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Film Clips
Reviews by Ian Caruth, James DiGiovanna, Linsay Hernon and Jennifer Nichols
102 DALMATIANS. Disney unleashes Cruella DeVil again in this sequel to the 1996 live-action remake of the 1961 animated classic. Glenn Close stars as an obsessed Dalmatian dognapper in London who has become the ultimate dog lover after undergoing years of Dr. Pavlov's sadistic brainwashing. However, with every chime of the mighty Big Ben, the changed woman regresses back to her old villainous ways. So with the help of a maniacal fashion guru (Gerard Depardieu), she ravenously searches the town for 102 spotted pups in a dog-eat-dog world. This movie includes all the basic elements of a kids' flick, like the cuddly creatures and Close's outlandish persona, yet someone still needs to throw it a bone and give this film some imagination. --Hernon
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES. Matt Damon and Henry Thomas saddle up and ride through the majestic desert in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's most popular novel. To celebrate the end of World War II, the two brazen buckaroos cross the Rio Grande to find work with steeds and stallions on a Mexican ranch. Their rodeo days quickly end, however, when the two fall into a Mexican prison, where they are reunited with an uncaring delinquent they met during their travels. Debts, deceit and death develop at an excruciatingly slow pace set by director Billy Bob Thornton, who nevertheless somehow manages to provide a mildly mysteriously atmosphere. --Hernon
BILLY ELLIOT. Another Oscar contender is born in this truly delightful British drama about a driven 11-year-old boy who defies his father and the social norms by becoming a refined ballet dancer instead of a boxing rogue. In a charismatic acting debut, Jamie Bell stars as the little Gene Kelly who livens up the screen with every enthusiastic bend and bound. In addition to Bell's prodigal performance, first-time writer Lee Hall presents an emotional story that intertwines a politically charged revolution with family values and gender reversals to create an unforgettable film. --Hernon
CAST AWAY. Tom Hanks delivers Oscar-worthy work in Robert Zemeckis' latest; the editing and script, unfortunately, do not. Hanks stars as Chuck Noland, a regimented and relentless FedEx supervisor who survives a plane crash and washes onto a deserted island in the South Pacific. There he spends the next four years surviving on a crab and coconut diet, creating modern-day cave paintings, and sharing his candid thoughts with his only companion: Wilson, a volleyball. The film has a hokey book-ended format, many of the vital scenes are either abbreviated or altogether absent, and the script occasionally proves juvenile. However, it is Hanks' captivating presence and his grippingly realistic portrayal that keep this film afloat. --Hernon
CHOCOLAT. Lasse Hallström directs this simple fable of the chocolate-peddling gypsy Vianne (Juliette Binoche), who spends her life liberalizing the lives of conservative villagers in the French countryside. Daughter in tow, she sets up chocolate shops and single-handedly unlocks the hidden desires of the religious townsfolk with the magic of the cocoa seed. Once her cautious, god-fearing neighbors get a taste of her homemade chocolate confections, the people begin to come alive and abandon their assumption that Vianne is the devil incarnate. Remembering that this is told in the confines of a fairy tale, the tints of magical realism and the fight against mediocrity are charming, if not mouth-wateringly sweet. Lena Olin, Alfred Molina, Judi Dench and Johnny Depp provide caricatures of fear and love that play out as nicely as the indulgent delights cooked up in the Mayan kitchen. Chocolat is most likely the best holiday feel-good feature to be released from Tinseltown this season. --Nichols
CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON. Variety magazine used to refer to martial arts movies as "chop socky flicks." Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon would, then, be a really big chop socky flick. It's got all the cheesy, goofball stuff you'd expect from the Taiwanese kung-fu movies of the '70s, but with an enormous budget to back it up. Chow Yun Fat stars as a master of the Wudan school of martial arts. The big bonus to being a Wudan master is that you can fly, which is the kind of thing that looks great on a big screen, especially if the characters are flying over misty Chinese landscapes while fighting with ancient, magical swords. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon is big-time fun, but don't go expecting to see Citizen Kane. This is more like a Saturday morning cartoon raised to the level of Wagnerian opera, with all the amusement and stupidity that are found so abundantly in both of those art forms. --DiGiovanna
DR. SEUSS' HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS. Ron Howard brings Dr. Seuss' classic tale to life. Jim Carrey dresses like a pregnant green Chewbacca with crooked teeth and yellow eyes to star as the infamous Grinch who wastes his days on top of Mount Crumpit eating rotten produce and condemning any holiday cheer. All inhabitants of Whoville, with their donkey noses and rabbit teeth, despise the party pooper, with the exception of little Cindy Lou Who, an optimistic girl helping everyone discover the true meaning of Christmas. The elaborate detail of the whimsical and colorful sets, the playful vocabulary ("snorkleblasts," "flooflounders") and Carrey's exquisite delivery of genius comedic shtick create a magical realm full of wit and energy. However, the storyline itself is mundane and slow-paced and does not live up to the vibrant Dr. Seuss spirit. --Hernon
DRACULA 2000. Vampires have always been the most latently sexual of mythic and horrible monsters, so a vampire entry in the newly revived teensploitation sex 'n' horror genre was probably inevitable. Dracula 2000 is that bloodless entry, an unnecessary millennial recontextualization of--or is it a sequel to?--Bram Stoker's basic story. A sure contender for both the worst title and worst soundtrack of the year, Dracula 2000 opens with a crew of naïve young thieves stealing a sealed coffin from Carfax Antiques, a metaphor for the feckless plundering of various old vampire stories that director Patrick Lussier perpetrates through the rest of the film. The film plays up the sexual aspect of the vampires, portraying them as well-dressed young hotties more interested in having freaky sex than feeding their bloodthirst. But close-ups of claret lips and concupiscent curls can only carry a film so far, and while the visual effects and sexualized feeding scenes may titillate, the film ultimately lacks bite. The myths are true; Dracula sucks. --Caruth
THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE. The punch and pizzazz of a typical Disney animated feature are missing, but Groove is still the best kids' flick to hit theaters this holiday season. An anorexic-looking bitter crone, voiced by the legendary Eartha Kitt, wants to overthrow a self-centered emperor (David Spade), but her murderous plan backfires when the royal egomaniac is turned into a scrawny llama instead. John Goodman voices the oafish peasant with a conscience who guides the four-legged hairball through a trite series of misadventures back to the palace so the emperor can reclaim his crown and his human body. The rambling dialogue and overall blandness give this film two left feet, but the light comedic feel puts a mild spring into its step. --Hernon
FAMILY MAN. Has anyone noticed that Nicolas Cage has gotten a sort of stoned-out, glazed look to him of late? I think it happened right after he decided that making small, but well-made, films was beneath him, and that he wanted to be a Big Star. I can only hope that Family Man will turn out to be the enormous bomb that it deserves to be, and Nic will head back to what he used to do best, i.e. act. Unfortunately, first he'll have to suffer through this perverse and unnecessary remake of It's A Wonderful Life. Here's the zany twist: instead of being a small town guy who had dreams of big city success, he's a big city guy who doesn't realize that deep in his heart he has dreams of small town family life. Of course, an angel (Don Cheadle, who's also working way beneath himself here) comes along and shows him what his life would have been like if he had just married his high school sweetheart (Tea Leone, who is working right at her level). Since this is already being marketed as a "Christmas Classic" (read: rehashed, focus-grouped piece of mindless dog-doo) I wonder if anyone can guess if Cage's character will prefer the family values world of the suburbs to his million dollar apartment and endless string of gorgeous bimbos. Wouldn't it be cool if in the end he decided he preferred cheap sex and expensive clothes to a loving wife and hyper-cute kids? Sadly, that's the kind of Christmas present that the movie-going public is not likely to receive. --DiGiovanna
QUILLS. Director Philip Kaufman is truly the master of middle-brow filmmaking, in that he can take just about any story and make it seem intellectual while he is, in fact, dumbing it way down. Quills is his take on the final months of the life of the Marquis de Sade, the man who put the "S" in "S&M." Geoffrey Rush is excellent as the Marquis, though he's not as good as Kate Winslet, who plays de Sade's laundry lass, and she's not as good as Joaquin Phoenix, who plays the gentle Father Coulmier. It's an embarrassing surfeit of talent, all put to no good end as Kaufman refuses to do anything challenging with his material. Instead, he presents an incredibly simplistic story about the hypocrisy of censorship, casting the always-delightful Michael Caine as the repressive Dr. Royer-Collard. Royer-Collard is sent to the insane asylum where de Sade is incarcerated in order to put an end to the Marquis's inflammatory prose. In order to hammer home how evil Royer-Collard is, Kaufman has him repeatedly raping his underage wife and torturing the inmates at the asylum. This kind of heavy-handed characterization does nothing for the story, which starts strongly but gets more and more bogged down in the obviousness of its message. Quills isn't a complete washout, as the acting is excellent and the set design and costumes are gorgeous. Still, nobody goes to a movie just to see a well-constructed wimple. --DiGiovanna
TRAFFIC. Today's war on drugs is taken to the front lines with a Magnolia storytelling style and a Three Kings look. From the straight-shooting American police officer (Don Cheadle) to the no-holds-barred drug-busting Mexican cop (Benicio del Toro), and from the chic country-club wife of a drug-smuggling thug to the law-enforcing anti-drug czar (Michael Douglas) and his crack-smoking daughter, writer Stephen Gaghan candidly presents all sides to this never-ending battle. --Hernon
VERTICAL LIMIT. Once, I dreamt I saw a film about mountain climbing in which no great storm appeared, no strong-headed man forced the climbers to continue through the storm, and no brave but irreverent group of wacky misfits and concerned heroes went to rescue the storm-trapped climbers. In this film, no one uttered ridiculous dialogue like "Up there, you're not dying, you're already dead." No one revealed his dark nature while trapped in the snowstorm. No one faced a test of courage that redeemed him for an error in his past. In short, this film of which I dreamt was not a montage of standard scenes and stock characters. This film was original, surprising, oddly real in its emotional content, oddly compelling in its naturalness. Of course, this film was only a dream. --DiGiovanna
WHAT WOMEN WANT. After a drunken rampage of cross-dressing, a Frank Sinatra serenade, and a near-fatal electric shock, one pompous womanizer can hear just what it is that women want. Mel Gibson plays the chauvinistic advertising executive and estranged father who cunningly uses his phenomenal power of hearing women's intimate thoughts to sabotage the fledgling career of Darcy Maguire (Helen Hunt), to revitalize the rocky relationship with his teenage daughter, and to become the ultimate sex god of Chicago. Even though this film has a high reading on the cheese-o-meter, the talented cast, including Alan Alda, Bette Midler and Marisa Tomei, delivers perfect comedic timing and captivating charm that would entice even Howard Stern to learn what women truly want. --Hernon
YOU CAN COUNT ON ME. You can count on Laura Linney, but not on the mundane script. The talented actress stars as an overbearing single mom with Martha Stewart-like tendencies who wastes her day as a paper-pusher in a meaningless desk job. Soon her scruffy wayward brother visits and plays daddy to his nephew, despite his foul mouth and bad influences. Meanwhile, Linney contemplates marriage with her sidelining boyfriend, and has an affair with her pretentious boss (Matthew Broderick), who is obsessed with post-it notes and computer color schemes. Linney delivers a dynamic performance, which garnered her a recent Golden Globe nomination. However, Kenneth Lonergan's cut-and-dried script offers no drive or intensity amid the inundation of clichés. --Hernon
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