Short Subjectives January 15 2003

?Opening Friday
A GUY THING (PG-13) Alas, the likable Selma Blair and Jason Lee seem to have given up making films that anyone out of their teens wants to see. Here, he plays a groom-to-be who falls for the free-spirited cousin (Julia Stiles) of his prospective bride (Blair).

KANGAROO JACK (PG) Jerry O’Connell tries to retrieve a fortune in mob money hidden in a jacket worn by a runaway kangaroo. The kangaroo raps in the trailer, which we can only hope is a bad dream.

NATIONAL SECURITY (PG-13) Martin Lawrence and Steve Zahn play mismatched security guards who must contend with real cops — and real killers. Zahn’s dorky mustache and crew cut might be good for a giggle, but hasn’t Lawrence done the “fake” cop stuff a bit much?

TALK TO HER aa (R) A surprisingly grown-up and restrained Pedro Almodovar shifts into hyper-serious mode in this disappointingly inert film with the ardent tone of a women’s picture but dominated by the romantic agonies of two men. Sensitive guys Javier Camara and Dario Grandinetti try to sustain relationships with women who have both ended up in a coma on the same hospital ward and end up developing a deep bond with each other. All of Almodovar’s inventive, garish imagination seems to have flown the coop in this soapy stab at adult themes with occasional forays into creepy, kinky sexual compulsion. --Felicia Feaster

?Duly Noted
I.D. (1998) (NR) This Congolese/Belgian production provides both a charming fairy tale and a critique of colonialism when the elderly king of Bakongo travels to Brussels to find his long-lost daughter. African Film Showcase. Jan. 19, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Auditorium. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

ME WITHOUT YOU (2001) aaa (R) The codependent friendship of a plain-jane activist (“Dawson’s Creek’s” Michelle Williams) and an irresponsible party girl (Anna Friel) is traced from the early ’70s to the late ’80s. Williams and Friel effectively track how the girls grow up — and how they don’t — while Kyle MacLachlan amusingly plays the “sensitive” professor they both sleep with. Though the film over-reaches by trying to carry the destructive-friendship dynamic from college to young adulthood, it effectively follows London’s changing music and club fashions, from The Clash to Depeche Mode. Peachtree Film Society. Nov. 19, 7:30 p.m. Lefont Garden Hills Cinema. --Curt Holman

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.

STATE OF THE UNION: THE COLOR OF FREEDOM IS GREEN (NR) D.J. Kadagian’s documentary, presented with the MLK Jr. National Historic Site DREAM series, looks at how America’s multinational corporations control public policy at home and abroad. Interviewees include Kathleen Cleaver, activist and widow of Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver. IMAGE Film & Video Center. Jan. 16, 7:30 p.m., Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, 450 Auburn Ave. Free. 404-352-4225. www.imagefv.org.

?Continuing
ABOUT SCHMIDT aaaa (R) Jack Nicholson does an about-face in his performance as a smaller-than-life midwestern insurance executive facing multiple crises mostly funny ones upon retirement. Election director Alexander Payne’s critique of American mediocrity can feel snide and elitist, but also has considerable comic invention, from Schmidt’s inappropriate letters to an impoverished African boy to Kathy Bates and Dermot Mulroney as the prospective in-laws from hell. --CH

ADAPTATION aaaaa (R) One of the best and brightest films of the year, this brilliant follow-up to director Spike Jonze and writer Charlie Kaufman’s Being John Malkovich follows the self-loathing tribulations of Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) as he struggles to adapt cerebral New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean’s (Meryl Streep) book The Orchid Thief for the screen. An astoundingly inventive exploration of writing’s emotional and psychological complexity, the film also goes far deeper than its clever meta-construction to become a tender, lovely glimpse into the search for elusive dreams and desires in all of our lives. --FF

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN aaaa (PG-13) Steven Spielberg’s most purely entertaining film since the early 1980s finds Leonardo DiCaprio as a chameleon-like high schooler who flees his broken home by brazenly passing as an airline pilot, an Atlanta pediatrician and more. Tom Hanks finds plenty of rueful humor as the Joe Friday-esque FBI agent who’s always one step behind. When other filmmakers remake classics like Charade, they’re striving for the kind of ease, star power and fluency that this film generates without breaking a sweat. --CH

CHICAGO aaaaa (PG-13) First-time feature director Rob Marshall reclaims the musical genre from Moulin Rouge with this sexy, robust, big-screen version of Bob Fosse’s cynical stage hit. As Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones play Jazz Age murderesses vying for the attentions of superlawyer Richard Gere, showbiz and the legal system prove to be opposite sides of the same tarnished coin. The entire cast, including John C. Reilly and Queen Latifah, reveal remarkable musical showmanship, selling the hell out of the vaudeville-style numbers. --CH

DRUMLINE aaa (PG-13) A brilliant but insolent drum prodigy (Nick Cannon) joins the marching band of fictitious “Atlanta A&T University” and learns that there’s no I in team. Even skeptical audiences will gladly march to music and moves of the marching band’s “drumline,” while the script ably explores the tensions between showmanship and musical accomplishment. Only Cannon’s shallow performance hits discordant notes. --CH

FRIDA aaa (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. . At United Artists Tara Cinemas. --FF

GANGS OF NEW YORK aaa (R) Though Martin Scorsese’s historical epic has a more conventional plot line than his more morally ambiguous, violence-soaked films, Gangs of New York is no small feat. A vortex of crime and corruption based on the real life mire of 1800s Manhattan street gangs, Gangs is a smarter than average epic, though far short of Scorsese’s best work. Its greatest saving grace is a brilliantly charismatic, psychopath leader of the Native gang, Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis) whose often justified guttersnipe rage far outshines the milquetoast heroism of his Irish gang rival played by Leonardo DiCaprio. --FF

THE HOURS aaaa (PG-13) Stephen Daldry’s splendidly literate film uses Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway to unite three women, cutting between the day Woolf (Nicole Kidman) is writing it, a 1950s housewife (Julianne Moore) is reading it, and a 2002 book editor (Meryl Streep) is somehow living it. The film’s increasing reliance on theatrical monologues means the pay-off doesn’t equal the brilliant set-up, but its nevertheless a lush, rich film experience, with Kidman donning a prosthetic nose and being more liberated as an actress than she’s ever been. --CH

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS aaaaa (PG-13) The middle film based on Tolkein’s Middle-Earth epic is so full of spectacle it makes Fellowship of the Rings look like director Peter Jackson was just clearing his throat. It’s also a more black-and-white affair, stressing mortal combat over moral struggles as heroes like Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Aragorn (Viggo Mortensen) resist the forces of evil. The schizophrenic Gollum, an all-CGI creation superbly voiced by Andy Serkis, has the most complicated inner life and proves the film’s unlikely star. --CH

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY aaaa (PG) Charles Dickens nearly 1,000-page novel is distilled into a breezy, 132-minute film populated by half of the most lovable character actors in England — and a few ringers from the New World. Writer/director Douglas McGrath gives his actors plenty of leeway and they all have a grand old time, especially Christopher Plummer as a Scrooge-like uncle and Jim Broadbent as a bullying schoolmaster. The film embraces Dickens’ florid dialogue and melodramatic plot twists for comic effect but also injects more knowing, modern humor in the mix, especially during the scenes with an acting troupe that includes Nathan Lane, Alan Cumming and Dame Edna. --CH

PERSONAL VELOCITY aaaa (R) Though writer/director (and daughter of Arthur) Rebecca Miller’s film about three different women’s lives — in a nutshell, an abused wife, a preppie and a punk rocker — can bear traces of the overly precious, purposeful ambiguity of the modern short story, it also benefits from the craftsmanship and subtleties more often seen in contemporary prose than in movies. It is hard to think of a recent film with such challenging female characters engaged in such psychologically murky situations. At Lefont Garden Hills Cinema. --FF

RABBIT-PROOF FENCE aaaa (PG) This archetypal tale of resisting impression resembles a runaway’s tale from Uncle Tom’s Cabin transported to the outback setting of Walkabout. In 1931 three Aboriginal girls of mixed parentage are stolen from their families to be forcibly integrated into white society, until they escape and try to make their way home along the 1200 mile fence of the title. With a chilling blandness, Kenneth Branagh plays the career bureaucrat who believes the policy of state-sanctioned kidnapping is doing the Aborigines a favor. At Lefont Plaza Theatre. --CH

THE 25TH HOUR aaa (R) Edward Norton effectively plays a convicted drug dealer spending his last day as a free man, but filmmaker Spike Lee’s most strongest images have virtually nothing to do with that story. Shots of the former World Trade Center site and other post-9/11 landmarks have such a haunting power that the personal crises of Norton’s characters and his pals seem trivial by comparison. Do The Right Thing director Spike Lee is overdue for a comeback, but still can’t seem to find a story that fits his sense of emergency. --CH