CHARLOTTE FILM SOCIETY Movies begin this Friday at the Manor and continue the following Friday at Movies at Birkdale. Call 414-2355 for details.
FOLLOWING What Darren Aronofsky's Pi was to his Requiem for a Dream is what Christopher Nolan's Following is to his Memento: a micro-budget debut that served as a fascinating springboard for a fantastic follow-up. Made three years before Memento, Following follows a sad sack whose odd habit of randomly trailing people on the street eventually gets him mixed up with a dapper burglar. The twists keep comin' in this clever neo-noir.
THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE Mexican director Guillermo del Toro, whose attempt at a Hollywood horror yarn (Mimic) was actually noteworthy, returned to his native language to helm this Mexican-Spanish co-production (filmed in Madrid) about an orphanage that's haunted by the spirit of a murdered child. Reviewers who claimed this improved on The Others were merely grandstanding, but del Toro has nevertheless crafted a sturdy chiller.
Also: VA SAVOIR, a French comedy about the behind-the-scenes dalliances during the mounting of a stage production, and WAKING LIFE, director Richard Linklater's experimental animated feature presented as a series of philosophical musings. (Unscreened)
40 DAYS AND 40 NIGHTS That ultimate genre of ill repute, the teen-oriented sex comedy, takes a sideways step with 40 Days and 40 Nights, a mildly tolerable romp that at least offers a sweet center to counterbalance its smarmy surroundings. Josh Hartnett, that stiffest of Next Big Things, delivers a surprisingly adept comic turn as Matt Sullivan, a web page designer who decides that the best way to forget about the icy girlfriend (Vinessa Shaw) who dumped him is to abstain from all sexual pleasures, including masturbation, under the Lenten timeline of 40 days (yeah, it makes no sense, but work with me here). At first, things go well for our celibate hero, but once he meets his perfect match (Shannyn Sossamon), he finds it exceedingly difficult to keep his vow. A few modest laughs and an imaginative sex scene can be found amid the usual condom/Viagra/erection gags, but the film goes limp (no pun intended) during the disappointing climax (ditto), not least because it involves a rape that never really gets addressed.
CURRENT RELEASES
DARK BLUE WORLD It's a simple equation, really: Pearl Harbor minus dopey dialogue plus interesting characters divided by a fraction of a gargantuan budget equals Dark Blue World, the latest feature from Czech director Jan Sverak (the Oscar-winning Kolya). Like that bloated Hollywood epic, this one also focuses on a love triangle set against the backdrop of World War II; in this case, the players are two Czech pilots (Ondrej Vetchy and Krystof Hadek) who escape from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, join England's Royal Air Force and fall in love with the same British lass (Tara Fitzgerald). The romantic dilemma is familiar material played out in a fairly satisfying manner, yet it's the subtext involving the men's separation from their country (both during the war and, as we see in scenes interspersed throughout the picture, during the post-war Communist rule) that makes this film stand out.
DRAGONFLY Say you're a studio head, and you have this sensitive, soulful, supernatural love story that, if nurtured properly, could turn out to be a commercial bonanza on the order of Ghost or The Sixth Sense. Would you then turn around and hand the project to the guy responsible for such inconsequential, ham-fisted works as Patch Adams and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective? That's the kamikaze approach taken here, as a potentially moving tale about a doctor (Kevin Costner) who believes his recently deceased wife may be trying to communicate with him is torpedoed by the oblivious efforts of director Tom Shadyac. That's not to say the script by David Seltzer, Brandon Camp and Mike Thompson is flawless for one thing, it's not too difficult to figure out the twist ending that the picture has in store for us. But for a movie that's supposed to be about airy, ethereal elements, Shadyac moves this along at a torpid pace and frequently undermines any notions of everlasting love by tossing in the sort of cheap scares more suitable to a horror yarn.
HART'S WAR Certainly one of the more ambitious projects of the new year, this WWII drama falls just shy of qualifying as an out-and-out hit. The problem rests with the pontification, as an initially absorbing storyline eventually gets railroaded by a final half-hour in which everyone boasts about the sacrifices they'll make before actually getting around to making them. Despite top billing and prominence in all the trailers, Bruce Willis is actually a supporting character, portraying the top dog among the Americans being held at a German POW camp. The Hart of the title is played by Colin Farrell, who's cast as a greenhorn lieutenant ordered to defend a fellow officer a black flyer (Terrence Howard) accused of murdering a racist GI (Cole Hauser) in a kangaroo court set up within the confines of the camp. This extremely well-made drama has its share of high-minded themes to push for starters, the divisiveness of racism is not only inherently evil but also detrimental to a necessary spirit of camaraderie and self-sacrifice but such notions of nobility work far more effectively when subtly woven into the fabric of the piece rather than written large across a billboard that's then toppled onto audience members' heads. 1/2
IRIS Alzheimer's might have been a more accurate title for what is ostensibly a biopic about British writer Iris Murdoch, since the focus isn't so much on the woman's literary achievements as it is on the disease that mentally crippled her late in life. Certainly, there are numerous scenes set in her earlier years, when she was a young hedonist falling in love with her opposite the shy, stammering literary critic John Bailey. Yet the heart of the story rests in the scenes set in their twilight years, as John contends with the maddening Alzheimer's that pulls Iris away from him. Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville are quite good as the young Iris and John, but the picture belongs to the actors playing the characters in their later years: Jim Broadbent is enormously moving as the devoted husband, while Judi Dench's interpretation of a person coping with this terrible disease is so authentic, it's often painful to watch. Dench, Broadbent and Winslet all picked up Oscar nominations for their work in what's ultimately an eloquent love story.
JOHN Q Emotionally effective but also dishonest and irresponsible, John Q is largely DOA. It's tough not to side with a movie that sticks it to America's health care crisis, but this heavy-handed button-pusher stacks matters so densely, it doesn't give any rationale room to breathe. Denzel Washington plays struggling factory worker John Quincy Archibald, who learns that his insurance won't cover a heart transplant operation for his dying son (Daniel E. Smith). With nowhere to turn, John elects to hold an emergency room hostage, threatening dire consequences if his son's name isn't placed on the donor recipient list. This one offers a virtual checklist of "social drama" cliches: the opportunistic police chief (Ray Liotta) wanting to make a good impression in an election year; a tanned TV reporter (Paul Johansson) hungry for ratings ("This is my white Bronco!" he exclaims in one of scripter James Kearns' many dopey lines); and unfeeling hospital personnel (Anne Heche and James Woods). Furthermore, the notion that the US public would outwardly cheer a man holding innocent people hostage (no matter what the reason) is not only ludicrous but somewhat insulting as well.
QUEEN OF THE DAMNED It's difficult to make a truly boring vampire picture, but the folks behind this draggy adaptation of Anne Rice's bestseller have done just that. Neil Jordan, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and the rest of those responsible for the arresting screen version of Rice's Interview With the Vampire are sorely missed this time around; instead, given the tedious exploits of the notorious bloodsucker Lestat (blandly played by Stuart Townsend) in this outing, the movie's sole claim to fame would seem to be as the final film project of the late singing star Aaliyah. She's cast as Akasha, the Mother of All Vampires, but it's impossible to gauge her thespian abilities based on this performance: She only arrives during the final half-hour, buried under reams of makeup and jewelry and boasting an electronically altered voice that sounds like a cross between Bela Lugosi and Twiki the robot from that 70s Buck Rogers series. There's probably a compelling film version to be made from this particular chapter in the vampire chronicles, but this moribund (and occasionally laughable) take ain't it. 1/2
RETURN TO NEVER LAND Over the past few years, Disney has been hell-bent on releasing a slew of needless and inferior sequels (e.g. Cinderella II, The Little Mermaid II) to their classic animated features directly to the video market. What, then, persuaded them to throw this sorry sequel to 1953's Peter Pan into theaters? Perhaps it's to test the waters on how these shoddy products would fare with highly publicized theatrical campaigns; if that's the case, then let's pray this one tanks, since I have no real desire to see the movie marketplace cluttered with the likes of Hercules or Fox and the Hound sequels. Despite the brand name recognition, the '53 Peter Pan hardly ranks alongside the studio's finest efforts, but it's still miles ahead of this poorly realized follow-up that finds Wendy's daughter Jane helping Peter and the Lost Boys battle persistent Captain Hook. Dull characters, unmemorable songs and flat animation sink this one. 1/2
WE WERE SOLDIERS This adaptation of Joe Galloway and General Hal Moore's book We Were Soldiers Once... and Young focuses on a key skirmish of the Vietnam War: the 1965 battle in the Ia Drang Valley, when 400 Americans found themselves surrounded by 2,000 enemy soldiers. Like Black Hawk Down, this also centers on the inspiring mettle demonstrated by US soldiers under fire, and it's the superior film, since it does a far better job of placing a human face on the spectacle of war. Rather than diluting the power of the piece, the expository scenes and domestic interludes provide it with an intimacy and emotional scope that easily allow it to overcome some rough narrative patches, while a no-nonsense cast (led by Mel Gibson) offers the necessary conviction. The combat scenes are extremely intense, and while some of the dialogue may clank, the sentiments don't: This is that rare Hollywood movie that isn't afraid to present its leading characters as devout Christians honestly seeking to reconcile their predicament with a spiritual soothing, and it's that even rarer movie that allows us to spend a little time with the enemy in an effort to show that the devastation of war hits on all fronts and in all facets. 1/2