Short Subjectives April 15 2000

FF is Felicia Feaster, CH is Curt Holman, RJ is Richard Joseph, EM is Eddy Von Mueller, SW is Steve Warren.

Opened Friday

DETERRENCE (R) *** Film critic Rod Lurie’s first feature has divided the critics. I’m on the pro side. In a stroke of casting genius, Kevin Pollak stars as an unpopular US president who grows into his role - as Pollak does - before our eyes. Snowbound in a Colorado diner, the president responds to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait by threatening to nuke Baghdad. The story unfolds in virtual real time. What might have been a rack to hang political arguments on is a gripping, entertaining drama (and a strong candidate for stage adaptation) first and foremost. Don’t let politics deter you from seeing it. - SW

GOSSIP (R) Inspired by their journalism class project about the nature of gossip, three college students decide to put their theories to the test by spreading a rumor about a beautiful, wealthy and chaste freshman, whom they claim had sex with her boyfriend after a wild party. Things quickly get out of hand when the girl’s boyfriend is arrested for date rape and one of the three instigators is revealed to have a deep, dark secret.

JOE GOULD’S SECRET (R)** In this nostalgic period piece, Big Night’s Stanley Tucci directs himself as a New Yorker writer who makes a temporary celebrity of an eloquent, mercurial Greenwich Village street person (Ian Holm). While Holm gives a pleasingly cantankerous performance, Tucci never gets under the skin of his character (the bogus Southern accent doesn’t help), and despite a genuine affection for mid-century Manhattan, the film leaves you feeling like you saw the slides of someone else’s visit. - CH

LOVE AND BASKETBALL (PG-13) *1/2 Love and Basketball stars Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps as two gifted basketball-playing neighbors who begin a relationship as children, which may or may not blossom into love as adults. Nope, the ending isn’t a surprise. Nope, it’s not directed very well. Nope, it’s not written very well. Nope, co-star Alfre Woodard never gets to reveal the talent we’ve come to appreciate. And nope, it’s not really worth your time. - RJ

MIFUNE (R) *** The cinema vérité style of Denmark’s Dogma 95 filmmakers continues to pay off, with this idiosyncratic comedy of familial dysfunction suggesting Flannery O’Connor penning a draft of Rain Man. Never predictable and always alive, Mifune is only diminished by a weak, confusing conclusion. - CH

U-571 (R) Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton and Harvey Keitel costar in this WWII drama about a daring feat of heroism in which the Americans become trapped in a German submarine and are unable to make contact with American forces. Their mission is to sneak the vessel back into US waters without being mistaken for the enemy.


Duly Noted

FIGHT CLUB (R) *** 1/2 A spoof of cures for millennial malaise evolves into something darker, then takes a turn of Sixth Sense proportions. Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) loosens and toughens Edward Norton’s unnamed character, and spectators at their Saturday night fights want to participate. Burned-out punkette Helena Bonham Carter isn’t much to fight over, but she’ll do. Director David Fincher may have overestimated the intelligence of American moviegoers, and isn’t that refreshing! GSU’s cinéfest, April 17-20.- SW

I STAND ALONE (NR) *** And you thought the French were all Derrida, tiny coffees, smart ensembles and disdain-filled looks. The debut film from Gaspar Noe, about a jobless butcher on a hateful, racist, misogynist bender is a sojourn to the other side of the tracks - the France of rampant unemployment, an influx of immigrants, lumpen people and barren, postindustrial boulevards without a touch of Vigo fairy dust. Relentlessly brutal, Noe’s film suggests a more formally rigorous, intellectually tight Abel Ferrara. Moments of nasty humor (if castration, impotency and marital despair strike you as amusing) peek through the desolation, in this nevertheless engrossing study of a contemporary, very ordinary sociopath. GSU’s cinéfest, April 14-20. - FF


Continuing

ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (R) *** 1/2 A lovely mix of campy humor and heartfelt affection for the sacrifices made by the women who made us, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s film follows a bereaved mother (Cecilia Roth) who’s just lost her teenage son on her odyssey to Barcelona, to inform the boy’s father of his death. Fierce performances by a cast of high-octane women, including Roth, Marisa Paredes as a flinty stage actress and Antonia San Juan as a goofy, loveable transvestite, enhance this fiery, earnest meditation on the multiple roles women play, and the thin, permeable divide between film and life. - FF

AMERICAN BEAUTY (R) *** Full of arch, sardonic dialogue and shot with real style, this tale of anomie and sexual frustration in the suburbs and the snide, brow-beaten husband (Kevin Spacey) who defies it is a slick but occasionally thoughtful social skewering. The film falls short of greatness for its fuzzy moral perspective, hokey ending and a very teen boy point-of-view that casts the girls and women as vacuous and the men as cultural seers in a peculiar vision that feels halfway between Risky Business and Ordinary People. - FF

AMERICAN PSYCHO ***1/2 (R) Director Mary Harron has salvaged a seemingly unredeemable, minor shock-novel by Bret Easton Ellis and turned it into a whipsmart funny satire and pungent critique of male competition, money lust and a world of appearances. Christian Bale delivers an entirely credible and compelling take on Ellis’s Wall Street yuppie who turns killer, and, commendably, never glamorizes his virulent misanthropy. A coolly, stylishly shot piece of cultural commentary, American Psycho has some regrettable slasher-film hack touches but remains an admirable alchemic transformation of rubbish into, if not gold, then a pretty shiny likeness. - FF

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE (R) ** An Altmanesque dramady about the intersecting lives of a hodgepodge of troubled Londoners, all of whom are in some way touched by the Bosnian war, this first film from Bosnian-born, England-based Jasmin Dizdar is intentionally far-fetched and zany, but this glib approach to what ails the modern mind grows as tiresome as the director’s falsely feel-good effort to symbolically “fix” the world’s problems in the end. - FF

BLACK AND WHITE (R) ** The likes of Brooke Shields, Robert Downey Jr., Claudia Schiffer, Mike Tyson and members of the Wu-Tang Clan mix it up in James Toback’s heavily improvised depiction of the connection between white youths and black hip-hop culture. It’s ambitious, inclusive and never boring, but it never explores its racial thesis in much depth. Toback seems more interested in the gray areas of sexuality and criminality, featuring a youth-gone-astray subplot worthy of a 1950s juvenile delinquent film. - CH

BOILER ROOM (R) *** Like Glengarry Glen Ross, Junior, the first film from 27-year-old writer-director Ben Younger offers a tour of the high-stakes, high-testosterone would of sleazy, twentysomething stock brokers. It lacks dramatic polish but knows its world inside and out. CH

BOYS DON’T CRY (R) **** Directed with uncommon style and consideration for its white trash milieu, Kimberly Peirce’s true crime art film concerns the 21-year-old Nebraska woman who tried to pass herself off as a man, Brandon Teena, and paid dearly for her gender subversion. A meaty, intense evocation of this badlands crime scene, Boys splits the film into two vantages, making us dread the escalating danger closing in around Brandon and also feel the ecstatic hopefulness of the dreamy drag king imagining he’s finally found love and a home amongst the wasted teen miscreants of Falls City. - FF

THE CIDER HOUSE RULES (PG-13) ** 1/2. John Irving adapts his own weighty novel about love, orphans, abortion and apples, and the results are true to the letter of the book without catching fire as a film. Despite an inconsistent New England accent, Michael Caine does a nice job as a sad-eyed, ether-addicted abortionist, while Tobey Maguire continues to look like a young Dustin Hoffman as an orphan trying to find his place in the world. Directed by Sweden’s Lasse Hallström, Cider House Rules ultimately comes across as overly pretty and even-keeled, with every outcome seeming preordained. - CH

COTTON MARY ** (R) Like the member of a successful band recording a solo album, Ismail Merchant of the Merchant-Ivory production team directs this glimpse at East-West tensions in India of 1954. The title character is a Ango-Indian nurse (Madhur Jaffrey) with delusions of being English, and when she sneakily ingratiates herself into the troubled British family of Greta Scacchi, she accelerates its difficulties. The Indian locales look both exotic and lived-in, but Merchant’s characters are uniformly passive and unsympathetic. - CH

THE CUP *** The Cup is a lovely, unpretentious family film full of unintended ironies. Superficially a simple story, the film concerns the minor disruption of routine at an expatriate Tibetan Buddhist monastery in India when a particularly rambunctious lad develops a passion for World Cup soccer and wants to watch the final match. That’s it, whole story. In and of itself, the narrative flows comfortably, if languidly, and possesses an accessible charm. It is the kind of film parents should drag their pre- and early teenagers to for they will appreciate its colorful yet universal characters and comprehend the moral lessons within. - RJ

ERIN BROCKOVICH (R) *** A true populist movie that deserves its inevitable popularity, Steven Soderbergh’s film is a perfect vehicle for Julia Roberts. In this true story, she’s a working-class woman who dresses like a working girl. In a menial job at Albert Finney’s law firm, she stumbles on PG&E’s involvement in pollution that poisons an entire community. She builds a case and persuades Finney to take it. That’s not funny, but Susannah Grant’s screenplay finds copious humor in the characters while treating the story with the seriousness it deserves. But for the March release, this could have been Roberts’ Oscar role. - SW

FANTASIA 2000 *** 1/2 . The technology of animation, sound recording and film projection gloriously catch up with the Fantasia concept of cartoons inspired by classical music. As if overly concerned about avoiding the original film’s moments of leaden pace, the segments move by at a rapid clip, with a piece involving Donald Duck, Noah’s Ark and “Pomp & Circumstance” being especially rushed. But though the celebrity introductions are disastrous, the rest of the film is an intoxicating experience. IMAX theater at Mall of Georgia - CH

FINAL DESTINATION (R) ** 1/2 This “Twilight Zone” for teens may be schlocky, but bursts of directorial genius from debuting James Wong generate some of the most suspenseful moments in teen slasher history. It’s not technically a slasher movie, but degenerates into that format - the killer being Death itself - after a vision of disaster leads Devon Sawa to run off his plane destined for a class trip to Paris. Five classmates and a teacher follow him; then the plane blows up. Weeks later the survivors start dying in bizarre accidents, explained as Death’s “new design.” Wong adds masterful touches to a genre film that could have been far worse. - SW

GHOST DOG (R) ***1/2 A typically quirky, soulful Jarmuschian idyll, Ghost Dog features Forest Whitaker as an inner-city hit man whose life is defined by an ancient Japanese code of samurai ethics. Whitaker is perfectly cast and very affecting as the stoic killer in this idiosyncratic blend of Eastern philosophy, hip hop, Italian mafioso slapstick. A surprisingly tender film about poetry sprouting between the cracks of a dismal urban wasteland. - FF

HIGH FIDELITY (R)***1/2 John Cusack and director Stephen Frears, 10 years after collaborating on The Grifters, show high fidelity to Nick Hornby’s terrific novel about a lovelorn record shop owner. The film effectively echoes Annie Hall as Cusack engagingly chats to the camera and looks back on his relationships with women to understand why his latest girlfriend (Iben Hjejle) left him. But its spot-on depiction of music geeks and fanboys (led by Tenacious D’s Jack Black as a disdainful record store clerk) gives it its biggest laughs and truest observations. The excellent cast includes Tim Robbins, Catherine Zeta Jones, Lili Taylor and Joan Cusack. - CH

KEEPING THE FAITH (PG-13) ** Edward Norton, directing himself as a priest and Ben Stiller as a rabbi, in an likely romantic triangle with a daffy blonde (Jenna Elfman), belabors themes of love and faith with the obviousness of a Sunday School sermon. There’s Something About the Virgin Mary it’s not. - CH

MISSION TO MARS (R) ** 1/2 Brian De Palma starts with some of Stanley Kubrick’s famed interstellar effects and ends with the lame cosmic therapy themes that diminished Contact and The Abyss. In depicting a rescue mission to the red planet, De Palma brings his usual love of the craft of filmmaking, constructing some breathless, intricate set pieces. But he also brings a rank indifference to telling compelling stories, and the familiar epiphanies at the climax leave audiences snickering. - CH

MY DOG SKIP (PG) ** 1/2 Lassie’s dead. Today it’s wimpy dogs for wimpy kids. No one gets out without weeping at Willie Morris’ childhood memoir of the summer of ‘42 in Yazoo, Miss. It pushes sentimental buttons about coming of age, nostalgia, race relations and physically and emotionally crippled veterans. Only-child Willie (Frankie Muniz) is the target of bullies. His only friend, athlete-next-door Luke Wilson, goes off to the Army; so his mother (Diane Lane) gives him a dog. I’m not a dog person, but if I ran over one in the parking lot after seeing My Dog Skip I would have felt real bad. - SW

PRICE OF GLORY (PG-13) ** Price of Glory seems torn from the faded script pages of a Hollywood long past. This story of a Mexican-American family may take place in the present day, but its spirit is a projection of the second and third tier potboilers that were the staple fare of Saturday matinees a half-century ago. - RJ

REINDEER GAMES (R) * It’s hard to know what’s to blame: the lackluster direction, the trite, cliché-jammed script, a bland cast, but there’s no denying, this John Frankenheimer mistaken identity “thriller” about decent guy ex-con Ben Affleck, who’s forced into helping a band of ne’er-do-well truck drivers led by Gary Sinise as they try to knock over an American Indian casino is a good two months past Christmas and probably no one’s idea of a gift worth getting. - FF

READY TO RUMBLE (PG-13) ** David Arquette and Scott Caan live for wrestling. When WCW honcho Joe Pantoliano pulls the plug on their hero, Jimmy King’s (Oliver Platt; other wrestlers play themselves) career they devote themselves to restoring his crown. The predictable plot strings together copious brutal bouts and scatological humor. Wrestling fans will enjoy a record number of crotch kicks - more nutcrackers than a year of Christmases - but I wonder if they’ll appreciate the emphasis on the phoniness of it all. On the way out another critic said, “I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone over 25,” and I asked, “Years or months?” - SW

RETURN TO ME *** (PG-13) Return To Me is a lovely creation, full of life, not dramatic re-enactments of heartwarming moments designed to temporarily alleviate the fears of the insipid. It is also a story about risk. The risk of putting your soul on the line in the daring willingness to love. But ultimately, Return To Me is a film about human relationships and their ability to fill the heart with the effervescence of life. Stars Minnie Driver and David Duchovny. - RJ

THE ROAD TO EL DORADO (PG) **1/2 Getting there is most of the fun in this animated history lesson that begins in Spain in 1519 as a rollicking romp. Once Tulio (Kevin Kline) and Miguel (Kenneth Branagh) reach the “New World” as stowaways on Cortes’ ship they’re hailed as gods in El Dorado, “the city of gold.” Kindred spirit Chel (Rosie Perez) provides the only amusement there as the film shifts into neutral and coasts for about an hour until gathering momentum for an exciting climax. Kline and Perez do a wonderful job of projecting their personalities onto their characters, unlike Branagh, who has no personality. - SW

ROMEO MUST DIE (R) ** 1/2 There’s room at the top for an action star and Hong Kong martial artist Jet Li deserves the position once held by the late Bruce Lee. Like a ’70s B movie but faster and louder, this one’s about a supposed war between Asian and African-American gangs in Oakland and a developing romance between Li, the son of the Asian gang boss, and Aaliyah, the daughter of his black rival. It takes a bit too long to reach the unsurprising conclusion but there are plenty of fights along the way and Jet makes Romeo a winner - tru-Li, mad-Li, deep-Li. - SW

RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (R) *** A few good points short of A Few Good Men, this military courtroom drama’s stars make it well worth watching. Old friends and Marine Cols. Tommy Lee Jones defends Samuel L. Jackson when he’s court-martialed for ordering troops to fire on civilians in Yemen. Inconsistently drawn prosecutor Maj. Guy Pearce is established as an idealist but winds up playing dirty. Director William Friedkin manipulates us skillfully if not always honestly, and the camaraderie of the stars goes a long way toward glossing over the film’s minor flaws. Jones and Jackson rule and make Rules of Engagement damned engaging. - SW

THE SKULLS (PG-13) ** 1/2 This popcorn potboiler about an Ivy League society so secret that if you see the movie they’ll have to kill you, held my interest despite plot implausibilities. Joshua Jackson is on a scholarship but has such drive the elitist Skulls induct him. When they have a death to cover up - and the power to do it - Jackson must decide where his loyalties lie and how much an assured future is worth. A potential political exposé or satire, the film emphasizes thriller elements instead, with some intellect used to resolve matters (between the car chase and the shootout). - SW

STUART LITTLE (PG) ** 1/2 Villains’ roles are traditionally better than heroes’, so the cat runs away with the season’s big mouse movie. Nathan Lane as Snowbell mops up the floor with Michael J. Fox, who voices the title rodent, adopted by the Littles (Geena Davis, Hugh Laurie) as a brother for Jonathan Lipnicki. Besides, Stuart is computer-generated while the cats are mostly real (except their lip movements). Blatantly celebrating diversity and elective families, Stuart Little is as predictable as holiday movies should be. I’ll cut it some seasonal slack and give Lane, who makes it all tolerable, the Snowbell Prize for his performance. - SW

3 STRIKES (R) * 1/2 It’s another Friday in the hood, with more energy but no momentum connecting sketches about bland Brian Hooks doing everything (except turning himself in and explaining the misunderstanding) to avoid going to prison for the third time (a mandatory 25-to-life in California). - SW

THE TIGGER MOVIE (G) ** 1/2 Obviously motivated more by maximizing marketing and merchandising Pooh-tential than artistic vision, the latest visit to A.A. Milne’s characters in the Hundred-Acre Wood has a thin plot padded to feature-length. Although most of his friends (Rabbit, Owl, Piglet, Winnie the Pooh bear and Eeyore the donkey) seem to be the only ones of their species, Tigger suddenly develops an acute need for roots. The others jump through hoops to make him realize they’re all he needs. Coming from Disney Animation’s Television Division, it’s no artistic match for Tarzan but better than most of what the kids see on TV. - SW

TITUS (R) ** Julie Taymor, the bold stylist behind the hit stage version of The Lion King, tackles Shakespeare’s bloodiest, silliest play with results that are visually remarkable but exhausting and preposterous. Anthony Hopkins gets to hark back to Hannibal Lecter as the tormented Roman general, while a breast-plated Jessica Lange, as a vengeful Goth queen, gives her most ferocious work in years. - CH

28 DAYS (PG-13) ** 1/2 Sandra Bullock romps through rehab as the funniest drunk since Arthur in her personal best acting showcase. The writer of Erin Brockovich, Susannah Grant again finds considerable humor without trivializing a serious subject and also hits all the dramatic cliches of the genre, including leaving us with the feeling our heroine will be one of the 30 percent that’s able to make it on the outside. - SW

WHERE THE MONEY IS (PG-13) ** Paul Newman’s good but he can’t save this slender caper about two losers and a lifer hijacking an armored car. Professional bank robber Newman fakes a stroke to get sent from prison to a nursing home where nurse Linda Fiorentino gets wise to him and persuades him to work with her and her husband (Dermot Mulroney). Because he’s Paul Newman, he’s a sexual threat, despite being 35 years older than Fiorentino. Thankfully they don’t have any love scenes, yet we’re always aware of their supposed mutual attraction, which is less like Romeo and Juliet than a reverse Harold and Maude. - SW

THE WHOLE NINE YARDS (R) ** 1/2 Jonathan Lynn makes unsubtle comedies with stereotypical characters (e.g., My Cousin Vinny). In this one, some half-dozen people are trying to kill each other and the dentist (Matthew Perry) who’s trying to avoid bloodshed. There’s Perry’s unloving wife (Rosanna Arquette), the hitman next door (Bruce Willis), Willis’ estranged wife (Natasha Henstridge), Perry’s assistant (Amanda Peet), the mobster whose father Willis ratted out (Kevin Pollak) and Pollak’s muscle (Michael Clarke Duncan). Perry does well by the pratfalls that compensate for the lack of wit in the script. - SW

WONDER BOYS (R). ** 1/2. Michael Douglas and L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson each try to prove that they can handle light, mature comedy, but this sad-eyed academic satire doesn’t make a very compelling case. Adapted from Michael Chabon’s novel about a blocked writer, Wonder Boys moves at a pokey pace and the relationship between Douglas’ accident-prone professor and Tobey Maguire’s dour but wise student compares unfavorably to American Beauty. - CH