Upcoming Releases
FRED CLAUS (PG) Vince Vaughan stars as the black sheep brother of none other than jolly old St. Nick himself (Paul Giamatti) in this kid-friendly comedy of sibling rivalry and holiday cheer. Also stars Miranda Richardson, Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins. Opens Nov. 9 at local theaters. (Not Reviewed)
P2 (R) Minimalist stalk-and-slash horror directed by first-timer Franck Khalfoun and produced by Alexandre Aja (Haute Tension and The Hills Have Eyes remake), that plays like a stripped-down, somewhat less compelling version of Aja's own work. Virtually the entire movie takes place in a deserted parking garage lorded over by a psychotic attendant who kidnaps a young businesswoman for a long and progressively deadly evening of cat and mouse. Wes Bentley (Ghost Rider) is a bit too bland as the heavy, and Angela Nichols isn't required to do much beyond communicating various degrees of hysteria as the victim, but the film still manages to generate a consistently creepy atmosphere, making good use of its claustrophobic setting through some imaginative camera placement and choreography. The final effect is a bit too much like a well-crafted made-for-TV movie but still worth a look, particularly for fans of the genre. Also stars Simon Reynolds. Opens Nov. 9 at local theaters. 3 stars
RECENT RELEASES
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (PG-13) The new film from stylist extraordinaire Julie Taymor (Titus, Frida) promises a lushly visual approach and wall-to-wall Beatles music bolstering a basic boy-meets-girl scenario set against the groovy, tumultuous 1960s. The characters all have Beatlesque names like Lucy, Jude, Sadie and Jo-Jo, and psychedelicized imagery inspired by the Fab's tunes reportedly abounds — but the $10 million the studio ponied up for the rights to the music apparently didn't even buy them the original versions, so Across the Universe's 133-minute running time may become tough going what with the nonmusician actors themselves being the ones doing the warbling here. We'll have to wait to see how it all turns out, since the film was screened too late for review. tars Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs and Martin Luthor McCoy. (Not Reviewed)
THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD (R) A languorous art-western in the fabled mold of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Heaven's Gate and Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, Andrew Dominik's two-hour-and-40-minute The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford is a love-it-or-hate-it proposition. Some will see it as a pretentious slog, others as sheer poetry, but one thing's for sure: They don't make 'em like this anymore. The film presents Jesse James (Brad Pitt) as an early contender in the Cult of Personality — he and Mark Twain were the only Americans known in Europe in the late 19th century — and much is made here of the urge to bask in the outlaw's celebrity, of people wanting to hang around him, even to be him. Meandering back and forth through time, the movie lays out its elliptical story assisted by a melancholy, matter-of-fact voice-over that gives up its details as methodically as Robert Bresson making his case in The Trial of Joan of Arc. The movie throws out much of the James legend, meditating upon its anti-hero as he goes through wild mood swings, alternately depressed, buoyant and unhinged, and ultimately even takes on a weirdly Christ-like aspect, wondering which of his squabbling gang members is going to betray him. James' Judas turns out to be Robert Ford (Casey Affleck), a confused hanger-on whose obsession borders on the homoerotic and whose titular act of violence briefly makes him even more famous than the celebrity killer he kills. An appreciation of The Assassination of Jesse James hinges less on suspension of disbelief than on suspension of our reliance on snappy pace and linear plotting, but those who do give themselves over to the film's demanding poetry may find themselves well rewarded. Also stars Sam Shepard, Paul Schneider, Sam Rockwell, Jeremy Renner, Garret Dillahunt, Mary-Louise Parker and Michael Parks. 4.5 stars
BEE MOVIE (PG) Jerry Seinfeld returns from the stand-up comedy wilderness with this CGI-animated offering about a spunky little bee who wants more (as apparently do all animated creatures these days). The voice cast alone might be reason enough to investigate: Besides Seinfeld, Renee Zelwegger, Matthew Broderick and John Goodman, there's an eclectic ensemble including Rip Torn, Sting, Oprah Winfrey and Larry King. (Not Reviewed)
BELLA (PG-13) A huge crowd pleaser on the festival circuit (it snagged the Audience Award winner at the Toronto Film Festival), Bella offers sincerity, romance and emotional uplift for miles. As far as subtlety or originality go, the movie doesn't fare nearly so well. Eduardo Verastegui stars as Jose, a once-promising soccer player who succumbs to some terrible tragedy (nameless for most of the film but easy to decipher) and winds up a mournful, bushy-bearded cook in his brother's restaurant. Enter Nina (Tammy Blanchard), a spunky, pregnant waitress who seems to be the only one capable of lifting Jose out of the dumps. Director Alejandro Monteverde follows the couple on a daylong outing as they bond over lunch, hang at the beach and bask in the warm and fuzzy glow of Jose's immigrant family. It won't be giving away much to reveal that everybody goes home happy. Also stars Manny Perez, Angelica Aragon and Jaime Tirelli. 2.5 stars
DAN IN REAL LIFE (PG-13) Steve Carell stars as single dad with a house full of girls and a serious crush on his brother's girlfriend (Juliette Binoche). Also stars Dane Cook, John Mahoney and Emily Blunt. (Not Reviewed)
THE DARJEELING LIMITED (R) Wes Anderson's new movie often seems closer to fever dream than real life, but it's cohesive in ways that the director's previous film, The Life Aquatic, wasn't. The color-coded confusion and calculated whimsy that got the better of Life Aquatic still occasionally creep in, but Darjeeling is a funnier and more focused trip, giving us three strangers on a train — semi-estranged brothers Francis (Owen Wilson), Jack (Jason Schwartzman) and Peter (Adrien Brody) — reunited for what the eldest promises will be a "spiritual journey" across India. (It's a promise made so solemnly it's impossible to mistake for anything other than totally absurd, like most everything that transpires here.) The brothers indulge themselves in synchronized chain-smoking, keep themselves buzzed with potent Indian painkillers, squabble and engage in virtually nonstop non sequiturs and poker-faced kvetching. The squabbles occasionally mutate into physical brawls, pepper spray and poisonous snakes are produced, the snake gets loose on the titular train, and Schwartzman plays passive-aggressive sex games with a sad-eyed stewardess in the train's bathroom. Anderson applies meticulously measured rhythms to even the film's most screwbally impulses, occasionally punctuating them with dreamy, slo-mo passages, so that The Darjeeling Limited often feels like a Marx Brothers movie on Thorazine. Also stars Amara Karan, Waris Ahluwalia and Anjelica Huston. 3.5 stars
ELIZABETH: THE GOLDEN AGE (PG-13) A sequel of sorts to Kapur's '98 take on England's "virgin queen," Elizabeth: The Golden Age lacks even the vaguely Gothic kitsch-horror appeal or its predecessor, as it flits uneasily between two narrative streams that don't ever mesh particularly well. In one parallel plot, we have Elizabeth entertaining the possibility of a suitor (suffering several fops and buffoons before locking eyes on smoldering he-man Clive Owen, as Sir Walter Raleigh), while in the other we get some fairly pedestrian cloak-and-dagger stuff in which assorted Catholic agents scurry about the fringes of the film conspiring to undo the Protestant monarch. Neither of these stories amounts to much, with the romantic angle boiling down to a half-hearted triangle between Raleigh, the Queen and her lady-in-waiting (Abbie Cornish) that never really goes anywhere. Meanwhile, the movie lurches through a dangerously condensed, black-and-white version of history in which dastardly Catholics lust for innocent Protestant blood, culminating with a big Spain-England smackdown and a flurry of thoroughly unconvincing CGI battles. The sets and costumes are sometimes eye-catching, and Blanchett, ever the trooper, does a commendable job with what she has to work with, but the movie's attempts at humanizing its eponymous monarch are dodgy at best, and its history lesson is strictly Cliffs Notes. Also stars Geoffrey Rush, Rhys Ifans, Jordi Molla and Samantha Morton. 2.5 stars
THE FINAL SEASON (PG) Fact meets feel-good schmaltz in Hollywood's latest sports drama, which is based the true story of the Norway Tigers. The setting is the small Midwestern town of Norway, Iowa, which takes great pride in its high-school baseball team and for good reason: The Tigers have won 19 state championships over 24 years of competing. Conflict arises when the school board threatens to disband Norway's high school as part of a statewide plan to merge small schools with larger ones. When the school's legendary head coach steps aside to take a job in the major leagues, the new, more inexperienced coach (played by Sean Astin) is faced with finding a way to make the team's final season count. While sports movie clichés abound, The Final Season has enough heart (and enough zippy one-liners) to overcome the weight of banality and rise above its shortcomings. Also stars Powers Boothe, Rachel Leigh Cook and Tom Arnold. 3 stars —Caitlin Kuleci
GONE BABY GONE (R) Casey Affleck stars in brother Ben's surprisingly good directorial debut about something rotten in a working class Boston neighborhood where a little girl has gone missing. Gone Baby Gone is based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, who also wrote Clint Eastwood's Mystic River, and, frankly, Affleck outdoes Eastwood in his understanding of the author's Boston-based turf. Affleck goes for maximum authenticity, trolling through the city's seedier sides with a camera that discretely observes the nonglamorous flora and fauna, making good use of virtual unknowns in several key roles. The director occasionally even shows himself to be a touch over-enamored with his blue collar grotesques — it sometimes seems like every Beantown resident with a hair lip, goiter or obesity problem gets screen time here — but Gone Baby Gone still manages to be an effectively disquieting descent into a local underworld. Lehane's source material culminates in a series of dubious plot twists involving a conspiracy of least likely suspects, but Affleck wisely uses this as a springboard to get into something more interesting, albeit uncomfortable. Also stars Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, John Ashton, Amy Ryan, Amy Madigan and Titus Welliver. 3.5 stars
INTO THE WILD (R) This is Sean Penn's meandering but strangely compelling take on the true story of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a child of privilege who burned his IDs, gave away his money and, reborn as Alexander Supertramp, hit the open road. Into the Wild unfolds on a certain level as a road movie, with Chris/Alex hooking up with fellow travelers as he makes his way across the country, but the film also offers frequent flashbacks providing a parallel story obsessing on the familial tensions supposedly being left behind. The flashback structure and ominous, anguished tone of the voice-overs leave little doubt that we're witnessing a tragedy, however, and the movie's pervasive fatalism provides a bottom note even to Into the Wild's brighter moments. To his credit, and despite a soundtrack studded with painfully sincere Eddie Vedder songs, Penn doesn't turn Alex into a hero — his quest ultimately seems as foolish as it is noble. The film is too long by at least a half hour, and its frequent attempts to provide Alex with metaphorical surrogate families are a bit transparent, but there's something important being communicated here about the beauty and folly of attempting a personal spiritual revolution, the closest corollary being Herzog's Grizzly Man. Also stars Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Jena Malone, Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn, Brian Dierker, Kristen Stewart and Hal Holbrook. 3.5 stars
KING OF CALIFORNIA (PG-13) Further exploring the vein of aging eccentrics he's begun playing of late (epitomized by the pot-smoking head-case in Wonder Boys), Michael Douglas stars as Charlie, a recently released mental patient with wild eyes and formidable facial hair. There's an appealingly odd edge to King of California but the film is rooted in fairly conventional father-daughter bonding stuff, as Charlie moves back in with his level-headed teenaged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and, despite the love obviously dying to bust out in all directions, makes life immensely difficult for the girl. Things are further complicated when Douglas' character becomes obsessed with locating the treasure he's convinced is buried beneath his local Costco, but King of California is only intermittently successful as it treads a fine line between quirky character study and screwball adventure. Also stars Willis Burks II, Greg Davis Jr. and Gerald Emerick. 3 stars
THE KINGDOM (R) The clash of civilizations is writ large all over The Kingdom, but what the movie basically offers is straight-forward, relatively agenda-free entertainment — a fast-moving police procedural with thriller and action movie accents. The film's title refers to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where a small team of FBI agents (led by Jamie Foxx) has grudgingly been allowed to investigate a brutal massacre of Americans. Struggling to solve a mystery in a place that doesn't accept them, The Kingdom's American agents are some of the strangest strangers in a strange land since Sidney Poitier's Mr. Tibbs. Eventually, Foxx and friends abruptly shift into full battle mode, blasting away with heavy-duty assault weapons and burning up the Riyadhi roads in high-speed car chases as the Americans find themselves besieged in an Islamist enclave, and The Kingdom starts looking like an even more hellish version of Black Hawk Down. Director Peter Berg maximizes the chaos by shooting in that intentionally jerky ADD-esque style popularized by films like United 93 and The Bourne Ultimatum, a technique that aims to present everything as somehow edgier and more "real" — although when Foxx begins single-handedly blowing away the bad guys, reality is best taken with several grains of salt; he's clearly as indestructible as any action hero. Also stars Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman, Jeremy Piven, Danny Huston, Ashraf Barhom and Aku Suliman. 3.5 stars
LARS AND THE REAL GIRL (PG-13) A Sundance favorite that falls all over itself in an effort to be both enormously quirky and enormously sweet — but never achieves even a fraction of the depth it seems to be implying. Ryan Gosling stars as painfully shy and thoroughly delusional Lars, who buys himself an anatomically correct blow-up doll, introduces it around as his new girlfriend and, apparently won over by the sheer purity of his innocent soul, gets everyone in his community to treat it as a real person. Screenwriter Nancy Oliver (Six Feet Under) peppers the script with graceful moments, but the story never really gets beyond its one-joke premise, and most of the characters basically come across as caricatures pitched somewhere between Fargo and Napoleon Dynamite. Gosling remains one of our finest actors, although he spends too much time here simply blinking his eyes, the movie's code for a man furiously trying to shut out the world. Also stars Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, Kelli Garner and Paul Schneider. 2.5 stars
LUST, CAUTION (NC-17) Set in Japanese-occupied Shanghai toward the end of World War II, Ang Lee's film follows a group of politically engaged Chinese college students as they make the leap from staging nationalistic theater productions to some real-life play-acting aimed at assassinating a high-ranking traitor (Tony Leung) who's collaborating with the Japanese. The student's mission hinges on placing a beautiful female (Wei Tang) within Leung's inner circle in order to seduce him, but things get muddy when the Chinese Mata Hari becomes a little too close to her target and finds herself converted by the power of rough sex. Lust, Caution is as carefully modulated and meticulously constructed as anything Lee's done, but when the violence erupts, as it does from time to time, the film can be genuinely jarring. Ditto for the occasional bursts of sex, which flash upon the screen with an unmediated intensity not normally associated with this director. More than the flesh on display, though, what really gives the movie its punch is that both of the characters seem to realize they're fornicating with their worst nightmare, edging the film into a kinky subcategory of movies including The Night Porter and Last Tango in Paris. Also stars Joan Chen, Lee-Horn Wang and Chung Hua Tou. 3.5 stars
MARTIAN CHILD (PG) Lonely and quirky widower John Cusack adopts an even lonelier and quirkier child in this sappy time-waster about loving the alien inside us all. Cusak's new kid (Bobby Coleman) claims to be from Mars, and with his pasty skin and big bug-eyed sunglasses, he certainly looks the part — he's actually called a "mini-Warhol" at one point but is really a closer match to Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. The whole "Martian" thing is, of course, simply the script's exclamation point on the boy's outsider status, but nothing really happens here to convince us that the kid's half as troubled as he's supposed to be. The movie plods along as adult and child bond over Lucky Charms and baseball, with time out for a food fight or two and the death of a beloved family pet, set to Cat Stevens music. In the end, the kid actually does turn out to be from Mars, shape-shifts back into his original form of a 12-foot insect with venomous fangs and bites off Cusack's head. Just kidding. Also stars Amanda Peet, Joan Cusack, Oliver Platt, Richard Schiff and Sophie Okonedo. 2 stars
MICHAEL CLAYTON (R) A character study of a man defined by his compromises, Michael Clayton stars George Clooney as a former prosecutor gone to seed and long reduced to working as a fixer for a big law firm. It's a no-brainer Clayton's in trouble from the first moment we see him — the GPS on his swanky Mercedes is on the blink, after all, movie-metaphor-ese for the guy's moral compass being out of whack — but half the pleasure of Michael Clayton is watching its title character's slow-mo meltdown lead up to that revelatory moment of painful self-knowledge. The other half of the movie's pleasure takes the form of a curiously gripping conspiracy thriller that percolates on such an ominously low frequency it almost catches us off guard when it finally officially announces itself. What lies at the heart of Michael Clayton isn't ultimately that far removed from conventional socially-conscious melodrama, but where the movie excels is in how it puts all this together, coming at the story from unexpected angles and neatly folding its sweeping political agenda into the personal struggles of its individual players. Also stars Tom Wilkinson, Tilda Swinton, Sydney Pollack, Michael O'Keefe and Ken Howard. 3.5 stars
MR. WOODCOCK (R) Phallic shadows fall mightily all over Mr. Woodcock, but, sadly, the film lacks the frenetic energy or even the gross-out bravado of Balls of Fury. Seann William Scott stars as John Farley, a successful self-help author who returns to his hometown only to find his mom (Susan Sarandon) dating the titular Woodcock (Billy Bob Thornton), the sadistic, ultra-macho gym teacher who tormented him all through high school. A heated pissing contest naturally results, with the two men competing for the affections of Sarandon, engaging in a movie-long match of wits and brawn, and all but whipping out their johnsons while running for the measuring sticks. Thorton's Woodcock (and yes, the name means exactly what you think it does) is cut from much the same cloth as his self-involved jerk-offs in Bad Santa, Bad News Bears and School for Scoundrels, but a little bit of this sort of concentrated obnoxiousness goes a long way. There's an undeniable charisma that Thornton brings to the role, but the movie itself is dull and, for the most part, painfully void of real laughs. Also stars Amy Poehler and Ethan Suplee. 1.5 stars
SAW IV (R) Yet another installment of the torture-porn franchise that just wouldn't die. Stars David Koechner, Carl Weathers, Brooke Nevin, Jackie Long and Matthew Lawrence. (Not Reviewed)
THE SEEKER: THE DARK IS RISING (PG) The fate of the world hinges on a young boy who discovers he's really a mystical warrior charged with defeating the forces of evil. What ensues is cosmic PG-rated adventure that the studio apparently didn't have enough confidence in to screen for critics. Stars Drew Tyler Bell, Frances Conroy, James Cosmo and Wendy Crewson. (Not Reviewed)
THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE (R) Dead hubby David Duchovny is one of the several things lost in that fire, and Benicio Del Toro plays Jerry, the childhood pal and intermittent drug fiend who winds up comforting bereaved widow Audrey (Halle Berry). The movie tries too hard to slather artistic credibility on what is basically an extremely simple story, piling on the heavy-duty symbolism (we're supposed to read that titular blaze as an essentially metaphorical purging, apparently), and the artsy frills just don't jive with Things' movie-of-the-week scenario — Jerry bonds with Audrey's adorable kids! Jerry relapses into drugs! Audrey anguishes! Jerry bounces back! Director Susanne Bier seems to be telling a story that she's faintly embarrassed by, and the more she spins her wheels, the more superficial Things We Lost in the Fire becomes. Also stars Omar Benson Miller and Alison Lohman. 2 stars
WE OWN THE NIGHT (R) Writer-director James Gray, who previously tracked the criminal element from an immigrant's point of view in Little Odessa and The Yards, is back on familiar turf with this male-dominated family saga of corrupt cops and Russian gangsters mixing it up in Brighton Beach. Gray reunites his stars from The Yards, Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, as brothers on opposite sides of the law. Also stars Eva Mendes and Robert Duvall. (Not Reviewed)
This article appears in Nov 7-13, 2007.