Adaptation
Crafting a follow-up to Being John Malkovich, 1999’s head-tripping deconstruction of identity, desire, and fame, would be difficult job for anyone. For Charlie Kaufman–writer of Malkovich, co-writer and lead character of Adaptation–it’s a virtual impossibility. Thankfully, Kaufman and Spike Jonze have created a rich entertainment out of this impossibility, stuffing it with enough meta-plot twists to fuel half a dozen lesser movies, and bringing it to the screen with brilliant performances by Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep. Still, not even Kaufman and Jonze can overcome the unfortunate fact that listening to a writer whine about how hard it is to write is always annoying. (David Schmader)
All the Real Girls
All the Real Girls, directed by David Gordon Green, nearly reverses all the nonsense Hollywood has ever told us about love. Zooey Deschanel as Noel, and Paul Schneider as Paul, seem less like actors and more like kids who are too old to still live at home, but young enough to fall in love for the first time. An excellent supporting cast (including the new indie queen Patricia Clarkson) creates the town they inhabit. Green’s direction is carefully understated–melancholy shots of the land turn scenes into little vignettes of small town life. The film is reminiscent of 2000’s You Can Count On Me, quiet and thoughtful, whereas in real life the deepest emotions tend to get left unsaid. Strangely, the big dramatic scene is actually the least effective, but otherwise the film is a quaint reminder of what romance felt like when all the world was young. (Steven Lankenau)
Anger Management
See review this issue.
Assasination Tango
See review this issue.
Basic
Basic, starring John Travolta, is less a war movie than it is a fast-paced whodunit. It’s an engrossing murder mystery that just happens to have a gleefully mean-spirited drill sergeant as the victim (Samuel L. Jackson) and a squad of disgruntled army rangers as the suspects. The story may not be wholly original–and in the end, may not entirely add up–but nonetheless, Basic is well produced and fun to watch. (Phil Busse)
Bend it Like Beckham
Not exactly a masterpiece, this film is a lighthearted, cute escape best suited for parents and teens. An adolescent, soccer-playing daughter struggles against her Hindu parents, who would rather gear her interests towards cooking and otherwise preparing herself to be a proper Indian bride. (Marjorie Skinner)
Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary
See review this issue.
Britney Baby, One More Time
See review this issue.
Business of Fancydancing
This movie, written and directed by Sherman Alexie, is funny, provacative, and educational. It’s the story of Seymour Polaktin, an Indian who’s left the res., who’s written a lot of poetry about life on the res. He has to return home to attend the funeral of a good friend, and in doing so, face the people he’s exploited. He’s also gay. It touches on a lot of issues that deal with contemporary Native Americans, but isn’t lost in preserving and reliving something that’s really old. (Katia Dunn)
Captain Milkshake
The original anti-Vietnam film, showing corn-fed boys go from their hometown soda shops to wooden boxes in a matter of weeks.
City of God
City of God chronicles gang warfare in one of the most impoverished and depraved slums in Rio de Janeiro. It revolves around a young man named Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues) as he struggles to get high, get laid, and finally get a real job in photography so he can get out of the slums. He narrates the film in a dazed, almost aloof tone as waves of drugs, guns, and murder swirl around him. Lush mounds of twisting story lines and visual treats pile up, your eyes greedily devouring them like candy, but never seeming to quite get full. (Justin Sanders)
The Core
Young hottie geology professor Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) is yanked out of class one day by Federal agents to explain a score of unusual occurrences: People with pacemakers dropping dead, flocks of birds going wacko, and the space shuttle accidentally being forced to land in downtown Los Angeles. With the help of a Frenchie pal (Tchèky Karyo) and a Carl Sagan look-alike (Stanley Tucci), Josh figures out that the core of the earth has mysteriously stopped spinning. Who gives a crap, right? Well, you would, when the electromagnetic field started breaking down and your skin burst into flames. The solution is simple enough: Hop into an earth-burrowing machine, dive to the center of the Earth, and blow up a few nukes to get the core restarted. Yeeee-HAW! (Wm. Steven Humphrey)
Dreamcatcher
Cigar-shaped star critters wage a slimy back-door assault against the human race. Somewhere, Freud is moaning. Stephen King fans are a forgiving bunch by necessity when it comes to cinematic adaptations, but it’s hard to imagine anyone cottoning to director/co-writer Lawrence Kasdan’s grievous mishandling of what amounts to a compilation of the author’s greatest hits (childhood friends reunited against evil, kids with freaky powers, military gone amuck, snow). (Andrew Wright)
Dysfunktional Family
A whole documentary about annoying Eddie Griffin and his annoying, stupid family. What’s next, a documentary about that guy from Everybody Loves Raymond? God help us.
Fiasco
If you think that a world without a heartwarming comedy from Iceland is an empty world, then your wait is over! That’s right, the country that brought us Björk and… well, Björk… now delivers a comedy about three relatives living under the same roof and experiencing horniness–no, not for each other, but for a hot-tubbing priest, a batty old actress, and a clumsy lover. Yeah, if you can see how that would be funny, you’ll love this movie!
Ghosts of the Abyss
A 3-D documentary on the Titanic. Sorry, Kate Winslet’s boobs will not be featured. See My, What a Busy Week
The Good Thief
See review this issue.
The Greatest Thing
The adorable Petra attaches love to men like they are flypaper. This fun and quirky Norwegian film cleverly adapts Nobel Prize winner Bjornson’s short novel “The Fisherman’s Daughter” to the screen. After finding herself engaged to no fewer than three men in her small fishing village, the irrepressible Petra flees to the hills where she, again, falls in love–this time in brutal competition with her new best friend. A wonderful story about love, restraint, and a world that may not be big enough for both.
He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not
How hysterical that as conservatives in this country denounce the French over Iraq (Freedom Fries anyone?), the French cinema machine releases a film starring Amelie’s Audrey Tautou–probably the most beloved French export to come along since the first Gulf War–in a fairly nasty role as a rather cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs young Parisian woman in love with a doctor (Samuel Le Bihan)? Politics (and possible bad timing) aside, however, is He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not any good? Oui, though it’s not quite as entertaining (nor as nefarious) as the continual rantings of insipid war hawks. (Bradley Steinbacher)
House of 1000 Corpses
Written and directed by Rob Zombie, this is the story of a group of kids whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. They take refuge in an old house with a psychotic family neck deep in Satanism, cannibalism, witchcraft, and dreadlocks.
The Hunted
Trained to be the ultimate special-ops murder machine, Benicio del Toro sees a bit too much bloodshed while on a mission in Kosovo. Upon his return, he’s awarded for his bravery, yet ironically, is driven crackers by the endless screams of the dead. When Benny goes AWOL, he becomes a marked man and it’s Tommy Lee Jones’ job to capture him. It’s almost impossible to describe how jaw-droppingly ridiculous this movie is–but therein lies the fun. One could start with the bloated stars of the film, whose koo-koo characters are a cross between Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Both express their advanced craziness in the most obvious ways: twitchy hands and the speaking patterns of a stroke victim (however, these affectations may have been necessary to make up for the lack of any real characterization in the threadbare script). (Wm. Steven Humphrey)
The Legend of Hell House
A team including a scientist, his wife, and a psychic must return to the notorious Hell House to discover what happened to the previous group, who have all been killed or gone mad.
Irreversible
While Irreversible is exceptionally hard to watch, it is, for those with a curiosity for the base and demented, entirely worth seeing. The story unfolds in reverse order and chronicles the time leading up to the beautiful Monica Belluci’s rape and the disturbing aftermath. (Katie Shimer )
A Man Apart
Vengeance, violence, Vin: stout-necked action hero returns, and this time (much like the other times) it’s personal.
Movern Callar
Based on the Alan Warner novel, the film is supposed to be about a rave culture gal whose boyfriend offs himself, leaving her with some money and opportunity. The film version, however, has almost no dialogue, no good rave scenes, and no compelling story. Had I not read the book, I don’t think I would have gotten it at all. (Katie Shimer)
Phone Booth
The image of a man surrounded by cops in a lone phone booth in the middle of downtown New York City is striking initially, but grows mundane after an hour or so. Once the visual titillation wears off, it becomes painfully clear that Phone Booth is really nothing more than two guys talking on the phone. The sustenance of such a premise for a feature-length film demands a quality of screenwriting that even the best filmmakers would have trouble maintaining, let alone Can’t-Pick-a-Script-to-Save-His-Life Schumacher. The director employs his usual swooping, gritty camera tricks to an almost nauseating degree, but can’t come close to saving Phone Booth from tedious dialogue and mediocre characterization. (Justin Sanders)
The Pianist
Despite appearances to the contrary, this film is not about the indomitable spirit of a survivor. It’s about how low a human being can sink in order to live, and the depths of abasement a race is capable of withstanding in order to avoid extinction. There’s no heroism in the picture, and all redemption is tempered by the knowledge of what’s coming next. It’s here, in the deeply Eastern European black comedy of this knowledge, that the film and its maker mark their territory most boldly. (Reassuring the Poles that “the Russians will be here soon” is a classic Polanski irony.) For all the possible autobiography of the story, The Pianist is most personal when it stares into the abyss of the Holocaust and finds nothing looking back. (Sean Nelson)
The Quiet American
Michael Caine deserves all the praise he’s received for his role as Fowler, while Brendan Fraser slightly overplays the wide-eyed idealism that inspired America’s misguided involvement in Vietnam. The metaphor of the love triangle doesn’t work here nearly as well as the more overt politics, but the movie is worth seeing if only because it shows how America can do the wrong thing with the best of intentions. (Andy Spletzer)
Rethinking America
The Margaret Mead Film Fest comes back with Ota Benga, about a man taken from the Belgian Congo and put on display at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Also showing, An Injury to One, about the lynching of Butte, Montana union organizer Frank Little.
The R.M.
The antics of a return missionary. Mormons, this one’s for you.
Solaris
Things that can be praised without reservation about Solaris include the dazzling production design, Cliff Martinez’s percussion-rich score, and the luminous Natascha McElhone as Clooney’s semi-estranged wife. Less tangible, but equally undeniable is the director’s skill at illuminating the many ways regret stains memory (similar to what he accomplished with The Limey, but far less reliant here on showy Mixmaster editing). Any other enjoyment or significance may depend upon your personal feelings about love and loss, and how well they synch up with the filmmaker’s. (Andrew Wright)
Spider
Spider (the nickname of the main character) begins with Ralph Fiennes, who says less than ten intelligible words in the entire film, entering a sort of halfway house for people released from the asylum. Even though the head of the house, Mrs. Wilkinson (Lynn Redgrave), tries to assimilate our dear mumbling Ralphie, he slowly starts living in his past, re-imagining the events that led him to the asylum. Fiennes is inserted in these scenes so that we watch him watching himself as a child. Spider’s past plays out like a perverse rewriting of Angela’s Ashes. A drunken Irish father (Gabriel Byrne) argues with the stoic martyred mother (Miranda Richardson), and then runs down to the pub while the wee little lad watches vacantly from the stairwell. Only we have to remember that a lunatic is telling the story, and Miranda Richardson’s mother slowly insinuates herself into Spider’s world, becoming other women in Spider’s life and leaving any sense of reality to be questioned. (Steven Lankenau)
spirited away
One of the last remaining directors of animation to truly capture the strange, subtly contented spirit of childhood (and, for that matter, one of the only directors of animation with any sense of singular recognition), Princess Mononoke director Hayao Miyazaki follows his 1997 masterpiece with his latest–an Alice in Wonderland-inspired fable about a little girl whose parents are transformed into pigs.
Spun
Oh, as if we don’t have to live in the midst of a crystal meth maelstrom, now we have to have it play out in our theaters? Where is the escapism? Based on real-life local (okay, Eugene) dropouts and burnouts, John Leguizamo and Mickey Rourke play meth traffickers and cookers who pretty much hang out, freak out, and spazz out. Billy Corgan lays down a languid soundtrack that is eerily mellow compared to the frenetic pace of the speed freaks and fast-forward narrative. Preview screening.
Tears of the Sun
The plot of Tears, which combines The Magnificent Seven with any number of Chuck Norris military films, should be a gimme: Rough and tumble officer (Bruce Willis) saves sexy white lady and her native pals from evil rebels with good ole’ fashioned military know-how. The problem lies in the inclusion of “ethnic cleansing”–which is a wrong move for a cheesy flick like this. Putting piles of burning bodies and rape scenes on top of such a hackneyed plot is manipulative, and cheapens the plight of war-torn African nations. And while there are suspenseful moments and some nice cinematography, by the end my eyes were rolling so much I wanted a real band of rebel guerrillas to storm the theater and put me out of my misery. (Wm. Steven Humphrey)
The Tempest
Derek Jarman’s visually romancing 1979 version of Shakespeare’s play about an exiled necromancer and his virginal daughter.
Tully
Basically a mystery, Tully is a fairly successful picture, able to pinch your emotions without leaving a bruise. Beautifully shot, with stellar performances (especially by Bob Burrus as the elder Tully), it’s only drawback may be a sometimes near-glacial pace that at times seems to match the dullness of Nebraska farm-life reality. Then again, maybe I’m just an urban elitist. (Bradley Steinbacher)
A View from the Top
Playing out like something of a saccharine, low-rent version of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, A View From the Top is pure ocular Wonderbread–featureless, familiar, and entirely inoffensive. Characters appear and disappear without relevance or explanation, the plot plods along with heartwarming comic relief, and the whole slapdash mess ends almost painlessly. Almost.
What a Girl Wants
Amanda Bynes, Colin Firth, and Kelly Preston star in Girls Gone Wild: London Edition, in a film filed somewhere between “Coming of Age,” “Fish Out of Water,” and “Product Placement Opportunity.”
Willard
Willard’s life stinks. He lives in an old, dusty house with his decrepit mother, who’s little more than a hideous flap of skin. Obsessed with the relics left by his father, Willard shuffles to work every day in pappy’s old clothes, pushing pencils at the company started by daddy-o. The office is obligatorily staffed with rapidly aging employees, just as his boss is obligatorily callous and abusive. The formulaic premise of Willard is so obvious that it’s funny, which sets the tone for the rest of the story. Whatever marbles Willard still has at the beginning of the film are long gone when he decides that a white rat rescued from his vermin-infested basement is “the best friend he ever had.” Absurdly, Willard begins training all of the rats in his basement to be a sort of army. Does this sound stupid? It is. But it’s also cute, funny, and sad. (Marjorie Skinner)