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Also this issue: Killing Time Sayles Event Movies |
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July 12-18, 2002
movie shorts
THE CROCODILE HUNTER
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:
Steve, my Aussie mate,
Soon the crocs will eat you up.
Crikey! Crikey! Cri...
(AMC Andorra; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview)
ELLING
This harmless Norwegian comedy is most notable for being just that, the Norwegian sense of humor being about as legendary as English cuisine or German flexibility. Based on the middle book of a best-selling trilogy, Elling concerns the efforts of the childlike Elling (Per Christian Ellefsen) and Kjaell Bjarne (Sven Nordin) to move out of the state home where they’ve spent several years and out into the real world. Director Petter Næss thankfully avoids depicting his characters as even-tempered innocents getting their first taste of the cruel world. Elling in particular is gruff, paranoid and pathologically afraid of human interaction. Unfortunately, the film’s negative virtues are its strongest; though there’s not much to condemn, there’s not much to recommend either. --Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)
HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:
Dear Michael Myers,
I’ve got dibs on Busta Rhymes.
Hugs, Jason Voorhees.
(AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Riverview)
REIGN OF FIRE
“Envy the country that has heroes? I say, pity the country that needs ‘em.” So roars Matthew McConaughey, the earnestly angry, elaborately tattooed, bald-headed, cigar-chomping American (of the “Kentucky irregulars”), trying to chastise a band of raggedy Brits who are, as it happens, celebrating McConaughey’s own heroic act, namely, his slaying of a fire-breathing dragon. It’s only one of the many incoherencies in Rob Bowman’s movie that this holdover notion of “countries” still exists in 2020, when most all of the planet has been burned up by the aforementioned dragons. (They eat ash, “live on death,” as McConaughey poeticizes it, at least until it’s more convenient for them to eat people, or each other.) McConaughey disrupts the isolationist life of Christian Bale and crew, who are hiding from dragons rather than fighting them, until the Yanks storm through with big guns, a tank and a chopper, piloted by Izabella Scorupco and equipped with daredevil parachutists called “archangels.” Efforts to slay the swooping dragons appear to be extremely ill-conceived, and in between, Bale (who has a dragon-slain mom in his past; i.e. “personal demons”) and McConaughey (who seems to have no past at all) argue repeatedly over fighting vs. hiding. The film pays homage to Star Wars and rips off The Road Warrior and Godzilla movies, but the pieces never come together. – Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview)
SWIMMING
You could watch Lauren Ambrose all day and never catch her acting. That’s not to say the Six Feet Under star is unskilled, quite the contrary: She’s such a natural actor she doesn’t have to make a show of anything she does. Without Ambrose’s utter lack of (visible) calculation, Robert Siegel’s subdued coming-of-age tale would undoubtedly be much less than it is. Ambrose plays Frankie, a soft-spoken, pale-skinned tomboy who, with her bullying older brother, runs a restaurant on a South Carolina boardwalk, where her unwillingness to partake in beachfront bacchanalia separates her from the madding crowd. Per standard c-o-a format, Frankie’s life is shaken up by the arrival of the cartoonishly feminine Josee (Joelle Carter), who seems to bend men (including Frankie’s brother) to her will without effort, and whose power and self-possession mesmerizes the impressionable Frankie, endangering her lifelong friendship with the headstrong Nicola (Jennifer Dundas Lowe), who runs the tattoo shop next door. Lisa Bazadona’s script, based on her own experience working in a tattoo shop on Myrtle Beach (Siegel and Grace Woodard are credited writers as well), is laced with small details and unanswered questions, which gives the film a kind of open-ended pleasure. When Frankie says she doesn’t like to go swimming, you wince in anticipation of the moment she’ll stick her toe in the water, but thankfully, it never comes. You’re left to imagine it. --S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)
