Page 2 of 4
FULL FRONTAL After winning an Oscar for the gritty Traffic and conquering the box office with the glitzy Oceans Eleven, director Steven Soderbergh has elected to do what many filmmakers in his exalted position have the option of doing: Go deep, by making a grainy, low-budget, indie-style flick that purports to tackle heavy issues by following a group of recognizably flawed individuals coping with fairly ordinary issues of everyday life. The naval-gazing result is an exercise in motion picture masturbation as much as anything else, and yet it's also impossible to dismiss out of hand, catching its stride after a shaky beginning and ultimately allowing us to understand what drives these fairly self-absorbed individuals created by screenwriter Coleman Hough. Among the players taking part in the movie's loosely interconnected story strands are Julia Roberts as a journalist profiling a popular black actor (Blair Underwood), Catherine Keener as a public relations executive dissatisfied with her marriage to a mild-mannered writer (David Hyde Pierce), and Mary McCormack as a masseuse whose search for happiness hits a number of hurdles, not the least being an encounter with a lonely producer (David Duchovny). Soderbergh plays with the whole notion of cinema as an exercise in voyeurism (some of the subplots are presented as films-within-films, with one leading to a cameo by Oceans Eleven co-star Brad Pitt), and he and his actors aren't afraid to engage in frank discussions about the illusory nature of love and the allure of various sexual mores. The end result is stimulating if not entirely satisfying. 
1/2
K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER Not to be confused with K-9 (a Jim Belushi bomb), K-2 (a mountain-climbing dud) or even K-PAX (a Kevin Spacey disaster), the fact-based K-19 is nevertheless strictly DOA. If there's anything to add at this late date to the venerable sub-genre of sub flicks, hack director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) and writers Christopher Kyle and Louis Nowra don't even come close to finding it, preferring instead to trot out a creaky vessel that seems stitched together, Frankenstein-style, from past underwater adventures. Sean Connery was smart enough not to bother to attempt to don a Russian accent in The Hunt for Red October, but here are Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson limply using now-you-hear-them-now-you-don't accents as the two top dogs on a Soviet submarine sent out to sea under perilous conditions during the height of the Cold War. What ensues is a half-hearted Mutiny On the Bounty, with the no-nonsense captain (Ford) squaring off against his more compassionate second-in-command (Neeson) as they both profess to do what's best for the sailors under their command. The usual themes pertaining to honor among men and courage under fire are repeatedly brought to the surface, along with the expected scenes featuring malfunctioning machinery, unsettling water leaks and a bombastic score that tries to bully our emotions at every turn. It's all too familiar to be even remotely effective.
LOVELY & AMAZING Six years ago, writer-director Nicole Holofcener made her feature debut with Walking and Talking, the sort of off-the-radar charmer that nobody ever hears about unless they happen to take a chance on a bargain rental at the video store (at which point they then rave about it to friends who couldn't care less). Her belated follow-up may meet the same fate, but regardless of this auteur's obscurity, here's clearly a filmmaker who cares about exploring what ordinary people do and say in the course of trying to improve their lot in life. Less satisfying than Walking but still overwhelmingly generous in spirit, this stars Catherine Keener as a struggling artist who's merely one eccentric cog in a self-doubting family that also includes her mother (Brenda Blethyn), who's recovering from liposuction; her cute sister (Emily Mortimer), who wonders if she physically has what it takes to become a big actress; and her 8-year-old sibling (Raven Goodwin), an adopted African-American girl mulling over the things that make her different from the rest of her family. Holofcener doesn't gloss over her characters' insecurities and occasionally antisocial behavior, meaning their actions aren't always easy to take; on the contrary, she believably details how each person's lack of self-confidence creates problems where none may otherwise exist and makes the struggle to connect with others all that much more difficult to navigate. Keener is excellent (though she largely plays the same role in Full Frontal), but it's Mortimer who steals the show with an emotionally and physically bare (talk about full frontal) performance.
Mobile
