NEW RELEASES
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. Cedric and Epps do their best with the script, but in the end, the contrived jokes fall flat and the slapstick isn't nearly as comical or endearing as that on the show. Pure Hollywood summer filler, this movie is entirely passable and ultimately forgettable. Also stars Gabrielle Union, Regina Hall and John Leguizamo. Opens June 10 at local theaters.
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-Zach Rosenfeld
NINA'S TRAGEDIES (NR) Nina's Tragedies is the winner of numerous Israeli Academy Awards, and the latest in a series of engagingly understated domestic dramedies to emerge from that country in recent years (Late Marriage, Broken Wings). Director Savi Gavison crams the film with unconventional characters and storylines that tantalize us by sometimes tying together in unexpectedly intriguing ways, and sometimes not connecting at all. There's much to like about the film, but the 14-year-old boy at the center of it all, Nadav (Aviv Elkabeth), is such a curiously colorless creature that Nina's Tragedies often feels like a somewhat unsatisfying attempt at a coming of age tale. Nadav, whose estranged and ailing father has found God while his mom has turned her energies to sex, divides his time between spying on neighbors and obsessing on the beautiful aunt (Ayelet Zurer) who moves in when her husband is killed in a terrorist attack. The youngster makes a passable guide into a world that demands our attention (albeit a world probably too quirky to be considered a cross-section of Israeli society), but it's a bit disconcerting when a film's main character is consistently upstaged by virtually every one of its so-called peripheral figures. Also stars Yorma Hattab, Alon Abutbul and Dov Navon. Opens June 10 at Sunrise Cinemas in Tampa. Call to confirm.
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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. The tone here is considerably less nasty than in Kim's previous Bad Guy and The Isle, but that won't save the film from the scorn of viewers with little patience for connecting the dots of a deliberately open-ended (some might say ambiguous) narrative puzzle. Moviegoers who can deal with minimalist action, measured pacing and who like a little metaphysical sizzle in their cinema – and you know who I'm talking to – will be amply rewarded. Also stars Kwon Hyuk-ho.
1/2
THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (R) A remake of the much-loved but not very good haunted house flick from 1979, this new Amityville hails from the team responsible for the recent revisiting of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which undoubtedly accounts for the copious amounts of gore, grisly sadism and generally messed-up atmosphere. The remake begins with creepy noises and quickly escalates into squabbles and open rifts between the various family members inhabiting a malignant house that's clearly seeking to possess and destroy them. Shortly thereafter, Amityville '05 tips its hand and then peaks way too early, all but deflating the movie's more subtle, psychological side.
1/2
CINDERELLA MAN (PG-13) Consider this biopic of Depression-era boxer James Braddock (Russell Crowe) as one for guys who don't mind a little chitchat and tears mixed with their blood, and for women who occasionally enjoy the sight of grown men bashing each other's brains out. The movie depicts Braddock 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. There's nothing too glaringly wrong with the film, but Cinderella Man is ultimately as safe and as thoroughly unsurprising as the dependable craftsmen who made it. Also stars Renée Zellweger and Paul Giamatti.
CITIZEN VERDICT (NR) Reality TV and the American legal system are the primary targets in this bungled project, set in Tampa but shot mostly in South Africa and Canada, from South Florida filmmaker Phillippe Martinez. Jerry Springer references himself, playing a sensationalistic TV personality who hooks up with a tough-on-crime Florida governor (a sleepwalking Roy Scheider) to produce a new show where viewers put someone on trial, vote on the verdict, and then get to witness a pay-per-view execution. Citizen Verdict's themes are undeniably important but they've all been tackled many times before, usually with significantly more skill and imagination. It's hard to say whether Citizen Verdict lacks the courage of its convictions or if it simply lacks vision, but the movie seems to be working overtime to please all the people all the time, and, as is usually the case with something so transparently desperate, fails. Also stars Armand Assante and Justine Mitchell.
CRASH (R) In a nutshell, Crash is a sort of A-Z guide to racial tensions in modern America, and about how even the best of us sometimes use those tensions to drive ourselves and each other crazy. The movie takes the form of an Altman-esque ensemble piece a la Short Cuts, with writer-director Paul Haggis (screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby) introducing some dozen characters of various ethnic backgrounds, and then elaborately interweaving their lives over a brief period of time. The movie is all about tensions between black and white, certainly, but the shifting context in Crash leaves no doubt that what we're really dealing with is mostly shades of gray. Ultimately, everything is laid out in a manner that's just a bit too symmetrical, with all of the stories neatly counter-balanced and with the narrative-advancing coincidences piling up so thick and fast it's nearly overwhelming. Still, it's hard to complain too loudly about a filmmaker trying to do too much for once as opposed to too little. Stars Don Cheadle, Ryan Phillippe, Terrence Howard, Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Esposito, Larenz Tate, Thandie Newton, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges and Brendan Fraser.
1/2
FEAR AND TREMBLING (NR) Sylvie Testud is marvelous as Amelie, a Belgian woman whose nostalgia for a brief childhood stint in Japan prompts her to leave Europe and secure a translator's job at a big Japanese corporation. Positioned at the very bottom of a long and elaborate chain of command, Amelie soon finds herself thrown into a state of perpetual confusion and humiliated at every turn by her various superiors, often for the apparent sin of doing too good a job. Based on an autobiographical novel by Amelie Northomb, Fear and Trembling has a ball skewering the rigidly codified and (to us) incredibly bizarre hierarchies of the Japanese workplace. The film is most engaging when it's observing the oddities of Japan's corporate arena as conscience-less food chain, but there are glimpses of compassion here too that keep the film from becoming anything less than three-dimensional. Also stars Kaori Tsuji, Taro Suwa and Bison Katayama.
1/2
FRANK MILLER'S SIN CITY (R) Maybe the most extravagantly brutal live-action cartoon ever made, Robert Rodriguez's new movie boasts a ravishing look, an all-consuming attitude, and, most of all, a devotion to excess. Rodriguez is officially the director here (with pal Quentin Tarantino listed as "guest director"), but, as the movie's full title more than implies, this is Frank Miller's show all the way. Miller is the designer and guiding light of the graphic novels on which Sin City is based, and virtually every frame of the film is a stunning ode to the monochromatic artistic sensibility that permeates Miller's work. For all but the most insatiable gorehound, Sin City inevitably begs the question of why watching something so purely nasty should be so much fun, but with designer sensationalism this tasty, this fit-to-bursting with energy and imagination, it's nearly impossible to Just Say No. Stars Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, Benicio Del Toro and Rosario Dawson.
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (PG) The long-awaited film adaptation of Douglas Adams' cult-beloved sci-fi absurdity finally hits the big screen, with mostly entertaining results. Martin Freeman (from BBC's The Office) plays Arthur Dent, the hapless English everyman yanked off of Earth by a friend who's more than he seems (Mos Def) seconds before the planet is destroyed to make room for an interstellar highway. Dent and friend shortly end up on a runaway starship piloted by the idiotic President of the Galaxy (the always watchable Sam Rockwell) and Dent's Girl Who Got Away (Zooey Deschanel); along with Marvin the Paranoid Android, the motley crew endures sidetracks and setbacks on its quest for The Answer to Everything. Director Garth Jennings plays it fast and lavish, mixing Gilliam-esque live-action puppetry and cutting-edge CGI. Freeman and Deschanel both bring warmth to somewhat underdeveloped roles, and Rockwell plays the over-the-top Zaphod Beeblebrox with deceptive ease. It's Mos Def, however, who steals every scene in which the characters actually matter – his perfectly human Ford Prefect never under- or overdoes it. Also stars John Malkovich and the voice of Alan Rickman.
HOUSE OF WAX (R) If you're expecting anything remotely like a remake of the 1953 Vincent Price film by the same title, forget it. Other than boasting a deranged sculptor as one of its characters (here lovingly renamed Vincent), this House of Wax bears virtually no resemblance to the quaint little 3D thriller for which it's named. Instead, what we have here is one of those ultra-aggressive, modern-day descendants of the slasher movie and the Texas Chainsaw school. There are lots of creepy mannequins on display, the one big holdover from the original House of Wax, but the movie mostly eschews atmosphere in order to do what's expected of it. To the movie's credit, it does what it does pretty well, and some of its imagery is genuinely disturbing in a borderline surreal way. Also stars Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt and Jared Padalecki.
IN MY COUNTRY (R) Samuel L. Jackson stars as an African-American journalist sent to South Africa to cover a national conference in which the old demons of Apartheid are conjured up and confronted. The movie clearly wants us to think long and hard about the evils that humans perpetrate upon one another, but it pounds its messages home in stilted and hopelessly heavy-handed fashion, even as it's unable to resist throwing in a cheesy and completely unnecessary romance between Jackson's character and an Afrikaans poet (Juliette Binoche) that only makes all the political sermonizing all the more difficult to swallow. In My Country is obviously well-intentioned but it's also trite, preachy, stiffly acted and, worst of all, dull, with a tacked-on feel-good ending that only serves to cheapen the whole thing further. Also stars Brendan Gleeson.
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THE INTERPRETER (PG-13) Glossy production, political relevancy and an A-List of names behind and in front of the cameras can't save director Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter, a suspense thriller with very little suspense and even fewer thrills. Nicole Kidman stars as a U.N. translator who accidentally overhears a plot to assassinate an African dictator and then finds herself locking horns with and (you guessed it) eventually drawn to the secret service agent (Sean Penn) handling the case. Nothing too terribly interesting results from any of this. There are some exciting individual sequences in The Interpreter but they don't hang together or add up, and the simmering but basically dull romance between Kidman's and Penn's characters is a cliché of the worst sort. Also stars Catherine Keener.
KICKING & SCREAMING (PG) Despite the title, this is a curiously listless comedy from wild man Will Ferrell. The former SNL player isn't given much room to stretch or improvise as the incompetent coach of a kids' soccer team, and there are even more wasted opportunities when Ferrell finds himself competing against the league's Ubercoach – his own bullying, alpha-male dad (Robert Duvall). There are a few amusing moments as Ferrell's character finds his inner sports jerk and transitions from mild-mannered to over-caffeinated and hyper-aggressive, but Kicking & Screaming is, for the most part, formulaic family fun, with an assembly-line feel to nearly every aspect of the project. Also stars Mike Ditka and Kate Walsh.
KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (R) Ridley Scott's two-and-a-half hour epic about the religious Crusades of the middle ages has armies marching every which way, of course, but the biggest army of all might be behind the scenes – the teams of advisors employed by a non-Muslim director to make sure no delicate Muslim toes were stepped on. The result is a rigorously even-handed epic about a subject over which, nearly a millennium later, passions still run dangerously high. 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
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 Currently playing at Tampa Theatre. Call to confirm.
1/2
THE LONGEST YARD (PG-13) In this remake of the 1970s flick, Adam Sandler stars as former professional football player Paul Crewe, whose career ends after he allegedly throws a game. A series of unfortunate events lands him in jail, where, after some persuasion by Warden Hazen (James Cromwell of Six Feet Under), he decides to start his own football team of convicts, to play against the guards. All the elements of a classic sports film are here: the rag-tag bunch of underdogs; a slow motion shot as the clock on the scoreboard runs out; pep talks with flying spittle; the predictable victorious ending. The key difference from the original movie is the humor. Sandler sheds the sketch comedy shtick of Saturday Night Live while still generating laughs and coming off as a proficient actor. The film also stars Burt Reynolds and Chris Rock, who lead the ensemble cast of convicts. Reynolds, who played the original Crewe, has developed a latent campiness in his old age that allows him to eke out a passable comedic performance. Also stars rap artist Nelly.
-Matthew Pleasant
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. Unless you're a skateboarding enthusiast, you'd be better served renting the documentary, which is far superior in its treatment of the people, the story and the history. Also stars Heath Ledger and Johnny Knoxville.
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.
MINDHUNTERS (R) Fading stars Christian Slater and LL Cool J are among a team of FBI agents participating in a simulation exercise gone horribly wrong when one of the team members turns out to be a serial killer. The movie is basically a dumbed-down and amped-up variation on that old mystery-story schematic where a murder is committed in a locked room and we have to figure out which of the guests is the killer. The, uh, innovation here is that few clues are supplied and all of the suspects are simply knocked off (in gruesome fashion) one by one, virtually eliminating any possibility of the guesswork that might have generated some suspense or fun. Mindhunters lurches on, sloppily written and not particularly scary (except for that shot of Christian Slater's ass), finally resorting to flinging red herring after red herring at us and winding up with the biggest letdown since someone first heard that the butler did it. Also stars Val Kilmer, Jonny Lee Miller, Will Kemp and Kathryn Morris.
1/2
MONSTER-IN-LAW (PG-13) Jennifer Lopez stars as Charlotte Cantilini, an artist who, while working to further her career, meets the love of her life in the form of a handsome, charming doctor, Kevin (Michael Vartan of Alias fame). Unfortunately, he also happens to be the son of Viola Fields, a Barbara Walters-esque television interviewer played by Jane Fonda. Of course, no one is good enough for her baby, so the over-protective Fields devises a underhanded plan to botch her son's imminent nuptials. The film also stars Wanda Sykes as Ms. Fields' personal assistant. After two television shows and a successful career in stand-up, Sykes has proven herself worthy of carrying an entire movie; Monster-in-Law has her holding together the less-humorous scenes between Lopez and Fonda, only appearing in frame long enough to deliver punchy one-liners. Also stars Will Arnett.
-Matthew Pleasant
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
SAHARA (PG-13) A bland, by-the-numbers action-adventure project, Sahara is based on one of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt books, with an artificially tanned and carefully rumpled Matthew McConaughey playing Pitt as a cocky, carefree Indiana Jones-lite. The plot is a mishmash that brings together a search for a lost civil war battleship, a deadly virus, corrupt Euro-industrialists and African warlords. On the upside, there's nothing too terribly awful or pretentious here, but everyone seems to be sleepwalking through their non-demanding roles, from Steve Zahn as the obligatory comic relief sidekick to Penelope Cruz as the love interest. You might just find yourself dosing off, too. Also stars William H. Macy.
1/2
THE 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. Wham! A romance implodes to much weeping and some dreadfully sappy soundtrack music. Bam! A new best friend turns out to be dying of Leukemia. Thank you Ma'am! Someone loses her virginity and promptly starts feeling all empty inside. 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, particularly for anyone who thinks of themselves as fans of the series. Also stars Ewan McGregor, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Natalie Portman and Jimmy Smits.
1/2
XXX: STATE OF THE UNION (PG-13) Xander Cage, the token badass from 2002's XXX (played by Vin Diesel), has been mysteriously killed in action – or perhaps he was just too busy pursuing a family-friendly image with Disney. Either way, NSA agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) has already managed to find Darius Stone (Ice Cube) to fill Xander's shoes. Just in time, too, because a right-wing nut job (Willem Dafoe in Green Goblin mode) is conspiring to kill the president! What follows is a garbled mess fraught with clumsy exposition, confusing editing, plot holes, absurd situations, bad rock/rap music and a remarkable disregard for proper U.S. presidential succession procedures. Even the action is surprisingly lackluster. Occasionally, the film manages brief flashes of wit, satirizing its obvious Bond origins to humorous effect; the cars are pretty cool, too. For the most part, however, the new XXX is just as tired, dumb and as predictable as the films it rips off, without any of the charm. Also stars Xzibit and Nona M. Gaye.
1/2
-Zach Rosenfeld
Entries by Lance Goldenberg unless otherwise noted.
This article appears in Jun 8-14, 2005.
