ALL OR NOTHING Few filmmakers craft movies as brutally honest about the hardships of everyday existence as writer-director Mike Leigh, yet for the first time, the patented blueprint that has long served him well is starting to look a bit frayed around the edges. Whereas titles like Secrets & Lies, Life Is Sweet and Career Girls spilled over with all the spontaneity and messiness of real life, this latest effort seems more calculated and controlled, as if Leigh's close to exhausting the subject and trying to keep it viable via more artificial means. To be sure, this downbeat drama about the largely miserable lives of a struggling London family and their circle of friends has its share of the emotionally raw sequences we've come to expect from Leigh, and his ability to cast unglamorous actors as characters who look as if they could really be one step away from being on the dole remains unparalleled. Yet too many of the situations feel cribbed from his past pictures, including a forced ending that offers a little more hope than should reasonably be expected. 1/2
THE EMPEROR'S CLUB In the tradition of Dead Poets Society and Finding Forrester comes another inspirational drama that champions the power of education while simultaneously providing air time to the sort of shaky, only-in-the-movies scenario that would leave a true academic guffawing at the simplemindedness of it all. Still, this works better than it probably should, thanks primarily to Kevin Kline's committed performance as a Classics professor whose ability to shape the characters of his young charges meets a serious challenge in a rebellious, irresponsible boy (Emile Hirsch) who eventually forces the prof to compromise his own strict moral code. To its credit, the script by Neil Tolkin (who previously penned the anti-education Pauly Shore vehicle Jury Duty), based on Ethan Canin's short story "The Palace Thief," does acknowledge the reality that some students are simply out of reach of even the most dedicated of instructors. Eventually, though, even the film's thorny issues get buried under the soft gauze of cheery conformity, as all troubles wash away in a sea of grandstanding speechifying and daft plot developments. 1/2
FRIDA First, let us be thankful that it's the Salma Hayek version, not the proposed Jennifer Lopez one, that made it to the screen -- after all, who wants to see a Frida Kahlo biopic that would doubtless find the Mexican artist putting aside the paintbrushes (and putting a part in her unibrow) for a career as a glamorous songbird? Seriously, as far as screen biographies of artistic sorts go (always a gamble, since it's hard for film to accurately convey the creative process at work), this one apparently ended up in the right hands, as director Julie Taymor (Broadway's The Lion King) uses various colorful conventions -- an animated sequence designed by the Brothers Quay, the melding of actual people and artwork, the stunt casting of Edward Norton, Antonio Banderas and Ashley Judd in small roles -- to effectively touch upon the key incidents in Kahlo's life, from the trolley accident that kept her perpetually in pain over the years to her brief fling with Leon Trotsky (Geoffrey Rush). Still, the film's centerpiece is her long, complex relationship with husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera, and it's the robust performances by Hayek and Alfred Molina that ultimately give Frida its soul.
CURRENT RELEASES
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE God bless America. And God bless Michael Moore for caring so much about America. The scruffy guerilla filmmaker who's made a career out of sticking it to the nation's corporate guard on behalf of the little people this time sets his sights on the country's thorny firearm issue. The result is a hard-hitting treatise that offers almost as many laughs as his previous pictures Roger & Me and The Big One but also emerges as a much sadder, wiser piece of filmmaking than its predecessors. Detractors will claim that this film, so skewed that Marilyn Manson ends up coming across as the most logical of all the interviewees, is nothing more than a typical liberal diatribe taking pot shots at easy targets, and they'd probably be right except for one thing. Sure, it's easy for Moore to note that those countries without easy access to firearms don't have our absurdly high murder rate, yet this film muddies the waters by pointing out that Canada, a country also swimming in firearms, has an enviably low murder rate despite the prevalence of weapons, thereby leading Moore (and us) to question whether gun control isn't the issue as much as an arrogant American mindset that feels everything is for the taking for anyone with the means to do so. Bowling for Columbine isn't a subtle film; instead, it makes its case with Magnum force. 1/2
8 MILE At first glance, 8 Mile would appear to be Eminem's Purple Rain, a blatant attempt by a music star to broaden his fan base by appearing before the moviegoing multitudes in a ragtag effort consisting of sizzling concert scenes surrounded by tepid melodrama. Yet it's soon clear that this is actually going to be a bonafide motion picture and not just a soundtrack album with cinematic trimmings. Not that this movie, knowingly directed by Curtis Hanson (L.A. Confidential), doesn't have some connection to Purple Rain. Indeed, it harkens back to several films from the late 70s/early 80s (Saturday Night Fever, Fame, Flashdance) that had replaced the traditional glitz of the musical fantasy world with the grit of the real world, a place where creative expression wasn't a luxury but rather a survival instinct, a possible escape from the lower rungs of a manmade hell. Here, the desolate locale is the Detroit of 1995, wherein a young man beaten down by life uses rap as a way to express himself. 8 Mile has its share of potholes along the way, but overall it's a sturdy drama, and it conclusively demonstrates that, for one movie at least, its magnetic star can go the distance.
FEMME FATALE Director Brian De Palma has spent most of his career courting controversy, so why expect different results from his latest release? Already running the gamut of critical opinion since its opening (from an F by Entertainment Weekly to four stars from Roger Ebert), this over-the-top thriller features both the best and worst of De Palma. A convoluted, twisty yarn about a shapely thief (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, channeling Sharon Stone) who double-crosses her criminal cohorts, assumes a new identity and makes a patsy out of a tabloid photographer (Antonio Banderas), Femme Fatale includes some terrific set pieces that remind me why I revere his style so much -- yet ultimately becomes burdened with several embarrassingly self-conscious sequences that make me wince at how he's frittered away much of his latter-day career. Woe to the audience member who approaches this with a straight face -- the writer-director is clearly in a playful mood here (love that blood-stained shirt, "seven years later") -- but even accepting this in the right frame of mind can only provide it with so much leniency. 1/2
I SPY This tepid studio product is supposedly based on the same-named 60s TV show starring Robert Culp and Bill Cosby, but its relationship to that series is so tenuous, they could easily have called this thing Petticoat Junction or My Mother the Car and gotten away with it. Owen Wilson, charming when the role is just right (rare, indeed), is warmly relaxed as a second-tier secret agent, while Eddie Murphy, in his patented motor-mouth mode, darts all over the screen as his civilian partner, a boxing champ whose ego is larger than Brazil and Argentina combined. This sort of "buddy comedy" is long passe, so the real surprise is that Murphy and Wilson actually make a pretty good team, each actor playing off the other's strengths. But the project surrounding them is distressingly rote, a true snoozer that finds the pair trying to stop the usual Eurobaddie (Malcolm McDowell) from selling a stolen government aircraft to the highest international bidder. The plane, incidentally, is invisible, though viewers hoping for a Wonder Woman cameo will be sorely disappointed.
THE RING An American remake of a 1998 Japanese smash that spawned a pair of sequels, a TV series and a cult following, The Ring centers around the existence of a videocassette that causes death to anyone who dares watch it. So what exactly is on this terrible tape? Outtakes from The Anna Nicole Show? Footage of the Liza Minnelli-David Gest wedding? The torturous Vanilla Ice bomb Cool As Ice? Actually, none of the above; instead, it turns out to be a series of grainy, bizarre images that would be right at home in a music video by, say, Nine Inch Nails or Metallica. In his short movie career, director Gore Verbinski has certainly been someone to watch, having helmed Mouse Hunt and The Mexican. Yet the quirky light touch that served him well on those projects has hampered him here: For a movie built around a piece of film containing unsettling images, The Ring is itself a rather tame undertaking, never building the finger-curling sense of dread that's demanded by the material. At the same time, Verbinski clearly takes the genre seriously, and he scored a casting coup by landing Naomi Watts (as the reporter on the case) in her first appearance since her amazing breakthrough performance in last year's Mulholland Drive. 1/2
THE TRUTH ABOUT CHARLIE It's easy to appreciate what Jonathan Demme was trying to do with this remake of Charade without actually enjoying any part of it. Stanley Donen's effervescent effort from 1963 isn't exactly a classic, but with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn breezing through an engaging mystery-romance set in Paris, it's awfully enjoyable stuff. Demme probably figured a straight retelling couldn't compete, so he used the occasion as an opportunity to pay homage to the French New Wave of the 60s, get back to the hipster style of filmmaking he employed in Something Wild and Married to the Mob, and hand his Beloved star Thandie Newton a potential star-making role. His ambition should be applauded but his creation should be avoided, as the truth about Charlie is that it's a brazenly misguided project. Full of schizophrenic edits, shot in a frequently warped style, and full of maddening asides and non sequiturs, this yarn about a widow pursued by various shady characters who were all involved with her late husband never locates an appropriate wavelength. Newton acquits herself well enough, but Mark Wahlberg, in Grant's old role of the mysterious suitor, seems more a schoolboy than a sophisticate. 1/2