BAD SANTA (R) Billy Bob Thornton stars as the world's most horrible department store Santa in this wonderfully disgusting new comedy from Terry Zwigoff (Crumb, Ghost World). The closest modern equivalent to the movie's brand of sick-sick-sick humor might be There's Something about Mary, but Bad Santa turns wallowing in ugliness into something not only very funny but also very sad and real in a way that the Farrelly Brothers rarely manage. Things get a little gooey at the end (when Thornton's relationship with a weird little kid blossoms) and chirpy Lauren Graham of The Gilmore Girls seems a bit out of place here, but the rest is solid gold, dipped in blood, booze and puke. Also stars Bernie Mac, Tony Cox and John Ritter. 
BROTHER BEAR (G) There's nothing particularly bad about Disney's latest animated feature, but not much really stands out either. Joaquin Phoenix provides the voice for Kenai, a brash young warrior who learns about humility and love when he's magically transformed into a bear and forced to walk a mile in the shoes — er, paws — of the very critters he's blithely killed. The lush animation is mostly of the old-fashioned 2-D variety, the obligatory, ultra-cute talking animal sidekick is on hand (a little cub called Koda), and the moral instruction offered by the movie, while well-meaning and potentially valuable, is a bit too preachy for both tykes and their parental units.
DR. SEUSS' THE CAT IN THE HAT (PG) The sets are as crazily colorful as you'd expect from a movie directed by a former production designer, but that's about all The Cat in the Hat has going for it. The jokes are weak, the musical numbers and special effects decidedly un-special, and Mike Meyers' titular character is neither particularly funny nor endearing. Meyers looks lumpy and uncomfortable in his oversized cat suit, playing the character as an unappealing cross between Regis Philbin, Oz's Cowardly Lion and his own New Yawk Coffee Talk Lady. The movie never really gets going, and seems to be overcompensating for its tepidness by practically screaming in our ear "Are we having fun yet?!" every 15 seconds. An even worse Seuss adaptation than the recent The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Also stars Alec Baldwin, Kelly Preston, Dakota Fanning and Spencer Breslin. 1/2
ELEPHANT (R) Gus Van Sant's very personal reaction to Columbine, and high school violence generally, features an ensemble of ordinary teenagers with no previous acting experience, almost all of whom seem to be more or less playing versions of their real-life selves. The bulk of the film unfolds as a series of seemingly inconsequential and random moments, as the camera follows various high school students through the events of their day. It becomes clear that what we're watching are moments inexplicably frozen in time, and that the film itself is nothing less than an elegy for lives lived in ways large and (mostly) small, and about to be lost. When the bloody apocalypse we're expecting does finally materialize, our accumulated intimacy with the victims and victimizers alike makes it all the more horrifying. Stars Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson and Elias McConnell. Held over at Madstone Theatres. 1/2
ELF (PG) A good bit more than just another forgettable project for some former SNL cast member, Elf benefits from some very funny gags, smart direction, and a solid cast — beginning with its star, Will Ferrell. Ferrell plays Buddy, an overgrown Gump-ian man-child raised by elves (don't ask), who now finds himself in the urban jungle of the human world in search of his biological father (James Caan). Ferrell remains one of the funniest and most underrated performers ever to pass through the SNL factory, and director Jon Favreau gives him plenty of room to display the fearless, manic comedy he does so well. The humor veers between gleefully lowbrow slapstick and over-the-top oddness verging on performance art, but most of it works surprisingly well. The supporting cast is appealing as well, beginning with Caan, who makes a great straight man to Ferrell's ball of absurdist energy. Also stars Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen and Ed Asner. 1/2
THE GOSPEL OF JOHN (PG-13) Epic (and reportedly nearly word-for-word), three-hour telling of the Gospel of John, in which the adult Jesus meets opposition as he attempts to bring his ministry to the people. Stars Henry Ian Cusick, Richard Lintern and Stephen Russell. (Not Reviewed)
GOTHIKA (R) In her first post-Oscar role, Halle Berry plays a psychotherapist who begins seeing nasty visions and winds up in the damaged souls section of a prison that more closely resembles a haunted house than a penitentiary. The story teases us with some Is she actually nuts or is there really something supernatural afoot? mind games, but that's only window dressing for what is essentially just your basic freaky horror flick. Neon lights flicker at predictable intervals, the wind howls incessantly, and director Mathieu Kassovitz's camera twirls about to the point of distraction, sort of a 21st-century equivalent of those irritating zoom shots of the '70s. The movie is stylish, and Berry holds her own, but Gothika's script is a plodding, convoluted mishmash of horror cliches (complete with eleventh-hour revelations). Even worse, everybody but Berry and Robert Downey often gives the impression that they're being directed by someone with a less-than-perfect grasp of the nuances of the English language. Also stars Penelope Cruz and Charles S. Dutton.
HAUNTED MANSION (PG) The year's second movie based on a Disney theme park attraction isn't quite the unexpected surprise that Pirates of the Caribbean was, but there are certainly worse ways to while away an empty hour or two. Eddie Murphy stars as a workaholic real estate agent trapped with his wife and kids in a creepy house inhabited by ghosts. The movie's target audience is 12 and under, but there's an actual attempt at a plot, of sorts (something about an ancient curse resulting from a tragically ended romance), some respectable special effects and appealing performances both from Murphy and Terrence Stamp (playing a sinister, spectral butler). Parents should be forewarned that there's a particularly frightening sequence halfway in (involving re-animated, decaying corpses), that is probably too intense for most children under the age of seven or so. So if you bring the kiddies, prepare to cover those little eyes. Also stars Marsha Thomason, Jennifer Tilly and Nathaniel Parker.
THE HOLY LAND (R) The best thing about this first feature from Israeli filmmaker Eitan Gorlin is the local color on display, the curious cross-sections of Israeli society we glimpse in the movie's fringes. Our hero, of sorts, is Mendy (Oren Rehany), a naíve, young Orthodox Jew who gets a hand job from a Russian hooker named Sasha (Tchelet Semel) and offers her his undying love in return. The romance between Mendy and Sasha is an uninspired variation on a tired theme — virginal nerd becomes obsessed with saving a hooker with a heart of gold — and the movie's several other subplots rarely seem to actually connect with one another. Writer-director Gorlin simultaneously gives us a half-baked buddy movie between Mendy and an American-born smuggler (Saul Stein) who's as overbearing as Mendy is bland, then throws in a few other scattered tidbits about a group of Israeli settlers who seem to think they're living in the Wild, Wild West. None of these stories seems to really go anywhere, and a melodramatic ending out of left field doesn't help tie up the loose ends. 1/2
HONEY (PG-13) Dark Angel's Jessica Alba stars as an aspiring dancer/choreographer who moves to the big city to pursue her dream. Trials and tribulations ensue. Also stars Mekhi Phifer and Lil' Romeo. (Not Reviewed)
THE HUMAN STAIN (R) Nicole Kidman stars as a troubled bit of white trash having a fling with an older man (Anthony Hopkins) who's got troubles and secrets of his own. None of these secrets are all that surprising, though, and the movie never really establishes a voice or even a coherent narrative, rambling back and forth between clumsy flashbacks and scattershot tidbits about various characters. Kidman and Hopkins are woefully miscast, the movie's rife with hackneyed symbolism, and the Big Secret upon which the whole thing hinges (not divulged until over midway through) is so ludicrous that I'm tempted to give it away, simply because I can. In the end, it's that scariest of all movies you'll see this Halloween — something that's simply horribly, horribly boring. Also stars Gary Sinise. 1/2
THE LAST SAMURAI (PG-13) A grandly proportioned opus — think Dances With Wolves in Japan — about a man who finds himself by losing himself in another culture. Tom Cruise plays a guilt-ravaged, Civil War-era soldier who accepts an offer to travel to Japan to prepare that country's army to battle a legion of samurai warriors resisting encroaching modernity (read: Western influence). It's clear from the outset that Algren's admiration lies more with his brave-hearted adversaries than with his fat-cat employers — and when the samurais capture him, Cruise's love affair with his honorable foes begins in earnest. It's all very beautifully realized, although not particularly subtle, with endless scenes of samurai life accompanied by warm, gooey music that makes the theme from Love Story sound restrained. The movie falls into a pattern of sorts, with quieter sequences involving Cruise's character's personal transformation followed by a succession of big, juicy battle scenes that pop up roughly every 20 minutes. So even if all the sensitive stuff is putting you to sleep, you won't have long to wait for the next energetically edited sequence of heads being lopped off, swords piercing flesh, and screaming men on horses galloping in all directions. Also stars Ken Watanabe, Tony Goldwyn, Timothy Spall and Billy Connolly.
LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION (PG) A blend of live action and cartoon craziness that, while not up to Who Framed Roger Rabbit standards, is certainly several steps up from Space Jam. The basic scenario here is simply a series of predictably frenetic chases — Brendan Fraser and Jenna Elfman join Daffy and Bugs in a mad race to locate a valuable diamond — but director Joe Dante infuses the project with more than enough clever pop culture references to keep the boomers happy. Also stars Steve Martin, Timothy Dalton and Joan Cusak.
LOVE ACTUALLY (PG-13) From Four Weddings and a Funeral to Notting Hill, Richard Curtis' scripts have proven consistently funny, energetic, romantic, and just smart and quirky enough to compensate for stray moments of unruly sappiness. Love Actually, Curtis' first self-directed project, breaks absolutely no new ground, but it showcases most of the things the writer-director does best. Curtis interweaves nearly a dozen tales here, showing us all kinds of love, from the puppy and unrequited varieties, to office romances to power worship that might or might not be love, actually. None of it ultimately matters much, since Love Actually awards happy endings to all, urging its characters along to the fulfillment of their romantic daydreams, like lemmings to the sea. But, like those lemmings, it's hard for those of us in the audience not to get caught up in the movie's glib, carefully orchestrated enthusiasm. Ironically, the movie's weakest element is its biggest selling point — Hugh Grant, absurdly miscast as the eminently eligible Prime Minister of England (!), and a sweetly stammering, eye-fluttering parody of himself. Also stars Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Bill Nighy, Martine McCutcheon, Andrew Lincoln and Laura Linney.
MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (PG-13) Director Peter Weir's latest film is every bit the rousing, testosterone-infused adventure you're probably expecting, but it's also an above-average character study, and a finely drawn portrait of seafaring days in the early 19th-century. Based on Patrick O'Brian's popular novels about Captain Jack Aubrey, Master and Commander follows Aubrey (Russell Crowe) and the crew of HMS Surprise as they travel the seven seas (well, two or three of them), playing cat-and-mouse with a bigger, faster, better-armed French vessel. Crowe is the big sell here, of course, but the movie's considerably more than just a star's pretty face. For all its mainstream appeal, Master and Commander in many ways harks back to its director's earlier efforts — quiet, delicately textured films like Picnic at Hanging Rock — that relied as much on atmosphere as on plot. Weir's a good enough filmmaker to infuse this big-budget, big-name production with artistry, without alienating the affections of audiences primarily craving exhilarating action scenes. Also stars Paul Bettany and Billy Boyd. 1/2
THE MATRIX REVOLUTIONS (R) Revolutions begins with a series of elegant set pieces, leading to a CGI-generated machines-versus-humans battle of numbingly epic proportions (with visuals ripped from Aliens via Robocop), and concludes with Keanu Reeves' savage messiah dishing up some obligatory cosmic comeuppance. There are few surprises this time out, but the movie feels more cohesive than the last installment, and it's so well made that we can't help but get caught up in all the fireworks. Also stars Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Hugo Weaving and Jada Pinkett Smith. 1/2
THE MISSING (R) Ron Howard's new film takes place in the Old West, and it consciously recalls classic Westerns like The Searchers, big movies about obsessive quests, family, redemption, and the land. At the same time, The Missing isn't a Western at all; it's a horror story. Cate Blanchett is in typically fine form as a frontier doctor in crisis when an evil Apache witch doctor kills her lover and kidnaps her teenaged daughter. With no one else to turn to, she enlists the help of her estranged father (Tommy Lee Jones) — a conflicted and tragically flawed white man who's spent most of his life living with Indians — and together they ride off in search of the stolen child. Howard has some good, nasty fun weaving elements of supernatural horror throughout the film, and the unforgiving, anything-goes terrain of America's 19th-century frontier provides a surprisingly effective setting for it all. At the same time, The Missing remains a Western, first and foremost, with everything from James Horner's musical score to Salvatore Totino's exquisite cinematography evoking the form in fine style. Also stars Evan Rachel Wood. 1/2
MY LIFE WITHOUT ME (R) Young, happily married-with-children Ann (Sarah Polley) is diagnosed with terminal cancer, given two months to live, and immediately starts checking off items on her "Things To Do Before I Die" list. Oddly enough, the plucky, doomed girl doesn't bother telling the kids or hubby; she does, however, indulge herself in a number of other activities, including sleeping with another man (Mark Ruffalo from You Can Count on Me). Director Isabel Coixet avoids most of the Lifetime Movie disease-of-the-week cliches you might expect with material like this, but some of the dialogue exchanges aren't entirely convincing, and a number of borderline surreal interludes (including a dance number in a supermarket) seem awkward and gratuitous. Polley is fine, though, and the movie gets extra points for featuring various versions of Brian Wilson's God Only Knows. Also stars Scott Speedman.
MYSTIC RIVER (R) Clint Eastwood's latest directorial offering dives into somewhat unfamiliar waters, with mostly successful results. Mystic River is an epic tragedy about how two devastating events, a quarter-century apart, change a handful of lives in a Boston working class neighborhood. Eastwood's film is uncharacteristically filled with charged symbols and nakedly emotional Big Speeches, but the top-notch ensemble cast is good enough to pull it off and leave us wanting more. Tim Robbins is particularly effective as the damaged man-child who never quite recovered from being molested as a child, and Sean Penn burns up the screen as a man with a dead daughter and one too many secrets. Also stars Kevin Bacon, Laura Linney, Laurence Fishburne and Marcia Gay Harden. 1/2
RADIO (PG) Apparently pitched very much in the same territory as The Rookie, this feel-good tale combines sports, soap opera and nostalgia for the kinder, gentler ways of small-town America, circa anytime but now. The same guy who wrote The Rookie supplied the story, in fact, which is based on the actual life of a mentally challenged man whose eternal optimism inspires the local high school football team. Stars Cuba Gooding, Ed Harris and Debra Winger. (Not Reviewed)
THE SCHOOL OF ROCK (PG-13) Rocker Jack Black (Tenacious D), in this new Richard Linklater film, is a harmless but not terribly talented slacker who wants to rock so hard it's practically heartbreaking, and pulls off a scam that allows him to get paid for secretly teaching "Smoke on the Water" to nerdy students at an elite prep school. In lesser hands this could have been Kindergarten Cop, but Linklater makes most of it work, albeit not in a laugh-out-loud Dazed and Confused sort of way. Also stars Joan Cusack, Sarah Silverman and Mike White (Chuck & Buck), who also wrote the script.
SHATTERED GLASS (PG-13) Before Jason Blair, there was Stephen Glass, the respected New Republic journalist who turned out to have built a career on writing fabricated stories. Shattered Glass is part character study of the needy, neurotic Glass (beautifully played by Hayden Christensen), but mostly it's a crackling good mystery, one that unfolds with the straightforward, no-nonsense approach of an old-fashioned police procedural. There are broader political and cultural implications here, of course, and the movie does in fact often seem like an All the President's Men for the new century — one where the media is on the prowl again, only this time they're out to get themselves. Consider it a cautionary tale for the Jerry Springer Age, in which the drive for increasingly sensationalized versions of reality inevitably leads to everyone's fall from grace. Also stars Peter Sarsgarrd and Hank Azaria. 1/2
THE STATION AGENT (PG-13) A touching and mildly quirky little film about a train-loving, tight-lipped loner named Finbar (Peter Dinklage), who moves to the sticks in search of solitude and, instead, finds himself opening up to strangers and to life. Fin also happens to be a dwarf, although, while it eventually emerges that he has some unresolved height-related issues, size is not really what matters here. To its credit, the film barely notices Fin's physical stature until it's practically forced to. Rather, The Station Agent is simply about people who need people, as they say, and what happens when fate throws a few of those people together. There are few revelations here, but the movie offers numerous small pleasures as it details the unlikely bond that forms between Fin, a frazzled painter grieving for a dead son (Patricia Clarkson), and a lonely hot-dog salesman who's as unabashedly enthusiastic about life as the other two are reserved. Also stars Bobby Cannavale. 1/2
STUCK ON YOU (PG-13) As if further proof were required, this new project from the Farrelly Brothers shows the team's patented brand of "offensive" comedy has become an occasionally amusing but, for the most part, rigorously inoffensive formula that the filmmakers can apparently whip up in their sleep. Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear generate some good chemistry as a pair of co-enjoined twins ("We're not Siamese," snips Damon's character. "We're American"), but the filmmakers seem to be pulling their punches and playing it safer than ever. As if compensating for the politically incorrect nature of the material, every potentially sensitive gag is wrapped in oodles of irony-free sentimentality, usually accompanied by an upbeat and/or heartwarming tune (including "Moon River," The Stones' "Wild Horses" and even a whiff of Bread). It's not nearly as awful as you might imagine from the premise (or the trailer), but — outside of one priceless moment with Kinnear performing a one-man play while dragging his twin behind him — not nearly as funny either. Also stars Eva Mendes, Wen Yann Shih, Seymour Cassel and Cher. Opens Dec. 12 at local theaters. 1/2
SYLVIA (R) Gwyneth Paltrow stars as everybody's favorite depressed, schizophrenic female poet, Sylvia Plath, an artist probably now more famous for her manner of suicide (death by oven fumes) than for her poems. The film is more or less faithful to the circumstances of Plath's life, and Patrow delivers a powerful performance, but Sylvia is as polished and well manicured as the star herself, giving an overly controlled, conventional feel to the story. Even more problematic is the decision to frame Plath's inner turmoil almost entirely as a struggle to compete with her acclaimed poet husband, Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig), who also shows his fangs a little less often here than he should. Good intentions aside, Sylvia ultimately serves to trivialize its central character by reducing her artistic and personal hells to mere extensions of some suitable-for-made-for-TV marital squabble. Also stars Jared Harris.
TIME LINE (PG-13) Yet another big-screen adaptation of another Michael Crichton book, and basically one big drag. Paul Walker and Frances O'Connor are among a team of young archeologists transported back in time to 14th-century France, where they find themselves caught up in the ongoing war between the English and the French. Crichton's narrative hooks are as catchy and as shallow as ever, but veteran director Richard Donnor directs the movie with all the grace, energy and ingenuity of a high school play on an off-night, or an old episode of Scooby Doo where the gang goes back in time. There are battles aplenty, but for all the bloodletting, everything here feels strangely bloodless, with rambling, lethargic story-telling, phoned-in performances and virtually no sense of time or place. One of the few saving graces is David Thewlis as an evil techno-mogul with an unmistakable resemblance to Bill Gates. Also stars Billy Connolly and Gerard Butler. 1/2
— Reviewed entries by Lance Goldenberg unless otherwise noted.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2003.