New Releases:
HELLBENT (R) Despite being aggressively marketed as a "gay slasher movie," and despite nearly every one of its characters being in fact homosexual, Hellbent plays it surprisingly straight, you should pardon the expression, when it comes to its craft. Taking place on Halloween eve (arguably the most important date on the queer calendar), the movie follows a quartet of hunky revelers as they're stalked and picked off, one by one, by a buff, bare-chested dude in a devil costume. There's perhaps just a smidgeon more character development here than you might expect, but Hellbent is more interested in being a competent genre flick than in coming off as clever or campy, much less subversive or original. The basic, time-honored slasher flick formula is followed closely here and, outside of the characters' sexual orientation, Hellbent doesn't seem remotely interested in screwing with that formula or in innovating. To its credit, the movie cuts to the chase whenever possible, offering up the requisite gory bits while getting in and out with a minimum of fuss, but it winds up feeling a little too much like any straight to video project. Stars Dylan Fergus, Hank Harris, Andrew Levitas, Matt Phillips and Bryan Kirkwood. Opens Nov. 18 at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa. Call to confirm. 2.5 stars.
RECENT RELEASES:
BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE SEAMSTRESS (NR) Beautifully observed but occasionally sluggish Chinese coming-of-ager about discovering love in the hinterlands. Our entry point into the story is a city boy in the early '70s, at the end of China's brutal Cultural Revolution, who gets sent to a remote and backward region for a little, good old-fashioned Maoist "re-education." In between major bouts of heavy manual labor and other wholesome, party-approved, anti-intellectual activity, the boy and his companion find themselves captivated by a local beauty who shares their love for decadent French literature, particularly the works of Flaubert and Balzac. Director Sijie Dai adapts his own autobiographical novel with a gentle style and grace, although that aroma of nostalgia in the air sometimes becomes a bit cloying. Stars Kun Chen, Ye Liu and Xun Zhou. 3.5 stars.
CAPOTE (R) Anyone who has read In Cold Blood or seen the 1967 movie version will be basically familiar with the raw material here — a pair of drifters reveal themselves to a reporter while awaiting execution for the senseless slaughter of a Kansas family — but Capote yanks the focus away from the killers and puts it squarely on the writer and his process. That writer is Truman Capote, portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman in a performance that gives us traces of all the Capotes that we think we know — the narcissistic dandy, the sensitive artist, the twee fop with the whiney baby voice, the literary powerhouse — and fuses them all into a character too complex and human to be pigeonholed by any of those descriptions. Capote is not a biopic in the conventional sense but, rather, an evocative and richly nuanced character study, sometimes dreamy, sometimes disturbing, and with a rigorously constricted focus that concentrates on how In Cold Blood came to be written and what it did to the man who wrote it. Also stars Catherine Keener, Clifton Collins Jr and Chris Cooper. 4.5 stars.
CHICKEN LITTLE (G) Disney's latest computer-animated feature offers an increasingly familiar scenario: plenty of great stuff to look at, but not much by way of memorable characters or even a stick-to-your-ribs story. Even at well under 90 minutes, the movie feels a bit padded, with a first half-hour largely composed of amusing but basically gratuitous scenes of frenzied hyperactivity, with visual puns filling the edges of every frame. By the time Chicken Little finally shifts into its main narrative — the titular chicken and his misfit pals (a big, presumably gay pig and an ugly duckling) get wind of what appears to be an alien invasion, but no one believes them — it feels like the movie's already over. The life lesson messages here and the Nemo-esque father-son dynamic feel recycled, and the obligatory pop culture references (including nods to E.T., War of the Worlds and, yes, even The Wizard of Oz), though often cleverly visualized, aren't enough to make up for the fundamental sketchiness of the story. It's all quite cute in a way that will appeal to very young viewers, and gorgeously rendered in a way that will appeal to animation geeks, but nothing you'll probably remember a year or two from now. Featuring the voices of Zach Braff, Garry Marshall, Joan Cusack and Steve Zahn. 2.5 stars.
DOOM (R) It's a toss-up whether you'll destroy more brain cells playing the video game Doom or watching this big screen "adaptation" of the same. Either way, the odds are against you. Dwayne Johnson, The Artist Sometimes Known as The Rock, stars in a sci-fi adventure that will surprise a lot of people (including me) if it features much of anything beyond a major body count, noise and lots of stuff blowin' up real good. Also stars Karl Urban, Rosamund Pike and Ben Daniels. (Not Reviewed)
DOMINO (R) Tony Scott unleashes his flashiest and most aggressively discombobulated movie. Domino is loosely based on the fascinating and very brief life of Domino Harvey — Hollywood royalty (daughter of movie star Lawrence Harvey) turned fashion model turned bounty hunter — but Scott manages to transform a potentially great story into a barrage of pointless, hyperbolic style. We learn virtually nothing about the characters or why they do the things they do, but the film is constantly, relentlessly in motion. It's undeniably attention-grabbing, but nothing is particularly original (Scott borrows shamelessly from Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, as well as from Tarantino and Guy Ritchie), and the film eventually throws any semblance of plot out the window. Stars Keira Knightley, Mickey Rourke, Edgar Ramirez, Christopher Walken and Lucy Liu. 1.5 stars.
ELIZABETHTOWN (PG-13) Elizabethtown is another one of Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire-esque tales of a golden boy humbled, brought down to earth and reborn on the wings of love — but the movie meanders all over the place and the director seems like he's on autopilot here. Reigning Hollywood heartthrob Orlando Bloom has the golden boy role this time, playing a depressed urban overachiever who returns to his provincial hometown for his father's funeral, only to find himself charmed by the locals and redeemed by the love of a slightly wacky woman (a story a bit too close for comfort to last year's infinitely better Garden State). The locals who eventually lift Bloom's character out of his deep funk are a collection of small town Southern stereotypes, each basically defined by a single adjective and all ultimately endearing. Most endearing of all, of course, is Bloom's love interest, an eccentric flight attendant played by Kirsten Dunst. The real killer here is that Elizabethtown is a romantic comedy built around a romance that, simply put, just doesn't work. Dunst looks self-conscious and desperate, Bloom is a blank, and the actors generate almost zero heat together. Also stars Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin and Jessica Biel. 2 stars.
EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED (PG-13) Actor Liev Schrieber (The Manchurian Candidate) makes his directorial debut with this black comedy based on Jonathan Safran Foer's best-selling novel about a Jewish-American writer traveling to Europe in search of family secrets. Elijah Wood heads up a crew of quirky characters, and the whole thing almost certainly gains in authenticity from having been shot on location in Prague. Also stars Eugene Hutz and Boris Leskin. (Not Reviewed)
THE FOG (R) A remake of a lesser-known John Carpenter horror outing (about pirate ghosts a tad scarier than the ones found in old episodes of Scooby-Doo), the 2005 edition of The Fog was made unavailable to movie critics until it was too late to review the thing in time for opening day. The studio's lack of faith in the film might just tell you as much as an actual review would. Stars Tom Welling, Maggie Grace and Selma Blair. (Not Reviewed)
G (R) Though there are rappers, gangstas, cheating husbands and hoes in this hip-hop adaptation of The Great Gatsby, the central love story helps to overshadow the film's negative undertones, and the question of what we're willing to give up in exchange for fame and fortune has universal appeal. Summer G (Richard T. Jones) is a struggling rap artist turned big shot producer with a house in the Hamptons and enough money to make most people forget he's black. But all the riches in the world can't make him forget about his college sweetheart, Sky (Chinoa Maxwell), who left him 10 years earlier to marry a successful businessman. When Sky and her philandering husband move into the neighborhood, sparks fly between the pair once again and various complications ensue. Also stars Blair Underwood and Andre Royo. 2.5 stars.
— —Quilin Achat
GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN' (R) Director Jim Sheridan (In America), diving for the first time into non-Irish subject matter, tries to do for hip-hop star Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson what Curtis Hanson did for Eminen in 8 Mile. 50 Cent plays Marcus, a thinly veiled version of himself, who grows up fatherless and floundering in the Bronx, drifts into drug-dealing and eventually into prison, where he vows to turn his life around. The parallels to 8 Mile and, particularly, to Hustle & Flow are unavoidable as Marcus struggles to make the leap from gangsta to rapper, but Get Rich never achieves the emotional power or stylistic command of either of those films. Oddly enough, the movie shies away from letting us actually hear much of Marcus/50 Cent's music and consequently never really convinces us of its hero's talent or vision. And as for 50 Cent himself, the guy doesn't exactly embarrass himself, but let's just say he's not exactly the most expressive actor in the world. Also stars Joy Bryant and Bill Duke. 3 stars.
GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK (PG-13) Ostensibly, actor-turned-director George Clooney's remarkable new film is a more-or-less true account of that pivotal moment in American politics when CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow dared speak out against Joseph McCarthy, the Commie-hunting U.S. Senator who turned paranoia into a national pastime. In reality, McCarthy could be anyone — George Bush, Nixon, Bill O'Reilly — virtually any past, present or future public figure who abuses the public trust by feeding the flames of demagoguery, and Clooney lets it be known that what he's showing us is a cautionary tale. David Strathairn is an effective presence as Murrow, a 1950's proto-liberal media star (Murrow might just be the Anti-O'Reilly) who spoke his mind and crusaded tirelessly for the truth, brow furrowed earnestly and a burning cigarette permanently wedged between his fingers. Clooney chose to shoot in black and white, a wise decision that lets us know that Good Night and Good Luck is art, too, while blending seamlessly with the extensive archival footage of McCarthy incorporated into the film. It's possible that James Gandolfini or maybe even Bob Hoskins could have captured McCarthy's Mussolini-esque swagger, but the decision to let McCarthy "play" McCarthy turns out to be a brilliant one, creating riveting drama while subtly underscoring the intricate layering of reality and artifice that inevitably occurs in all corners of the media, whether it's owned up to or not. Also stars Robert Downey Jr, George Clooney, Ray Wise, Patricia Clarkson and Frank Langella. 4 stars.
THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED (PG) Actor turned filmmaker Bill Paxton makes quite a leap here, following his intensely disturbing 2001 directorial debut about religious fanaticism and serial killers, Frailty, with this heartwarming crowd-pleaser about the game of golf. More than that, though, The Greatest Game Ever Played is an underdog movie in the classic Disney mold, although it's anything but subtle in its aggressive use of golf as an arena for class struggle and the enormous divides between haves and have-nots. The movie has a tough time finding its focus and its footing for the first act, but it eventually settles into a fairly straight-forward account of the 1913 U.S. Open, in which Francis Ouimet (Shia LaBeouf), a 20-year-old amateur from the wrong side of the tracks, successfully took on a slew of seasoned professionals, most of whom Paxton casts as lackeys of the snooty, idle rich. Also stars Stephen Dillane, Josh Flitter and Elias Koteas. 2.5 stars.
HAPPILY EVER AFTER (NR) Run of the mill kvetching about a bunch of middle-aged guys feeling trapped by marriage, work and life in general, and compensating by fantasizing about sex (and, in some cases, acting out those fantasies). The film happens to be French, but it's very nearly as shallow and clichéd as what you'd expect in an equivalent tale from Hollywood, and is only slightly redeemed by the presence of the always engaging Charlotte Gainsbourg (Serge's daughter) and a few tasty cameos by the likes of Johnny Depp and Anouk Aimee. Also stars Alain Chabat, Emmanuelle Seigner and Alain Cohen. 2 stars.
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (NR) David Cronenberg's aptly titled movie begins and ends with the happy household of the Stall family, an all-American clan headed up by Tom (Viggo Mortensen) and loving wife Edie (Maria Bello). Cronenberg lets us know from the start that chaos is just a shot away, and the movie's calm is soon enough shattered by an act of extreme violence that turns Tom into a local hero. With fame comes unwanted attention, though, in the form of some unsavory out-of-towners (headed by a marvelously ominous Ed Harris) claiming that Tom is not the person he says he is. A History of Violence is tough to talk about without giving away crucial plot twists, but suffice to say that the film shoves our faces in the notion of violence as a transforming phenomenon, as alluring as it is appalling, and eventually focusing on a family bonding over blood. Also stars William Hurt. 3.5 stars.
IN HER SHOES (PG-13) Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette play radically dissimilar sisters whose only common ground is a love for footwear, in this meandering, unfocused romantic comedy from normally dependable director Curtis Hanson (LA Confidential, 8 Mile). Collette plays the plain but dependable sister while Diaz gets to smolder and twitch as the sexy but dysfunctional bad-girl sister, a terminally unemployed nut-job who sponges off her sibling and then sleeps with her boyfriend. To its credit, this is a chick flick that doesn't focus on the sisters' man troubles so much as on their relationship to each other, but the characters and their conflicts are still pretty broadly drawn, and things soon become trite, then ridiculous. Also stars Shirley MacLaine. 2.5 stars.
JARHEAD (R) Director Sam Mendes does an awful lot of rambling and posturing here, while showing precious little of the insight that elevated his American Beauty above its pretensions. Jarhead is a war movie where the war is barely seen. This might be his whole point — something about modern warfare being a largely technological exercise devoid of heroism or human drama — but that doesn't make the film any less dull. There's not much excitement, tension or depth as we watch a bunch of newly-minted marines go through basic training, clean toilets, talk about wives and girlfriends. The soldiers don't wind up seeing combat until the last 20 minutes or so, at which point we get a handful of arresting images of the killing fields of Kuwait, but not much else. The real war always seems to be happening somewhere else, and all the characters can do is complain about it. You might say that Jarhead is an anti-war movie — not in the sense that it's against war, but in that it almost deliberately seems to be going against the grain of what we expect a war movie to be. Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Saarsgaard, Lucas Black, Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper. 2.5 stars.
KISS KISS, BANG BANG (R) Lethal Weapon screenwriter Shane Black makes his directorial debut with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, a hugely entertaining effort starring Robert Downey Jr. in his juiciest performance in years. Downey is a fine bundle of nerves as Harry, a petty thief turned actor, who hooks up with a gay detective called — drum roll, please — Gay Perry (Val Kilmer), in a Bizarro World reconfiguration of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover's odd couple act. The first half hour or so of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang almost completely forgoes plot in order to set these weirdly mismatched characters loose in what is essentially a wicked little satire of the Hollywood scene. When the plot does finally kick in it hardly matters, since Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang turns out to be modeled on those wonderfully convoluted, classic Raymond Chandler noir-mysteries where even the writer isn't sure who killed whom and why. The scrambled plot is amplified by scrambled narration guiding us through action that stops and starts, backtracks and digresses in ways that are sometimes almost too clever. Black seems to literally be having a blast here, riffing on genres, turning conventions inside out, piling on outrageous gag after gag, and spoofing the buddy movies and action flicks that have made him rich and famous. Also stars Michelle Monaghan and Corbin Bernsen. 4 stars.
NORTH COUNTRY (R) An uncomplicated but rousing tale of female empowerment and workers' rights in the good ol'-fashioned, issues-oriented style of Norma Rae and Silkwood, North Country is the story of how the nation's first class-action suit for sexual harassment came about. Charlize Theron stars as Josey Aimes, who runs away from an abusive husband only to land smack dab in the middle of a workplace polluted by some of the nastiest testosterone around. As we follow Josey's escalating humiliations at the hands of male co-workers and bosses, North Country combines elements of thriller, soap opera and courtroom drama, even as it succeeds in personalizing a critical moment in American history. North Country is the Hollywood debut of the New Zealand director Niki Caro, whose much-loved Whale Rider also featured a lone female treading in traditionally male territory, and the filmmaker fleshes out the dynamics of Aimes' tight-knit, Minnesota mining community with the same careful attention to detail she brought to the male-dominated Maori society of her earlier film. Also stars Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Sissy Spacek, Richard Jenkins and Sean Bean. 3.5 stars.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (PG) Does the world really need yet another big screen adaptation of Jane Austin's classic tale of late 18th century love and pain and the whole damn thing in Merry Olde England? The 2005 edition of Pride and Prejudice stars Keira Knightley, Donald Sutherland and Brenda Blethyn. (Not Reviewed)
PRIME (PG-13) Written and directed by Ben Younger (Boiler Room), Prime takes a witty yet realistic look at the complications that arise in cross-generational dating. Academy Award nominee Uma Thurman stars as Rafi, a 37-year-old divorcee living and working in Manhattan. After meeting and getting to know Dave (Bryan Greenberg) in more positions than she ever thought possible, Rafi begins to see the possibility of loving another, even if he is 14 years younger than her, proving that the power of attraction lies not within the boundaries of social "norms" but outside definition and rationality. Falling in love doesn't happen without some obstructive consequences, however, as Rafi and Dave soon learn through Dr. Lisa Metzger (played by Meryl Streep), Rafi's therapist and, as we soon find out, also Dave's rather distressed mother. From the almost stereotypical romantic comedy introduction to its fitting conclusion, Prime is a well-balanced, live-and-learn type of film with spark, touch and very little lag. 3.5 stars.
— ADAM C. CAPPARELLI
SAW II (R) As with the original Saw, an appreciation of Saw II largely depends on one's appetite for seeing people getting sliced, diced, skewered and charred. The premise here once again involves characters trapped in a controlled environment and picked off by a deranged but brilliant sicko in ways that the filmmakers hope we'll find ingenious. The plot, such as it is, involves the characters trying to find some way to stay alive (unsurprisingly, most of them don't), and, as with the original, there are also a few twists at the end, although nothing to get too excited about. The real show here is the screaming and the splatter, a grand guignol that's no more than a calculated repackaging of early Argento, Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper, stripped of anything remotely resembling a frill (much less an emotion) and programmed with the unwavering forward motion of a video game. Stars Donnie Walhberg, Tobin Bell and Lyriq Bent. 2 stars.
SEPARATE LIES (R) A hit-and-run incident shakes up life and exposes tensions in a quiet, upper-class neighborhood in the English countryside in this study of murder and adultery among people who aren't supposed to go in for that sort of thing. Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson deliver typically fine performances as the couple at the center of it all, and Rupert Everett steals the show as the pampered and vaguely unpleasant neighbor who becomes one more monkey wrench among many. The film drifts toward unbecoming soap opera before it exits, but the bulk of Separate Lies makes good use of a cool, almost Hitchcockian tone that allows the material to bubble up toward the surface and seethe. 3.5 stars.
SHOPGIRL (R) Shopgirl is Martin's much ballyhooed "serious" project, based on his novella (as if anybody writing a novella could be mistaken for anything but serious), and full of unrequited longing and flawed, disappointed characters. The movie is beautifully crafted but basically another one of those mopey, middle-aged male fantasies in which an older man hooks up with a younger woman and the heart proceeds to want what the heart wants (a license-to-kill mantra so devastatingly effective I'm surprised Clinton didn't invoke it). Martin plays the older man who pursues and lands the titular shopgirl (Claire Danes), an aspiring artist who pays the rent by working behind the counter at Saks. There's a scruffy young slacker in the romantic mix as well, amusingly played by Jason Schwartzman, although Shopgirl never makes much of the possibilities arising from those complications. Shopgirl is beautifully crafted (what else would you expect from a director who also produced The Girl with a Pearl Earring?) but not particularly interesting. When curious little plot developments do emerge, they seem to emerge from nowhere and then, just as suddenly, disappear. All of this is presided over by a curiously stilted voice-over that periodically waxes poetic about destiny and the like, and an omnipresent musical score that works overtime to invest every action, no matter how tiny, with enormous weight. 2.5 stars.
THUMBSUCKER (R) It's not Napoleon Dynamite by a long stretch, or even Rushmore, but Mike Mills' directorial debut covers some of the same, suburban teen-angst territory and emerges as one of the funniest and most smartly written comedies of the moment. Lou Pucci (who took home a well-earned award from Sundance for his performance) stars as Justin, a thumb-sucking loner who transforms into a high school debate team attack dog, and then into something even stranger. Thumbsucker doesn't provide any revelations, but it's equally good detailing its wacky adults as it is exploring the inner life of its teenage characters. Pucci is a real find, but he's only part of a wonderful ensemble cast that includes Tilda Swinton, Vince Vaughn and Keanu Reeves as a very strange orthodontist. Also stars Vincent D'Onofrio and Benjamin Bratt. 3.5 stars.
THE WEATHER MAN (R) Apparently driven by an urge to demonstrate that he's an auteur, too, director Gore Verbinski follows up his buoyantly charming Pirates of the Caribbean with this sophisticated but unappealingly mopey character study of a minor-level celebrity trying to make sense of his life. Nicolas Cage stars as a not-particularly talented Chicago TV personality dealing with troubled teenage kids, an ex-wife who doesn't like him, a job that ultimately means nothing and a famous father who he'll never be as good as. The bleak wintery Chicago settings make for an overstated metaphor for the state of Cage's soul, and, with its abundant and vaguely absurd navel-gazing, the whole movie often seems to be positioning itself as a quirky new remake of Camus' The Stranger. Despite flashes of smart writing and periodic comic edges, The Weatherman is ultimately little more than a chronicle of a downward spiral as draining as it is relentless. Also stars Michael Caine and Hope Davis. 3 stars.
ZATHURA: A SPACE ADVENTURE (PG) A follow-up of sorts to 1995's Jumanji, Zathura: A Space Adventure is based on another Chris Van Allsburg book about children playing games that magically become real, and a bit dangerous. The setting this time is outer space, and the heroes are two young brothers who suddenly find themselves besieged by rampaging robots, deadly meteor showers and evil, reptilian aliens. Director Jon Favreau gives us an exhilarating, straight-up action adventure, albeit one with moments of intensity that may be a bit much for viewers under the age of, say, 7. Favreau handles the action scenes with just the right blend of sophistication and charm, and the film's brief opening section captures the dynamic between two squabbling siblings and a single dad with affection and accuracy. Life lessons are learned, cherished material possessions destroyed and bonding takes place all around, but even the most formulaic bits are handled in high style. Stars Josh Hutcherson, Jonah Bobo, Dax Hucherson and Tim Robbins. 3.5 stars.
THE LEGEND OF ZORRO (PG) A sequel a little too desperate to emulate the success of the popular Mask of Zorro but not quite sure how to go about it, The Legend of Zorro is as shapeless and uninspired as the original was elegant and sure of itself. A charismatic Antonio Banderas returns in the title role, but the movie is all over the map — part feature-length domestic squabble between Banderas and romantic interest Catherine Zeta-Jones; part kiddie flick with a little Zorro Jr. popping up from time to time; and part Hispanic Indiana Jones, with Banderas' masked avenger swinging from ropes and leaping off ledges at every opportunity. It's all hung on a plot — something about tampering with California's bid for statehood in order to benefit the Confederacy — that's a bit too dry to care much about. The production looks great and much of the action is good, mindless fun, but there's little here of the classic mythmaking of the Zorro film that preceded it. Also stars Rufus Sewell. 2.5 stars.
Reviewed entries by Lance Goldenberg unless otherwise noted.
This article appears in Nov 16-23, 2005.