Current Releases
ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 A favorite of critics and cultists alike, John Carpenter’s 1976 Assault On Precinct 13 was a nifty little “B” flick about an LA street gang that descends upon a police station with the sole purpose of wiping out everyone inside. This flashy update is a competent but entirely generic action opus in which it’s a group of rogue cops who attack the precinct in order to kill a captured crime lord whose testimony would put them behind bars. Laurence Fishburne plays the cool-under-fire kingpin, who reluctantly teams up with an honest officer (Ethan Hawke) to ensure his own survival. Expect few surprises from yet another needless remake.
THE AVIATOR This sprawling biopic about Howard Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), the notorious billionaire-industrialist-producer-flyboy, employs all the cinematic razzle-dazzle we’ve come to expect from Martin Scorsese, yet there’s an added layer of excitement as the eternal cineaste finally gets to step back in time via his meticulous recreations of the sights and sounds of Old Hollywood (look for Cate Blanchett in a show-stealing turn as Katharine Hepburn). Still, the behind-the-scenes movie material takes a back seat to other aspects of Hughes’ life – namely, his adventures in the field of aviation and his lifelong battle with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. At its best, the film is a stirring tale about a man whose inner drive allowed him to climb ever higher and higher, grazing the heavens before his inner demons seized the controls and forced the inevitable, dreary descent.
1/2
COACH CARTER This works the usual underdog cliches fairly well as it tells the true story of Ken Carter (Samuel L. Jackson), a high school basketball coach in California who manages to turn a team that won only four games during its previous season into a statewide powerhouse. But at the height of their success, Carter elects to bench the entire team once he discovers that most of his players are performing poorly in their classes. Carter’s selfless actions against a failed education system register even when the movie surrounding him turns on itself: All pertinent points are made after a full two hours, but the picture drags on for another 20 minutes simply so viewers can be treated to a climactic Big Game. Ultimately, Coach Carter‘s sincerity gets trumped by its savvy at milking the sports formula for all it’s worth.
1/2
ELEKTRA Talk about a house of flying daggers: The multiplex is filled with them once Marvel’s blade-wielding superheroine springs into action in this spin-off of 2003’s Daredevil (in which she appeared as the sightless superhero’s romantic interest). But while this lady in red often kicks it into high gear, the movie itself rarely moves beyond a stroll. The story finds the assassin-for-hire (Jennifer Garner) balking when her latest assignment requires her to kill a single dad (Goran Visnjic) and his teenage daughter (Kirsten Prout, whose annoying performance does the film no favors). Elektra elects to protect them instead, which in turn pits her against an evil organization known as The Hand. Inexplicably, no one ever deadpans, “Talk to The Hand,” but then again, a sense of humor is noticeably missing throughout.
1/2
FINDING NEVERLAND After numerous film versions of Peter Pan, we now get a fanciful tale that seeks to explain how playwright J.M. Barrie initially came up with the idea for this children’s classic. What ends up on the screen is as much fiction as fact (probably more so), but it’s the sort of moving saga that will make audiences wish this was the way it really happened. A gentle Johnny Depp is just right as Barrie, whose inspiration comes from a widow (Kate Winslet) and her four sons, particularly the moody Peter (Freddie Highmore). Director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) and scripter David Magee have made a film full of warmth and wit.
HIDE AND SEEK Robert De Niro, in full paycheck-gorging mode, is miscast as David Callaway, a New York psychologist who, after his wife (Amy Irving) commits suicide, moves upstate with their traumatized 9-year-old daughter Emily (Dakota Fanning). Still struggling to cope with the tragedy, Emily invents an imaginary friend named Charlie, and a subsequent string of disasters leads David to wonder whether Emily suffers from a split personality, whether another person is manipulating his daughter, or whether there’s a supernatural presence in their new home. It’s becoming increasingly rote to review junky, generic thrillers like this one: Critics would do well to simply cut-and-paste their slams of last year’s Secret Window (this film’s doppelganger) and leave it at that.
1/2
HOTEL RWANDA Set in 1994 Rwanda, this powerful film takes place during the 100-day period when nearly one million of that country’s Tutsis were slaughtered by the Hutu extremists. Clearly, Hotel Rwanda is about international indifference and liberal ineffectualness, and the movie reverberates with such topical force (Sudan, anyone?) that the ink is still drying on its condemnation of a planet that operates with blinders firmly attached. Yet for all its indignant ire, the movie is more than anything a humanist saga, and it’s in this area where it draws its greatest power. Don Cheadle exudes quiet authority as Paul Rusesabagina, the Hutu hotel manager who risked everything to save over a thousand Tutsi civilians from falling under the machete.
1/2
HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS Zhang Yimou recently stated that it’s always been his dream to direct martial arts films. Having now helmed Hero and House of Flying Daggers, let’s hope he’s gotten it out of his system. Yimou directed the best foreign-language film of the 1990s – Raise the Red Lantern – and was also responsible for other titles that explored Chinese history in all its facets. This overrated new film pales by comparison, exuding a been-there-done-that vibe on the heels of (among others) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hero. But if nothing else, Daggers is gorgeous to behold, and that alone almost carries the picture over the hump: Its rainbow visions are probably vibrant enough to even register with the color-blind. Daggers is appealing eye candy, but here’s hoping that Yimou goes back to making movies that can rattle a nation to its core.
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IN GOOD COMPANY In Good Company works as well as it does because its central character, Dan Foreman, is a paragon of uncompromised ideals, and because Dennis Quaid plays him so perfectly that we can’t help but line up behind this guy and cheer him on. Dan symbolizes not the larger-than-life morality found in superhero or gladiator yarns nor the bogus morality exhibited in pieces of hypocrisy like Christmas With the Kranks; instead, it’s the everyday type to which we can all aspire, as decent people trying to make the right choices concerning family and career. The storyline, which finds ad executive Dan forced to report to a corporate golden boy (Topher Grace) half his age, rarely strays far from convention, but it’s hard to dislike a picture that goes out of its way to champion integrity in America.
MEET THE FOCKERS The drop in quality between a hit movie and its sequel is usually so steep that just thinking about it could lead to a broken neck. Happily, no such falloff exists between Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers. The freshness of the premise may have dissipated, but the attention to the differences between the central characters – the primary reason the first film raked in the dough – still exists. So once again we find Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) seeking the approval of prospective father-in-law Jack Byrnes (Robert De Niro), with the presence of Greg’s old-hippie parents (Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand) adding to the stress level. The primary pleasure is watching veteran comedian Stiller once again squaring off against De Niro, whose recent attempts at shtick have only worked in this series.
MILLION DOLLAR BABY The best picture of 2004 is an instant classic, much like director-producer-star Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven. But whereas that revisionist Western deconstructed genre conventions, turning them inside out to expose the inherent contradictions and compromises, this movie leaves many of the cliches intact, deriving its power not by upending them but by burrowing so deeply that it feels like we’re witnessing familiar sights for the very first time. Eastwood stars as a gym owner who’s urged by his only friend (Morgan Freeman) to train a young woman (Hilary Swank) determined to make it as a boxer, yet what starts out as a familiar (if brilliantly told) story eventually changes course and emerges as a profound and moving filmgoing experience. There’s very little about this movie that feels extraneous – it’s tight, taut storytelling, anchored by three astonishing performances and helmed by a man still able to teach Hollywood’s young punks a thing or two.
SIDEWAYS Movies in which characters hit the road in search of adventure and end up discovering themselves are nothing new to American film – in fact, they’re an integral part of our cinematic heritage – yet this one is idiosyncratic enough to stand apart from the pack. Miles (Paul Giamatti), a chronically depressed high school teacher, and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), a has-been actor about to get married, decide to book passage to California’s Santa Ynez Valley to tour the local wineries; while there, they get involved with two women (Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh) who force them to reconsider their present outlooks on life. It should be noted that this lovely motion picture should itself be approached like a fine wine: Uncork it, give it time to breathe, and then luxuriate in its rich, heady flavor. It also ages nicely, holding up beautifully under repeat viewings.
A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT The ad material wants us to believe that Engagement, about a woman (Audrey Tautou) searching for her lover at the end of World War I, is cut from the same cloth as pictures like The English Patient and Reds, movies that place grand romances against the backdrop of wars and social upheaval. But director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s movie is a different kind of epic, with a light touch and an offbeat attitude that strip the story of much of its gravitas and instead replace it with a freewheeling flippancy. Engagement isn’t as overtly funny as Jeunet’s previous films (including Amelie), but its comic quota is still there, resting behind its players’ character quirks or within the tight choreography of several of the more elaborate set pieces. The result is a real curio: often delightful, often tragic, yet never as penetrating as one might expect.
WHITE NOISE This silly movie asks viewers to accept Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) – the method by which the dead communicate with the living via televisions and radios – as cold, hard fact; it then proceeds to spin a fantasy yarn that flubs its own narrative constraints. Michael Keaton headlines as an architect whose wife (Chandra West) dies in a car accident. Soon, a fuzzy figure starts appearing through the snowy static on his TV set, but rather than assume (as most of us would) that he’s illegally receiving HBO without a converter box, he’s convinced it’s his late wife trying to communicate with him. It’s a coin toss as to whether this cribs mostly from Poltergeist, The Ring or The Sixth Sense; in any case, its inconsistencies prove to be the primary culprit, as this never plays fair even within the parameters of its own supernatural milieu.
1/2
This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2005.
