Short Subjectives January 22 2003

Opening Friday
CHILDREN ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS (PG) Based on the Truman Capote short story of the same name, this sleepy Southern tale depicts how the friendship of two small-town boys begins to fray when a 13-year-old girl moves into the neighborhood. Featuring Sheryl Lee and Tom Arnold.

CITY OF GOD (R) This gritty crime drama from Brazil uses the flashy, pulp-fiction techniques of Tarantino and Scorsese to draw attention to the violence and crushing poverty in Rio’s sprawling slums. Tracking a bloodthirsty drug dealer and a meek photographer from the ’60s to the ’80s, the filmmakers make the most of every cinematic trick at their disposal, although their greatest resource is a sense of social outrage that mourns how penniless orphans become larcenous killers. --Curt Holman

CONFESSIONS OF A DANGEROUS MIND (R) George Clooney directs a feverish biopic of Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), who would have us believe that, while launching “The Dating Game” and “The Gong Show,” he was moonlighting as a CIA assassin. Despite memorable camerawork, Julia Roberts as a Mata Hari and a head-spinning script by Adaptation writer Charlie Kaufman, the film feels joyless, never capturing the hucksterish eagerness to entertain that motivated Barris himself. --CH

DARKNESS FALLS (PG-13) “Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s” Emma Caulfield stars in this horror picture about a boy menaced by an evil version of The Tooth Fairy (no, really) whenever the lights go out.

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PULL MY DAISY (1958) (NR) Like watching Kerouac and Ginsberg’s very own home movies, this Beat production feels improvised (though it wasn’t) and more than a little goosey. What passes for story involves a constrained railroad man/sax player (played by painter Larry Rivers) who’s sprung from the wifely jailhouse by his fellow overgrown boy Beats including Allen Ginsberg, David Amram and Corso. Like the Beatnik’s answer to surfer narrator Bruce Brown, Jack Kerouac provides voice-over narration from his own script. Showing with This Song for Jack, a documentary about the 25th anniversary of On the Road. Jan. 24, 8 p.m., Eyedrum, 290 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Suite 8. $6. 404-522-0655. www.eyedrum.org. --Felicia Feaster

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.

SATIN ROUGE (2002) (NR) A widowed, buttoned-down housewife comes out of her shell when she chances to discover the joys of belly dancing in this charmer from Tunisia. African Film Showcase. Jan. 24-25, 8 p.m. Woodruff Arts Center, Rich Auditorium. $5. 404-733-4570. www.high.org.

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ABOUT SCHMIDT (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 (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

ANALYZE THAT (R) Sure, “The Sopranos” does the whole mobster/shrink thing with deeper insights and better jokes, but the original comedy with Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal provided harmless laughs. The follow-up even nods to the HBO series by having the gangster consult for a similar TV show, but the idea gets wasted. Otherwise, the sequel is like beating a dead horse — then putting its head in somebody’s bed. --CH

ANTWONE FISHER (PG-13) The screenplay’s the story here, and Denzel Washington (in his directorial debut) gets out of its way, letting his actors relate it honestly without gumming it up with show-off stylistics. Antwone Fisher wrote the script, based on his own life story, and he and Washington luck out by having engaging newcomer Derek Luke handle the heavy lifting, playing a troubled sailor whose anti-social behavior brings him into contact with a Navy psychiatrist (Washington) who eventually helps him get to the root of his emotional problems. --Matt Brunson

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. At Marietta Star Cinemas. --FF

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN (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 (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

DIE ANOTHER DAY (PG-13) Pierce Brosnan’s fourth outing as 007 isn’t the best Bond film by a long shot, but it may be the fastest. Director Lee Tamahori brings a breakneck pace and a spirited willingness to show the audience some wild, new spectacle, notably a melting ice palace and chases across a frozen lake. Homages to earlier films are plentiful, while Halle Berry, as comely assassin Jinx, and Judi Dench, as Bond’s spy boss, each have Academy Awards, lending a little legitimacy to the silly puns and stunt work. --CH

DRUMLINE (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

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

EMPIRE (R) John Leguizamo plays an up-and-coming, South Bronx crimelord whose bid for to make a Wall Street killing leads to bloodshed. Featuring Denise Richards, Isabella Rossellini and Fat Joe.

FAR FROM HEAVEN (PG-13) A rhapsodic, and often surreally accurate homage to the classic 1950s melodramas made by one of the genre’s greatest subversives, Douglas Sirk, this tale of homosexuality and prejudice in 1957 Connecticut stars Julianne Moore and has all the stifled passion and bone-deep malaise of a Sirk production. As he did in the neo-rock opera Velvet Goldmine, director Todd Haynes has revitalized a disparaged genre, the women’s picture, and in the process made one of the most heartfelt expressions of female confinement around. --FF

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. . At United Artists Tara Cinemas. --FF

GANGS OF NEW YORK (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

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).

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS (PG) Schoolboy sorcerer Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) and his pals try to solve a series of mysterious attacks at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The first film found narrative momentum in Harry discovering his place in the newfound magical realm, but the sequel plays like an overlong Hardy Boys story set in Disneyworld’s Haunted Mansion. Exciting scenes involve monstrous spiders and snakes, and Kenneth Branagh conjures huge laughs as a fatuous professor, but they can’t make up for the slack storyline and surplus characters. Call it Harry Potter and the Chamber of Exposition. --CH

THE HOT CHICK (PG-13) A high school hottie (Anna Faris) wakes up to find herself trapped in the body of a 30 year-old man (Rob Schneider). If you’ve always wanted to see Schneider prancing like a schoolgirl, this is the film for you.

THE HOURS (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

IMAX Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West (NR) Jeff Bridges narrates this sweeping documentary that traces the famed explorers’ 8,000-mile trek across America. Through March 28. Whales (NR) Follow orca, blue, humpback, right whales and dolphins through oceans around the globe in this doc narrated by Patrick Stewart. Through March 28. Africa: The Serengeti (NR) The year-long Great Migration of more than 1.5 million African animals is recorded on film, with narration by James Earl Jones. 8 and 10 p.m. Fridays through March 23. Fernbank Museum of Natural History IMAX Theater, 767 Clifton Road. www.fernbank.edu.

INTACTO (R) This strangely compelling import from Spain hints at the existence of “luck vampires,” seemingly normally people who can drain the good fortune of others for their own benefit. A petty thief and a female police detective, both survivors of terrible disasters, find themselves drawn into an underground culture that follows its own set of rules — much like the film itself. Despite its chilliness of tone, Intacto’s one-of-a-kind premise and freaky games of chance make it a good bet for fans of supernatural thrillers. --CH

JUST MARRIED (PG-13) Dude, where’s my honeymoon? The slapstick teen romance depicts Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy as newlyweds who face one disaster after another once they tie the knot.

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.

THE LION KING (G) Disney’s highest grossing film ever gets the IMAX treatment. Sort of like Hamlet on the plains of Africa, it depicts a young lion trying to reclaim his place atop the food chain from his usurping uncle. It’s not really in the league of classics like Pinocchio or Beauty and the Beast, despite its all-star voice cast and Elton John/Tim Rice songs that a generation of kids knows by heart. Regal Cinemas Mall Of Georgia IMAX, 3379 Buford Drive, Buford. --CH

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS (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

MAID IN MANHATTAN a (PG-1) It wants to be Jennifer Lopez’s own monogrammed version of Pretty Woman, but the end product is more like Pretty Woeful. Lopez plays a hotel employee who, in one of those “mistaken identity” crises pulled off with more elan by Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, finds herself wooed by a compassionate Republican who believes she’s another hotel guest. Ralph Fiennes is uncharacteristically relaxed as the politician, but this unimaginative effort marches with martinet precision through the usual cringe-worthy circumstances. --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

NARC (R) Despite Tom Cruise’s endorsement (he had Paramount pick it up after seeing it at Sundance), this isn’t far removed from the usual cops ‘n’ robbers fare that passes through the multiplex. Its primary strength is the intense performance by Ray Liotta as a detective paired with an undercover officer (Jason Patric) to investigate the murder of a fellow cop. Writer-director Joe Carnahan has made a moderately involving crime flick in the gritty French Connection tradition, but it’s undermined by a protracted finale and a ludicrous last-minute twist. --MB

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 crewcut might be good for a giggle, but hasn’t Lawrence done the “fake” cop stuff a bit much?

NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (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

THE PIANIST (R) Though less stylish and darkly humorous than typical Roman Polanski fare, this true story of Polish pianist and Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) will be fascinating stuff for Polanski fans who will find copious allusions to the director’s life and films in this somber and enlightening story. --FF

RABBIT-PROOF FENCE (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 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.

STAR TREK NEMESIS (PG-13) The tradition that even-numbered “Star Trek” films are better than the odd ones holds up — barely — with the Enterprise’s tenth outing. Captain Picard’s (Patrick Stewart) conflict with a more youthful doppleganger (Tom Hardy) leads to choppy plotting, weak comedy and sets as cheesy as the original series’. But with a worthy villain, stellar combat scenes and Stewart at the helm, Nemesis sees the audience to a safe harbor. --CH

SWEET HOME ALABAMA (PG-13) You get a more accurate depiction of the South in that movie about the Country Bears than this lazy, laugh-deficient romantic comedy. Reese Witherspoon plays a hotshot designer engaged to the son of New York’s mayor, who she must get a divorce from the laid-back husband (Josh Lucas) she abandoned in her sleepy Alabama home town. Witherspoon’s controlled performance gives a few grace notes to a predictable parade of both Southern and wedding movie cliches. --CH

TALK TO HER (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. --FF

TREASURE PLANET (PG) Disney’s heart is in the right place for this animated, space-faring version of the Robert Louis Stevenson adventure, which boasts spectacular set pieces and a nice relationship between cabin boy Jim Hawkins and a cybernetic pirate named Silver. But unnecessary ballast comes from such shameless, pandering touches as a wisecracking robot (voiced by Martin Short), a pop power ballad, a cutesy alien sidekick and interludes for extreme sports. --CH

THE 25TH HOUR (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

TWO WEEKS NOTICE a (PG-13) Sandra Bullock pratfalls her way through this inane romantic comedy as a klutzy environmental lawyer who reluctantly agrees to work for a millionaire playboy (Hugh Grant), but discovers her true feelings for him only after submitting her titular resignation. The hackneyed script from Marc Lawrence (Miss Congeniality, Forces of Nature) feels lifted from a handful of better films, and both leads show a “let’s-just-go-with-it” kind of resignation. --Tray Butler

THE WILD THORNBERRIES MOVIE (PG) With such ambitious animated works as Monsters, Inc. being created specifically for the big screen, it’s becoming increasingly hard to justify plunking down hard-earned cash to sit through yet another adaptation of a currently popular cartoon television series. This time, it’s The Wild Thornberrys Movie, a takeoff on the show about a 12-year-old girl who, like Dr. Dolittle, has the ability to talk to the animals. This is basically a glorified TV episode — not painful, but awfully hard to get excited about. --MB