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Film Clips
Reviews by Diane Daly, James DiGiovanna and Linsay Hernon.
AMELIE. A quirky introvert searches for her Prince Charming in this fable spiced with vibrant creativity, juvenile practical jokes, a world-traveling garden gnome and a reclusive brittle-boned painter. Audrey Tautou stars as the shy, hopeless romantic with a troubled past who discovers that her life's purpose is being a guardian angel to the good and a playful prankster to the bad. However, once she finds her true love-to-be, she has problems being her own guardian angel. The French actress brightens the screen with her enchanting energy and touching nature in this original delight by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. --Hernon
BIG FAT LIAR. Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) is in the middle of an implausible but fun and ludicrous Home Alone kind of Saturday morning popcorn flick for 9-year olds who need to escape from their intense third-grade woes. Here, the sitcom star goes to Hollywood as the boy who cried wolf and needs to prove to his used-to-proud pop that a slumming bigwig film producer (Paul Giamatti) stole his ticket out of summer school and transformed it into a big budget summer blockbuster. But when the pompous producer refuses to fess up, little Muniz infiltrates Universal Studios to pull several Macaulay Culkin-like pranks from orange dye in the shampoo bottle to rewiring the convertible BMW. Director Shawn Levy creates endless situations that could and would never happen, a supporting cast of caricatures, and an Erkel cop with a crime-fighting poultry sidekick, but the three-time Golden-Globe nominee makes a decent transition from TV to film that will hold the audience and keep them entertained throughout. --Hernon
BLACK HAWK DOWN. A great movie, if not a great "film," Black Hawk Down tells the mostly true story of 100 American troops who were trapped behind enemy lines and surrounded by thousands of armed militia men during a botched raid in Somalia in the mid 1990s. Director Ridley Scott is in top form, and he's well complemented by an impeccable cast, including standouts William Fitchner and Ewan MacGregor. The music, by Hans Zimmer (who scored Thin Red Line), fits in perfectly, and the cinematography by Slavomir Idziak is astounding. It's a perfectly paced flick that will make 144 minutes vanish like Al Gore's political career. --DiGiovanna
BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF. While I suppose it's not unusual to see a movie about two adventurers who are buddies and come from different races and cultures and who use their special kung fu powers to fight against a giant killer wolf and a cabal of evil papists and beautiful, papally-sanctioned, lingerie-clad, prostitute-assassins, it is odd for such a film to be French. So, for the sheer strangeness of seeing the French make an American-style movie, it might be worth going to see Brotherhood of the Wolf. Also, as Brotherhood well illustrates, the one thing that the French do much better than the Americans while making junky movies is throw in a lot of nudity, so perhaps there's still something to be gleaned from what the French call "French culture" and what we like to call "soft-core porn." Not surprisingly, shortly after Brotherhood of the Wolf was released in France, a survey in the French cinema magazine Le Film Français showed that 80 percent of French filmgoers thought that French films were much better lately than they had been in the past two decades, a historical period notable in French cinema for its almost complete lack of giant, killer wolf-monsters. --DiGiovanna
COLLATERAL DAMAGE. Filmed before and then postponed in light of 9/11, this Ah-nold flick somehow manages nonetheless to uncannily enact the rage of every American whose gut reaction after September's events was to annihilate now, ask questions later. Our bemuscled hero easily navigates a studio-generated, English-speaking Colombia and its network of drug lords and guerillas to hunt down the terrorists responsible for killing his family. Questions about the drug war and American foreign policy are padded over like so many skinny quadriceps, and the twist at the end is less about surprise than it is about tasting a more complete revenge. --Daly
GOSFORD PARK. Robert Altman is probably the most inconsistent filmmaker in Hollywood, having made several of the best and worst American films of the 20th century. With Gosford Park he manages to rein in his love of violence, sexism and violent sexism to produce what is perhaps the finest indictment of the English class system in cinematic history. Multiple storylines interweave during a weekend outing at an English country manor, with the servants downstairs and the lords and ladies upstairs crossing paths to gossip, berate and procreate. At some point someone is murdered, and several of the ladies' dresses need laundering. Whatever shall be done? Stop by your local cinny to find out, and enjoy the performances of Michael Gambon, Kristin Scott Thomas, Maggie Smith, Richard E. Grant, Stephen Fry, Alan Bates, Helen Mirren, Derek Jacobi, Emily Watson and, well, just about every British actor who wasn't off playing a hobbit or wizard last year. --DiGiovanna
HART'S WAR. A makeshift courtroom at a POW camp in WWII Germany is the setting in which Lt. Hart (Farrell) acts as a defense attorney for a commanding officer framed for murder because of the color of his skin. But, before we get tangled in this convoluted legal battle of racism, betrayal and the deep-seated motives of a devoted colonel (Bruce Willis), we must endure the long first hour that displays the overtly bleak and frigid prisoner life via an unnecessary cold blue tinted photography. Director Gregory Hoblit commands Operation You Can't Handle the Truth II, which ultimately falls flat as a weak A Few Good Men imitation starring Colin Farrell, who definitely is no Tom Cruise, and Bruce Willis, who is an overly subdued Jack Nicholson. --Hernon
I AM SAM. This overly sappy Hollywood custody battle needs a little caffeine kick of its own to crank it up a notch from Oxygen Channel schmaltz to attention-getting drama that borders at least somewhere close to reality. Sean Penn stars in a sensational performance of a mentally challenged father working at the home of the extra double grande low fat low foam latte iced mocha who struggles to raise his loving daughter (Dakota Fanning) by himself on his Starbucks salary and Beatlemania metaphors. Once the Department of Family and Child Services gets wind of this, the two are separated and the unrealistic tear-jerker pushes full throttle with an impatient, self-centered pro bono lawyer (Michele Pfeiffer) becoming the parent she always wanted to be, a heartless prosecuting attorney (Richard Schiff), and an undying bond between father and daughter. Kleenex please. With the exaggerated screenplay, plot holes, and the tacked on ending after tacked on ending, it's a shame that the talent of the one-time Oscar nominee is wasted here. However, it should not stop him from getting another Best Actor nod. --Hernon
IN THE BEDROOM. Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek star as an older couple dealing with the most unpleasant of empty nests in this overly long, but often excellent, film. Too much time is wasted in the middle third, and the final section is full of Hollywood clichés, but on the whole In the Bedroom is a successful exploration of a relationship rocked by external events. Nick Stahl plays their son, and Marisa Tomei gives a surprisingly strong performance as a young mother whose abusive, estranged husband is making her life less than pleasant. The real star of the film may be the Maine landscape and lensman Antonio Calvache's almost painfully beautiful cinematography. While In the Bedroom drags quite heavily in the middle, the camerawork and acting largely, if not entirely, make up for it. --DiGiovanna
INTIMACY. An uncomfortable film about a deeply alienated man whose only pleasure in life is his weekly, anonymous sexual encounter with a woman who may or may not be married to someone else. Reminiscent of Francis Ford Coppola's masterpiece The Conversation, both in its characterizations and in the washed out color photography, Intimacy is largely successful in evoking the hollowness of the characters' lives, but is somewhat slow at times and occasionally dips into bathos. On the plus side, it's adopted the European cinema mode du jour of featuring actual hardcore sex. These scenes aren't exactly erotic, but they are well thought out, in that they accentuate the mixed emotions of the protagonists, with each caress and withdrawal dripping with meaning and anxiety. Intimacy, in fact, may be the only film that successfully conveys something besides prurience through its sex scenes, and that alone could make it worth watching. --DiGiovanna
K-PAX. He traveled to Earth faster than the speed of light to study life in its early stages of evolution. Or did he? He can see ultraviolet light. Or can he? He writes in hieroglyphics. Or does he? He is a knocker at a slaughterhouse in a remote New Mexico town. Or is he? He witnessed the horrific murder of his wife and daughter. Or did he? Prot (Kevin Spacey) is a 337-year old alien from the planet K-PAX, which lies 1,000 light years away in the constellation Lyra with its seven purple moons and two suns. Or is he a savant suffering from extreme delusions that were caused by a traumatic past? Director Iain Softley explores the loaded issues of faith versus science and reality versus apparition in this highly crafted adaptation of Gene Brewer's novel. It will stir a thought-provoking discussion during the car ride home. --Hernon
KANDAHAR. One of the most interesting things about Iranian cinema is how uniformly excellent the acting is, so Kandahar, by Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf, comes as quite a surprise, insofar as the acting is so deeply, tremendously awful. On the other hand, the script sucks too, so I guess there's a certain parity there, but even if you have to deliver dialogue like "you wear a burqha--this beard is my burqha--," you'd think you could do it without sounding like you're reading the line off a cue-card. Still, Kandahar occasionally manages to get past the terrors of it's acting and provide some real insight into the horrors of living in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Viewed as a documentary, it's actually a fairly successful, beautifully photographed film. Of course, it's not actually a documentary, but, you know, if you're feeling generous you could just pretend that it is one, and maybe have an educational experience, if not an aesthetically rich one. --DiGiovanna
KUNG POW: ENTER THE FIST. The grueling torture and unbearable suffering are finally over and now I can wreak vengeance on this inane drivel that has assured itself a slot on my Worst Films of 2002 list. Writer/director/star Steve Oedekirk, for some reason, decided to use footage from the 1976 martial arts film Savage Killers and incorporate his own ridiculous storyline involving an acrobatic Kung Fu baby, a Matrix brawl with bovine, and The Chosen One who bears the mark of Infinite Wisdom, which is none other than Tonguey, the talking tongue. Wait. It gets worse. I have yet to mention the utterly annoying, ear-popping voiceovers all done by the brunette Dana Carvey look alike, the absurd sound effects used, or the childish special effects which all should have deterred the Fist from having entered in the first place. --Hernon
MONSTER'S BALL. Billy Bob Thornton plays the exact same character he played in The Man Who Wasn't There, which is a good thing, because it means he isn't acting all over the screen. Instead, his highly restrained performance stands out because he's so unlikable as a corrections officer who lives with the racist father he hates and the non-racist son he despises. While the plot, about a white man falling in love with a black woman (Halle Berry), is pretty standard stuff, and the cinematography is a collection of shots borrowed from other films, there are some excellent moments, thanks to the performances of Thornton, Peter Boyle and, surprisingly, Heath Ledger, who shows he can do more than look pretty in a teen movie. Berry is also passably decent, which is a big step up from her previous films, where she basically just played a woman with fabulous breasts. --DiGiovanna
MULHOLLAND DRIVE. This may be David Lynch's best film, and thus one of the best American films of the last 20 years. It's impossible to summarize as it moves with the logic of a long, beautiful and not always comfortable dream. An amnesiac actress with a sordid past meets up with an innocent Canadian who wants to be a movie star. Together they criss-cross Hollywood's dark underbelly, finding conspiracies, romance and long-legged midgets. As characters shift identities, story elements contradict each other, and everything repeats from different, mutually exclusive perspectives, a set of possible interpretations emerge. The audience is left to figure out which, if any, are true. Even if the idea of thinking while watching a movie is unappealing, you might just find that this movie works because each individual scene is a complete delight in itself. At times the funniest, scariest, creepiest, sexiest film of the year, Mulholland Drive has something for everyone who truly loves movies. --DiGiovanna
ROLLERBALL. I never believed in extra-terrestrials until now. The action flick remake of the 1975 original began at a high level of excitement with the slick editing and intense death-defying urban luging down the streets of San Francisco to a Marilyn Manson industrial rage beat. But the scale started to slide a bit during the ludicrous futuristic circus sport of animalistic players wearing tutus, warrior helmets, and body paint, though I gave it all the benefit of the doubt. But when the screen suddenly and illogically turned a blurry night goggle green, that is when I became convinced that alien beings penetrated our atmosphere and abducted director John McTiernan because from that moment on political loose ends began to run amuck, a gratuitous naked weight training session popped up out of left field, ACME-cartoon-quality sound effects became unstoppable, and a laughable no holds barred blood bath began with Keanu Reeves' evil twin leading the way. Now I am forever changed and never again will doubt the immense powers of those little green men. --Hernon
THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. One of the most visually exacting films ever made, The Royal Tenenbaums tells the story of a family of faded childhood prodigies through their odd effects. A room full of naïve paintings of a grade-school crush, a flaming pink hallway, a 9-year-old girl in a giraffe suit, complete with fake bullet wounds, and also some kinda strange stuff make up the optical complement to one of the best soundtracks in recent memory. If you enjoyed director Wes Anderson's Rushmore you'll no doubt love Royal Tenenbaums. If you didn't like Rushmore I have nothing further to say to you, and you might as well go back to your day job of picking nominees for the Academy Awards. --DiGiovanna
THE SHIPPING NEWS. E. Annie Proulx?s popular novel is adapted for the screen by director Lasse Hallstrom (Cider House Rules) with mixed results. Though it's beautiful to look at, Kevin Spacey blows the lead role by adopting Haley Joel Osment's acting style. Hey, it's cute when you?re a 10-year-old, but it just doesn't play on a homely 47-year-old man. Spacey plays Quoyle, a man haunted by the childhood memory of his father throwing him in a lake. Somehow, he winds up becoming the star reporter at a small newspaper in Newfoundland, where he finds love and family and other good-feeling type stuff. If you like pretty, emotionally manipulative movies, and are willing to sit through a long one, then you might find The Shipping News a refreshing break from the holiday TV specials. It?s marginally more profound than Rudolf Fights Tooth Decay, but not quite as philosophically rewarding as Baby Jesus Versus The Santa-Bots. --DiGiovanna
TORTILLA SOUP. Big Night cooked up tasty Italian treats, Soul Food fired up good Southern home cooking, and now director Maria Ripoll's remake of Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman stirs up savory Mexican meals with a mouth-watering medley of mayhem, marriage and marjoram. Hector Elizondo stars as a widowed restaurateur who is losing his senses, literally, since he can no longer taste or smell. Nonetheless, the gourmet chef pulls out all the stops when preparing delectable Sunday-night feasts for his three grown daughters: an entrepreneur with dad's cooking talents, a shy science teacher with her own little schoolgirl crush, and a free-spirited misguided rebel, all of whom deliver life-altering news as their own contribution to their traditional family dinner. Though the final serving tastes like a stale after-dinner mint coated in a contrived Hollywood happy ending, the appetizers and the main course combine a wholesome blend of laughter, warmth and even a revival of Chiquita Banana. --Hernon
A WALK TO REMEMBER. Smell cheese? Close; this film actually reeks of more formula than a Levittown nursery. Count the clichés: The popular high-school senior punished into the lifestyle of a drama geek; the square girl with beauty gradually revealed; her forbidding reverend father; the unscripted onstage declaration of love. Had enough formula? Ready to spit up? Well, get comfy, baby, there's more in the bottle, from the terminal-disease victim's list of wishes becoming reality to that sentimental last wish, the wedding. Peter Coyote's smooth performance is the only lullaby in this colicky sob fest. Run, don't walk, to any available alternative. --Daly
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