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Also this issue: Blax Power Tiny Spies Clod, James Clod |
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August 8-14, 2002
movie shorts
AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER
After the third time in a row, it feels like Austin Powers could use a Viagra or two. Catapulted this time to 1975, Austin (Mike Myers, as snaggletoothed as ever) hooks up with the golden-’froed Foxy Cleopatra (Beyoncé Knowles) to fight Evil -- Dr. Evil, that is, along with new nemesis Goldmember, a lisping Dutchman with eczema and a 24-carat dingly-dangly (the original having been lost in an “unfortunate smelting accident,” a phrase that grows no funnier each of the many times it’s repeated). With each installment, the series has grown less focused, which means this time out Myers and director Jay Roach find themselves scraping the bottom of the pop-culture barrel, subsisting on lame Britney Spears jokes and references to movies that, while hardly old, are still past their referential prime (Mission: Impossible, Hannibal, The Matrix, possibly even a dash of Midnight Express). In particular, the movie founders on Knowles’ vacant performance. Though she’s named for blaxploitation heroes, she’s not fit to fill one of Pam Grier’s D-cups. --S.A. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Bryn Mawr; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview )
THE BOURNE IDENTITY
Separating itself from The Sum of All Fears or Bad Company, The Bourne Identity’s CIA is a sinister and duplicitous organization, funded by a blissfully ignorant Congress, determined to do and cover up its self-assigned work. Based on Robert Ludlum’s popular novel, the film is directed by Doug Liman, starring Matt Damon and featuring the usual spy picture’s preposterous premise, namely, that Damon’s Jason Bourne is a super-operative who’s lost his memory due to some recent on-the-job trauma. As he gradually learns who he is and how he’s come to have these startling killer skills, he decides to fight against the very Agency that made him. It’s cockamamie, yes, and by all rights, it shouldn’t work. But The Bourne Identity is so free-fallingly bizarre, so in love with its own narrative absurdities, violent bone-crunching and stylistic flourishes, that, after a while, you just go with it. --Cindy Fuchs (Bryn Mawr; Ritz 16; UA Main St.)
CITIZEN KANE
Orson Welles’ incendiary mock-biopic has been voted the Greatest Film Ever Made so many times that most people’s eyes glaze over as soon as you mention it. It’s like lecturing them on the health benefits of wheatgerm: nice, and can you pass the salt? Leaving Kane -- released here in a newly-struck 35mm print -- untouchably up on the world’s largest pedestal does no one any favors, Welles least of all. Even 60 years after its original release, Kane is still dazzlingly inventive, playing games with the structure of the medium few have had the courage or bravado to replicate. For all its over-the-top drama and twisted psychology (which Welles himself dismissed as “dollar-book Freud”), Kane is fundamentally a young man’s movie, full of the giddy exhilaration of a brash, supremely confident artist crossing into a brand new medium. A sensation of the New York theater (most notably for his celebrated “voodoo Macbeth “), Welles was given an extraordinarily generous contract with RKO; he called the studio “the biggest electric-train set a boy ever had.” In other words, as much as he cared for self-expression, Welles was in it to amuse himself. --Sam Adams (Roxy)
THE COUNTRY BEARS
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:
Disney’s Country Bears...
They look like big scary dogs.
Bears? If you say so.
(UA Riverview)
THE DANGEROUS LIVES OF ALTAR BOYS
The premise behind Peter Care’s coming-of-age tale is good enough you wish a better filmmaker had gotten a hold of it. The fantasies of the film’s core group of four Catholic school teenagers are played out in animated comic book-style sequences, which, for example, incorporate an authoritarian nun (Jodie Foster) as a motorcycle-riding arch-villain called Pegleg. But Care’s film heads in so many directions that the fantasy sequences have nothing to match up to, and its attempts to instill seriousness by inserting soap opera twists fall painfully flat (although Jena Malone is good enough to make you believe the drivel coming out of her mouth).--S.A.(Roxy)
FULL FRONTAL
Steven Soderbergh’s Full Frontal, a hermetic, self-regarding tale of life in the Hollywood food chain, was originally conceived as a “sequel” to sex, lies and videotape, but this time the jerking off takes place behind the camera, not in front of it. At times, the movie seems designed to demonstrate no more than Soderbergh’s definitive membership in the Tinseltown in-crowd (Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, etc.). All in all, they’re perhaps the most fatuous, micron-deep collection of characters since Mike Figgis’ Timecode, which similarly tried to hide its shallowness beneath a cloud of video murk. It’s impossible, of course, for a movie to have no style (even no style is a style), but Full Frontal does its damnedest. --S.A.(Bala; Ritz Bourse; Ritz 16)
HALLOWEEN: RESURRECTION
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:
Dear Michael Myers,
I’ve got dibs on Busta Rhymes.
Hugs, Jason Voorhees.
(UA 69th St.; UA Riverview)
K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER
Kathryn Bigelow’s submarine movie is much like other submarine movies: The setting is claustrophobic; the exterior shots are dark and rumbling; the crew includes a charismatic spunky guy (Christian Camargo), a rookie (Peter Sarsgaard) with a girl back home, a loyal “first mate,” a nervous doctor, etc.; there’s a showdown between two strong-willed and dissimilar men, in this case two Soviet captains, Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) and Polenin (Liam Neeson). More unwieldy than Bigelow’s other pictures (Near Dark, Blue Steel, Point Break, Strange Days), this one suffers from a clichéd script. “Inspired by actual events” (and a 1996 National Geographic documentary on those events), the film is set in 1961, when the U.S. and the U.S.S.R were locked in a contest of mutually assured destruction (conveniently explained in the first few minutes by ominous marshal Joss Ackland). During missile tests, the sub’s nuclear reactor develops a leak. Klaus Badelt’s overbearing score kicks in (courtesy of the Kirov Orchestra, apparently in an effort to “Russian-ize” the film), the camera follows many men running around in tight quarters, the captains get it on while the men -- who love affable Polenin and resent severe Vostrikov -- watch and worry. If they can’t cool the core, the sub will explode, take out a nearby U.S. destroyer and (since Ben Affleck isn’t even born yet) initiate all that mutual destruction. Radiation pervades the ship, noble sacrifices are made. --C.F. (Ritz 16)
LIKE MIKE
Think: Shirley Temple with a wicked jump shot. That’s not say that Jermaine Dupri protégé Bow Wow (in the process of dropping the Lil’ from his name, now that he’s 15) is at all into ringlets or animal crackers. It is to say that for his first starring role (having already made an impression in Ice Cube’s All About the Benjamins), the kid plays Calvin, an orphan living in a rickety inner-city Group Home (run by Crispin Glover -- very scary). There he shoots hoops with fellow waifs Brenda Song and Jonathan Lipnicki (who seems not to have grown an inch since Jerry Maguire -- slightly less scary), and hopes to be adopted by the perfect family. When he finds a pair of old kicks with the initials “MJ,” Calvin can fly beyond his wildest dreams. He earns a spot on the L.A. Knights, where he’s coached by infinitely patient Robert Forster and hounded by fans, you know, like a rap star. Conveniently, the franchise player (Morris Chestnut) is in need of focus, which he finds in his new buddy-roommate-son-figure Calvin. Co-produced by the NBA and conceived by Philadelphia’s own Michael Elliot (once a rapper himself, as well as Krush magazine publisher and radio host), Like Mike is more like a lengthy commercial than a movie, but the kid’s appeal is worth contemplating, and you see some of how it works, here, for girls, boys and young women. Sexy, innocent, cute, tough, authentic, pop-fake, self-conscious, delirious -- he can do it all. --C.F. (UA Cheltenham; UA 69th St.; UA Riverview)
LOVELY & AMAZING
Each unhappy in her own way, actress Elizabeth Marks (Emily Mortimer) and her artistic sister Michelle (Catherine Keener) form the intriguing center of Nicole Holofcener’s Lovely & Amazing. Like her first film, 1996’s Walking and Talking, this one deftly and indirectly considers the complicated relationships of ordinary -- difficult, sexual, insecure, insightful -- female characters, in this case, the 30-something sisters; their mother, Jane (Brenda Blethyn); and adopted sister Annie (Raven Goodwin). It’s hard for all of them to say what they mean, to feel like themselves, to be girls. Jane announces she is going into the hospital for liposuction, so she can “feel better about herself.” Her daughters, even as they reject Jane’s worry about how she looks, act out similar concerns. Michelle has developed more effective emotional armor than her sister, but continues to argue with her husband (Clark Gregg) about the fact that she’s never had a paying job. Reluctantly, she agrees to take Annie while Jane’s in the hospital; black and just 8 years old, the girl is starting to articulate her own insecurities, stemming in part from her interracial adoption and in part from living with this particular family. Jane’s surgery, meanwhile, results in complications, leading her daughters to re-evaluate their own disappointments. The film’s emotional specificity, its very smallness of scope, is enormously rewarding. Shot on digital video by Harlan Bosmajian, it achieves a refreshing intimacy, never pushing too hard, never revealing too much. Even as the girls have their own problems, they provide acutely familiar reflections.--C.F. (Bala; Ritz Five; Ritz 16)
MARTIN LAWRENCE LIVE: RUNTELDAT
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:
Martin's so crazy,
You better see his movie
Or he might hit you.
(AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Riverview)
MASTER OF DISGUISE
(Not reviewed.) A haiku:
Oh, Dana Carvey,
You were a funny George Bush!
Now you're a turtle.
(AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)
MEN IN BLACK II
Like the first Men in Black, II is a blessedly terse affair -- if nothing else, director Barry Sonnenfeld makes no bones about the business of a summer entertainment: get in, distract ’em, and get out before they notice their wallet’s missing. Sonnenfeld fills out his cast with ace comedians like returning veterans Rip Torn and Tony Shalhoub, and new recruits Patrick Warburton (Will Smith’s hapless new partner), Jack Kehler and Mr. Show’s Jay Johnston -- not to mention David Cross, who re-ups despite have been devoured in the first installment. (And that’s without mentioning the ace comic timing of Tommy Lee Jones.) Turns out, though, that it’s so easy for Sonnenfeld to pare down his material -- MiBII clocks in somewhere under the 80-minute mark -- because when you strip away the nods and the winks, there’s precious little left. For every moment when the comedy hits every mark, there’s one where the bottom drops out, and considering what dead spots do to a nightclub act, it’s not a pretty end result. The biggest hole in the picture is roughly the shape of Lara Flynn Boyle: As the malevolent alien villainess (or rather, the current form of a shape-shifter inspired by a Victoria’s Secret ad), Boyle emits malice but no glee, which is to say you hate her, but you don’t love it. And pity poor Rosario Dawson (you know, the busty Pussycat), who as Smith’s love interest is stuck mugging into the camera of a director who’s more energized by Rube Goldberg gags than the simplicities of the heart. As in the original, an awareness of race surrounds Smith but rarely touches him -- the talking pug makes more jokes on the subject -- although it’s worth noting that his character’s dialogue has been significantly streeted up. (He actually uses the word “jawn.”) Who knows what corners of the universe he’s been visiting. -- S.A.(AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)
Minority Report
Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s short story by Scott Frank and Jon Cohen, the story proceeds linearly from a devilishly simple premise: What if the government had the ability to stop crimes before they happened? In 2054, the world has been transformed by the introduction of the Department of Pre-Crime, whose officers use data obtained from a triune oracle to pinpoint the date and time of murders before they happen, and then intervene to prevent them from occurring. At times, the film plays like what, by the numbers, it is: the product of a handful of intensely commercial personalities doing their best to make an uncommercial movie. As a pre-crime officer, has never been more somber, less raffishly charismatic. Minority Report is short on whimsy and long on ambience, which misfires almost as often as it succeeds. --S.A. (UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)
MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING
Toula (Nia Vardalos) is Greek, 30 and unmarried. It’s the last part that is killing her hyper-Hellenic family, who thinks she should quit dabbling at college courses (“She’s got enough education for a woman” says her father) and just settle down and start a family. So when Toula falls in love with Ian, the man of her dreams (Sex in the City’s John Corbett), everything’s just wonderful -- except he isn’t Greek. What follows is essentially Meet the Greek Parents: The large, gregarious family is suspicious of Ian the Protestant and -- gasp -- vegetarian, who tries his best but obviously doesn’t fit in, and Toula becomes increasingly embarrassed by her ethnicity’s eccentricities. Will the couple gain the family’s approval and end up having the wedding? If so, will it be big, fat and Greek? Well, I don’t want to give anything away. Second City alum Vardalos wrote the screenplay, based on her semi-autobiographical one-woman show, so her knowing, frazzled performance and many of the details of her character’s over-attentive family life ring true. Michael Constantine and Lainie Kazan shine as Nia’s restaurant-owning parents; Dad Gus’s fixation on Windex as a panacea is particularly amusing. If director Joel Zwick’s staging is a smidge too hammy and sitcommy to work completely, keep in mind that this 25-year TV vet learned ethnic comedy working with the likes of Chachi, Balki and Mork.--R.G. (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)
MY WIFE IS AN ACTRESS
Written and directed by Yvan Attal, My Wife Is An Actress stars Attal as Yvan, a sports journalist whose wife, Charlotte (Charlotte Gainsbourg) is, you guessed it, an actress, and whose celebrity is a constant thorn in her husband’s side. Attal never cuts down to the bone, but he doesn’t pretend to. When, for example, Charlotte’s uncomfortable getting naked for a love scene, her British director has the whole crew strip off, but while the crew’s bodies are filmed in unflattering truth, Attal catches his wife from behind, her hip perfectly cocked, curves glowing, a movie dream even before the cameras start rolling. The film celebrates cinema even as it acknowledges the wounds it causes.--S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)
NEVER AGAIN
The frustrations inspired by Eric Schaeffer’s new film are many, not least being that it leaves Jill Clayburgh pledging her troth to exterminator Jeffrey Tambor while wearing a knight’s costume she bought at the local dildo shop. A dreary teen sex farce with middle-aged characters, Never Again gives its protagonists gender-specific “issues” -- hers: daughter leaves for college and mom meets an Internet date who turns out to be a dwarf; his: can’t get it up and tries meeting a transvestite (Michael McKean) -- and sympathetic best friends -- hers: Sandy Duncan and Caroline Aaron; his: Bill Duke, looking even more put upon than he did in Predator. Oh yes, he also has a monster-mom (Dolores McDougal). They meet uncute at a gay bar, where he mistakes her for an M2F with an excellent boob job. They fall madly in love, find they share sexual fantasies (asphyxiation, strap-ons) and fears of commitment (hence: “never again”), and then run into preposterous troubles. He breaks it off, she cries, he gets knocked down by a horse in Central Park. --C.F. (Ritz at the Bourse)
READ MY LIPS
Neither hearing-impaired Carla (Emmanuelle Devos) nor Paul (Vincent Cassel), a hearing man, is a particularly admirable type -- both are sullen and manipulative both. But if Jacques Audiard doesn’t love them, exactly, he pays them the greater tribute of depicting them with even-handed reserve in Read My Lips (Sur Mes Lèvres. Carla is a put-upon corporate secretary whose hopes of moving up are constantly frustrated; in the cafeteria, she can lip-read the derisive comments of her co-workers. Paul is an ex-convict without much desire to reform. When he shows up at Carla’s office looking for a straight job, she has no reason to believe him when he says he’s computer literate, but she takes him on anyway, less out of a desire to help than to have someone over whom she can, at last, exert power. It’s hardly that simple, though. She blackmails Paul into stealing critical files from a co-worker who’s stolen her place in the queue, but in return, he muscles her into helping him get back at a loan shark who’s out to collect some pre-penal obligations. It’s at this point that Read My Lips starts to morph into a semi-conventional thriller, but you can’t root for the characters the way you normally would. The greasy small-time gangster certainly deserves the comeuppance the two begin to plan for him, which involves a heist he’s planning, but you don’t exactly want Paul and Carla to Citroën off into the sunset. Audiard doesn’t let them off scot-free, either: Their plan comes with heavy consequences, and you start to reconsider whatever tenuous sympathies you might have formed. The trouble with Read My Lips is that it’s all subversion; you lose sight of what it is it’s supposed to be subverting.--S.A. (Ritz at the Bourse)
ROAD TO PERDITION
Maguire (Jude Law), a freelance photographer, specializes in images of corpses, and, rather ingeniously, secures his employment by murdering his own subjects. His latest assignment is Irish mob hit man Michael Sullivan (Tom Hanks), anti-heroic protagonist of Sam Mendes’ latest dysfunctional family saga, Road to Perdition. Sullivan initially appears possessed of a pleasantly upper-middle-class existence, ensconced with his quietly supportive wife, Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and two young sons. Sullivan is introduced from the perspective of Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin); sent to fetch dad for dinner, he pauses in the hallway outside his parents’ bedroom, watching his father carefully remove his jacket and gun. The shot through the narrow doorway, inspired by the film’s source, Max Allan Collins’ 1998 graphic novel, exposes Michael’s complex mix of fear and love for his father. Though Michael knows enough not to ask about his father’s occupation-- namely, killing people for Chicago boss John Rooney (Paul Newman) -- he’s also curious enough to check it out for himself. The trauma begins one stormy night, when he stows away in the back of the car and inadvertently sees his dad shoot several men with his Tommy gun. Though Sullivan assures his employers that Michael “understands” and business can continue as usual, it’s immediately clear that whatever familial equilibrium they all pretend to share is destroyed. Sullivan and Michael go on the run, and the film’s father-son romance begins in earnest. They embark on a six-week series of Midwestern bank robberies, conveyed in a montage that looks like a graphic novel in motion. The film’s manifest reverence for its source, its artful darkness and precise composition are stunning, and almost make up for the tired plot (Eastwood and Costner’s A Perfect World comes to mind), in which a boy sees his father (figure) redeemed by good intentions, if not acts.--C.F. (Baederwood; Narberth; Ritz 16; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)
SIGNS
Signs doesn’t look much like an alien invasion movie. Rather than presenting climactic battles or fearsome big-eyed creatures, it focuses instead on establishing moods. These include familiar responses within the genre (wonder, dread, anticipation -- experienced by ex-priest Mel Gibson, his two kids and brother Joaquin Phoenix), but they are also remarkable in that, at least initially, they are predicated on not knowing and not seeing exactly what’s going on. Indeed, for about 90 minutes, M. Night Shyamalan’s new movie resists showing much of anything, relying instead on not-so-informative TV news reports and reaction shots to convey the scary business. Sadly, the movie eventually abandons its delicate ambiguity, its attention to such everyday things, to deliver a resolution which can only look contrived and reductive. --C.F. (AMC Andorra; AMC Orleans; Baederwood; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Main St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview; Ritz 16)
STUART LITTLE 2
It’s good to know that even mice can fall for the wrong chick. But if Stuart Little knew anything about Melanie Griffith, the voice of his pseudo-love interest -- a bird named Margalo -- he would have driven away, very fast, instead of taking her home to the swank little Victorian the Little family calls home, across the street from Central Park. It’s hard not to like this follow-up to the original Stuart Little movie, about a family that adopts a talking mouse. Michael J. Fox, the voice of said rodent, is an animator’s dream, bringing life and emotion to the title role. The always-kooky, always-sexy Griffith also gives great voice and Nathan Lane as the woeful, puffy old queen of a cat is a scream. Geena Davis is always nice to look at even if her mother-smothering character rightfully makes one squirm. With just enough action to keep things moving and enough simulated mayhem to get a PG rating, SL2 entertains children and adults alike without wallowing in schmaltz. Well, not too much schmaltz. Well, not so much schmaltz that it still isn’t a pleasure to watch a screen mouse not named Mickey. --H.A. (UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)
SUNSHINE STATE
It’s hard to believe there are any John Sayles fans who don’t agree with his politics. A devoted social chronicler and champion of so-called ordinary people, Sayles is more artisan than artist, which is to say his movies tend to be about their subjects rather than inside them. Still, it’s hard to miss the point that Sunshine State, like the more polished Lone Star, is about history, since characters keep referring to it, such as when one dressed in historical-reenacter’s garb tells another, “You can’t live in the past.” (Get it?) Covering the same ground as Lone Star but without a genre to bounce off, Sunshine State is often shrill instead of clever. There’s no perspective-altering twist at the end, just a slice of poetic justice. Set on a small island off the Florida coast, Sunshine State takes a dim view of tourism and development, which isn’t particularly surprising, as positions go: Sayles caricatures the developers and chamber of commerce toadies without much mercy or interest. Mary Steenburgen’s desperate inventor of an ersatz holiday called “Buccaneer Days” exists mainly to have comic points scored off her, as does her bumbling husband (Gordon Clapp), a bank employee who’s embezzling to feed his gambling habit. Sayles excels at imagining the interrelations between and within communities, but apparently some people deserve more imagination than others. What Sunshine State does best is expand on the tension between the ugly reality of history and the myths we create to cover it up. Tom Wright’s college football sensation, once the pride of all-black Lincoln Beach, returns as a car salesman with a busted knee and a few dark secrets to hide. The town is practically void of spring breakers and retirees, but in a sense it seems everyone there is retired from their former glory, rarely chasing it, but just accepting that such things lie in the past.--S.A. (Ritz East)
TADPOLE
15-year-old Oscar Grubman’s (Aaron Stanford) crush on his dad’s wife Eve (Sigourney Weaver) is wholly understandable. Oscar is at first frustrated in his attempts to talk to her at a party she and his dad (John Ritter) are hosting; at evening’s end, he takes himself to a bar to drown his sorrow. On his way home from the bar, he runs into Diane, who takes him home to sober up, and before you know it, they’re in bed. Mortified in the morning, Oscar swears Diane to secrecy, believing news of the tryst will ruin his chances with Eve. In another movie, we’d probably be deep inside Oscar’s fantasy world here, but not in Tadpole. As written by Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller and directed by Gary Winick, this look at one teen’s urgent desires takes a mostly blithe approach.--C.F. (Bala; Ritz Five; Ritz 16)
THIRTEEN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT ONE THING
Jill Sprecher’s low-budget, closely plotted, philosophically bent film is a function of fate. Not only is it inspired by the director/co-writer’s (with her sister Karen) own NYC experience of being mugged and hit in the head (twice), it also considers the ways that chance, as much as ambition or desire, shapes the experiences of various characters’ intersecting experiences (organized into four general stories). Physics professor John Turturro leaves his wife (Amy Irving), to escape what he sees as “entropy” (the subject of a class lecture), pursuing an affair with colleague Barbara Sukowa; Clea DuVall and Tia Texada are maids with conveniently opposite outlooks (optimistic and pessimistic), until Duvall is hit by a car (suffering head damage), driven by attorney Matthew McConaughey, who in turn feels debilitating guilt about leaving the scene; this accident happens just after McConaughey, excited because he’s just won a case, meets gloomy insurance company claims examiner Alan Arkin at a bar. Arkin, in his own turn, painfully compares himself to his ever blissful employees (William Wise), and eventually plots his downfall, which doesn’t quite work out the way he expects, because, well, fate and desire interfere. At times, the pieces fit too neatly, but the actors’ precision, in their fragmented, tightly configured roles, within stylized, compressed sets, is often breathtaking --C.F.(Ritz at the Bourse)
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