New Releases
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. The film boils down to a basic David vs. Goliath story, and we all know who won that one, and the director pads it with more flashbacks than are probably healthy and an abundance of computer-generated special effects that try a little hard to make the game of golf actually look exciting. The first time you see the movie's action from that moving golf-ball's point-of-view, it's sort of fun, but by the third or fourth time it's a whole other story. Also stars Stephen Dillane, Josh Flitter and Elias Koteas. Opens Sept. 30 at local theaters. 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. The whole thing is dominated by an overbearing soundtrack of mostly American pop songs with lyrics that tell us exactly what we're supposed to be thinking and feeling in each scene. The blame for this self-indulgent time waster can mostly be laid at the feet of writer-director Yvan Attal, who also co-stars as Gainsbourg's philandering husband, who acquitted himself much better in the similarly themed but somewhat more energetic My Wife is an Actress. Also stars Alain Chabat, Emmanuelle Seigner and Alain Cohen. Opens Sept. 30 at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa. Call to confirm. 2 stars.
INTO THE BLUE (PG-13) An intense opening sequence suggests a film of intrigue and adventure, but it quickly becomes clear that Into the Blue is little more than an excuse to display a bunch of beautifully-tanned hard bodies, under the guise of an adventure-gone-awry in the Caribbean. Sam (Jessica Alba) and Jared (Paul Walker) are among a small group of divers who discover a sunken airplane full of narcotics and a legendary shipwreck, all in one day. Ultimately, Jared must decide what is most important to him — love or money. Not that we really care how it all turns out; the film drags for so long that even a few last-minute thrills can't revive it from its comatose state. Also stars Josh Brolin, Scott Caan and Tyson Beckford. Opens Sept. 30 at local theaters. 1.5 stars.
— —Yeatie Morgan
OLIVER TWIST (PG-13) Charles Dickens' oft-told tale of a plucky young orphan navigating the mean streets of 19th-century London has another big-screen go-around courtesy of that most angst-ridden of directors, Roman Polanski. Sir Ben Kingsley is on hand as well, assuming the role of everybody's favorite Jewish stereotype, the notorious Fagin. Also stars Barney Clark, Jamie Foreman and Harry Eden. Opens Sept. 30 at local theaters. (Not Reviewed)
PROOF (PG-13) A so-so play becomes a so-so movie in Proof, featuring Gwyneth Paltrow as the frumpy and somewhat unstable daughter of a famously deranged and now deceased math whiz (Anthony Hopkins). This is well-acted but not particularly engaging stuff (unless, I suppose, you happen to be a world-class math geek yourself or just can't get enough stories about clingy, grown-up daughters hung up on their thoroughly messed-up fathers) and, despite efforts by class-act director John Madden (Shakespeare in Love) to open up the material, it's all terribly stage-bound. In a nutshell, another tastefully sleepy, middle-brow art film to be seen, filed away and forgotten. Also stars Hope Davis and Jake Gyllenhaal. Opens Sept. 30 at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa. Call to confirm. 2.5 stars.
RECENT RELEASES:
THE 40 YEAR-OLD VIRGIN (R) Ruder, cruder and more consistently funny than Wedding Crashers, this is 90-some minutes of comic anarchy with a 15 minute ode to middle-aged love inserted somewhere in there to show us the movie's heart is in the right place. Steve Carell is the titular virgin, a sweetly clueless arrested adolescent who collects action figures and spends his weekends perfecting recipes for egg salad sandwiches. The movie's one big joke revolves around Carell's character being pressured by his male co-workers to have sex, and his bungled attempts to accomplish that mission. Also stars Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen and Romany Malco. 3.5 stars.
2046 (R) The film is sort of a (very) loose sequel to Wong Kar-wai's masterful In the Mood for Love, with Tony Leung returning as Chow, whose unspoken and unconsummated, but no less grand, romance with a married woman was the bittersweet focus of that movie. The film takes place in the years following In the Mood for Love, with our once-wounded-in-love hero now an emotionally distant womanizer who we see crossing paths with a series of beautiful and mysterious women moving in and out of the hotel room across from his. Connections are made, unmade and messed with, relationships play out, events repeat themselves and time slips away only to be regained once more, and even those paying strict attention may be hard pressed to say what some of it means. We eventually come to see that the film's title refers not just to the room inhabited by Chow's various girlfriends, but also to the very curious sci-fi novel he's writing (and that we see visualized and paralleled throughout the film), which posits a place populated by androids with "delayed emotional reactions" and where all memories come to roost. As in In the Mood for Love (and, for that matter, all of Wong's films), life is both sad and unbearably sweet, love boils down to either good or bad timing, and 2046 reveals itself as another of this brilliant filmmaker's magnificent but maddening meditations on memory and desire. Also stars Zhang Ziyi, Faye Wong, Gong Li and Maggie Cheung. 4 stars.
THE ARISTOCRATS (NR) The Aristocrats tells us one of the oldest and (prior to this documentary) most obscure jokes around, a monstrously filthy monologue that describes all manner of depraved sexual atrocities. The punchline isn't much to speak of, but that's sort of the point: as the film is happy to remind us, repeatedly, it's never really about the punchline, but about how you get there. The joke is told, retold, inverted, subverted and dissected by dozens of famous comedians, but although much of this material is outrageously funny, even insightful, the movie eventually begins repeating itself, finally verging on overkill. Then again, would you expect less from the a film that attempts to cast itself as the last word on a killing joke? Features Jason Alexander, Hank Azaria, Drew Carey, George Carlin, Gilbert Gottfried, Eric Idle, Paul Reiser, Chris Rock, Bob Saget, Robin Williams and Jon Stewart. 3.5 stars.
ASYLUM (R) It's Wuthering Heights in a loony bin when the repressed young wife of an asylum administrator becomes obsessed with a hunky, brooding inmate. Director David Mackenzie is back on the passion-adultery-murder turf familiar from his dank and gritty Young Adam, although the treatment here becomes so broad and absurdly overheated that the movie sometimes feels like one of those Harlequin novels. The film transforms into something twistier and far more interesting in its last act, complete with a fabulously bizarre and complex finale that's well worth waiting for, but the bulk of Asylum isn't nearly as strange, erotic or as symbolically rich as it seems to want to be. Stars Natasha Richardson, Ian McKellen and Marton Csokas. 3 stars.
THE BEAT MY HEART SKIPPED (NR) A curiously chilled-out but nonetheless satisfying remake of James Toback's Fingers, with Romain Duris (L'Auberge Espagnole) assuming the Harvey Keitel role as a gifted classical pianist living a life among the violent fringes of society. Director Jacques Audlied (Read My Lips) provides a moodier, less sensationalistic focus for Toback's visceral 1978 cult fave, while subtly closing the gap between the dueling sides of the main character's nature (he's more of a sleazy opportunist here than a sadistic, outright criminal, though not above occasionally solving problems with a baseball bat). The premise is still a bit far-fetched, but the elegantly understated direction and Duris' quietly intense performance make it work. Also stars Niels Arestrup, Jonathan Zaccai and Aure Atika. Currently at Burns Court Cinemas in Sarasota. Call to confirm. 3.5 stars.
BROKEN FLOWERS (PG-13) Bill Murray plays an over-the-hill Don Juan named, appropriately enough, Don — who, despite his love of the ladies, seems so lethargic that he's on the verge on evaporating right into the ether. When a letter arrives one day from an anonymous ex informing him that he's the father of her 19-year-old son, Don dips his toes back in the world, setting out to revisit his former flames from two decades past in an effort to get to the bottom of the mystery. Jarmusch details a journey in which past, present and future fracture and collide, as Murray's character discovers the hard way that you can't go home again. Also stars Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, Frances Conroy, Julie Delpy and Tilda Swinton. 3.5 stars.
THE CONSTANT GARDENER (PG-13) Ralph Fiennes plays a mild-mannered diplomat whose wife gets herself murdered when she comes a little too close to a scheme by nefarious European drug companies using unsuspecting Africans as human guinea pigs. Director Fernando Meirelles makes the most of the material, letting it play out in scrambled time, often shooting from the hip in a slightly toned-down version of that visceral style he employed in City of God, and layering the film with a convincing atmosphere of escalating dread (punctuated by a few brief but intense action sequences). It's only toward the end that the film lets its political messages get the better of it, and the discerning viewer is advised to run for cover when The Constant Gardener chooses to unleash its inner Erin Brockovich (insert Silkwood, The Insider or your own personal favorite little-guy-vs-demonic-big-business screed here). Also stars Rachel Weisz, Danny Huston, Bill Nighy and Pete Postlethwaite. 2.5 stars.
DEEP BLUE (NR) There's some astonishing footage to be seen in this feature-length documentary, beginning with sequences of death squads of tireless sharks laying into their prey, and killer whales seizing sea lion pups and flinging their bloody corpses 20 feet in the air. It's not all Faces of Death territory, though; Deep Blue isn't coy about the harsher truths about our underwater neighbors, but the film is almost always realized in the very best of taste, and is more often than not both fascinating and hypnotic. The final 20 minutes is pure sci-fi, a close-up look at the impossibly strange creatures that inhabit those deepest depths of the ocean where the sun don't shine. Directed by Alastair Fothergill and Andy Byatt. 3.5 stars.
THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE (R) Horror fans walking into The Exorcism of Emily Rose expecting a head-swiveling, pea-soup-puking time should take heed. This movie belongs to that most dreaded of all genres, the courtroom drama, with a little bit of horror thrown in to keep the natives from getting too restless. It's The Exorcist meets A Few Good Men, and if that sounds dangerously close to a skit on MAD TV, then so be it. What we have here is an account of the trial of a kindly priest (Tom Wilkinson) accused of manslaughter in the botched exorcism of college freshman Emily Rose (Jennifer Carpenter). Everybody has a story to tell, and a series of witnesses take the stand with conflicting accounts of poor Emily's struggle with what some call paranoid schizophrenia and others swear is possession. There are a few things going bump in the night here and there, but the scares turn out to be mere visual aids to an endless series of overly earnest arguments in which various characters weigh in on whether Emily is possessed or just paranoid. Some people will probably call this a "thinking person's horror movie," but does that mean we've got to be beaten about the head with what we're supposed to be thinking? Also stars Laura Linney and Campbell Scott. 2 stars.
FLIGHTPLAN (PG-13) Jodie Foster plays grieving aeronautics engineer Kyle Pratt, traveling home with her 6-year-old daughter, Julia, to bury her husband after his suicide. Onboard the plane, Foster awakens, panicked, to find her child missing. No one claims to have ever seen the girl and Pratt is assumed delusional and dangerous. Peter Sarsgaard plays the sympathetic air Marshal who attempts to help solve the mystery of the missing girl. With cool camera angles and intense close ups, the movie has an eerie, Twilight Zone-esque feel. Foster's usual command of raw emotion makes an otherwise blah film incredibly intense and thrilling. Also stars Sean Bean. 3 stars.
— —Yeatie Morgan
JUNEBUG (NR) Director Phil Morrison and screenwriter Angus MacLachlan demonstrate a genuine understanding and affection for their small-town subjects (even though I'd wager the filmmakers are somewhat more attuned to their big city characters), and when somebody in this movie does something odd or wacky it usually feels like a natural extension of who that person is, rather than simply something scripted for our amusement. We spend time with some very funny people here, but the movie is smart and subtle enough to allow us to smile at its characters without turning them into cartoons. Junebug isn't a movie that's going to change anybody's life, but there's a surprising amount of clever and thoughtful details packed into this small film. Stars Embeth Davidtz, Amy Adams, Allessandro Nivola, Benjamin McKenzie, Scott Wilson and Celia Weston. Currently at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa and Burns Court Cinemas in Sarasota. Call to confirm. 3.5 stars.
JUST LIKE HEAVEN (PG-13) A comedy that raises serious questions about enjoying the now and avoiding regret, Just Like Heaven stars Reese Witherspoon as Elizabeth Martinson, a dedicated young ER doctor with too little time for anything other than work. One serious car accident later, ghost Elizabeth now has all the time in the world, and she spends most of it haunting her old apartment and harassing its new tenant, grieving widow David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo). The obvious parallel between a guy who's heartbroken and sleepwalking through life, to a woman who's never experienced true love and wants to go on living, serves as the movie's foundation and keeps it going on a wheel of serendipitous events. Comedic highlights come courtesy of Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder, who plays a guy with a "gift" for spirit communication. Also stars Donal Logue. 3 stars.
— Quilin J Achat
LORD OF WAR (R) There's a lot of stylish hubris but little that's particularly original about Lord of War, director Andrew Niccol's epic story about the rise and fall of an international gun runner. The movie spans two decades in the life of ambitious anti-hero Yuri Orlov (Nicolas Cage), whose compulsively chatty voice-over accompanies the proceedings. Yuri's narration runs more or less constantly throughout the film, offering glib commentary while making sporadic attempts at justifying a life above politics and morality, but Lord of War's biggest problem is that it never finds the right tone for its story. Cage's bizarrely exaggerated performance ranks among his most maddeningly self-conscious, while the movie veers erratically from gritty realism to unconvincing, overheated melodrama to tongue-in-cheek farce, with a stop or two in between for some Scarface-esque excess. There are hackneyed shots of guns and money looking as cozy together as ham and cheese, and when the characters aren't blowing someone away or being blown away, they're prone to sophomoric soul-searching of the clumsiest kind. We can only wonder if the filmmaker is asking us to take this material seriously, or if he's crafting some postmodern cartoon that wants to take the piss out of clichés by making them even more ridiculous. It's hard to shake the feeling that Niccol wants it both ways, resulting in a film simultaneously traveling in two mutually exclusive directions. Also stars Jared Leto, Ian Holm, Bridget Moynahan and Ethan Hawke. 2.5 stars.
MYSTERIOUS SKIN (R) Mysterious Skin tells the parallel stories of Brian and Neil (Brady Corbet and Joseph Gordon Levitt), two young men living in the shadow of events that happened to them as children. One boy blacked out for five hours of his life and believes he was abducted by aliens. The other boy fell in love with his little league coach, a predator who wound up seducing him on a kitchen floor strewn with smashed Fruit Loops and Coco Puffs. Mysterious Skin follows Brian and Neil through the years, weaving between their stories and making it clear that they're somehow linked — a mystery that only opens up at the cathartic but not completely unexpected conclusion, where all the dots are finally connected. Also stars Bill Sage and Elisabeth Shue. Currently at Burns Court Cinemas in Sarasota. Call to confirm. 3.5 stars.
RED EYE (PG-13) Rachel McAdams is the movie's damsel in distress, trapped on a flight with sadistic psycho Cillian Murphy (he of the spooky, baby-doll glass-like eyes), who's blackmailing her into helping him with his latest act of terror. By the end, Red Eye has thrown in just about every cliché in the book, and can't seem to think of anything to do with its characters but have them chase each other around until one can't get up anymore. Wes Craven is usually much better reveling in clichés than in trying to subvert them (see Scream), but this looks like he's hardly even trying. Also stars Brian Cox. 2 stars.
ROLL BOUNCE (PG-13) Director Malcolm D. Lee (Undercover Brother) offers what we suspect might be the silliest movie of the year. Lil' Bow Wow stars as Xavier ("X" to his friends), leader of a hotshot roller-skating gang (we kid you not) on the south side of '70s Chicago. When their rink closes, the gang heads uptown to a swankier one, where they engage in a skate-off against rival rollers. And, oh yeah — it's a musical. Also stars Chi McBride and Mike Epps. (Not Reviewed)
A SOUND OF THUNDER (PG-13) Peter Hyams hasn't made a half-way decent movie since 1981's Outland, but if you think that Time Cop represented the director's absolute low point, wait until you get a load of this hunk o' junk. A Sound of Thunder is sloppy, half-hearted sci-fi action about a bungled trip to the past that affects everything in the present (well, it's the future, technically, since the movie takes place in 2055 — but never mind). The way the movie visualizes how the world changes is unimaginatively conceived (mostly just a bunch of overgrown vegetation and roaming packs of silly lizard-primate mutations) and the cheap-looking CGI is as unconvincing as the general level of acting on display (Ed Burns, in particular, looks like he's embarrassed to be here half the time; the other half of the time he just looks bored). Also Stars Ben Kingsley and Catherine McCormack. 1 star.
TIM BURTON'S CORPSE BRIDE (PG) Tim Burton's first visit to stop-motion animation land since 1993's exquisite Nightmare Before Christmas takes the form of a dark, elegant wisp of a fairy tale, extremely beautiful to look at, but often just the tiniest bit dull. Corpse Bride is the sweetly macabre tale of a delicate young lad (voiced by Johnny Depp) who accidentally weds a dead girl and winds up preferring the no-airs company of her deceased pals to that of the pompous living. The movie starts out somber and a bit stodgy, with a severe visual palate in effect that's just a half-notch removed from pure black and white; it's only when the film shifts locales to the land of the dead that it finally comes alive, paradoxically enough, bursting into pastel color and bombarding us with a slew of half-morbid, half-wacky sight gags. At that point it becomes a treat to simply drink in the movie's elaborate, self-created fantasy world, its crazy, off-kilter shadows and expressionist sets populated by chorus lines of dancing skeletons direct from the Day of the Dead (the Mexican holiday, that is, not the Romero film). While Corpse Bride isn't quite the instant classic we were hoping for, it's certainly a more satisfying manifestation of this filmmaker's sensibility than, say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Also featuring the voices of Helena Bonham Carter, Emily Watson, Albert Finney and Christopher Lee. 3.5 stars.
TRANSPORTER 2 (PG-13) Jason Statham stars in a sequel to the 2002 action movie that became an unexpected hit when it appeared on DVD. This time out, Statham's ex-special forces operator is lured back into action when a pair of young boys are kidnapped. Also stars Alessandro Gassman, Keith David and Amber Valletta. (Not Reviewed)
UNDERCLASSMAN (PG-13) A rough-around-the-edges L.A. cop goes undercover at a posh private school and culture clash hilarity ensues. Maybe. Stars Nick Cannon, Roselyn Sanchez and Shawn Ashmore. (Not Reviewed)
UNDISCOVERED (NR) Romantic sparks fly between an aspiring model-actress (Pell James) and a hunky but oh-so sensitive musician (Steven Strait). Also stars Fisher Stevens, Kip Pardue and Carrie Fisher.
AN UNFINISHED LIFE (PG-13) Morgan Freeman turns out to be just about the only thing worth watching in Lasse Hallström's long-stalled project An Unfinished Life, a tepid melodrama where pretty much everything that's going to happen is known within the first 10 minutes. Precocious young daughter in tow, battered woman Jennifer Lopez travels to Wyoming and moves in with estranged father-in-law Robert Redford, who still blames Lopez for the death of his son, her husband, many years ago. It's only a matter of time before bonding happens between all of the feuding parties here, and the movie plods along on autopilot, occasionally injecting its cliché-ridden story with bits of overplayed symbolism. Despite sitting around unreleased for two years, An Unfinished Life feels, well, unfinished — technically polished but narratively sloppy and rushed, with half-hearted performances (Redford delivers one of his blandest turns ever), and moments where it seems like scenes have been arbitrarily excised. Also stars Becca Gardener and Josh Lucas. 2 stars.
VALIANT (G) DreamWorks' latest digital animation tells the story of a brave little carrier pigeon serving his country during World War Two. This is probably about as close to an actual history lesson as many kiddies are likely to come by these days, so be grateful for even very small favors. Featuring the voices of Ewan McGregor, Rupert Everett, Tim Curry, John Cleese and Ricky Gervais. (Not Reviewed)
Reviewed entries by Lance Goldenberg unless otherwise noted.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2005.