|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|
|
Also this issue: Around the Whirl Success Stories Screen Picks |
|
|
|
|
 |
|||||||||
June 5-11, 2003
movie shorts
2FAST 2FURIOUS
Who knew? Tyrese has got jokes. Aside from the much-anticipated speed-demony cars, he’s easily the most entertaining object in John Singleton’s sequel to Ron Cohen’s 2001 film. The only first-timer returning is nominal star Paul Walker, as stiff and dreary as he was before, but Tyrese (who also did terrific work with Singleton in Baby Boy) brings funk, irony and, of course, his remarkable musculature, enough that you won’t be caring much that Vin "One Race" Diesel priced himself out of this venture. The minimal story has ex-LA cop Walker now racing for money in Miami; busted, he convinces his homeboy Tyrese to go undercover with him, as "drivers" for diabolical dealer Cole Hauser. Yeah, yeah -- the point is the ridiculous car races and tricks: flying over open bridges, highway racing that outstrips The Matrix Reloaded for ingenuity, ferocious speeding down straightaways and careening around corners. Ludacris (who gets points just for being on Bill O’Reilly’s hate-list) plays a mechanic, Devon Aoki a girl driver with a pink car, and Eva Mendes a cop undercover and in bed with Hauser. Less earnest than the first film, and more fun.--Cindy Fuchs(AMC Orleans; Cinemagic; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)
LILYA 4-EVER
(Not reviewed,) A haiku:
Russian orphan trapped
in Swedish prostitution.
Next on Hard Copy!
(Ritz Five)
TOGETHER
Dismiss Chen Kaige’s story of a young violin prodigy struggling with the responsibilities of his talent as a Hollywoodized sugar pill at your peril; Together eventually boasts more toughness than any number of grit-scoured H-wood dramas. Following the boy and his success-hungry father from the provinces to Beijing, Together spans the extremes of Chinese culture (recalling Zhang Yimou’s The Story of Qiu Ju), but the tension between traditionalism and progress doesn’t play out along predictable lines. Together’s ultimate rejection of material success doesn’t come across as piety but as a hard-won insight, no doubt born of its maker’s own bouts with success. --Sam Adams (Ritz East; Ritz 16)
WATTSTAX
Styled as not just a concert film but a referendum on African America circa 1972, Mel Stuart’s sprawling picture is less than the sum of its parts, but oh, those parts! Not just Jesse Jackson leading the crowd in an incantory "I am somebody!," or Isaac Hayes, naked from the waist up save a few gold chains, moving from the radio-ready fantasy of "Shaft" to the ghetto realism of "Soulsville," but consummate showman Rufus Thomas luring the crowd onto the field and then using revolutionary rhetoric to get them back to their seats. ("Power to the people, let’s go to the stands!") Stuart (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) was an odd choice for director to say the least, but he and his four cinematographers (including a young Larry Clark) gather up plenty of barbershop bull-shooting for the vernacular segments that alternate with concert performances. (The concert’s name blends L.A.’s Watts neighborhood, still reeling from the 1965 riots, and Memphis soul label Stax, from whose rosters the performers are drawn -- even Richard Pryor, whose raps are mixed into the brew, was signed to a Stax subsidiary.) Stax was bankrupt within a few years -- maybe they should’ve charged more than a dollar admission -- but as a singular event that flared and then burned out, Wattstax still casts a powerful light. --S.A.(UA Riverview)
WINGED MIGRATION
Moments in Jacques Perrin’s documentary, which follows migrating birds in flight around the globe, almost defy belief: The camera seems to soar among them like, well, a bird, dipping and diving, so close you swear you could reach out and grab a feather. Waddling geese are transformed into sleek creatures of the sky, while birds that already seemed graceful become almost supernatural. A few moments break the spell, though; twice, when the camera is about to capture the food chain in all its merciless, fascinating splendor, Perrin cuts away, which seems more dishonest than tasteful -- edit that stuff out for the Discovery Channel, but leave it in for the theater. And though you’d think a film about birds couldn’t possibly have any political content, what else to make of a sequence where Perrin cuts from American hunters downing birds in flight to a flock flying past the World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty? No Frog-basher I, but something smells fishy, and it ain’t just that seagull. --S.A.(Ritz at the Bourse; Ritz 16)
-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there
