Short Subjectives November 06 2002

?Opening Wednesday
FEMME FATALE (R) Rebecca Romijn-Stamos plays a jewel thief who pulls off a heist at the Cannes Film Festival and is pursued by Antonio Banderas as a plucky paparazzo. Director Brian DePalma compares the film’s twists to Mulholland Drive, but in this case that sounds more like a warning than an endorsement.

br>?Opening Friday
ALL OR NOTHING (R) Secrets & Lies director Mike Leigh depicts the bedraggled, beaten-down lives of various neighbors in a working-class London housing estate in this bleak but not hopeless drama. Although the first half rambles without apparent point, a health crisis in the second half puts the roles and their relationships in sharp relief, while the entire cast gives deeply emotional, lived-in performances that feel free of artifice.--Curt Holman

8 MILE (R) Bratty rapper Eminem plays a struggling hip-hop artist loosely based on himself in this struggling-artist story from Academy Award-caliber director Curtis Hanson. Structured around a series of public rap “duels,” the film plays like a Rocky or Karate Kid movie, only with profane rhymes substituting for fisticuffs. If not a versatile thespian, Eminem proves comfortable in front of the camera, and the film reveals a genuine interest in hip-hop culture and the impoverished Detroit setting.--CH

THE GREY ZONE (R) Tim Blake Nelson, director of O and co-star of O Brother, Where Art Thou? directs this drama about concentration camp inmates forced to work in the crematoriums. David Arquette and Steve Buscemi play prisoners and Harvey Keitel a Nazi officer.

REAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES (PG-13) Just graduated from high school, 18-year-old Ana (America Ferrera) finds her dreams of college squashed by her struggling Mexican-American family, which wants her to work to support the family. Concerned with a range of worthwhile issues, from overweight Ana’s body image to cruel mother-daughter relationships and poverty, director Patricia Cardoso’s film is certainly well-intentioned even if it often feels like the director is more concerned with spoon-feeding us her feel-good medicine than with anything close to reality.--Felicia Feaster

br>?Duly Noted
IRREN IST MANNLICH (1996) (NR) In Sherry Hormann’s light comedy, a happily complacent German businessman discovers that he’s been infertile for years, thus making him wonder who’s the natural father of his children. Nov. 6, 7 p.m., Goethe-Institut Atlanta, Colony Square, 1197 Peachtree St. $4 for non-members. 404-892-2388. www.goethe.de/uk/atl/enpfilm.htm.

NUTS FOR LOVE (1999) (NR) In Alberto Lecchi’s feature, two young people (Ariadna Gil and Gaston Pauls) meet at an Argentine rock concert in 1975, and over the next 25 years their lives intersect as lovers, antagonists and friends against a backdrop of political turmoil. Latin American Film Festival. Nov. 8, 8 p.m. High Museum, Rich Auditorium. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

OUT ON FILM FESTIVAL IMAGE Film and Video Center presents the 15th anniversary festival of gay and lesbian film, which features more than 40 features, documentaries and short movies. Retrospective screenings include 1940’s Turnabout, 1987’s I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing and 1975’s Female Trouble, presented by director John Waters. Out on Film Festival. Nov. 6-10, Regal Hollywood 24 and other venues. 404-352-4225. www.outonfilm.com.

POSTHUMOUS MEMORIES (2000) (NR) Reginaldo Farias and Sonia Braga star in Andre Klotzel’s fanciful comedy of a deceased, sardonic man who reflects on his life as a 19th-century dandy. Latin American Film Festival. Nov. 6, 8 p.m. Regal Hollywood 24. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

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. Midnight Fri. at Lefont Plaza Theatre and Sat. at Marietta Star Cinema.

TO LOVE TOO MUCH (2000) (NR) Karina Gidi won Best Actress at the 2001 Guadalajara Film Festival for playing an insecure woman who discovers the splendors of romantic love and Mexico as a country. Latin American Film Festival. Nov. 9, 8 p.m. High Museum, Rich Auditorium. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

br>?Continuing
ABANDON (PG-13) Steve Gaghan, Oscar-winning director of Traffic, tries his hand at directing with this college thriller about a student (Katie Holmes) torn between her feelings for her mystery-man boyfriend (Charlie Hunnam) and an older detective (Benjamin Bratt).

AUTO FOCUS (R) Returning to his interest in loners governed by unreasonable obsessions, Paul Schrader’s campy bio-picture Auto Focus is a very believable translation of how addiction replaces real life with an unquenchable need. Here the addiction is sex and the junkie is “Hogan’s Heroes” TV star Bob Crane (Greg Kinnear), turned onto the joys of making amateur porn by techie buddy John Carpenter (the brilliantly sleazy Willem Dafoe) in this fascinating, at times penetrating, but just as often superficial and dismissive peek at a uniquely twisted life.--FF

BARBERSHOP (PG-13) Ice Cube goes for a day-in-the-life-of-the-‘hood vibe comparable to his trilogy of Friday films, but this modest comedy centered around a Chicago hair-cuttery feels trimmed of laughs. The labored slapstick with two accident-prone ATM thieves and the squabbles between the barbers are about as thin as a comb-over. As the oldest and most outspoken barber, Cedric the Entertainer makes a lonely effort to give the film some old-school personality.--CH

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (R) An often cruelly jocular agitprop documentary about an out-of-control American gun culture, Michael Moore’s (Roger & Me) nightmare tour of America’s covert foreign policy, Michigan Militia and NRA rallies, conspiratorial kooks and sleazy TV producers makes a good case for the hair-trigger viciousness of our eye-for-an-eye culture even as it reduces painful, profound issues to irony-laced, laughable sport.--FF

BROWN SUGAR (PG-13) This predictable romantic comedy centers on two lifelong best friends, a music business executive (Taye Diggs) and a music magazine editor (Sanaa Lathan), who spend the entire movie fighting the fact that they’re meant for each other. The film’s whole point is that these two are forever linked through their love of hip-hop, but aside from the obligatory music biz cameos and lots of lip service from the leading characters, hip-hop rarely comes alive as its own fire-breathing entity, meaning that the pair might as well be joined by a mutual love of pro wrestling, Alan Rudolph flicks or Pokemon trading cards. — Matt Brunson

COMEDIAN (R) This backstage documentary follows Jerry Seinfeld as he rejects retiring as a zillionaire TV star to return to the stand-up comedy circuit, painstakingly crafting an all-new routine of his trademark observational comedy.

8 WOMEN (R) A deliciously campy paean to the glitzy Hollywood melodramas and musicals of the past, French director Francois Ozon’s whodunit features a cast of elite French actresses (including Emmanuelle Beart, Catherine Deneuve, Isabelle Huppert) stranded in a remote country house and trying to figure out who killed the only man on the premises. --FF

THE FOUR FEATHERS (PG-13) A.E.W. Mason’s century-old novel has never been far removed from the minds of moviemakers, having been filmed on seven separate occasions. This 21st century model is a satisfactory (if shaky) heir to the throne, a visually robust retelling that reinstates a dash of the epic to the big screen. Heath Ledger is solid as the 19th century British officer who must redeem himself after being branded a coward, but Kate Hudson, displaying all the luminance of a 20-watt bulb after 999 hours of service, is miscast as the woman he loves. — MB

FRIDA (R) Tony Award winning director Julie Taymor brings a slightly off-kilter sensibility to this strong bio-picture of the tempestuous life and times of Mexican painter and feminist icon Frida Kahlo. Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina as the love of her life, Diego Rivera, are convincing and human as the terminally at-odds husband and wife whose fascinating involvement with the art and radical politics of the ’30s and ’40s makes them long overdue for such a film treatment. --FF

GHOST SHIP (R) Gabriel Byrne and Julianna Margulies play salvage officers aboard a haunted vessel. It’s from Steve Beck, director of Thir13een Ghosts, but doesn’t have a “clever” title like that one.

I SPY (PG-13) Mindless entertainment, with the emphasis on mindless, unless you happen to find particularly entertaining the idea of yet another buddy/action comedy in which mismatched partners must overcome cultural differences (and death-defying stunt sequences) to save the world. This in-name-only “remake” of the ’60s secret-agent series features a disarmingly agreeable turn by Owen Wilson as the flustered straight man, but Eddie Murphy really ought give his obnoxious smart-ass routine a rest.--Bert Osborne

JACKASS: THE MOVIE (R) See grown men flip golf carts on themselves, fire bottle rockets from their rectums, snort wasabi like its cocaine and terrorize innocent bystanders in the unjustifiable, often sickening, yet at times exhilarating big-screen version of the MTV series. One hates to encourage self-destructive frontman Johnny Knoxville and his kamikaze skatepunks to hurt themselves, but their idiotic exploits provide the longest, loudest laughs at the cineplex this year.--CH

KNOCKAROUND GUYS (R) A group of young wannabe gangsters (including Vin Diesel and Seth Green) follow a bag of money through a Montana town in this joyless, predictable crime thriller. Tom Noonan provides the sole saving grace as an opportunistic sheriff, stealing the cash and the film from Barry Pepper’s whiny, unsympathetic hero and John Malkovich’s sadistic mobster, whose Brooklyn accent sounds like a failed “Sopranos” screen test.--CH

MOONLIGHT MILE (PG-13) It’s hard to imagine anyone stealing a movie not only from rising star Jake Gyllenhaal but also from Oscar-winners Susan Sarandon, Dustin Hoffman and Holly Hunter, yet newcomer Ellen Pompeo pulls off the feat with aplomb. She’s the main reasons to see this highly likable if somewhat calculated melodrama about a young man (Gyllenhaal) who, after the senseless slaying of his fiancee, moves into the home of her parents (Sarandon and Hoffman, each making returns to form) yet soon finds himself falling for a local bar owner (Pompeo).--MB

MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING (PG) While not as accomplished as Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding, this is nevertheless a gratifying romantic comedy that gently tweaks stereotypes even as its characters wallow in them. Adapted by Nia Vardalos from her own one-woman show, the film centers on the plight of a 30-year-old lonelyheart (Vardalos) who risks the wrath of her family when she falls for a non-Greek (John Corbett).--MB

ONE HOUR PHOTO (R) Former music video director wunderkind Mark Romanek upends the usual serial killer thriller plot with a disturbing investigation into the ennui of modern life as seen through the eyes of an anonymous megastore photo developer (Robin Williams) who nurtures an unhealthy obsession with the deliriously happy photos he develops for one all-American family. --FF

PAID IN FULL (R) Wood Harris and Mekhi Phifer play impoverished young men who rise to the top of Harlem’s crack cocaine trade during the 1980s in this crime drama based on true events.

PUNCH-DRUNK LOVE (R) This disappointing Paul Thomas Anderson follow-up to the ambitious Magnolia features Adam Sandler in typical idiot-boy mode as a sadsack Los Angeles small businessman who gets himself into trouble with some Provo, Utah, thugs and finds that only his love for an angelic woman (Emily Watson) can save him. The French went ga-ga for Sandler and Anderson’s riff on Jerry Lewis’ bumbling half-wits, honoring the latter with a Best Director prize at Cannes, but beyond that meta-cinematic conceit, there’s not a whole lot to hold onto in this thin, tired film.--FF

RED DRAGON (R) The second film adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon feels less like a remake of Michael Mann’s menacingly sterile Manhunter than a stylistic imitation of Jonathan Demme’s impeccable Silence of the Lambs. Director Brett Ratner offers an overlong but adequately suspenseful B-movie with an A-list cast that boasts remarkable work from Ralph Fiennes as a tormented killer and Emily Watson as his sightless paramour. Anthony Hopkins still zestfully chews scenery and hapless co-stars alike as Hannibal Lecter, but hopefully his third outing marks his retirement from the role.--CH

THE RING (PG-13) Mulholland Drive’s Naomi Watts plays a Seattle reporter investigating an urban legend about a videotape that kills its viewers — which may be no myth. This American remake of the superb Japanese thriller Ring can be both more self-consciously arty and more expensively gory than the restrained original. Director Gore Verbinski nevertheless finds some honest, atypical scares, generating paranoia of communications technology with the spookiest staticky TV set since Poltergeist.--CH

THE SANTA CLAUSE 2 (G) In the modestly entertaining original, Tim Allen played a hapless Joe who became a better dad by taking the role of St. Nick. The sequel, at one point known as The Mrs. Clause, finds Allen’s portly Kris Kringle tasked to find a wife in modern-day America.

SPIRITED AWAY (PG) When her parents are turned into pigs, a Japanese girl enters the realm of spirits and deities to save them and herself. An Alice in Wonderland for the 21st century, this animated treasure finds director Hayao Miyazaki (Princess Mononoke) at the height of his powers, offering mature characterizations, sharp conflicts without violence and one of the strangest, least predictable coming-of-age stories you’ve ever set eyes on.--CH

THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE (PG-13) Daft remake of deft 1963 comedy-caper Charade puts Thandie Newton in Audrey Hepburn’s place as a woman pursued all over Paris by bad guys convinced that her murdered hubby gave her their missing loot. Mark Wahlberg sleepwalks through it as a suitor who might know more than he admits about the money and the murder.--Eddy Von Mueller

WAKING UP IN RENO (R) Billy Bob Thornton, Patrick Swayze, Charlize Theron and Miranda Richardson play a pair of cracker couples who play musical beds en route to a monster truck rally in this long-delayed comedy.

THE WEIGHT OF WATER (R) Kathryn Bigelow’s psychological thriller flits back and forth between the tensions developing between four travelers on a sailboat docked off the New England coast, and a vicious, unsolved murder of two young women that occurred at the same site in 1873. The story set in the past featuring the compelling Sarah Polley as a Norwegian immigrant is far more interesting and only serves to highlight the dreck of the present-day story featuring an absurd performance by Sean Penn as a groupie-hounded Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and a deeply uncharismatic Catherine McCormack as his wife.--FF

WHITE OLEANDER (PG-13) If the screen version of Janet Fitch’s bestselling novel were an Olympic event, it’d be hard to tell which of the movie’s four actresses would win the gold. This powerfully-performed drama stars Michelle Pfeiffer as an artist whose cold-blooded murder of her philandering boyfriend lands her in prison and places her 15-year-old daughter (Alison Lohman) in a troubled foster care system. Lohman handles the picture’s largest role with the discipline it requires, while Renee Zellweger and Robin Wright-Penn score as foster moms of different temperaments.-- MB