Short Subjectives April 10 2002

Capsule reviews of films by CL critics

Opening Friday
CHANGING LANES (R) Atlanta commuters know exactly how intense changing lanes can be. In this drama about dehumanizing urban life, Ben Affleck’s callow attorney and Samuel L. Jackson’s desperate divorcee become savage enemies following a traffic accident.

FESTIVAL IN CANNES Image Image Image (PG-13) Henry Jaglom’s trifling look at the Cannes Film Festival tells you little you don’t already know about movie industry deal-making and heart-breaking, but it has an inoffensive, agreeable air. The film collapses in attempting to make grand statements about relationships, but Greta Scacchi, Ron Silver and Anouk Aimee give relaxed performances as movie professionals vying for each other’s talents.--Curt Holman

FOR DA LUV OF MONEY (R) With one of those one-word names like “Madonna” or “Sauron,” the actor Pierre plays a cash-strapped guy who becomes wildly popular when money from a robbery is stashed in his back yard. Aimed at fans of Friday, the low-budget comedy’s biggest stars are ventriloquist Willie Tyler and Lester.

FRAILTY Image Image (R) Bill Paxton (Apollo 13, A Simple Plan) stars and directs in this unusual thriller about a small-town Texas father who believes he’s been called by God to kill demons. Featuring elements of Southern gothic, Bible allegory and even black comedy, the script builds to some clever twists but still feels drawn-out, as if it could be cut to fit a one-hour “X-Files” slot without suffering.--CH

HUMAN NATURE (R) Being John Malkovich writer Charlie Kaufman pens an off-beat romantic satire involving a repressed anthropologist (Tim Robbins), a modern-day cave man (Rhys Ifans) and an author (Patricia Arquette) with a body-hair problem.

NEW BEST FRIEND (R) This crime drama features a college student from a poor background tries to be accepted by the rich-and-beautiful clique, with lethal consequences. Featuring Mia Kirschner, Dominique Swain and Taye Diggs.

THE OTHER SIDE OF HEAVEN (PG) An teenaged Idaho farm boy (Christopher Gorham) becomes a Mormon missionary in the South Seas in this lush film based on a true story.

THE SWEETEST THING (R) Writer Nancy Pimental has a “South Park” background, and may inject some raunchy jokes in this conventional-sounding romantic comedy starring Cameron Diaz as a ditzy blonde who takes a road trip to catch up with Mr. Right (Thomas Jane).

Duly Noted
BOB LE FLAMBEUR (1955) (NR) Jean-Pierre Melville’s romantic crime drama pays homage to American B-movies while anticipating the loose style of the French New Wave. The title character is a semi-reformed hoodlum tempted to go on one last heist. French Film Yesterday and Today. April 12, 8 p.m., Rich Auditorium, Woodruff Arts Center. $5.

THE CHESS PLAYERS (1977) Image Image Image (Not Rated) Two aristocrats play an obsessive chess game while India’s lower ranks fight cocks in the city streets in filmmaking master Satyajit Ray’s scathing indictment of the apathy of Indians in 1856 which led to the takeover of Lucknow by the British. Garish and often impossibly slow, this is not Ray’s best work, but it is certainly one of his most politically complex and socially engaged films. Indian Film Festival. April 13, 7 p.m., Rich Auditorium, Woodruff Arts Center. $5.

THE EARTH WILL SWALLOW YOU (NR) Touring with Widespread Panic in 2000, Christopher and Geoffrey Hanson compiled nearly 500 hours of footage for this concert film and retrospective of the Athens band’s 17-year career. Following the screening will be a live performance by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, who also appear in the movie. April 12, 8 p.m. Coca-Cola Roxy Theatre, 3110 Roswell Road. $20. 404-249-6400.

4 LITTLE GIRLS (1997) Image Image Image Image (R) Spike Lee’s Oscar-nominated documentary provides a chilling and tear-jerking account of the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that took the lives of four African-American girls and galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Showing with Ian Moore’s short film “Between the World and Me.” Eyewitness: Lynching and Racial Violence in America. April 11, 7 p.m., Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Site, 450 Auburn Ave. Free.--CH

GODASS Image Image (NR) A punk-obsessed young girl (Nika Feldman) discovers that her gay “uncle” is in fact her biological father. Esther Bell first film provides an authentic immersion in the 1988 punk rock subculture of South Carolina and New York, but can’t rise above its thin storyline and technical limitations. Present by IMAGE Film & Video Center, April 10, 8 p.m. The Echo Lounge, 551 Flat Shoals Avenue. $5, free for IMAGE members. 404-352-4225.--CH

THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE Image Image Image (R) Film noir has been good to Coen Brothers, although one hopes that their latest, an homage to James M. Cain, gets it out of their system so they can explore fresh cinematic modes. Billy Bob Thornton effectively plays a taciturn barber whose wife (Fargo’s Frances McDormand) may be having an affair with her boss (James Gandolfini), spurring a disastrous blackmail scheme. With less humor than any Coen Brothers film, it takes a hypnotic, clinical look at moral decay, captured in sleek black-and-white. GSU’s cinefest, April 5-11.--CH

MULHOLLAND DRIVE Image Image Image (R) A typical feast of Lynchian dreamwork, Mulholland Drive is also a disappointment for its deeply troubling storyline involving a naive Nancy Drew blonde (Naomi Watts) trying to help a haunted, amnesiac brunette, with silly Hollywood subplots that recall the increasingly absurdist dissolution of “Twin Peaks.” GSU’s cinefest, April 5-11.--FF

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW (1975) (R) The cult classic of cult classics, the musical horror spoof follows an all-American couple (Susan Sarandon and Barry Bostwick) to the castle of Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), a drag-queen/mad scientist from another galaxy. It’s all fun and games until Meatloaf gets killed. Dress as your favorite character and participate in this musical on acid. Fridays at midnight, Lefont Plaza Theatre, 1049 Ponce de Leon Ave., and Saturday at midnight at the Marietta Star Cinema, 1355 Roswell Road, Marietta.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS Image Image Image Image (PG-13) Director Wes Anderson maintains the idiosyncratic brilliance of Rushmore with a pixilated portrait of an ingenious but dysfunctional family. The likable cast centers around Gene Hackman’s rascally paterfamilias, but it’s more a film about its textures — nearly subliminal sight gags, wall-to-wall pop from the ’60s and ’70s, fictional locales in an idealized Manhattan — that subtly and overtly suggest the experience of reading a novel, especially the kind John Irving likes to write. GSU’s cinefest, April 12-18.--CH

STORYTELLING Image Image Image (R) Director Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Happiness) is still beating a dead horse in showing suburbia as the consummate intellectual wasteland, but he manages to at least offer some shifting plot twists, interesting characters and a self-damning message this go around. Divided into two separate stories about a “truth” open to interpretation, the film skewers political correctness in its first half, and heartless documentary filmmakers in the second. GSU’s cinefest, April 12-18.--FF

Continuing
ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS (R) A tough bounty hunter (Ice Cube, who also co-wrote the film) and a wisecracking bail jumper (Mike Epps) join forces to fleece some diamond thieves in this action comedy named for the P. Diddy song. Featuring Anthony Michael Hall and Lil’ Bow Wow.

AMELIE Image Image Image Image (R) A popular and critical hit in France, this not-to-be-missed sweet-as-pie, stylistic knockout is a dazzling live-action cartoon for grown-ups. The ultra-cute Audrey Tautou is a do-gooding sprite living in a magical Montmartre who dedicates herself to helping others. From Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director of The City of Lost Children and Delicatessen. — FF

A BEAUTIFUL MIND Image Image Image (PG-13) In an either bold or ignorant move, director Ron Howard may have made the first action-adventure film about schizophrenia. Russell Crowe stars in this story of real life Princeton mathematician John Nash who won the Nobel Prize, but also suffered from mental illness. Howard allows emotional button-pushing to triumph over character development and insight in this earnest but flat entry in Hollywood’s disability canon.--FF

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST Image Image Image Image (G) The only animated feature ever to be nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award — and one of the best classic-style musicals of the past 20 years — Disney’s 1991 animated gem gets a polish to fit the scalle of a really, really big IMAX screen. Mall of Georgia IMAX Theater, I-85 at Buford Drive, Buford.CH

BIG TROUBLE Image Image (PG-13) Director Barry Sonnenfeld makes a dismal attempt to recreate the rat-tat-tat patter and inspired casting of Get Shorty in this insufferable adaptation of Dave Barry’s novel. Depicting how a mysterious suitcase effects the lives of a dozen characters, the screwball antics are annoying rather than amusing, although Dennis Farina and Janeane Garofalo arguably come off best. --Matt Brunson

BLACK HAWK DOWN Image Image Image (R) Ridley Scott directs a harrowing soldier’s-eye view of the disastrous mission in Somalia that cost the lives of 19 U.S. troops. With a huge cast and non-stop battle scenes, characterization is nearly absent, and we scarcely get to know the soldiers played by the likes of Josh Hartnett, Eric Bana, Ewan McGregor and Tom Sizemore. But in the global environment following Sept. 11, the film gets credit for showing in frightening detail what could be a worst-case scenario of the War on Terrorism. --CH

BLADE 2 Image Image Image (R) With arteries being punctured left and right and vampires disintegrating after getting blasted by silver bullets, this is as disreputable a genre film as Queen of the Damned, but a helluva lot more fun. It tops its 1998 predecessor thanks in no small part to director Guillermo Del Toro of The Devil’s Backbone, although Wesley Snipes’ half-human, half-vampire renegade still proves a dull superhero. --MB

CLOCKSTOPPERS (PG) A teen and his girlfriend stumble across an invention that makes time seem to stand still, and must stop a bad guy from exploiting it. This revisit of the ideas of The Girl, The Gold Watch and Everything is directed by “Star Trek’s” Jonathan Frakes, who has some experience with temporal anomalies.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE Image Image (R) This Arnold Schwarzenegger action yarn about a firefighter who seeks revenge on the terrorist who killed his family was slated for release in October but yanked following 9/11. For the record, it’s not a good movie, but a working-class model of the standard action flick, with little to distinguish it from the other run-of-the-mill “red meat” endeavors that periodically test our theaters’ Dolby Digital sound systems. --MB

DEATH TO SMOOCHY Image Image Image (R) Danny DeVito’s acrimonious satire compromises its own welcome venality by inserting sentimental components where none are needed. Robin Williams’ corrupt children’s host is replaced by Edward Norton’s purple rhino named Smoochy, whose integrity is undermined by network avarice and Williams’ madness. The well-acted comedy wallows in the mire of human folly, but the final act undermines its outrageousness.--MB

E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL: THE 20TH ANNIVERSARY Image Image Image Image Image (PG) Steven Spielberg’s tale of a boy and his alien is no children’s movie, but a lovely evocation of the experience of childlike wonder. The anniversary re-release includes spruced-up sound and special effects, a deleted scene or two and some disquieting alterations in the name of political correctness, like the digital replacement of guns with walkie-talkies.--CH

THE FLUFFER (R) This would-be Boogie Nights takes place in the gay porn industry and touches on subjects ranging from abortion to the power of film images, but focusing on one man’s comic obsession with an ostensibly straight, “gay for pay” adult film star. Featuring Debbie Harry.

40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS Image Image (R) For Josh Hartnett delivers a surprisingly adept comic turn as a web page designer who abstains from all sexual pleasures to forget about his icy girlfriend. A few modest laughs and an imaginative sex scene can be found amid the usual condom/Viagra/erection gags, but the film goes limp during the disappointing climax (no puns intended) .--MB

GOSFORD PARK Image Image Image Image Image (R) As close to a masterpiece as this year in movies has seen, Gosford Park invests a familiar upstairs-downstairs theme of the upper and servant classes of English country life with a degree of compassion and sensitivity that proves director Robert Altman has something human lurking beneath his patented misanthropy. --FF

HARRISON’S FLOWERS Image Image Image (R) Following on the heels of No Man’s Land comes this hard-hitting drama that doesn’t shy away from showing the atrocities committed under the tag of “ethnic cleansing.” When a photojournalist (David Strathairn) is presumed dead in Yugoslavia’s civil war, his wife (Andie MacDowell) enters the fray herself. The film may not match the wallop of The Killing Fields, but writer-director Elie Chouraqui keeps things as real as possible.--MB

HART’S WAR Image Image Image (R) Despite top billing, Bruce Willis is a supporting character to Colin Farrell’s Lt. Hart, defending an African-American officer accused of murdering a racist G.I. in a Nazi P.O.W. camp. This well-made drama has its share of high-minded themes, which are initially subtle but ultimately written across a billboard that’s toppled onto the audience’s heads.--MB

HIGH CRIMES (PG-13) It’s A Few Good Men vs. one angry woman when Ashley Judd’s attorney confronts a military tribunal to save her unjustly accused husband (Jim Caviezel) in this courtroom thriller co-starring Morgan Freeman. Not to be confused with the marijuana comedy How High.

ICE AGE Image Image Image (PG) Ray Romano’s sensible woolly mammoth, Denis Leary’s duplicitous saber-toothed tiger and John Leguizamo’s imbecilic sloth are unique enough for us to pardon the pedestrian plot of this computer-animated film that’s like Disney’s Dinosaur without the mountainous sentimentality. The prehistoric squirrel Scrat is such a character that you’re sorry every time he leaves the screen.-- MB

IMAX Majestic White Horses (Not Rated) The pomp, history and legend of the famous Lipizzan horses of Austria and the Spanish Riding School of Vienna gets the really big screen treatment. Through May 23. Kilimanjaro: To the Roof of Africa (Not Rated) Everest director David Breashears’ latest IMAX documentary follows an expedition through five distinct climate zones to the top of Africa’s highest point. Through September 20. Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road.

IN THE BEDROOM Image Image Image (R) A thoughtful, admirable, first-director effort from actor Todd Field (Eyes Wide Shut), this story of how two chilly, noncommunicative Maine WASPS cope with their only son’s death has a writerly attention to character, nuance and human behavior. Though Field’s representation of his characters’ suffering can at times feel a little meta-Bergman and precious, this timely story of grief and the search for revenge has enough application to the current social climate to make it resonate. — FF

IRIS Image Image Image (R) The marriage of late British novelist Iris Murdoch and her husband John Bayley is shown from two points of their life together, with Kate Winslet playing the aspiring author when young and ambitious, and Judi Dench the elderly writer has she succumbs to Alzheimer’s. Hugh Bonneville and Golden Globe-winner Jim Broadbent play the meek, owlish spouse, and through their eyes the film provides a rich and fittingly incomplete perspective on Murdoch herself, while rarely stooping to disease movie clichés.--CH

JOHN Q Image Image (PG-13) It’s tough not to side with a movie that sticks it to America’s health care crisis, but this heavy-handed button-pusher doesn’t give any rationale room to breathe. As a factory worker with a son who needs a heart transplant, Denzel Washington takes an emergency room hostage to get his child on the donor list. The film offers a virtual checklist of “social drama” clichés, and the notion that the U.S. public would cheer a man holding innocents captive, no matter the reason, is ludicrous and insulting.--MB

KISSING JESSICA STEIN Image Image (R) The misadventures of a singleton in the city gets a gimmicky reworking in this film about a New York journalist and a Chelsea art chick who, tired of the lameoid men around, decide to date each other. Some clever writing by stars and screenwriters Jennifer Westfeldt and Heather Juergensen can’t dispel the sense that this is just a calculated reworking of a hackneyed suffering-single formula.--FF

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING Image Image Image Image Image (PG-13) Adapting the first and longest book of J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy, Peter Jackson offers an all-but-perfect fantasy epic that’s no simple piece of story-book escapism. Jackson offers a full immersion in an imaginary world, and even when some virtual environments look fake, they bristle with personality. Thrilling — and exhausting — at a full three hours, Fellowship’s greatest achievement is that it never loses sight of the human side of its fanciful story. --CH

MONSOON WEDDING Image Image Image Image (R) Beneath the initially frenzied energy and silliness of Mira Nair’s film is an affectionate, moving portrait of how the imminent marriage of a New Delhi father’s only daughter leads to a profound reassessment of the meaning of family, the one tradition worth holding onto in this meditation on the clash of new and old in modern India. --FF

MONSTER’S BALL Image Image Image Image (R) The relationship between a racist death row guard (Billy Bob Thornton) and a condemned prisoner’s wife (a remarkable Halle Berry) provides the fulcrum for a stunning, unpredictable treatment of Southern race relations. Little-known director Marc Foster and screenwriters Milo Addica and Will Rokos capture the rural South while avoiding sugarcoating or stereotypes, take on challenging subjects without hysteria or contrivance, and get Oscar-worthy performances from some of the least likely of actors. --CH

NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VAN WILDER (R) Ryan Reynolds plays the title character, a party-hearty seventh-year college student in this chaotic campus comedy. National Lampoon attempts to pass the cinematic torch by casting Tim Matheson of Animal House as Van Wilder’s father.

PANIC ROOM Image Image (R) Pop stylist and zeitgeist-surfer David Fincher goes gimpy in his latest dull, unimaginative pseudo-thriller about a recent divorcee (Jodie Foster) and her teenage daughter (Kristen Stewart) who wage a psychological battle with a trio of criminals (Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam) who have invaded their Manhattan mansion looking for a $3 million treasure. --Felicia Feaster

RESIDENT EVIL Image (R) This screen adaptation of a popular video game tries to beef up its pinball-simple narrative by borrowing liberally from The Andromeda Strain, Aliens and George Romero’s Dead trilogy. After an excruciatingly dull opening half-hour, our heroes (lead by Milla Jovovich) get attacked by shuffling zombies, fleshless Dobermans, and a laughable mutant billed as “The Licker.”--MB

THE ROOKIE Image Image (G) This overly familiar formula film won’t move anyone who’s already seen their share of follow-your-dream flicks. What little juice this gets comes courtesy of its actors, especially Dennis Quaid as a high school baseball coach who takes one last shot at his dream of pitching in the major leagues. The leisurely direction, 129-minute running time and clichéd script provide little sense of joy.--MB

SHOWTIME Image Image Image (PG-13) This entry in Hollywood’s ceaseless string of “buddy-cop comedies” has enough fun to make it a passable timekiller. De Niro plays humorless detective forced to co-star in a reality-TV series with a star-struck cop (Eddie Murphy). There’s nothing new under the sun, apart from hearing William Shatner, as himself, refer to De Niro’s character as “the worst actor I’ve ever seen.”--MB

SORORITY BOYS (R) Rocket Man’s Harland Williams, “Smallville’s” Michael Rosenbaum and “7th Heaven’s” Barry Watson are fraternity boys who cross-dress to pledge a sorority in this low-I.Q. cross-dressing college comedy. I seem to recall Matthew Modine doing the same thing in 1983’s Private School for Girls.

THE TIME MACHINE Image Image Image (PG-13) H.G. Wells’ great-grandson Simon and scripter John Logan take some successful liberties with this new adaptation of the immortal time-travel tale. But rather than captures our imaginations, the picture curtails its own creativity, culminating in a yawner of a showdown between Guy Pearce’s scientist-cum-adventurer and a campy Jeremy Irons, leader of the vicious Morlocks.--MB

WE WERE SOLDIERS Image Image Image Image (R) Like Black Hawk Down, this account of the 1965 battle in the Ia Drang Valley, when 400 Americans found themselves surrounded by 2,000 soldiers, centers on the inspiring mettle demonstrated by U.S. soldiers under fire. The combat scenes are extremely intense, and while some of the dialogue may clank, the sentiments don’t, and a no-nonsense cast (led by Mel Gibson) offers the necessary conviction.--MB

Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN Image Image Image Image Image (NR) A heartbroken woman takes off on a road trip with two randy teenage boys and the trio talk, laugh, bicker and have sex. How director Alfonso Cuaron turns this seemingly trite scenario into a metaphysical meditation on life, fate, death, the sublime and torturous aspects of sex, and the class divisions of modern Mexico is a thing of beauty. --FF