New Releases
DARK WATER (R) Class act director Walter Salles (Central Station, Motorcycle Diaries) adapts an atmospheric creepfest from the guy responsible for the original Japanese Ring. Also on board is a great cast including Jennifer Connelly, Tim Roth, John C. Reilly and Pete Postlethwaite. Opens July 8 at local theaters. (Not Reviewed)
THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL (G) As nature documentaries go, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill doesn't bowl us over with spectacular and poetic imagery a la Winged Migration or a few others I could mention, but the movie is nonetheless highly effective in a personal, intimate way that those films rarely manage. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is the story of a boy and his birds, the boy being Mark Bittner, an intelligent, articulate but thoroughly aimless San Francisco eccentric all too aware of the freefall that his life has become. The jobless and middle-aged Bittner takes his situation in stride, though, and so does director and longtime bird-watcher Judy Irving, who carefully shapes a small but captivating story through observing the man's remarkable relationship over the years with a flock of wild parrots that live in his neighborhood. The film comes with its own remarkable cast of non-human characters, with Irving and Bittner delineating the distinct personalities of several of the parrots, from calm but curmudgeonly Connor to schizophrenic Mingus to petite, needy Sophie and her big, dumb lug of a boyfriend, Picasso. Bittner resists anthropomorphizing them, but it's clear that these birds are distinctive individuals, have relationships, break up, grieve, and display many of the other traits that we find in human life and in good storytelling. Much like its human subject, and a few of its subjects with feathers, Wild Parrots is something engaging, unpretentious, gentle and sometimes surprisingly sweet without being sentimental. Opens July 8 at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa.
1/2
RECENT RELEASES:
3-IRON (R) This latest offering from South Korean auteur Kim Ki-duk (Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter) is the enigmatic tale of a young man (Jae Hee) who, while breaking into a supposedly vacant home for a little inscrutable but harmless pranksterism, encounters and hooks up with a curiously likeminded woman (Lee Seung-yeon). The film unfolds in dreamlike fashion, told through images and the silences between actions, and with a minimum of dialogue. The cumulative effect is often just short of hypnotic. Moviegoers who can deal with minimalist action, measured pacing and who like a little metaphysical sizzle in their cinema will be amply rewarded. Also stars Kwon Hyuk-ho. 1/2
THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL IN 3D (PG) Much like the Spy Kids movies, Robert Rodriguez's new Sharkboy and Lavagirl has an awful lot of silly, sloppy, barely coherent fun tapping directly into something purely childlike. The plot, such as it is, amounts to bursts of frenetic, video-game-like activity in which our protagonists navigate various levels while propelling themselves to a finish line, and pacing and logic just fly out the window. For all its goofiness and clumsiness, Sharkboy feels like the real deal. I bet Bunuel and the original surrealists would have gone nuts over Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and you don't get a better endorsement than that – except maybe from your pre-schooler. Stars Taylor Dooley, Taylor Lautner, Cayden Boyd, George Lopez, David Arquette and Kristin Davis. 1/2
BATMAN BEGINS (PG-13) Less a re-invention and more a bare knuckled reaction to Batman – or at least to what the Dark Knight Franchise has become in its last few big screen incarnations – Batman Begins is good enough to almost make us forget the wretched excesses of those last two Joel Schumacher-helmed outings. Don't come expecting a knock-your-socks-off action/special effects love fest, but rest assured that Batman Begins is a damned good comic-book movie for grown ups, by far the best we've had since the last X-Men flick. There are no nippled bat-suits, few bad puns during the heat of battle and, blessedly, no Robin to be found here, with director Christopher Nolan (Memento) taking the high road in terms of mood, atmosphere and even narrative – all unsullied by the faintest whiff of camp, surprisingly literate (at least for a summer blockbuster) and, for the most part, dark, dark, dark. Nolan and scripter David S. Goyer contemporize the Caped Crusader (capably played by Christian Bale) by turning him into a sort of terrorist-battling vigilante ninja, while making him more mythic than ever by exploiting the psychological and emotional issues that lie at the heart of the Batman/Bruce Wayne persona. Gotham City is no longer the cool amusement park ride Tim Burton made it out to be, but the version here – a tasty blend of Lang's Metropolis and Fellini's Satyricon – will suffice; the supporting cast is mostly impeccable, and Liam Neeson even shows up spouting a mix of Zen riddles and Nietzsche by way of the Sith. Also stars Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, Gary Oldman, Katie Holmes, Rutger Hauger and Morgan Freeman.
BEWITCHED (PG) Nora Ephron and her screenwriter sister Delia don't exactly give us a remake of the old television series, but something ostensibly different and more clever, at least in the minds of the writer-directors: a movie about remaking the original Bewitched, in which the actors involved in the remake turn out to mirror the characters they're playing. Unfortunately, most of this meta-meta stuff is more interesting in concept than in execution, and although the new Bewitched is sometimes mildly clever or mildly funny, it is rarely both at the same time, not even mildly. The movie is almost endearing in its desperation to be all things to all people, but it winds up not much at all. Stars Nicole Kidman, Will Ferrell, Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine and Jason Schwartzman.
CINDERELLA MAN (PG-13) This biopic of James Braddock (Russell Crowe) depicts the Depression-era boxer as a cross between Rocky Balboa, Forrest Gump and Mother Teresa, with many poignant scenes of the fighter's wife and kids making do on watered-down milk and the sorts of paper-thin slices of bologna that Mickey and Donald eat in old cartoons. The film's second half details Braddock's comeback, with several big fight scenes and many opportunities for the unflappably tough-but-fair, proud-but-humble Braddock to deliver fatherly advice and husbandly affection. Cinderella Man certainly looks the part of an Oscar contender, all classy production values and emoting, A-list stars, but its high emotions can't completely disguise a lack of depth. Also stars Renée Zellweger and Paul Giamatti.
HERBIE: FULLY LOADED (G) Fully Loaded doesn't stray much from the formula of the original Herbie movies – a lot of cute mugging, a bit of mild action and problem solving, a whiff of romance and a bushel of life lessons to be learned – so nostalgia buffs and fans of the series are likely to be fairly satisfied. Small children will be similarly amused, but there really isn't much here for anyone else, beginning with viewers in the process of growing out of their teen years. The filmmakers wisely chose not to overload the film with special effects and turn Herbie into a totally CGI-dependent creation, but the movie's efforts to make itself more appealing to contemporary audiences mainly amount to throwing in some NASCAR races, a monster truck rally, teen queen Lindsay Lohan (in pre-skeletal mode) and a few fading movie stars along the lines of Michael Keaton (wrinkly and forgettable as Lohan's dad) and Matt Dillon as an unscrupulous racer. Also stars Breckin Meyer and Cheryl Himes.
HIGH TENSION (R) Ultra-intense, unabashedly nasty and a big hit in Europe last year, the French slasher film High Tension (also known as Haut Tension and as Switchblade Romance) finally gets its American release, trimmed of a few gory moments in order to snag an audience-friendly "R" rating, and with several scenes newly dubbed in English to accommodate the subtitle-shy, multiplex masses. Luckily, the movie's best moments are essentially dialogue-free, so the dubbing is only occasionally a serious distraction, and most of the film's steadily mounting tension and big shocks are communicated just fine. High Tension is basically a straight-up, old-school slasher flick, albeit one crafted handsomely enough to almost transcend its influences, and with a curious and controversial 11th-hour twist that redefines the movie's sexual politics. A family locked in an isolated country home with a psycho killer is really all you need to know about this one, but proceed with caution. Stars Cecile de France, Maiwenn le Besco and Philippe Nahon. 1/2
THE HONEYMOONERS (PG-13) Cedric the Entertainer is no Jackie Gleason and Mike Epps is certainly no Art Carney, but both revisit the roles of those late actors in this Hollywood update of The Honeymooners. Your typical movie method for success applies: re-cast the classic characters with recognizable names, make the story only marginally similar to that of the show, and throw in a few memorable lines and musical refrains just in case someone in the audience actually watched the original television sitcom. But the loss of the show's spirit, the ridiculous plot and the predictable outcome are not really the film's downfall – The Honeymooners just isn't that funny. Also stars Gabrielle Union, Regina Hall and John Leguizamo. 1/2
-Zach Rosenfeld
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (R) Ridley Scott's two-and-a-half hour epic about the religious Crusades of the middle ages is a rigorously even-handed epic about a subject over which, nearly a millennium later, passions still run dangerously high. The film treads so gingerly on its core conflict, in fact, that it feels very nearly drained of passion – perhaps the deadliest sin for a movie that is ostensibly about, above all else, passion. Kingdom of Heaven is too long by at least half an hour, its central figure (a blacksmith-turned-knight portrayed by Orlando Bloom) is curiously uncharismatic, and too much of its running time is taken up with speechmaking and pretty platitudes. Also stars Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson, Eva Green, David Thewlis, Ghassan Massoud and Brendan Gleeson. 1/2
LADIES IN LAVENDER (PG-13) The Masterpiece Theatre crowd may find a few nuggets to their liking in this frothy and mostly forgettable 1930s period piece, but for the rest of us, Ladies in Lavender is likely to be very slow going. Dames Judi Dench and Maggie Smith play elderly spinster sisters who take in a man they find washed up on the shore near their quaint little Cornish cottage. The exotic stranger turns out to be a non-English-speaking violin virtuoso who ignites passions amongst the sleepy locals and even a bit of rivalry between the sisters. Dench and Smith seem to be having a good time sharing screen time, but the movie is little more than a collection of stray narrative odds and ends bolstered by period costumes and a whole lot of local color. Also stars Daniel Bruhl and Natasha McElhone. 1/2
LAND OF THE DEAD (R) This fourth clever, creepy and curiously poignant installment in George Romero's series begins with a premise that builds intriguingly on what went before, bolstered by a steady stream of interesting details and instantly iconic horror images. LOTD imagines a post-apocalyptic world that now pretty much belongs to the living dead, even as pockets of privileged humans pretend it's business-as-usual behind the walls of fortified high-rise cities, one of which is none-too-subtly dubbed Fiddlers' Green. While Rome burns and wealthy white Republican citizens fiddle inside, bands of heavily weaponized tough guys (including Simon Baker and John Leguizamo) patrol the meaner-than-mean streets outside, keeping the increasingly dangerous zombie population somewhat in check. Romero's movie is a terrifically exciting entertainment, and shockingly gory when it wants to be. Also stars Dennis Hopper and Asia Argento.
LAYER CAKE (R) More fun with London's crime underworld from first-time director Matthew Vaughan, a man whose producer credits on Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch betray his obvious affection for this sort of material. The story here isn't particularly new – a smooth criminal (Daniel Craig) seeking retirement gets sucked back into the biz for a last big score – but there's more than enough colorful characters, smart and nasty, slang-ish dialogue and twists to make it all worth our time. The cast is consistently strong too, particularly Craig and co-stars Colm Meaney and Michael Gambon. Vaughan's direction is remarkably assured for a first-timer, ominously insinuating and un-flashy in a way that his colleague, Ritchie, could only dream of. Also stars George Harris and Sienna Miller. 1/2
LORDS OF DOGTOWN (PG-13) This move arrives a full four years after Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about the very same story that made waves at Sundance. In effect, the audience is being fed the fantasy version after having seen the "real" one. The usual sports movie drill applies: underdogs come together and succeed like never before due to work, skill and serendipity; underdogs become superstars; superstars are then broken up by sex, money and merchandising; superstars are humbled and eventually return to their origins. It's a shame that the end result isn't terribly inspiring, nor are the skating tricks, which are often blundered by Hardwicke's obnoxious reliance on shaky-cam and hyperediting. Also stars Heath Ledger and Johnny Knoxville.
-Zach Rosenfeld
MADAGASCAR (PG) Four animal buddies escape from New York's Central Park Zoo and make a dash for the proverbial wild, only to discover that freedom has its own set of complications. Although less frenetic and cluttered than that other recent digital animation, Shark Tale, DreamWorks' Madagascar is fraught with its own problems, including an over-reliance on predictable, kid-friendly slapstick, and a story that takes forever to get going and then slides into some odd and unsatisfying areas. The animation looks great, though (in a more exaggerated, stylized way than we're used to), several of the characters are memorable (the lemur king and a quartet of penguins are particular crowd-pleasers), and, although there isn't all that much adult-oriented pop-culture reference and humor here, when it comes it's right on target. The gag about over-educated monkeys flinging pooh at Tom Wolfe is a movie moment for the ages. Featuring the voices of Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer and Jada Pinkett Smith.
MAD HOT BALLROOM (PG) There are plenty of fancy moves in this pleasantly uplifting documentary about fifth graders discovering the joys of ballroom dancing, but the best and fanciest moves of all are the sights and sounds of the kids joyfully, awkwardly and sometimes painfully discovering themselves. Filmmakers Marilyn Agrelo and Amy Sewell point their cameras at three groups of children from three very different public schools in the New York area – poor and mostly Dominican Washington Heights, upscale Tribeca, and the middle-class Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn – and watch as these 10 and 11 year olds rumba, merengue, tango and foxtrot their ways through an unexpectedly intense competition and a whole bunch of personal changes.1/2
MR. AND MRS. SMITH (PG-13) For all the sound and fury, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a pretty listless affair, massaged by a Hollywood slickness that makes the whole thing a little obscene, and not in a good way. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play John and Jane Smith, a seemingly ordinary suburban couple who are really top-secret super assassins, and who eventually wind up in each other's professional sights. You gotta love the metaphor of the Smiths destroying their pristine yuppie homestead in the process of trying to eliminate one another, but the movie never really does much with its True Lies meets War of the Roses premise. The basic story is routine, overlong, and told with so little joy and spontaneity that even the frequent and considerable slugfests are a bit, well, sluggish. Also stars Vince Vaughan.
PALINDROMES (NR) Todd Solondz's new film takes Bunuel's old Obscure Object of Desire trick and amplifies it fourfold, casting eight different actors to play Aviva, the runaway 13-year-old girl who is Palindromes' main character. Palindromes is, in many ways, an updated, more perverse Perils of Pauline, with Aviva yanked from the bosom of her cozy suburban family and out into the real world, where she encounters a series of strange and often unpleasant things. Solondz sometimes seems to be trying to pass off a sick joke as something more, but most of Palindromes hits its mark, and the people we meet are mostly complicated creatures, worthy of compassion as well as ridicule. It's clear that Solondz has a fascination for the grotesque and the mean-spirited, but the best parts of Palindromes push past that, to a place that calls cruelty into question by appearing to revel in it. Stars Ellen Barkin, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Christopher Penn, Shayna Levine and Debra Monk. 1/2
PULSE: A STOMP ODYSSEY (G) The producers and creators of the Broadway hit Stomp set their sights high with this 40-minute, large-format IMAX film. Pulse is not exactly an adaptation of the urban-oriented Stomp show, but, rather an ambitious pan-global survey of sound and rhythm in all its manifestations. The film was shot on five continents, and, although it is essentially wordless, it's anything but silent, communicating a world of nuances through a seemingly limitless variety of clicks, whispers, woops, warbles, grunts, growls and howls. It's an inspirational and sometimes overwhelming sensory assault, with the only problem being the filmmakers' annoying penchant for rapid-fire editing that someone probably thought was clever or trendy, but that often simply diminishes the integrity of the performances (especially on that huge IMAX screen, where we're constantly swiveling our necks in an effort not to miss anything). Playing at Imax Dome Theater at MOSI in Tampa.1/2
REBOUND (PG) Martin Lawrence stars as a big-shot college basketball coach reduced to whipping a lame high school team into shape. Also stars Wendy Raquel Robinson and Breckin Meyer. (Not Reviewed)
RIZE (PG-13) Former music video whiz-kid and Vanity Fair fashion photographer David LaChapelle forgoes the glossy imagery that made his rep for a tough, stripped-down style in this documentary on dance as therapy and battle zone in urban America. Grainy black-and-white footage of the Watts race riots and a revisiting of the Rodney King calamity serve as a prologue to Rize's real agenda: the intense, physically torturous dance forms that emerged in the African-American community as a reaction to racism and as an alternative to gang life. The movie focuses on clowning – a speeded-up style popularized by Tommy Johnson, a community healer in a rainbow-colored fright wig and full clown make-up – and then examines the ways of krumping, an even more extreme and radical off-shoot of clowning that's taking America's inner cities by storm. Rize devotes quality time to both styles, which have the effect of watching a strobed image or someone being electrocuted, and various dancers with names like Termite, Dragon, Tight Eyez and Miss Prissy wax eloquent on their seemingly impossible moves and what makes them do it. The dancing is incredible and it all culminates in a massive clowns vs. krumpers show-down in a big, downtown L.A. arena. 1/2
SAVING FACE (NR) What to do when you're a young, hip but semi-closeted lesbian Chinese-American doctor (Michel Kruslec) and your long-widowed, old-fashioned, middle-aged mom (Joan Chen) shows up at the door confused and pregnant? Well, invite her in to become your new roomie, of course, and then proceed to argue, cry, laugh, share secrets, unburden, bond and watch lots of TV together. Saving Face gets lots of good mileage by contrasting the very different (but, wouldn't you just know it, curiously similar) lifestyles of this very odd couple, throwing in a gaggle of wacky minor characters and giddy, soap opera-esque revelations along the way. The movie flirts with broad caricatures and sitcom scenarios, but brings just enough subtle nuance and charm to the table to put a smile on your face. Also stars Lynn Chen.
THE SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS (PG) A tale of relentless female bonding based on Ann Brashare's best-selling book about four gal pals on the cusp of womanhood, this is the sort of movie where the only males in the audience are likely to be there in quiet desperation, attempting to score points for sensitivity with their female companions. Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants cuts willy-nilly between the stories of what its characters did on their summer vacations, giving us essentially four soap operas for the price of one. It's all very Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood meets My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Bend It Like Beckham meets Real Women Have Curves, sure, but not quite as brain-dead as you might imagine. Stars Amber Tamblyn, Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Blake Lively, Jenna Boyd and Bradley Whitford.
STAR WARS: EPISODE III – REVENGE OF THE SITH (PG-13) Although it's technically the middle installment of the Star Wars series, Episode III is where all the chickens come home to roost – and, to cut right to the chase, Lucas gets it mostly right. There's no secret to what happens here, but the way the movie grooves on the tragic inevitability of its events is impressive, infusing the tale with an intensity that's nearly operatic. It's not all icing, of course – Lucas remains an erratic director with an annoying tendency to cram in something for everyone, and Episode III suffers from clunky dialogue, bad acting (particularly from Hayden Christensen), inelegant rhythms and some serious inconsistencies of tone. Still, flawed as it is, the film is far more cohesive and complex than anyone could have expected, and a satisfying experience over all. Also stars Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman and Jimmy Smits. 1/2
WAR OF THE WORLDS (PG-13) What with the curiously adult pleasures of Batman Begins and now this relentlessly dark thrill ride for grown-ups, 2005 is shaping up as one of the stranger summers on record, a veritable season of the anti-blockbuster. This big budget retelling of H.G. Wells' classic account of an extraterrestrial invasion turns out to be considerably more than grizzled ET auteur Steven Spielberg merely owning up to the possibility, finally, that all aliens might not like to cuddle. War of the Worlds is, for the most part, a genuinely terrifying movie experience, largely eschewing the glossy pop iconography of something like Independence Day (or, for that matter, the wide-eyed wonder of Jurassic Park) for a grimy and even gruesome, feature-length exploration of fear and paranoia on a mass scale. Not that there aren't a fair share of spectacular ID4-esque special effects here, and a basic disaster movie scenario that positions the movie squarely in a context with The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. But War of the Worlds' real power comes from its steady exploration of mass hysteria and mob rule, its unblinking look at the horrors resulting from a society broken down into chaos. The movie has major flaws – shrill performances from leads Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, and an ending so silly and ridiculously abrupt that it seems like the filmmakers just ran out of steam – but the bulk of War of the Worlds scares the hell out of us, even as it updates Schindler's List for the Age of Terror. Also stars Tim Robbins and Miranda Otto. 1/2
Reviewed entries by Lance Goldenberg unless otherwise noted.
This article appears in Jul 6-12, 2005.