October 23-29, 2003

movie shorts

New Movie Shorts

LEGEND OF JOHNNY LINGO

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Let's go surfin' now
Everybody's learning how.
No, not on the Web.

(UA Riverview)

Lollipop GIRLS IN HARD CANDY

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Hey wait, this is kitsch!
Everybody laugh and
stop masturbating!

(Roxy)

PIECES OF APRIL

Is it November yet? Not quite -- well, never mind. Never too early for the latest in what's become an annual mini-genre: the dysfunctional family Thanksgiving movie. (To be fair, Pieces precedes the Christmas-themed Elf by only two weeks, so it's not the only one to jump the gun.) Written and directed by What's Eating Gilbert Grape novelist Peter Hedges, this grimy-looking DV melodrama stars Katie Holmes as a punkish Manhattanite whose estranged family has grudgingly consented to turkey-day at her grungy pad. That becomes a problem when it emerges that she literally and figuratively can't cook; after she's shoved whole celery stalks into her slippery bird, she discovers that her oven has been turned off, and her landlord is out of town. A comedy of neighbors ensues, with Holmes desperately canvassing her (of course wacky) next-doors, who include a grating Sean Hayes, whose monologue on the virtues of his expensive new oven should be a how-not-to example in screenwriting classes everywhere. As daughter frets, her family is on the way, including nervous dad Oliver Platt, stuck-up sister Alison Pill, senile grandma Alice Drummond and, of course, Patricia Clarkson as Cancer Mom. Hedges leavens the family's clumsily-sketched cruelty -- at mom's insistence, they stop and fill up at a restaurant beforehand -- with broad comedy in the most manipulative and mechanistic of ways, like a sitcom scribe who thinks he's writing O'Neill. Better luck next year. --Sam Adams (Ritz Five; Ritz 16)

RADIO

In an alternate universe, perhaps, Cuba Gooding, Jr. would be making an Oscar bid with this role. As the mentally handicapped Radio, perpetually 12 years old, he twitches and grins in the tradition of previous nominees. But the film around him is so manipulative, so egregiously facile, so offensive in its premise, that such an outcome is unlikely. When his mostly-white-small-town-Southern high-school football team abuses Radio, the coach (Ed Harris, whose understated performance far outdistances the script) takes Radio under his wing, inviting him to do menial work for the team. This upsets Coach's family: the teenage daughter for whom he has no time, the wife (Debra Winger, who emphatically needs more screen time, as she provides welcome respite from the film's immense corniness) and prominent banker/team booster (Chris Mulkey). Radio has a mother (S. Epatha Merkerson) and, reportedly, an older brother named Walter, but she's too soon disappeared from his trajectory, and he never even makes an onscreen appearance This crucial omission, made for whatever reasons, is unforgivable, but it allows Coach to play noble mentor and the rest of the white folks to struggle with their unstated racism, all leading to the overstated realization that, indeed, all are "taught" valuable lessons by Radio. --Cindy Fuchs (AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Riverview)

SCARY MOVIE 3

(Not reviewed.) A haiku:

Airplane! meets Wayans!
Now all the dick-jokes will have
boob-joke counterparts.

(AMC Orleans; Bridge; UA 69th St.; UA Cheltenham; UA Grant; UA Main St.; UA Riverview)