NEW THIS WEEK:
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (R) A remake of the much-loved but not very good haunted house flick from 1979, this new Amityville hails from the team responsible for the recent revisiting of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Expect copious amounts of gore, grisly sadism and a generally messed-up atmosphere. Stars Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George and Philip Baker Hall. Opens April 15 at local theaters. (Not Reviewed)
DEAR FRANKIE (PG-13) Emily Mortimer stars as a young Scottish woman on the run from an abusive husband and distraught over having to pretend to her deaf 9-year-old son, Frankie (Jack McElhone), that his M.I.A. dad's a heroic naval officer perpetually away at sea. When Frankie notices that dad's ship has docked in their town, Mortimer resorts to hiring a handsome stranger to play the paternal part, and, from there, sparks fly in all the expected directions. Dear Frankie boasts some strong performances (particularly from Mortimer) and handsome cinematography, but that doesn't quite compensate for the predictable plotting, sappy soundtrack or general air of shameless sentimentality. Also stars Gerald Butler, Sharon Small and Mary Riggans. Opens April 15 at local theaters. 
RECENT RELEASES:
BAD EDUCATION (NR) Pedro Almodovar's intricately convoluted noir fantasy is dark, dense, maybe even dangerous stuff, but the film candy-coats its Big Ideas in the outrageous kink of the director's earliest movies as well as the eloquent symmetries of his more recent melodramas, presenting its story-within-a-story as a sort of greatest-hits package from this remarkable Spanish filmmaker. The movie spirals in multiple directions as we watch an autobiographical account of schooldays filled with forbidden passion mutate into a many-headed hydra as it passes through the memories of the film's various narrators. The tale that's spun becomes a sordid but surprisingly poignant web of intrigue, abuse and revenge, of sex, drugs, love and betrayal, and each time the story unfolds, another angle is presented, revealing new information that calls into question everything that's come before. Stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Fele Martinez, and Daniel Gimenez-Cacho.
BE COOL (PG-13) John Travolta returns as wise guy-turned-movie-producer Chili Palmer in this disjointed and very disappointing sequel to the 1995 oddball comedy Get Shorty. Despite the occasional amusing bit, Be Cool is a flat, episodic mess that often just seems like an excuse to string together a bunch of gratuitous celebrity cameos (including a fun one from Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a very bad bodyguard), and a reason to get Travolta and Uma Thurman back on the dance floor together again. The setting's been changed from the movie biz to the music biz in Be Cool, with a sliver of a plot about Travolta's character's efforts to help a female singer make it to the top, but the film's periodic winking at its own clichés are almost as clumsy and uninspired as the clichés themselves. Also stars Vince Vaughn, Harvey Keitel and Christina Milian.
BORN INTO BROTHELS (NR) Academy Award-winning documentary about the children of Calcutta prostitutes and the efforts of filmmaker Zana Briski to get the kids out of their Red Light Hell and into some better place. Briski, a photojournalist by trade, equips the children with simple point-and-shoot cameras, teaches them the basics of photography, and we watch as the budding young artists use their newfound ability to document their world as a means of rising above it. It's a fascinating process, all captured in this film, and even though it's a foregone conclusion that not all of the kids will be somehow magically empowered (their environment is simply too overwhelming and too awful for that to happen), there's a substantial amount of hopefulness to be found in Born Into Brothels. Briski is nothing if not a dedicated humanitarian, so much so that the film suffers a bit by having the filmmaker inject so much of herself into the proceedings (by necessity, some might argue), but there's no denying that this is finally the kids' show all the way. It's also, at root, a moving testimony to the transformative power of art. Co-directed by Ross Kauffman. 1/2
THE BOYS AND GIRL OF COUNTY CLARE (NR) Colm Meaney and Bernard Hill deliver strong performances as a pair of estranged Irish brothers who meet after 20 years to face off in a national music competition. Fans of Irish ceili music will find much of interest here, and there are more than a few moments of grand local color and fine Irish charm. The film itself is a mixed bag, though, with a steady infusion of foul language and some graphic gross-out humor (notably, a scene involving vomit and dentures), making it a little difficult to take the sweet-natured whimsy all that seriously. The movie begins in fine style, with some amusingly drawn characters engaging in various bits of drollery and borderline slapstick, but The Boys and Girl of County Clare eventually bogs down in soap, as the film's various familial tensions, secrets and lies boil over into the predictable. Also stars Andrea Corr and Charlotte Bradley.
BRIDE AND PREJUDICE (PG-13) Jane Austen with songs and dances? Hey, youbetcha. The new film from Anglo-Indian filmmaker Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) is a deliriously colorful ode to the rich fantasies of Bollywood as well as a fast and loose adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice – and it might just be this Brit-born-and-bred director's craftiest fusion of East-West yet. The movie's musical numbers introduce most of its key conflicts, as well as the male and female leads who will spend the first half of the movie squabbling and the second half trying to find a way into one another's arms. A charisma-oozing Aishwarya Rai is delightful in her first English-speaking role, as the feisty, free-spirited heroine who appreciates what's good in the Western world, but who values her own heritage above all. The movie doesn't fare so well with Rai's Caucasian counterpart – a less-than-dynamic Martin Henderson as the culturally chauvinistic but ultimately redeemable Darcy – but there's so much else going on here that we hardly notice. Chadha's take on Austen may seem frivolous or even a tad irreverent to purists, but this breezy romantic comedy cuts right to the chase of the author's sense, if not her sensibility. 1/2
THE CHORUS (PG-13) French Drama The Chorus (Les Choristes) falls into that schmaltzy genre of film that features a plucky teacher who refuses to consign his students to mediocrity's ranks. Clement (Gerard Jugnot) is the appealing star, a nicely frumpy Wallace Shawn-type with disappearing chin and dumpling face. In 1949, the failed musician takes a job at a rural reform school, where he discovers an in-house choir of angels in the school's unruly children. While The Chorus sticks closely to the World's Best Teacher script, it does attempt to draw a convincing picture of what's at stake and offers some good reasons as to why some of the children are such shits.
-Felicia Feaster
CONSTANTINE (R) Like the Hellblazer comic book on which it's based, Constantine aims for a dense fusion of pulp noir and Gothic horror and, for the most part, the movie pulls it off. Balanced neatly between the deadly serious and the tongue-in-cheek, the movie posits a vaguely timeless L.A. where angels, demons and assorted half-breed mutations are commonplace, and then seals the deal with everybody's favorite bad actor, Keanu Reeves, as a chain-smoking, psychic gumshoe trying to keep the legions of Satan at bay. Constantine is a guilty pleasure, for sure, but a fairly classy one; the film is thick on atmosphere and blessedly brief on balls-to-the-wall action, and the lushly fatalistic mood and noir-ish take on a fantasy genre happily recall some of the best bits from Blade Runner. Also stars Rachel Weisz, Shia LeBeouf, Tilda Swinton, Djimon Hounsou and Pruitt Taylor Vince. 1/2
DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN (PG-13) Tyler Perry's curious blend of ham-fisted melodrama, low-brow humor, rousing gospel music and fervent messages of religious devotion features Perry himself as a pistol-packing grandma who, despite her aggressive and sometimes raunchy ways, can ultimately be counted on for good advice about the merits of strictly adhering to God's Plan. Diary of a Mad Black Woman is inconsequential stuff at best, and stunningly idiotic at worst (or maybe it's the other way around), the by-the-numbers tale of a sweet little mouse of a housewife named Helen (Kimberly Elise) who is summarily dumped by her rich, callous hubby, but eventually finds happiness with a new, impossibly perfect boyfriend. Kimberly Elise is an uncommonly good actress (she was flat-out tremendous in Woman, Thou Art Loosed), but you wouldn't know it from her work here – and she's by far the best thing in this movie. There's barely a sliver of subtlety or nuance to any of these characters (nor to the story), but the whole uncomplicated, two-dimensional nature of the project probably just adds to the single-minded power of its faith-driven message. Also stars Steve Harris, Shemar Moore, Tamara Taylor and Cecily Tyson.
DOWNFALL (R) It's the last days of World War II, and Hitler and his inner circle of madmen, mistresses and visionary monsters are holed up in a vast underground bunker, waiting as the Russians take Berlin and the entire universe seems to collapse in a deluge of chaos and blood. This two-and-a-half-hour German import is one of the most highly acclaimed films of the past few years, making it doubly shameful that Downfall's distributors wound up sneaking the film into a handful of Bay area theaters with virtually no advance notice, thereby effectively preventing local critics from seeing the movie in time to review it. Hopefully, it will still be playing by the time you read this. Stars Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara and Juliane Kohler. Playing at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa, and Burns Court Cinemas in Sarasota. Call theaters to confirm. (Not Reviewed)
FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY (R) Maybe the most extravagantly brutal live-action cartoon ever made, Robert Rodriguez's new movie boasts a ravishing look, an all-consuming attitude, and, most of all, a devotion to excess. What makes Sin City so compelling is seeing just how far this movie is willing to go in its mad rush to constantly one-up itself in eye-popping onscreen depictions of violence, gore and every conceivable mode of over-the-top behavior. That the movie does most of this with a big fat wink mitigates the intensity only slightly, prompting occasional giggles as well as gasps at scenarios so extreme they often cross over into the absurd. Sin City takes the form of a series of vignettes, all set in a Mickey-Spillane-meets-Grand-Guignol universe, and all about bad people doing bad things in a very bad place. This is the sort of movie where even the good guys are bad, where characters are shot dozens of times before they finally die, and where faces are beaten to a bloody pulp, all captured in loving close-up as if to demonstrate the true meaning of pulp fiction. Rodriguez is officially the director here (with pal Quentin Tarantino listed as "guest director"), but, as the movie's full title more than implies, this is Frank Miller's show all the way. Miller is the designer and guiding light of the graphic novels on which Sin City is based, and virtually every frame of the film is a stunning ode to the monochromatic artistic sensibility that permeates Miller's work. The movie's elaborately stylized sets all appear to have been digitally created (think an infinitely seedier and more perverse Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow), and when the characters bleed – and they bleed a lot – they bleed a variety of unsettling colors. For all but the most insatiable gorehound, Sin City inevitably begs the question of why watching something so purely nasty should be so much fun, but with designer sensationalism this tasty, this fit-to-bursting with energy and imagination, it's nearly impossible to just say No. Sin City won't open up the doors of perception, but it takes no prisoners, generates one of the wildest rides in recent memory, and it doesn't apologize for anything. Stars Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro and Rosario Dawson.
GUESS WHO? (PG-13) An updating of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner's societal critique/comedy from the late '60s, retold from a contemporary African-American angle and with the genders reversed. Oh, and that's Ashton Kutcher apparently stepping into Sidney Poitier's shoes as the interracial X-factor. Also stars Bernie Mac. (Not Reviewed)
GUNNER PALACE (PG-13) A rambling and pleasantly chaotic documentary whose very shapelessness seems nicely suited to its subject matter – the day-to-day life of American soldiers stationed in Iraq. In September 2003, four months after Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, filmmakers Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein hooked up with a U.S. Field Artillery Unit headquartered in one of Uday's bombed-out pleasure palaces, and then proceeded to document what they saw. Gunner Palace gives us a grunts'-eye view of life on the mean streets of Baghdad, as we follow the soldiers on what they mockingly refer to as "minor combat" missions ("major combat" having been officially declared over some months back). In between the scary night patrols, tussles with hostile natives and false alarms, Tucker and Epperlein turn the cameras on the G.I.s in more relaxed moments as they float around in Uday's pool or engage in a little frank talk about the blessing and curse of trying to save the Arab-Islamic World from its own follies. The movie lurches about in lots of different directions, resulting in numerous loose ends and a shifting central focus, but the nearly unmediated sense of authenticity alone makes Gunner Palace a valuable experience. There's a soundtrack of sorts, a homegrown blend of hip-hop and metal supplied by the soldiers themselves that makes the whole thing even more engaging. 1/2
IMAGINARY HEROES (R) We've seen this story way too many times before – at least half of them at the Sundance Film Festival – and this particular version is one of the weakest yet. It's all here – the angst-ridden, dysfunctional suburban family, the weird-for-weirdness'-sake characters, the gratuitously depressing story arc – and I didn't believe any of it for a second. Sigourney Weaver delivers a sporadically amusing performance as the matriarch of the film's battered and broken brood, but that's about the only reason to see this derivative and badly written Ordinary People-Lite. Imaginary Heroes is shallow stuff pretending to be deep, a movie that strives for profundity but that would do well to remember that cynical does not necessarily equal smart. Also stars Jeff Daniels and Emile Hirsch. 1/2
THE JACKET (PG-13) The early sections are enigmatic, filled with haunting visuals and foreboding, Gothic atmosphere, but when The Jacket's mysteries are eventually revealed, they're simply not all that, well, mysterious. The storytelling methods here deliberately mirror the fractured thought processes of the film's narrator – a mental patient (Adrien Brody) who might or might not be traveling between the present and the future to solve the mystery of his own life and death – so it's impossible to say for certain what we're to make of it all. (The upside of this, of course, is that even if you hate the film, you may still have fun arguing about what it really "means.") Like Jacob's Ladder, this is another film about an unhinged veteran of an unpleasant war, haunted by demons that might be real and might be figments of his own messed-up mind. Both movies trade in conspiracy theories, rampant paranoia, muddled metaphysics, temporal disorientation, barrages of ambient sound, and the supremely seductive notion of latching on to an unpopular war as a metaphor for whatever ails ya. Metaphysically inclined viewers might take the entire movie as the extended hallucination of a deranged mind, or even as the final flash of a consciousness being extinguished, although to this viewer the whole thing ultimately feels a lot like a surprisingly generic sci-fi thriller, albeit one with delusions of grandeur. Also stars Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh.
MAN OF THE HOUSE (PG-13) Judging from the trailer and the, uh, concept alone, this looks like the very bad pilot for the worst sitcom you never saw. Just to press the point, I first laid eyes on this movie's trailer one night during a commercial break on Mad TV, and my wife and I were both convinced that it was part of the show – just one more absurd spoof of a movie so bad nobody would ever make it. Tommy Lee Jones stars as a cranky Texas Ranger living in a house filled with perky cheerleaders. Also stars Anne Archer, Brian Van Holt, Christina Milian and Paula Garces. (Not Reviewed)
MELINDA AND MELINDA (PG-13) Woody Allen's latest film offers what purports to be two versions of a single story, as a pair of playwrights sit around a dinner table spinning alternate takes, one comic and one tragic, on the same basic scenario. This would appear to be an ideal framework for Allen, whose best work has always skillfully balanced those twin poles and whose entire career has often been reductively framed as a battle between the "funny/good" early Woody and the "serious/boring" later Woody. Unfortunately, the movie never lives up to its intriguing premise, with neither of the stories featured in Melinda and Melinda amounting to much or dovetailing with the other in particularly interesting ways. Most problematic of all, there simply isn't much difference between what's supposed to be comic and what's supposed to be tragic in the two simultaneous narratives of Melinda and Melinda, other than casting comedian Will Ferrell (self-consciously aping Allen's patented delivery) in one of the stories, and some overly manipulative soundtrack music (nervous Stravinsky and Bartok for the "serious" story, jaunty jazz and Tin Pan Alley for the "funny" one). Probably to no one's surprise, it all takes place in Woody's beloved Upper East Side, a place exclusively inhabited by clean, cultured and deeply neurotic New Yorkers, and a feeling of deja vu is inescapable. A game try, but definitely minor Allen. Also stars Radha Mitchell, Amanda Peet, Chloe Sevigny and Jonny Lee Miller. Currently playing at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa.
MILLIONS (PG) Millions is a fairytale and proud of it, a sweet, heartfelt story of children navigating the adult world, and of the perils and pleasures of lost and found treasure. Our heroes are 7-year-old Damian (Alexander Etel) and his slightly older brother Anthony (Lewis McGibbon), two Liverpool lads who, the week before the UK's conversion to the Euro, find a bag of soon-to-be-worthless English pound notes that must be spent in a very short period of time. Director Danny Boyle (Trainspotting) finds both humor and emotional resonance in the boys' mostly bungled attempts to satisfy their materialist fantasies, even as they're unable to resist throwing pizza parties for the homeless or stuffing wads of cash through the mail slots of neighbors. And then, of course, there's the shifty-eyed creep with his own claim to the money, an ominous Big Bad Wolf who comes calling at the most inopportune times, turning the kids' dreams to nightmares and the movie, briefly, into a retooled Night of the Hunter. Despite some artsy flourishes, Millions never seems like it's condescending to its own simple, storybook logic, and the movie almost always connects on the most basic levels. It's all good fun and, by the final act, the mad rush to spend the money takes on a life of its own, as Boyle and Boyce throw in an emotional catharsis for the movie's wee-est player and a bona fide miracle or two. Also stars James Nesbitt, Daisy Donovan and Christopher Fulford. 1/2
MISS CONGENIALITY 2: ARMED AND FABULOUS (PG-13) Workmanlike writing and direction are the best things you can say about this sequel in which agent Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock), now a big media celebrity doing PR for the FBI, gets pulled back into active duty when her pal, Miss USA, is kidnapped. There's a female buddy movie angle here too – with Regina King on hand as the antagonistic bodyguard with whom Bullock will inevitably bond – and a couple of forgettable sidekicks, including a clueless male agent and Bullock's mincing Queer Eye for the FBI Agent stylist. The film juggles its various elements, mixing a little bit of comedy with a little bit of action, but not much happens and it's all equally predictable and bland. A virtual cameo by William Shatner breathes momentary life into the proceedings, but the rest is numbingly dull and listless, right down to the obligatory outtakes over the closing credits. Also stars Treat Williams, Ernie Hudson, Enrique Murciano and Diedrich Bader.
OFF THE MAP (PG-13) Off the Map is one of those movies that critics like to describe as a "small gem," and that's exactly what it is. The film takes the shape of a memory piece, a reeling-in of the years by a grown woman inviting us along as she revisits her childhood in the wilds of New Mexico, circa 1974. In the most broadly described sense, this is a coming-of-age tale – almost inevitably so, since our 12-year-old guide, Bo Groden (Valentina de Angelis), is at an age when new discoveries wait around every corner – but Off the Map is also much more: a grown-up romance, a mystical adventure, a cheerfully dysfunctional comedy, a wistful family drama. There's not a story per se so much as a series of anecdotes, an accumulation of tiny but telling details that gradually flesh out the characters and allow us to enter their world to a degree not commonly allowed for in most motion pictures. Joan Allen delivers yet another astonishing performance as the eccentric earth mama holding the Groden family together, and the character of Bo is as memorably self-possessed and old-beyond-her-years as the young protagonist of To Kill a Mockingbird, another movie that filtered its world to fine effect through the eyes of childhood. Off the Map makes us genuinely happy to spend time with its characters – people who, as the title implies, make contact with the world in new ways, entering it and departing through nexus points rarely noticed – and that's something worth celebrating. Also stars Sam Elliot, J.K. Simmons and Jim True-Frost. Currently playing at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa.
OSCAR SHORTS 2005 (NR) Shorter doesn't necessarily mean lighter and fluffier in this program of short films that were nominated for Academy Awards in 2005. Wasp, the UK short that wound up taking home the Oscar, is a blistering, unblinking life-slice that tells us more than we might have wanted to know about a young, unmarried mom saddled with too many kids and not enough ideas or options. Another rough 'n' tumble work, the brilliantly imagined Canadian animation Ryan, puts us up close and personal with a once-important artist now reduced to alcoholic dementia. The films get a bit sunnier from there – The New Zealand short Two Cars, One Night is a tender glimpse of young kids getting acquainted in a parking lot, while the homegrown animations Gopher Broke and Rex Steele: Nazi Smasher are both thoroughly silly and entirely suitable for kiddies – but there's generally a dark undercurrent shooting through most of this material that helps keep things interesting. One film, 7:35 in the Morning from Spain, even turns a suicidal stalker's desperation into an all-singing, all-dancing musical. 1/2
THE RING TWO (PG-13) Enigma and atmosphere loomed large in the original Ring, but all that is essentially absent from The Ring Two, leaving us with just another pedestrian horror sequel. The tormented mother-son pair (Naomi Watts and David Dorman) from the original movie are back, relocated in a small Oregon town where, wouldn't you just know it, the dreaded, death-dealing forces that haunted them in the first Ring resurface. The movie is basically just Watts and her young son being put through their more-or-less predictable paces by the original film's demonic entity (whose inscrutable strangeness now seems little more than just another generic, Freddy Krueger-esque boogeyman), with recycled images from the first Ring scattered throughout. There are a handful of interesting moments, and the film almost achieves some sort of belated lift-off in its last act, but it's ultimately just a mess, a typical case of too many script doctors canceling out each other's better impulses. You know you're in trouble when the only real innovation worth mentioning is a herd of evil, computer-generated deer. Also stars Simon Baker, Elizabeth Perkins and Sissy Spacek.
RORY O' SHEA WAS HERE (R) You can see the wheels spinning on this one. It's a given that Oscar voters love a movie about a guy in a wheelchair, so just imagine how nuts they'll go for a movie about – wait for it – two guys in wheelchairs. Then again, the only thing worse than a bad Holocaust movie is a bad movie about a guy in a wheelchair, and Rory O'Shea Was Here is one of the worst. Good intentions aside, this is a notch or two down from your run-of-the-mill feel-good movie about disabled individuals, a clumsy, confused and heavy-handed attempt to cloak rampant corniness and PC messages in an air of irony and hipness. James McAvoy stars as Rory, a dashing young Irish punk whose struggle with muscular dystrophy can't dampen his Indomitable Spirit (TM – All Rights Reserved). The first half of the movie puts Rory through his paces in a home for the disabled, following our pierced and punked-out provocateur as he rages against institutional authority. It's My Left Foot meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (with Rory as the Nicholson martyr figure), although the movie's cloyingly sentimental second half becomes more like a riff on a standard buddy picture, with Rory and a pal with cerebral palsy moving into a flat together and helping each other in and out of trouble. Director Damien O'Donnell doesn't seem to know what sort of movie he's trying to make, and although there are one or two very strong moments here, you have to wait until the film's nearly over to get to them. Also stars James Robertson and Romola Garal.
SAHARA (PG-13) A bland, by-the-numbers action-adventure project mostly notable for being the directorial debut of someone named Breck Eisner, who just happens to be the son of former Disney CEO Michael Eisner. Sahara is based on one of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt books, with an artificially tanned and carefully rumpled Matthew McConaughey playing Pitt as a cocky, carefree Indiana Jones-lite. The plot is a mishmash that brings together a search for a lost civil war battleship, a deadly virus, corrupt Euro-industrialists and African warlords, with some faux-007 music slapped on the ostensibly suspenseful parts, and classic rock chestnuts by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Steppenwolf liberally and gratuitously applied elsewhere. On the upside, there's nothing too terribly awful or pretentious here, but everyone seems to be sleepwalking through their non-demanding roles, from Steve Zahn as the obligatory comic relief sidekick to Penelope Cruz as the love interest. You might just find yourself dosing off, too. Also stars William H. Macy. 1/2
THE UPSIDE OF ANGER (R) Another take on middle-aged romance and the gender wars, among other things, that tackles territory previously staked out by As Good as It Gets and, more often than not, gets it right. As the title suggests, this is a movie that's ostensibly about angry or otherwise disappointed people, two of whom are aging alcoholics – but against all odds, The Upside of Anger turns that daunting subject matter into what is sometimes very funny material. This movie is far from perfect, but it's still a must-see, if only to see Joan Allen in a career-topping performance as a suburban housewife dealing with four grown (and nearly-grown) children, as well as a washed-up baseball player (Kevin Costner) who comes sniffing around and winds up staying for the long run. Costner's no slouch either as the boozing, aging good-time boy getting by on the fumes of fame and fortune. All the expected bases are covered here, but the film manages to take us to a few unexpected places, too. Also stars Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood, Keri Russell and Mike Binder (who also directs). Currently playing at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa. 1/2
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (NR) Shakespeare's most controversial play gets a bit of a facelift from director Michael Radford, who plays a little fast and loose with Big Will's story but remains true to the breadth of his humanist spirit. Radford's The Merchant of Venice contemporizes Shakespeare's text with small but crucial touches, punching up the homoeroticism in the air between best buddies Antonio (Jeremy Irons) and Bassanio (Joseph Fiennes), and, most importantly, providing a historical framework for the demonization of the Jews that the play takes for granted. This goes some way toward offering a partial explanation for the personal monstrousness of Shylock – the titular Jewish merchant who has, not without reason, earned the play a reputation for anti-Semitism – but Merchant is still a problematic play and a problematic movie. Al Pacino is interesting as a shriveled but semi-sympathetic Shylock, bleating and bellowing lines in a weird half-Yiddish, half-Bronx accent, and gratuitously extending syllables like Dylan did on stage for most of the last few decades. Also stars Lynne Collins.
Reviewed entries by Lance Goldenberg unless noted.
This article appears in Apr 13-19, 2005.