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Film Clips
Reviews by Ian Caruth, James DiGiovanna, Linsay Hernon and Jennifer Nichols
ALONG CAME A SPIDER. Adapted from a James Patterson novel from the same series as Kiss the Girls, this film finds Morgan Freeman reprising his role as detective Alex Cross. A botched sting operation killing his partner sends Cross into a tailspin, but when a senator's 12-year-old daughter is kidnapped the remorseful dick is put back on the job. Michael Wincott plays a criminal psychopath who poses as a teacher of pubescent computer hackers at a well-to-do private school when his actual objective is to commit the crime of the century, surpassing even the Lindbergh baby tragedy. Despite a moderate rise of intensity and Freeman's screen-stealing performance, the unpolished plot creates a tangled web of unconvincing twists with expedient conclusions and enough loose ends to leave even a spider hanging. --Hernon
BEST IN SHOW. Funnier than watching Strom Thurmond deny his racist past, Best in Show is the long-awaited follow-up to the most hilarious film of the '90s, Waiting For Guffman. The Guffman cast and crew reassemble here to present a mockumentary about a dog show (Best in Show's working title was Dogumentary). Director Christopher Guest, perhaps best known for playing mentally deficient guitarist (or is that redundant?) Nigel Tufnel in Spinal Tap, puts together one of the tightest comedies ever made. Every scene has laughs, and no scene is merely a setup for a later gag. Guest also stars as Harlan Pepper, Southern dog fancier and fishing shop owner. His dead-on performance is matched by Eugene Levy as nerdy suburbanite Gerry Fleck; Catherine O'Hara (the greatest living comedienne) as his wife and erstwhile slattern Cookie Fleck; Parker Posey and Michael Hitchcock as a grating yuppie couple; Michael McKean and John Michael Higgins as a gay couple whose love for each other is matched only by their love for Shih Tzus; and scene stealer Fred Willard as the local anchorman who's been horribly misassigned as an announcer at the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. And hey, sorry about that guitarist gag. --DiGiovanna
BLOW. Blow had one of the best trailers I'd seen in years. Stylish, fast paced, featuring Johnny Depp's beautiful face and arresting imagery of piles of money and cocaine. Well, in brief, you might want to wait for Blow to come out on video, and then just rent the trailer. It's your basic life-of-crime-doesn't-pay story, with Depp starring as real-life coke dealer George Jung. Ok, so maybe crime doesn't always pay, but sometimes it pays, and when it does, it pays big, man! Look at Stalin or Clinton or Bush! These guys had it made! I just wish someone would make a movie about a drug deal gone right, after which the dealers walk off into the sunset richer and happier than all their loser friends who went into accountancy or veterinary medicine. You know, so the kids will understand what life's all about. --DiGiovanna
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. --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
THE DAY I BECAME A WOMAN. As every cinema buff knows, the best films in the world are now coming out of Iran. In fact, the worst Iranian film I've seen in the last five years was still pretty good. If you get the chance, go over to Casa Video and rent The White Balloon, Children of Heaven, The Jar and The Mirror. But first, go see The Day I Became A Woman. It's an anthology of three stories about contemporary Iranian women. The first story is in the mold of the best Iranian film: It features a young girl facing the kind of situation that seems extraordinarily tense when you are not yet nine, and it conveys that tension forcefully, but without transforming it into an adult scenario. The next vignette features a woman in a bicycle race whose husband is threatening to divorce. Shooting in real time, the camera never stops moving, and though it isn't as effective emotionally as the first story, it's technically amazing. The final piece is a story about an old woman on a wild shopping spree and the horde of young boys who carry all her dream merchandise along behind her. It's visually stunning, with an odd story that nonetheless evokes a familiar, if seldom discussed, feeling. --DiGiovanna
ENEMY AT THE GATES. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud portrays the realities of war through bullets, bombs and blood in the muddy trenches of Stalingrad as the Russians battle Nazi Germany in 1942. In the midst of the guns and the gore is the acclaimed Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev, played perfectly by Jude Law, who instills hope in his country by using his cunning ways to capture his nemesis, Major Konig of the Third Reich (Ed Harris). The two run through the rubble in the dismal, cold winter for an intense game of predator versus prey, in an epic saga that rings true victory. --Hernon
EXIT WOUNDS. It's the same old testosterone-filled story: dirty cops, naked beauties, drug smugglers and a hot-shot cop all tangled up in high-speed chases, rapid gunfire and flagrant fights. Steven Seagal stars as a delinquent Secret Service agent who, after getting demoted, is sentenced to rage-aholic group therapy and traffic duty, where he soon finds himself in the middle of a covert drug heist. A car-crazy drug lord (DMX) leads the muscle-bound thugs and crooked cops through inane plot twists (which somehow manage to include the always-annoying Tom Arnold as a moronic talk show host) culminating in the inevitable showdown. The weekend polls calculated this recycled dribble as being number one at the box office, but what they did not calculate were the audiences rushing toward the exit, wounds or not. --Hernon
FAITHLESS. Ingmar Bergman, Sweden's answer to Dick Cheney (both are associated with heart-rending pain -- OK, sorry, never mind), has written another script for director Liv Ullmann. Although Bergman's recent work is not truly comparable with the stuff he did in his prime, this is still a fine film. Ullmann can't frame a shot or light a scene as well as Bergmann, but she is great at directing actors, and this standard story of a couple torn apart by infidelity benefits from a strong performance by Lena Endre. In the scale of things that have come out of Sweden, Faithless is not as good as Fanny and Alexander, but much better than the Viking incursions of the eighth century. --DiGiovanna
FINDING FORRESTER. An unlikely friendship builds between a Pulitzer Prize-winning Boo Radley of the Bronx and an inner-city punk feigning stupidity in Gus Van Sant's latest drama. Shaggy-haired Sean Connery plays the reclusive William Forrester, whose monotonous routine of window washing and voyeurism is stirred up when he becomes an unsuspecting mentor to a closeted brainiac remarkably played by newcomer Robert Brown. Together the two journey past their fears, insecurities and enemies toward their dreams and true capabilities. It's an inspirational film, despite the recycled premise and two superfluous endings, one of which presents an unnecessary surprise cameo. --Hernon
HANNIBAL. This is sort of like one of those classic Disney films of the '30s and '40s, where magical fairies dance about in glittering landscapes, eating the flesh of their still-living victims. You know, like Snow White and The Seven Horrible, Cannibalistic Dwarves, or Kill, Bambi, Kill! Anthony Hopkins plays Hannibal, an irascible scamp who loves classical music, fine art and evil. Gary Oldman plays his rival, the cute little horribly deformed man who wants only to gambol about and feed Hannibal to the three little pigs. Well, more like two dozen flesh-eating hogs. Julianne Moore plays Clarice Starling, who's kind of like the Good Woodsman who comes to help out when Red Riding Hood is captured by the evil wolf who wants to force her to eat her own brains. Or it could be that the Disney films they showed me in the vicious torture gardens where I was raised were slightly different than those released to the world at large. Anyway, Hannibal shares with those films a glacially slow pace that is only slightly enlivened by the adorable scenes of cute, fluffy, hugable murders and mutilations. --DiGiovanna
HEARTBREAKERS. A couple of dirty rotten scoundrels in stiletto heels and wonder bras take their sexy schemes to Palm Beach for one final score in this zany comedy by sophomore director David Mirkin (Romy and Michele's High School Reunion.) Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love-Hewitt star as the mother-daughter deceiving duo that seduces wealthy naïve men, only to walk away later with a steep divorce settlement. Gene Hackman plays their latest foolish fat cat, a chain-smoking, phlegm-filled old fogy in fluorescent green socks. Soon a Mob boss wannabe, a love-struck beach bar owner, a Nurse Ratched of the 21st century and a stone phallus get thrown into this kooky conundrum of cons. It will not break your heart, but it will make you laugh. --Hernon
JUST VISITING. It's amazing how something that started out so good could end up so bad. Original director Jean-Marie Poire brings the stars, Jean Reno and Christian Clavier, of the phenomenal 1993 French film Les Visiteurs to America for this ridiculous remake revolving around knights and knuckleheads. In Medieval times Lord Thibault of Malfete (Reno) mistakenly drank a hexed potion that caused him to see demonic produce-people and kill his own fennel-faced fiancé. The regretful nobleman consults a dimwitted wizard for a spell enabling him to travel back in time, but instead winds up in 21st-century Chicago with his numbskull peasant. There, of course, they run into the modern counterpart of the slain fiancée (Christina Applegate). Searching for a portal back into the tunnels of time, the dimwitted duo encounters every lame fish-out-of-water cliché from the impressive technology of toilets to the mysteries of table manners, with nonsense about self-empowerment tossed in along the way. If that's what you want, stay home and watch Oprah instead. --Hernon
THE MEXICAN. Gore Verbinski, the director of Mouse Hunt, leads you on another wild goose chase, but instead of a furry rodent and an obsessed exterminator you are stuck with a cheap-looking gun and boring group therapy sessions. Brad Pitt stars as a bumbling bagman who travels through Mexico in his blue El Camino contending with conspiring henchmen, loyal townspeople and a mangy mutt in order to retrieve a legendary pistol, thus achieving redemption from the Mafia. Meanwhile, girlfriend Samantha (Julia Roberts), a selfish self-help groupie with Vegas dreams, is kidnapped by a closeted criminal (James Gandolfini) who also wants his hands on the sacred firearm, but swaps more relationship tips with his hostage than useful facts for his unlawful pursuit. This never-ending story slowly meanders from dull plot twist to tiresome therapy session in an asinine premise that incorporates half-witted themes of cars, toilets and traffic lights. The only smart thing done for this film was hiring an A-list cast, including Gene Hackman in a cameo role, but acting in this pitiful project was not a smart thing to do on their part. --Hernon
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? Who doesn't love musical theater? Only mean people, I'm guessing. Thus, in order to prove that you're not a mean person you should rush out and see O Brother Where Art Thou?, the first great musical of the 21st century. O Brother retells the story of Homer's Odyssey, only from the perspective of two guys who have never read the book. George Clooney stars as Ulysses Everett McGill (see, he's Ulysses), an escaped convict who travels across Depression-era Mississippi to get home to his wife Penny (get it?) who's being wooed by a suitor (see, like in the Odyssey). When the Coens aren't referencing The Odyssey they're exploring the culture of the old South or alluding to such classic films as Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels. Actually, they're usually doing all three at once, which makes the fact that they can do it in the midst of a musical number all the more amazing. And what's even more amazing is that most of the people who've seen O Brother don't even realize that they've seen a musical. Which is good, because, as I've found out, most people claim to hate musicals. Because most people are mean. Q.E.D. --DiGiovanna
POKEMON 3. Just when you thought that it was safe to go to the theaters, those cruel moviemakers release another sequel based on a kooky cartoon show. The torture begins with a short segment of mushroom-headed beagles, rabid-looking squirrels and bouncing turnips who help their high-pitched screaming friends, Pikachu and Pichu, find their other Pokemon pals among a cyber dog and a 600-pound trampoline cat in a lame videogame-like setup with cheesy pinball sound effects to match. The agony continues with a pouty little orphan with pigtails who lives in the Unown, her self-controlled dream world of floating Spaghetti Os and mutating ice crystals that spawn talking mastodons. There she seduces innocent bystanders so that she can have friends and family of her own. Hopefully, this animated garbage is the last of its kind and those cruel moviemakers will spare us Part Four. --Hernon
POLLOCK. Ed Harris' ingenious portrayal as the complex and emotionally chaotic artist Jackson Pollock created stiff competition for Best Actor at the Oscars. The multitalented actor leads viewers through the roller-coaster life of a struggling artist who fights the pressures of criticism, artistic ingenuity, and his own inner demons with a bottle of beer in one hand, a painter's brush in the other and a cigarette in his mouth. Marcia Gay Harden plays the devoted wife who wields her philosophical wit and strong character through Pollock's depression, temper tantrums and nervous breakdowns. The rich talent of Harden and the rest of the supporting cast, including Jeffrey Tambor and Amy Madigan, complement the palette of feelings that Harris conveys through words and an expressive countenance. --Hernon
SOMEONE LIKE YOU. Perhaps the only interesting thing about this estrogen-drenched, singularly anti-male screed is that it was directed by Tony Goldwyn, who's made a career out of playing the sorts of duplicitous slimeball men (albeit often more murderous ones) who entirely populate this film's universe. Ashley Judd plays a recently jilted woman who devises the uncharmingly sexist theory that all men are exactly alike; like bulls on dairy farms, they reject previous sexual conquests--in the film's lexicon, "old cows"--and calculatingly make advances on new women, who are dubbed "new cows." The comedy goes much, much further; see, Judd's character is named "Jane Goodale," and get this: She thinks men are animals, and decides to study them and write about their habits! This film may be appealing to dumpees who run toward the bitter, vindictive end of the scale, or perhaps cliché-lovers--Judd's character goes straight for the Haagen-Dazs when she gets dumped--but anyone seeking entertainment or, I don't know, an even-handed, thoughtful look at human emotion better look elsewhere. --Caruth
SPY KIDS. Guns-and-gore writer/director Robert Rodriguez switches gears with this Crayola-colored conglomeration of James Bond and Pee Wee Herman. Fegan Floop, a demonic Willy Wonka of children's television, sips fluorescent green goop soup, creates new cartoon characters with silly putty, and organizes to take over the world with his dreaded thumb-thumb robots and an army of super-powered spy kids. Yet have no fear, because to the rescue come a couple of charismatic children of international secret agents, who have become POWs of the maniacal villain. Though the special effects and acting are of a kindergarten quality, the imaginative display of futuristic gizmos and the crime-fighting kids are sure to boost any child's interest and confidence. --Hernon
3000 MILES TO GRACELAND. Elvis made lots of crappy movies, but he at least had a dastardly manager on whom to blame his comically misguided career choices. Kurt Russell and Kevin Costner better find a Colonel Parker-esque agent/scapegoat for the mirthless 3000 Miles, unless they want to end up like the King, sitting around at home waiting for a career movement. The two stars play ex-cons and partners in crime who love Elvis but grow less and less keen on each other, until at last they must exchange gunfire and pithy taunts in a grimy industrial park. Edited like a commercial and plotted like one of Roger Corman's fever dreams, 3000 Miles blithely offers up all the affectations of every road movie ever made, with none of the fun. Take into account an almost creepy--for the post-'90s--lack of self-awareness, and the movie becomes the answer to the riddle it didn't know it posed; it's a throwback, an Elvis film, just as stupid and incoherent as he used to make 'em. Have some respect--it's time to let this one die. --Caruth
TOMCATS. As if Hollywood isn't inundated already with offensive bachelor films riddled with raunchy sex jokes, unimaginative writer/director Gregory Poirier brings yet another set of sex-crazed tomcats to theaters. Back when mullet hairdos were considered cool, this lot of lady chasers made a bet to remain unwed; the one not married wins a large chunk of change. Now fast-forward to the present day, when all but two of the sexist swingers have said "I do." One is a comic-strip cartoonist who has a colossal Vegas gambling debt; the other is a porn star poster boy with perverted pick-up lines and a wardrobe full of bikini underwear. The delinquent drawer competes for the bountiful bachelor pool with the help of an ex-girlfriend/undercover prostitute with army tactics. As you might guess, sleazy S&M humor and extreme chauvinism permeate this unbearable gutterball smut. --Hernon
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
THE WEDDING PLANNER. Even with the four collaborating screenwriters and Jennifer Lopez's luscious looks, there still is no hope in saving this stale romantic comedy that recycles every single cinematic cliché. Singer/actress Lopez stars as Mary, an anal-retentive wedding planner with Secret Service-like tendencies whose social life consists of being a Bay Area Scrabble Club member and alphabetizing her credit cards. The loner's life and love take a predictable turn when macho man Matthew McConaughey literally sweeps her off her feet in a heroic Dumpster dodge. To no surprise the Texas wonder boy is already engaged and is, in fact, the next client the wedding wizard must dazzle and delight with her Martha Stewart-like fantasies. This unfortunately kicks off the trail of triteness that you could already see in the preview. Save your money and skip this one. --Hernon
THE WIDOW OF ST. PIERRE. This one sets off the big uh-oh alarm: It's a French, 19th-century period piece. Yikes, right? Well, wrong. Juliette Binoche stars as "Madame La," the wife of an army captain stationed on a foggy island off the shores of Canada. She befriends a convicted killer who is awaiting the arrival of a guillotine, and while he ticks off the time he becomes the town hero, helping widows and orphans and such. I know, it sounds totally cornball, but it works because the script is restrained enough to tone down the plot, and Daniel Auteuil as M. Le Capitaine (Madame La's husband) is unbelievably fabulous. Plus, you know, it's French, and we owe them so much, so we should at least go see their movies. --DiGiovanna
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