Forget illegal immigration or the war on terror or any other faddish domestic crisis that regularly tops the polls: It's long been clear that health care ranks as the number one problem in America, and only a complete moron — or a well-to-do Republican — would believe that there's nothing wrong with our current system.
So here comes Michael Moore to tackle the subject, in what arguably stands as his most ambitious project to date. As with past works by this controversial filmmaker, Moore proves himself to be more a professor with some fanciful ways of explaining the matter at hand than a documentarian in the strictest sense of the term: He often places himself at the center of the spotlight, and he lets niggling details fall by the wayside in his rush to accentuate the greater truth. Sicko (***1/2 out of four) is no different: One can quibble about the presentation or the soft-pedaling of certain points, but there's no doubt that Moore's heart is in the right place, or that, in a just world, his powerful picture would serve as an agent for change.
A patriotic American who believes that no one should be left behind, Moore employs his latest film as a bludgeoning tool against insidious insurance companies and the corrupt politicians who let them get away with murder — often literally. Moore doesn't focus on the nation's uninsured; instead, he centers on ordinary folks who do carry insurance yet are still denied basic rights by those more concerned with lining their own pockets than helping out their fellow Americans. Thus, we see how a grieving mother loses her baby daughter because her HMO forces her to seek help not at the closest hospital but at one further away. We gasp at how one man is turned down for an operation, only to result in his death several months later. We witness how a laborer who has accidentally cut off two of his fingers is told that, because of financial considerations, he has to decide which finger he wants to keep and which digit he can live without. And so on.
Not surprisingly, Moore's solution on how to wrest this nation away from the hands of the insurance companies, lobbyists and politicians is to provide universal health care for everyone. Moore then traces, in often amusing fashion, how the Republicans gasp at such a notion, calling it "socialized medicine" and linking it back to the Communists. All the usual evildoers are trotted out in archival footage — Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, both Bushes — yet Moore also saves some barbs for Hillary Clinton, who once tried to tackle the health care issue (she was beaten down by GOP misogynists like Newt Gingrich) but is now only too happy to accept campaign contributions from the health industry lobby. And in a brilliant bit, Moore wonders why the right-wing is so adamant against "socialized medicine" when we already have other "socialized" advantages (fire departments, schools, libraries, etc.).
Along the way, Moore takes side trips to Canada, France and England, to take a firsthand look at the efficiency of universal health care. And it's while overseas that Moore hears two quotes that all Americans should take to heart: "If you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people" and "Americans fear their government, but in France, the government fears the people." The latter is an offshoot of Thomas Jefferson's quote that "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." Michael Moore is hardly the person I'd pick to bring a measure of Jeffersonian sensibility back to a great nation long ruled by venal profiteers, but I suppose he'll do in a pinch.
CINEMA HAS GIVEN US so many marvelous movies set around the kitchen that it's easy to lose count among the tantalizing dishes laid out on display. But onto a long list that includes Babette's Feast, Eat Drink Man Woman, and Like Water for Chocolate, I never expected to add an animated yarn about a culinary rat.
Ratatouille (***1/2) is the latest winner from Pixar, the animation outfit whose win-loss ratio has still managed to equal that of the '72 Miami Dolphins. That is to say, John Lasseter's company has yet to produce a dud, and one can only wonder when (or if) this streak will end.
The driving force behind Ratatouille isn't Lasseter but Brad Bird, the highly talented writer-director who won a Best Animated Feature Oscar for The Incredibles. As in both that superhero saga and the non-Pixar offering The Iron Giant, Bird again demonstrates that he's driven by the notion of families — usually extended ones — banding and bonding together to achieve whatever they've set out to accomplish. In The Iron Giant, it was a lonely boy, his single mom and his pet robot; in The Incredibles, it was a family of four struggling to get past their differences; and here, it's a dreamy rodent who tries to get along with his more conventional family while also attempting the impossible (and the taboo) by forging a friendship with a human.
The rat is Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt), whose skills in the kitchen are exemplary, and the human is Linguini (Lou Romano), a skinny lad who possesses none of his late father's superb culinary abilities. Since restaurant kitchens aren't exactly rodent-friendly, and since circumstances force the singularly untalented Linguini to pass himself off as a master chef, the pair pool their resources to return a once-great Paris eatery, now struggling following the publication of a disastrous review by food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole), back to its lofty position as one of France's finest.
As always seems to be the case with Pixar, the animation in Ratatouille far surpasses that of CGI imagery from competing studios, with characters emerging as fully formed, three-dimensional players (or as three-dimensional as cartoon characters can get). The attention to detail is startling, and there are some angles that may be commonplace in live-action features but are rarely attempted in toon flicks (I especially love the pen dropping).
The message of Ratatouille — a love letter to Paris, a valentine to the fine art of cooking and a gift to summer moviegoers — is that anyone can cook, no matter their lot in life. I suppose that thought can be extended to the art of filmmaking: Anyone can make a good movie, no matter their limitations (read: budget). Brad Bird doesn't have to worry as much as some: Armed with sufficient backing to meet his goals, he's delivered an especially tasty treat.
I WAS A FRACTION too old for the whole Transformers rage when it swept through the nation back in the mid-1980s, though professional dedication did force me to sit through the crappy animated feature that hit theaters in 1986. Yet even folks who wouldn't know a Transformer from a Teletubby can expect to have a fairly good time at Transformers (**1/2).
A movie about robots that turn into cars (and trucks and tanks and airplanes) would seem to have a more limited fan base than many other blockbuster wanna-bes, and the presence of Michael Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) as director certainly puts critics on alert. Yet perhaps the secret ingredient here is in the producing credits. Instead of Bay's usual partner in crime, Jerry Bruckheimer, it's Steven Spielberg who snags an executive producer citation (and is pegged as a "hands-on producer" in the press notes), so it can't be a coincidence that in its finest moments — most contained within the first half of this 145-minute yarn — this picture harkens back to the sort of filmic roller coaster rides that Spielberg often built during the 1980s.
What makes the initial hour-and-change so enjoyable is the expository material that former Alias scripters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman bring to the table. After quickly explaining that two warring factions of intergalactic robots — the heroic Autobots and the nefarious Decepticons — have brought their battle to our planet, we're introduced to various groups of characters who will eventually gather to help the good 'bots defeat the evil ones. Chief among the human protagonists is Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), a teenager who's so busy wooing a lovely classmate (Megan Fox) that he's slow to realize that there's more than meets the eye about his new Chevy Camaro, a car that has a tendency to play its own radio, drive itself across town, and, oh yeah, turn into a gigantic yellow robot when necessary. Meanwhile, in Qatar, two members (Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel) of an army outfit find themselves trying to stay alive against the metallic menace that has wiped out their entire base. And back in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Secretary of Defense (Jon Voight) tries to figure out what's going on with the help of a computer analyst (Rachael Taylor) and her "advisor," a hacker (Anthony Anderson).
Bolstered by ample amounts of humor (a popular comedian makes an early appearance as a car salesman) and decidedly more character-driven than expected, Transformers for the most part does a fine job of balancing action with emotion, which makes the final half-hour — wall to wall battles with little to individualize the raging robots on either side — a slog. Still, it's a given that Transformers fans won't be disappointed. The shock is that the rest of us might not be, either.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY ALMOST had it right when a recent cover story named 1988's Die Hard the best action movie ever made (but over Raiders of the Lost Ark? Come on...). The Bruce Willis hit is one of those adrenaline-pumping pictures that never wears out its welcome — I can't count the number of times I've watched it over the past 19 years — and its success paved the way for one enjoyable sequel (1990's Die Hard 2) and one lame follow-up (1995's Die Hard With a Vengeance).
For whatever reason — fat paycheck, wavering career, poor choice of available roles — Willis has now elected to return to his signature role as John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard (**1/2), and the end result is better than most years-after-the-fact sequels (Rocky Balboa, The Evening Star, Crocodile Dundee In Los Angeles). The twist here is that aging detective McClane, an old-fashioned guy used to 20th century modes of expression and ideas, finds himself battling cyber-terrorists who threaten to shut down the entire United States with a few strokes of a keyboard. The movie's billing itself as the story of an "analog" cop living in a "digital" age, and we all know what that means. No mouse pads or monitors for our hero; instead, it's all flying fists, rapid-fire weaponry and explosions. Lots of explosions.
Yet even director Len Wiseman and scripter Mark Bomback don't have complete faith in the cop's old-fashioned heroics since they saddle him with a sidekick who's a genius when it comes to computers. Matt Farrell (Justin Long, the "Mac" guy in those ubiquitous Apple commercials) is a Neo-inspired hacker who inadvertently helps the villain (an effective Timothy Olyphant) and his posse carry out their master plans. Marked for termination, Matt is only able to escape his would-be assassins with McClane's help.
An overlong running time allows matters to occasionally become stale (the blueprint calls for our protagonists to evade, fight, escape, repeat), although Willis does his part by tossing out those patented McClane quips with aplomb. And while there's no denying that the picture is packed with memorable action sequences, the film often collapses into a heap of silliness, with McClane surviving some encounters that would tax all sorts of leaps of logic. The appeal of the character has always been that he's Everyman, not Superman. Yet Live Free Or Die Hard blows that train of thought to smithereens; Bugs Bunny and the Looney Tunes gang can only wish they could do some of the things John McClane executes so effortlessly here.
MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM MAY have co-written (along with original author Susan Minot) the screenplay for Evening (**1/2), but those expecting a replay of the heady pleasures of The Hours (which had been adapted from Cunningham's novel) might find themselves disappointed at the slightness of this latest work. That's not to say that Evening is a turkey, but rather a delicate canary that never really finds its voice.
Powered by an ofttimes unwieldy big-name cast, this is one of those dramas that wanders back and forth between two time periods. The earlier passages center on Ann Lord (Claire Danes), who arrives at the family estate of her best friend Lila (Mamie Gummer, Meryl Streep's daughter) to serve as the bridesmaid for her upcoming marriage-of-convenience. Lila's brother Buddy (Hugh Dancy) loves Ann and hates the fact that Lila is throwing away her passion on someone not worthy of it. For her part, Ann finds herself attracted to Buddy's best friend Harris (Patrick Wilson), and their fling leads to tragic consequences.
The modern sequences focus on an elderly Ann (Vanessa Redgrave) now on her death bed, with her two dissimilar daughters (Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson) tending to her needs while also engaging in some heated sibling rivalry.
Important matters of life (Buddy's), liberty (from suffocating relationships) and the pursuit of happiness (everyone's goal, obviously) are treated in fairly interesting ways, although director Lajos Koltai keeps the pathos on such a low simmer that the melodrama never wallops us as it should. As for the cast, Danes and Redgrave are fine in the lead roles, while Dancy acquits himself quite nicely in an erratic part that requires him to whiplash between heterosexual, homosexual and incestuous love without a moment's notice. Meryl Streep and Glenn Close appear in small roles — if this were a TV series, they'd be billed as "special guest stars" — with Streep nicely underplaying and Close grotesquely overacting. Close's crying fit — the artificial counterpoint to Angelina Jolie's raw breakdown in A Mighty Heart — is one of the few moments that tests out the high end of the theater's sound system, but it's an embarrassing bit, as unwelcome as Michael Moore at an Aetna board meeting.