast the ethnic guy as the hero and the white guy as the horny doofus.) The movie is a barfathon that takes full advantage of the apparent MPAA guidelines in which you can do pretty much anything with bodily functions except involve them in healthy sex. The movie contains semen, bare breasts and butts, epic flatulence, bizarre forms of masturbation, public nudity, projectile vomiting and an extended scene of explosive defecation with sound effects that resemble the daily duties of the Port-a-Loo serviceman, in reverse. There are also graphic shots of enormous testicles, which are allowed under the National Geographic loophole, since they belong to Van Wilder's pet bulldog. Presumably the MPAA would not permit this if it had reason to believe there were dogs in the audience. "On a scale of 1-10 shots of bourbon needed to make a pledge ralph," writes Bob Patterson of the Web site Delusions of Adequacy, "this film will get a very strong five from most college age film fans who are not offended by vulgar humor. Older filmgoers who might be offended by such offerings are encouraged to do something that is physically impossible (i.e., lift yourself up by your bootstraps)." Although this is obviously the review the movie deserves, I confess the rating scale baffles me. Is it better or worse if a film makes you ralph? Patterson implies that older filmgoers might be offended by vulgar humor. There is a flaw in this reasoning: It is not age but humor that is the variable. Laughter for me was such a physical impossibility during "National Lampoon's Van Wilder" that had I not been pledged to sit through the film, I would have lifted myself up by my bootstraps and fled. 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 23:25:05 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN / **** (Not Rated) Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN / **** (Not Rated) April 5, 2002 Luisa: Maribel Verdu Julio: Gael Garcia Bernal Tenoch: Diego Luna IFC Films presents a film directed by Alfonso Cuaron. Written by Alfonso Cuaron and Carlos Cuaron. In Spanish with English subtitles. Running time: 105 minutes. No MPAA rating. BY ROGER EBERT "Y Tu Mama Tambien" is described on its Web site as a "teen drama," which is like describing "Moulin Rouge" as a musical. The description is technically true but sidesteps all of the reasons to see the movie. Yes, it's about two teenage boys and an impulsive journey with an older woman that involves sexual discoveries. But it is also about the two Mexicos. And it is about the fragility of life and the finality of death. Beneath the carefree road movie that the movie is happy to advertise is a more serious level--and below that, a dead serious level. The movie, whose title translates as "And Your Mama, Too," is another trumpet blast that there may be a New Mexican Cinema a-bornin'. Like "Amores Perros," which also stars Gael Garcia Bernal, it is an exuberant exercise in interlocking stories. But these interlock not in space and time, but in what is revealed, what is concealed, and in the parallel world of poverty through which the rich characters move. The surface is described in a flash: Two Mexican teenagers named Tenoch and Julio, one from a rich family, one middle class, are free for the summer when their girlfriends go to Europe. At a wedding they meet Luisa, 10 years older, the wife of a distant cousin; she's sexy and playful. They suggest a weekend trip to the legendary beach named Heaven's Mouth. When her husband cheats on her, she unexpectedly agrees, and they set out together on a lark. This level could have been conventional but is anything but, as directed by Alfonso Cuaron, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Carlos. Luisa kids them about their sex lives in a lighthearted but tenacious way, until they have few secrets left, and at the same time she teases them with erotic possibilities. The movie is realistic about sex, which is to say, franker and healthier than the smutty evasions forced on American movies by the R rating. We feel a shock of recognition: This is what real people do and how they do it, sexually, and the MPAA has perverted a generation of American movies into puerile masturbatory snickering. Whether Luisa will have sex with one or both of her new friends is not for me to reveal. More to the point is what she wants to teach them, which is that men and women learn to share sex as a treasure they must carry together without something spilling--that women are not prizes, conquests or targets, but the other half of a precarious unity. This is news to the boys, who are obsessed with orgasms (needless to say, their own). The progress of that story provides the surface arc of the movie. Next to it, in a kind of parallel world, is the Mexico they are driving through. They pass police checkpoints, see drug busts and traffic accidents, drive past shanty towns, and are stopped at a roadblock of flowers by villagers demanding a donation for their queen--a girl in bridal white, representing the Virgin. "You have a beautiful queen," Luisa tells them. Yes, but the roadblock is genteel extortion. The queen has a sizable court that quietly hints a donation is in order. At times during this journey the soundtrack goes silent and we hear a narrator who comments from outside the action, pointing out the village where Tenoch's nanny was born and left at 13 to seek work. Or a stretch of road where, two years earlier, there was a deadly accident. The narration and the roadside images are a reminder that in Mexico and many other countries a prosperous economy has left an uneducated and penniless peasantry behind. They arrive at the beach. They are greeted by a fisherman and his family, who have lived here for four generations, sell them fried fish, rent them a place to stay. This is an unspoiled paradise. (The narrator informs us the beach will be purchased for a tourist hotel, and the fisherman will abandon his way of life, go to the city in search of a job and finally come back here to work as a janitor.) Here the sexual intrigues which have been developing all along will find their conclusion. Beneath these two levels (the coming-of-age journey, the two Mexicos) is hidden a third. I will say nothing about it, except to observe there are only two shots in the entire movie that reflect the inner reality of one of the characters. At the end, finally knowing everything, you think back through the film--or, as I was able to do, see it again. Alfonso Cuaron is Mexican but his second and third features were big-budget American films. I thought "Great Expectations" (1998), with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow and Anne Bancroft, brought a freshness and visual excitement to the updated story. I liked "A Little Princess" (1995) even more. It is clear Cuaron is a gifted director, and here he does his best work to date. Why did he return to Mexico to make it? Because he has something to say about Mexico, obviously, and also because Jack Valenti and the MPAA have made it impossible for a movie like this to be produced in America. It is a perfect illustration of the need for a workable adult rating: too mature, thoughtful and frank for the R, but not in any sense pornographic. Why do serious film people not rise up in rage and tear down the rating system that infantilizes their work? The key performance is by Maribel Verdu as Luisa. She is the engine that drives every scene she's in, as she teases, quizzes, analyzes and lectures the boys, as if impatient with the task of turning them into beings fit to associate with an adult woman. In a sense she fills the standard role of the sexy older woman, so familiar from countless Hollywood comedies, but her character is so much more than that--wiser, sexier, more complex, happier, sadder. It is true, as some critics have observed, that "Y Tu Mama" is one of those movies where "after that summer, nothing would ever be the same again." Yes, but it redefines "nothing." 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 23:25:12 GMT From: gregorys@xmission.com Subject: [MV] CLOCKSTOPPERS / **1/2 (PG) CLOCKSTOPPERS / **1/2 (PG) March 29, 2002 Zak: Jesse Bradford Dr. Earl Dopler: French Stewart Francesca: Paula Garces Henry Gate: Michael Biehn Dr. George Gibbs: Robin Thomas Jay: Linda Kim Mom: Julia Sweeney Paramount Pictures presents a film directed by Jonathan Frakes. Written by Rob Hedden, Andy Hedden, J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. Running time: approximately 90 minutes. Rated PG.(for action violence and mild language). BY ROGER EBERT In an early scene of "Clockstoppers," a student in a college physics class is unable to complete the sentence, "Einstein's Theory of ..." And just as well, too, since any time-manipulation movie has to exist in blissful ignorance of Einstein's theory. Not that it can't be done, at least in the movies. "Clockstoppers" has a new twist: The traveler doesn't travel through time but stays right where he is, and lives faster. This is closer to Einstein's Theory of Amphetamines. Dr. George Gibbs (Robin Thomas) has invented a way for a subject to live much faster than those around him, so that they seem to stand in place while he whizzes around. He is like the mayfly, which lives a lifetime in a day--and that is precisely the trouble. The system works well, but experimenters age so quickly that they return looking worn and wrinkled, like Keir Dullea in "2001," who checks into that alien bedroom, and doesn't check out. Gibbs needs to iron out a few kinks. Before he can perfect his discovery, intrigue strikes. His teenage son Zak (Jesse Bradford) is informed by the friendly Dr. Earl Dopler (French Stewart) that Gibbs had been kidnapped into hyperspace by the evil and scheming millionaire Henry Gates. Dopler is named after the Effect. I have no idea how they came up with the name of Gates. Zak has just met the beautiful Francesca (Paula Garces) a pretty student from Venezuela, at his high school, and they find themselves teamed on a mission to venture into hyperspace, rescue his father, outsmart Gates, and return without becoming senior citizens. (That's if hyperspace is the same place as speeded-up-time-space, and frankly the movie lost me there.) To assist in their mission they use a gun which fires marbles filled with liquid nitrogen, which burst on impact and instantly freeze their targets. That this gun is not fatal is a fact the movie wisely makes no attempt to explain. "Clockstoppers" has high energy, bright colors, neat sets, and intriguing effects as the speeded-up characters zip around. There is a time when Zak outsmarts characters who are merely speeded-up by speeding up while in speedspace, or whatever it's called, so that he whizzes around the whizzers while emitting a kind of pulsing glow. The movie has been produced by Nickelodeon, and will no doubt satisfy its intended audience enormously. It does not cross over into the post-Nickelodeon universe. Unlike "Spy Kids" or "Big Fat Liar," it offers few consolations for parents and older brothers and sisters. It is what it is, efficiently and skillfully, and I salute it for hitting a double or maybe a triple. I also like the dialogue of Dr. ("Don't blow your RAM") Dopler. No one can be altogether uninteresting who makes a verb out of "Ginzu." Note: At one point, the characters pass a high-security check point and have to submit to a retinal scan. In a subtle bow to the Americans with Disabilities Act, the retinal scan device is at waist level. 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 #355 **************************** [ To quit the movies-digest mailing list (big mistake), send the message ] [ "unsubscribe movies-digest" (without the quotes) to majordomo@xmission.com ]