* 28 Days Later
A film that succeeds in defining the very condition of its moment is nothing less than a major event. In this case, 28 Days Later gets to the heart of SARS. True, SARS came about after 28 Days Later was made (2002), but the environment that made the disease all the rage for the better part of the first half of 2003 is the very same environment that makes 28 Days Later the best horror film of our time. (Charles Mudede)
* American Splendor
The team of Jonze and Kaufman no longer own the meta-film genre. This Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner is an ingeniously structured biopic on the sublimely ordinary life of underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar. As an examination of the self-loathing artist, it’s arguably a better film than Adaptation, thanks to the auto-on-autobiographical nature of the material and the on-the-nose performances by Paul Giamatti and Hope Davis combined with disarmingly deadpan voice-overs and interview interstitials with Pekar himself. (Shanon Gee)
The Animation Show See review this issue.
* Anything Else
Woody Allen’s latest film, with Jason Biggs playing a young Woody Allen, addresses the concerns of a younger generation. Biggs has a bad relationship (with Christina Ricci), a bad agent (Danny Devito), and a terrible therapist who never says a word. Yet, he feels tied to all of them, and his life becomes stupid because of it. Enter the real Woody Allen, who tells him exactly what he’s doing wrong and helps him get his life out of the shitter. A pretty funny movie with some valuable life lessons. (Katie Shimer)
* Bad Boys 2
An action packed Will Smith/Martin Lawrence sandwich with a shitload of explosions and three separate climaxes. That’s right, three climaxes. (Katie Shimer)
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)
Bruce Almighty
Jim Carrey plays Bruce Nolan, your typical angry news guy that Bill Murray played with far greater success in Groundhog Day. After one particularly shitty day, Bruce snaps while on-air and gets tossed out on his can. He curses God for his woes in a most extreme manner, and God (Morgan Freeman) appears to chide Bruce and imbue him with His powers to prove to him that His job ain’t as easy as it looks. As a fan of physical comedy, I’ve always given Carrey a long leash, but holy mother of Christ is this a pile of crap. The writers were obviously banking on Carrey’s rubber-faced antics to turn this chicken shit into chicken salad, but unfortunately for everyone (especially the audience), Carrey ain’t God. (Wm Steven Humphrey)
* Bubba Ho-Tep
Bubba Ho-Tep has an ingenious premise: Elvis (Bruce Campbell)–who didn’t die, but instead swapped places with an Elvis impersonator–is stuck in a dilapidated rest home, spending his days desperately trying to convince nurses and visitors that he’s The King. Unfortunately, the only person who’ll believe Elvis’ claims is another rest home resident: JFK (Ossie Davis), who insists that he survived his assassination, was dyed black, then stuck in the retirement home thanks to a Lyndon Johnson-led conspiracy. Elvis and JFK soon notice their geriatric compatriots are dying off even more often than usual. After some investigation, they discover that the culprit is an evil, soul-sucking mummy, Bubba Ho-Tep. So, as only two American mega-icons can, the two combine forces to kick some undead Egyptian ass. (Erik Henriksen)
Cabin Fever
Out in some anonymous woods somewhere a mysterious disease infects a hunter, whose flesh quickly begins to dissolve off his bones. Desperately seeking help, he descends on a cabin where a group of young, unnaturally attractive urbanites are partying. Drunk and startled, the hotties beat the woodsman savagely with baseball bats, virus-infected blood flies everywhere and presto! The readymade disease-vs.-humans plot for Eli Roth’s directorial debut Cabin Fever is born. Despite these banalities Fever could have been a spooky little ride. Instead Roth’s flesh-dissolving makeup team is amateurish, and his characters are right out of Horror Movie 101. (Justin Sanders)
Capturing the Friedmans
The Friedmans are a middle-class Jewish family from Long Island. Three sons comprise the Friedmans, along with two parents, Arnold and Elaine. The dad is a schoolteacher who instructs computer classes to young boys in his basement on the side. Also in the basement is Mr. Friedman’s collection of kiddie porn, which he has hidden behind the piano. And no one knows about the kiddie porn until dumbass Mr. Friedman gets busted in a sting operation for sending kiddie porn through the mail. After he gets caught for the mags, a wave of hysteria and sloppy police work sweeps the town. Arnold and, oddly, his youngest son Jesse, are charged with about a million counts of child rape. Thankfully for the filmmakers, during all of this insanity the three annoying sons record the dissolution of the Friedman family on video, which is the basis of the movie. (Katie Shimer)
Cold Creek Manor
Two well-to-do New York City-slickers (Dennis Quaid and Sharon Stone) take their kids and high-tail it for a life in the country. They find the house of their dreams in a titular estate. There’s only one problem: the former inhabitant (Stephen Dorff) wants it back. Cold Creek Manor is a creepy movie about creepy people, which plays out like a yuppie version of CSI mixed with The Hand That Rocks The Cradle and a smidge of the The Ring thrown in for good measure. The acting is solid–Dorff’s shirtless scenes are worth the price of second-run admission–and Juliette Lewis camps it up as Dorff’s poor, white-trash girlfriend, but the script is a dreadfully clichéd, boring mess. (Brian Brait)
The Contender
In this Hollywood version of the Lewinsky affair (with the Clinton character recast as a woman), the Democrats make all the great speeches you wish they’d made during the 104th Congress, and the Republicans are as simply evil and plainly hypocritical as you wish they were. The Contender plays like it was funded by the DNC and scripted by a college sophomore taking her first Intro to Women’s Studies class. Part of PSU’s Bush-Blair Dog Days of Summer Film Fest. (Josh Feit)
Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star
If Saturday Night Live has taught us anything, it’s that there’s a fine line between “comedy” and “beating a dead horse into the ground, picking its pulp-like carcass back up, and finely filleting the remains.” Wait, did I say fine line? I meant GAPING CANYON. Deeply grating SNL alum David Spade explores this expanse with his latest–a fairly self-explanatory single note, sustained for an hour and a half.
Dirty Pretty Things
An African illegal immigrant works as a cab driver by day and a hotel desk clerk by night, despite his training as a doctor. When he does sleep, it’s on the couch of a Turkish illegal immigrant (Tautou from Amelie). He soon discovers an illicit kidney-selling scheme that is praying on fellow immigrants. Frears’ London is engaging in that it is a place where corruption is taken for granted, but unfortunately the plot resolves itself mechanically. Tautou, however, remains feisty and adorable throughout. (Andy Spletzer)
Duplex
Drew Barrymore and Ben Stiller star in this comedy about a couple who has to kill off an old lady in order to nab her “duplex.” Directed by Danny Devito.
The Fighting Temptations
Cuba Gooding Jr. continues his winning streak of zany, fish-out-of-water comedies (in the illustrious tradition of Boat Trip and Snow Dogs) with a role as some chump who must successfully champion a gospel choir at the risk of his family’s inheritance. This fish-out-of-water is beginning to smell like shit. Co-starring the abs and complete lack of off-stage charisma of Beyonce Knowles. (Zac Pennington)
Freaky Friday
Despite the generally amiable Jamie Lee Curtis and the overwhelming presence of feigned teen rock band sequences (the greatest joy that the pubescent live-action genre affords), the new Freaky Friday movie is not the old Freaky Friday movie. Absent: Jodie Foster, Barbara Harris, Boss Hogg, and (in the most unfortunate oversight) the earth-shattering car-chase/water-skiing/hang-gliding finale. Present: an uninvested Jamie Lee, obligatory modernizations, and (most inexplicably) something called “Asian voodoo.” (Zac Pennington)
The Girl From Paris See review this issue.
* Girl on the Bridge
A ravishing, breezily paced tale of amour fou, Girl on the Bridge stars Daniel Auteuil as a Svengali-like knife-thrower who meets his perfect foil in Vanessa Paradis’ Adele. What makes the film great, though, is Leconte’s feel for the effect of place on people: The roads are beckoning, Monte Carlo is impulsive, and Istanbul is confusion itself. Auteuil is never less than his dour self, and Paradis–a gap-toothed woman, it’s worth noting–is stunning throughout. (Jaime Hook)
* it (independent tuesdays)
The very cool Nocturnal continues to bat a thousand with this monthly event at which budding filmmakers can show off their wares. This month’s theme is the “Music Video.” All are welcome to show films; just call 239-5900 or email jef@nocturnalpdx.com.
* The Italian Job
Taking the name (and not much else) from the ’60s Michael Caine Cockney classic, The Italian Job remains true enough to the heist formula to end up surprisingly gratifying. The set-up is thus: After the successful completion of the patented One Last Job in Venice, a close-knit team of supercrooks (led by idea man Mark Wahlberg, actually managing to convince that he has the proper number of synapses firing for the task) gets violently bilked from within (via the porn-mustachioed Edward Norton, whose public dissatisfaction with the project translates to an amusingly pissy onscreen turn). Revenge is plotted; cars are raced; property is destroyed; the audience is occasionally hoodwinked. What more does one need? (Andrew Wright)
Le Divorce
This movie is unflichingly atrocious, and not in a fun, campy way. Here’s how it COULD have been fun: American-turned-Paris-resident Naomi Watts gets divorced just in time to receive a visit from her less attractive sister, Kate Hudson. Of course Hudson’s a wild, nubile little thing, and it’s only a matter of time before she busts Watts out of her depression and the two go frolicking about town. But no… alas, this flick has more ambitious pretensions. It wants Watts’ divorce to change her and her sister’s lives forever. It wants Hudson to sleep with everyone under the sun, but then fall in love with an ultra-sleazy, twice-her-age, politician and have her heart broken when he (surprise!) ditches her for a new waify 20-something. It wants to show endless, agonizing amounts of footage of rich, white people eating fancy food and talking about how much money they’re going to make off their rare painting. It wants to be a… suspense thriller with a Hitchcockian ending atop the Eiffel Tower!!? It wants to be a lot of things, but what it ends up being is the dullest, most muddled big-budget star vehicle you’ll see all year. It does, however, manage to bestow Hudson with the single worst haircut ever, which is entertaining. (Justin Sanders)
* Learn to Dumpster [Dive] and Videos From the Resistance
Expert trash eaters show you how to dumpster dive for dinner. Plus, a reshowing of Videos from the Resistance which chronicles several Portland demonstrations; the August 22nd protest against President Bush’s fund-raiser for Sen. Smith; the massive 35,000 person for-peace march on March 15; and, a compilation of seven videotapers’ footage from sit-ins and bridge closures.
* Lost in Translation
In less delicate hands, Lost in Translation could easily have been a dull, pretentious disaster, but Sofia Coppola has two cards tucked up her sleeves. One is the city of Tokyo itself, which has never looked so mysterious and engaging in an American film, and the other is Bill Murray, the bulk of whose part comes across as having been improvised. Why someone has not thought of dropping Murray among the citizens of a strange foreign city before remains a mystery, but without him–and despite the fine work of Coppola and Scarlett Johansson–Lost in Translation would surely fail. (Bradley Steinbacher)
* Luther
Luther is directed by Eric Till and stars Joseph Fiennes as Martin Luther the German theologian. Luther is portrayed as a radical liberal, as a man who spoke for the people and was openly opposed to the all-powerful Roman Catholic Church, its politics, its reading of the bible, its shameless profiteering from the suffering and ignorance of the poor. The film also emphasizes Luther’s commitment to the idea of a loving God, rather than a revengeful entity who operates and maintains control by fear alone. (Charles Mudede)
The Magdalene Sisters
Serious as a heart attack, this unabashedly enraged lapel-grabber focuses on a trio of young women unjustly confined to an Irish convent/slave labor camp. Director Peter Mullan gives absolutely no quarter, placing shivery moments of genuine power and beauty within long stretches of cranked to eleven Legion of Doom-villainy. Provocative to a fault, helplessly moving, and a definite conversation piece for those with the fortitude to ride it out. Based on true events, and condemned by the Vatican. (Andrew Wright)
* Marooned in Iraq
Motorcycles, leather jackets, and rebel attitudes pave the way for the most exuberant movie a Kurd could have made about his people in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Despite a lot of singing and dancing, the films of Ghobadi–cinema’s one and only Kurdish filmmaker–are heartbreaking almost by necessity, and this one is no exception.
Matchstick Men
In truth, Nicholas Cage could have been airlifted from any number of his films and dropped into the middle of Matchstick Men, a film about a nervous con man, his odd-couple partner (played by Sam Rockwell) and his estranged 14-year-old daughter. Rambling to his shrink or just puttering anxiously around his impeccably clean house, Cage picks up the wild goose chase of neurosis right where Adaptation left off. With his ticks, abrupt laughs and adorable anxiety, this has become Cage’s trademark character, which is to say that overuse has worn down its uniqueness. (Phil Busse)
* My Flesh and Blood
If you liked Geek Love you’ll love this: The winner of the Audience Award and Best Documentary at Sundance, and a story about a mom who adopts 11 of the oddest and most heartbreaking children you have ever met. One is severely burned from a crib fire–another was born without legs, another has skin that blisters to the human touch! A year in their life.
* Northfork
In 1955, the small heartland of Northfork is about to disappear, a casualty of a newly constructed hydroelectric dam. In an attempt to move every resident out, an evacuation committee has been assembled. These men make their way through the eerie and near-empty area, trying to coax the few remaining holdouts from their land. Meanwhile, a sickly orphan, confined to bed and afflicted with feverish dreams, lies under the care of a local pastor (Nick Nolte). The inhabitants of the boy’s dreams: a pack of mangy angels who may or may not be searching for him. Northfork moves at a deliberate pace, holding your attention by only offering explanations when they are absolutely needed; the cards are kept close to chest here, which is a cinematic skill long on the rim of extinction. From the opening shot, of a dark lake that is curiously sprouting coffins from beneath its surface, the Polish Brothers have crafted a film that is gorgeous, confusing, and occasionally sad. A film that does what all the best films do: inspire argument. (Bradley Steinbacher)
On_Line See review this issue.
Once Upon a Time in Mexico
Once Upon A Time In Mexico, Robert Rodriguez’s latest venture as director/writer/editor/cinematographer/composer/effects guy, is a bit of a glorious mess–exhilarating in parts, but migraine-inducing overall. Picking up a few years after 1995’s Desperado, this third (and presumably final) installment in the El Mariachi series finds Antonio Banderas’ vengeful guitarist blackmailed by a shady CIA agent (Johnny Depp) into interfering with an attempted plot to assassinate the Mexican President. The double-crosses soon quadruple, culminating in all-out war, and what may be the gnarliest shotgun-inflicted wound ever. Narrative coherence has never been Rodriguez’s forte, but his scripts have never quite had this slapdash, 52-pickup quality before. Bad guys die repeatedly, flashbacks stumble into flash-forwards, Mickey Rourke shows up with a Chihuahua–flowcharts should be issued at the door. (Andrew Wright)
Open Range
There are certain sentences one never expects to write. Case in point: The new Kevin Costner picture is not long enough. Am I high? That depends on just when you’re reading this, but as I write this review the answer is no–Kevin Costner’s new Western, Open Range (which he directed, mind you), is indeed not long enough. Still, this doesn’t mean that the picture is a good one (it’s not)–just that one notices while watching it that Costner, after the three-hour debacle that was The Postman, is a little gun-shy when it comes to opus length this time around. Hence Open Range‘s 110-minute span–a span that is certainly reasonable, but here, given what Costner wishes to show us, comes up rather meager. Part standard Western, part attempted romantic epic, Open Range starts patiently and solidly, but ends up rushing through its climax; the romance, such as it is, takes it in the teeth, and what was meant to be big and important is instead messy and clumsy. Which is too bad, because it has one of the best shootouts in years. (Bradley Steinbacher)
* Pilgrimage
Follow one of the world’s greatest rock climbers, Chris Sharma, on a climbing adventure to the south Indian village of Hampi. Ancient temples lay hidden behind giant granite boulders in this region, but worry not, Chris is just the climber to find them. Directed by Josh Lowell.
* Portland International Short Short Festival
See Destination Fun pg 27
* The Qualified Astropath
A 71-minute DIY film made by Nicolas James Kruger while living in the Virgin Islands in an observatory. Visit a surreal, mystical, and comical place that melds Eastern philosophy and science fiction. Also, enjoy a few short comedy sketches and live performances of songs from the film.
Rundown See review this issue.
Seabiscuit
Before being discovered by an oddball trainer in the 1930s, Seabiscuit was a lazy lie-around horse with a goofy gait. He was unruly, abused, and could barely keep pace in minor-league country fair races. But coupled with a nearly blind and down-on-his-luck jockey, Seabiscuit stormed into the top tier of horseracing and, for a stretch of three years or so, became the most written-about celebrity in America. The moral, as the new film version of the horse’s life crams down our gullet, is “you don’t throw a whole life away because it’s banged up a little.” Yet in spite of this spirited true-life story, DreamWorks does the story complete injustice by kicking Seabiscuit’s corpse for the sake of a summer blockbuster. It’s unclear why DreamWorks bothered to work with a true story. The film version deletes and adds major facts at will. In a classic Disney turn of events, they omit Seabiscuits follies and losses, and clean and sober up Seabiscuit’s primary jockey, Red (played by Tobey Maguire), who was endlessly profane and often drunk in real life. (Phil Busse)
Secondhand Lions
A film about a boy who is left by his mother to spend an indefinite amount of time with his uncles, who, upon first impression, are stubborn hicks with a big barn. Through stories told by Michael Caine, the boy soon learns that his uncles are not hicks at all, but war heroes with glorious pasts. The eldest uncle, Robert Duvall, was in his youth a man of action, a great soldier who defeated powerful sheiks and seduced a dark woman while riding a wild horse on the shores of Arabia. Impressed by this example of pure manhood, Osment switches his dependency on Mommy for an even more unhealthy dependency on this violent father figure. This movie just sucks. (Charles Mudede)
* Senorita Extraviada
The border town Juarez has been touted as the model city of the future, an example about how nations can work together to make harmony. But there is an unsettling underside. Director Lourdes Portillo spent two years interviewing the surviving family members of more than 250 women who have vanished, been murdered, or raped in this dream town.
* Spellbound
Spellbound is a documentary that follows eight pre-teenage contenders in the 1999 National Spelling Bee finals. The cast includes an inner-city girl from D.C. who looks like she’s going to barf every time she steps up to the microphone. Another is a hyperactive spaz from New Jersey who fidgets nonstop, firing off stupid jokes in weird robot voices. Their mannerisms and facial expressions, as they writhe under the pressure, are worth about a trillion bucks a pop. (Marjorie Skinner)
* Stan Brakhage Tribute
Stan Brakhage created almost 400 stunning avant-garde films in his 50-year carrer. Since that’s more films than even the biggest film geek could ever watch, the NW Film Center presents a compilation of his better known work.
Step into Liquid
Step into Liquid is directed by Dana Brown, the son of Bruce Brown, who’s best known for The Endless Summer. The big kahuna of surf flicks, Summer captures the youthful exuberance of globe-trotting surfers looking for the perfect wave. Liquid is a sequel of sorts, focusing instead on a myriad of obsessive wave-riders and what makes them tick. Brown features a charismatic cast of daredevils and oddballs; though big wave rider Laird Hamilton exhibits steely-eyed nerve while navigating monster-sized swells, Liquid isn’t just about tanned surfer gods. There’s also an older group of fun-seekers tackling the two-foot waves of Lake Michigan, and a Texas trio who surf the wakes of oil tankers. However, cinematography makes or breaks a surf flick, and Liquid certainly delivers. Shot from inside, overhead, and underneath the waves, viewers get a visceral sense of their thundering power. And while the self-inflated hippie-dippy language of some surfers may temporarily annoy, most of its subjects are straight-up knowledgeable and charming. (Wm. Steven Humphrey)
Still Life
For the past four years local filmmaker Jacob Pander has been quietly documenting his dad, Henk Pander, as he completes one of his massive oil paintings.
* Student Animation Celebration
Sixty-plus students, grades 4-12, showcase their first films, made under the direction of award winning teacher Sharon Neimcyk. Admission is free.
Swimming Pool
A mousy, frigid English woman (Sarah) who writes popular mysteries retreats to her publisher’s mansion in the south of France. Then his illegitimate daughter Julie shows up unexpectedly, a slutty, bratty French vagina–I mean, character. The film follows the women as they eventually become friendly, and the uptight Brit mellows out with weed, swimming, and sex. A thriller element enters the film, shifting it suddenly from stereotypical Odd Couple stuff to highly improbable, anemic drama. By the end of the film, it’s revealed why things have became so cardboard and predictable. But it’s an extremely flimsy excuse for mediocrity. On the other hand, Julie shows a ton of skin and has sex with a succession of nasty older men, which is fun to watch. (Marjorie Skinner)
Tango
Conceived as a tribute to the dance, Tango opens with a narration by Miguel Angel Solà (Mario Suárez, one of Argentina’s best-known actors) describing the opening scenes of a film–the very scenes we are watching. Like the tango, the film strikes beautiful poses and pantomimes human drama. Sadly, unlike the tango, it never quite loses itself in movement. (Traci Vogel)
Thirteen
Older people tend to address this film in an alarmist tone, while the younger set thinks it’s crappy. (Except for the excellent tight jeans, slit shirts, and hoop earrings.) It tackles a lot of very real issues about maturity, but it takes on too much at once, to no effect. The lead protagonist is a smart, well-behaved child–until the hottest, brassiest, most popular girl in school criticizes her socks. Then it’s like she slipped on a banana peel and became the embodiment of parental paranoia: Drugs! Tongue piercings! Boys! Shoplifting! (Marjorie Skinner)
Under the Tuscan Sun See review this issue.
Underworld
Once again Romeo & Juliet is dusted off and given a refurbishing. This time the setting is the gloomiest of all gloomy cities, where vampires and werewolves wage a secret, exhausting war with one another. The experience: much Matrix-like action (save for the wire work), crackpot dialogue, and a PVC-clad heroine (Kate Beckinsale) who looks sexy as all get out, but can barely muster a sprint thanks to her garb. The result: A boring, uninspired hack work. (Bradley Steinbacher)
* Whale Rider
Audiences at Toronto and Sundance loved this film and so will you if you like triumphant tales of charismatic youngsters who defy the stoic immobility of old-fashioned patriarchs. I like it because it captures traditional Maori ceremonies and songs on film while also showing that New Zealand is not just a backdrop for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (Shannon Gee)
* The Widow of St. Pierre
In 1849, on Saint-Pierre (a French-ruled island off the Newfoundland coast) a sailor, after getting drunk and killing a man as a stupid prank, is sentenced to death by guillotine. But, the nearest head slicer is down south. While waiting for it to arrive, Neel is taken under the wing of “Madame La” Pauline (Juliette Binoche) and a love grows not only between them, but between Neel and the community, as well. You couldn’t ask for a more ready-made parable of the horror of the death penalty, the inhuman machinery of the state, and the grandeur of the human spirit.
* Winged Migration
Following geese, cranes, swans, puffins, penguins, pelicans, and gulls, the makers of the insect documentary Microcosmos spent four years capturing impossible images of birds, via a bevy of methods and a gaggle of cinematographers, for Winged Migration, a documentary that is as much about the wonders of flight as the migration of birds.
A Woman is a Woman
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard, this film explores a stripper’s burning desire to squirt out a kid.