New Releases
THE ICE HARVEST The Ice Harvest is being promoted as this year’s Bad Santa, but it’s just bad, period. Its only merit belongs to Oliver Platt, who’s top-notch as the obnoxious, loud-mouth drunk who invariably attaches himself, barnacle-like, to some poor sucker’s arm during a festive holiday party. Otherwise, this merely goes through the motions by displaying all the requisite black humor and hipster stylings without stopping to figure out what generally makes these ingredients work. That Harold Ramis is attached as director isn’t too shocking — his resume is more hit-and-miss than people realize — but it’s hard to believe that the script (adapted from Scott Phillips’ novel) is by Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo (Empire Falls) and multi-Oscar winner Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer), neither exactly a slouch in the writing department. John Cusack, who’s played this sort of mellow, wise-cracking character many times before, stars as Charlie Arglist, a Wichita lawyer who, along with his partner Vic (Billy Bob Thornton), steals over $2 million from a local mob boss (Randy Quaid) and then begins to sweat when an ice storm prevents them from skipping town. As Charlie trudges around the city waiting to make his great escape, he repeatedly bumps into two acquaintances: Renata (Connie Nielsen), a strip club owner who suspects Charlie’s up to something, and Pete (Platt), a vulgar souse who (among other grievances) bemoans his marriage to Charlie’s gold-digging ex-wife. As an exercise in neo-noir, the film is surprisingly inert, and as a dark comedy, it fails to offer many laughs in any situation outside of those involving Platt’s inebriated freefall. Rating: * 1/2
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE Marital discord receives an innovative treatment in this impressive feature that earned Noah Baumbach writing and directing awards at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. In 1986 Brooklyn, college professor Bernard Berkman (Jeff Daniels) and his wife Joan (Laura Linney) finally reach the conclusion that their marriage is chugging along on its last fumes. Upon separating, they subject their two sons, 16-year-old Walt (Jesse Eisenberg) and 12-year-old Frank (Owen Kline), to all manner of ill-advised actions and outbursts, which only serve to confuse and alienate the boys even further. Walt has always felt a kinship with his father, viewing him as an intellectual (and relationship guru) worthy of emulation, while Frank has drifted more toward his mother, a woman whose sexual frankness forces the preteen to grow up quicker than he should. The Squid and the Whale is tantalizing in the way in which it presents just enough information so that we can’t help but come to the conclusion that the self-absorbed Bernard and Joan are lousy parents — yet then it pulls the rug out from under us by offering peeks into previous periods of domestic bliss. Never denigrating itself by offering facile answers, it examines the difficulties of joint custody, the intrinsic flaw in favoring one parent over the other and the continued ability to wring mood out of Tangerine Dream’s score for Risky Business (used to good effect here). All four lead performances are outstanding. Rating: *** 1/2
Current Releases
BEE SEASON For the sake of variety, we need more spirituality in cinema, which is why the very existence of Bee Season is a blessing even if its haphazardness makes it something of a curse. When 9-year-old Eliza Naumann (excellent Flora Cross) suddenly blossoms as a spelling champ, her college professor dad (Richard Gere) suspects she might be a modern-day mystic able to connect directly with God through language. Yet as he devotes all his energy to her, he fails to notice the increasingly bizarre behavior of his wife (Juliette Binoche). Binoche valiantly struggles to carry her unwieldy subplot, so clumsily presented that it repeatedly threatens to sink the entire project. Yet the efforts of the other characters to navigate their own spiritual waters remain compelling, even if it leads to a finale that isn’t powerful as much as it’s puzzling. Rating: ** 1/2
CHICKEN LITTLE With its hand-drawn animation division boarded up and its partnership with Pixar in flames, Walt Disney Pictures has taken the next step by creating its own fully computer-animated movie. Yet if Chicken Little represents the future of Disney animation, then the sky is indeed falling: This is as far removed from such old-school classics as Pinocchio and Beauty and the Beast as roast duck is from chicken gizzards. The story is serviceable, centering on a diminutive bird (voiced by Zach Braff) whose warnings about an alien invasion are ignored by the other anthropomorphic animals. And to be fair, the film has its moments, most of them courtesy of a character known as Fish Out of Water (basically an animated Harpo Marx). But the central thrust — a standard “underdog wins the day” slog that on a dime turns into War of the Worlds — is the same sort of hollow experience that has all but drained the traditional toon tale of its potency over the past decade-plus. Rating: **
DERAILED The inaugural feature from The Weinstein Company recalls the formation of TriStar Pictures back in the 80s, when the quality of its initial slate was so dreadful that one critic suggested the company should change its name to OneStar. Certainly, Derailed is deserving of whatever critical scorn is tossed its way, whether it’s in the form of a solitary star, a down-turned thumb or even an extended middle finger. The film stars Clive Owen and Jennifer Aniston as unhappily married business drones whose attempt at an affair gets interrupted by a French thug (Vincent Cassel) with blackmail on his mind. Armed with only a plot synopsis, I (like many others) figured out the major plot twist even before stepping into the theater, yet this movie is so fundamentally brain-dead on so many levels that predictability turns out to be the least of its problems. Rating: *
DOOM Stating that Doom is probably the best of the numerous flicks based on a video game ranks as the feeblest praise imaginable. It’s akin to noting that benign genital herpes is the best sexually transmitted disease to acquire, or that strawberry is the best tasting Schnapps flavor. Still, in a sub-sub-genre that has subjected us to the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Resident Evil, we’ll take our favors where we can get them. Doom rips off Aliens at every turn (at least its makers steal from the best), as a group of military grunts find themselves combating vicious creatures at a manned outpost in outer space. For a good while, director Andrzej Bartkowiak actually attempts to make a real movie rather than just a video game simulation, but eventually the movie runs out of creative steam and turns increasingly daffy. Rating: **
GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN’ Rapper 50 Cent may have set the music world on fire, but as a movie star, he’s as relevant as a dead mic. His starring vehicle, about a drug dealer trying to make it as a rap star, is yet one more uninspired crime pic that liberally borrows from all the violent “dis dis bang bang” titles that preceded it. Yet the movie it most resembles — coincidentally, given the proximity of the release dates — is this past summer’s Hustle & Flow (in which a pimp tried to make it as a rapper). It’s fascinating to place both films side by side and see how one succeeds while the other doesn’t. With its rich characterizations and pungent atmosphere, Hustle flows. Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, with its frayed theatrics and stiff performance by 50 Cent, isn’t worth a plugged nickel. Rating: * 1/2
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK In his second stint as director, George Clooney (who also co-wrote and co-stars) looks at an inspiring moment in US history, when legendary journalist Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) did the unthinkable by standing up to Joe McCarthy, the junior Senator who was destroying lives left and right in his maniacal pursuit of Communist infiltrators. Clooney has his sights set, and the targets are all big game. Like All the President’s Men, the movie celebrates journalistic integrity in the face of political corruption, and like Quiz Show, it shows how this marvelous invention that has the ability to educate millions of Americans simultaneously has instead been dumbed down to placate the lowest common denominator (in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t take long for Edward R. Murrow to be replaced by Trading Spouses). Comparisons to the insidious Bush Administration abound, and Clooney decries the lack of modern-day media heroes who could compare with Murrow. Rating: *** 1/2
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE The fourth installment in the J.K. Rowling screen franchise clearly isn’t afraid of the dark. There’s a reason that this is the first movie in the series to earn a PG-13 rating, as director Mike Newell, the first British director attached to this veddy British series, and scripter Steve Kloves, forced to whittle down Rowling’s enormous tome, steadfastly refuse to coddle the youngest audience members, “family film” status be damned. The series’ greatest strength — namely, the dead-on portrayals by Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as Harry, Ron and Hermione — never fails to deliver (these kids are wonderful together), and even an overstuffed plot doesn’t slow down the proceedings as much as convey that there’s much at stake in Harry’s increasingly sinister world. Rating: ***
JARHEAD In adapting Anthony Swofford’s book about Marines bored by their experience during the Gulf War, director Sam Mendes and scripter William Broyles Jr. have made a movie that isn’t exactly a war movie or an anti-war movie; if anything, it’s the pioneer in the new genre of the semi-war movie. Jarhead is about warriors without a war, men who have been primed to kill and are then denied that opportunity. Mendes and his actors (led by Jake Gyllenhaal) do an admirable job of punching across this frustration, and our sympathies are with these characters even if we don’t exactly endorse the reasons for their mental morass. Jarhead does its best to remain apolitical, yet the very nature of the piece insures that correlations can be made to the current debacle in the Middle East. Mendes may have been reluctant to offend the war hawks, but history can’t afford a similar luxury: It’s too busy repeating itself to balk. Rating: ***
KISS KISS, BANG BANG Scripter Shane Black, best known for penning Lethal Weapon, makes his directorial debut with this fast and furious yarn that isn’t a buddy/action movie as much as a send-up of a buddy/action movie. Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer are both in top form, respectively playing a none-too-bright thief who gets mistaken for an actor and the gay private eye assigned to prepare him for his screen test. The murder-mystery plot becomes needlessly complicated and doesn’t hang together all that well, resulting in a tendency for the picture to move forward in fits and starts. But for the most part, this is sharp entertainment, as numerous Hollywood cliches are gleefully turned inside out. As scathing indictments of Tinseltown go, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang may not be The Player, but it’s a player nonetheless. Rating: ***
THE LEGEND OF ZORRO Set approximately nine years after The Mask of Zorro, this sequel finds Don Alejandro de la Vega (Antonio Banderas) having trouble shedding his day job as Zorro in order to spend more time with his lovely wife Elena (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and rambunctious young son Joaquin (Adrian Alonso). External pressures force the couple to split, with Alejandro drowning himself in booze and Elena taking up with a Frenchman (Rufus Sewell) who’s clearly up to no good. The presence of Anthony Hopkins (who played the original, aging Zorro in the first film) is sorely missed, but Banderas and Zeta-Jones remain a sexy and spirited screen couple. Their fiery passion, combined with some solid action scenes, results in an undemanding good time. Rating: ***
PRIDE & PREJUDICE In adapting Jane Austen’s literary staple, director Joe Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach have done an exemplary job of making us care all over again about the plight of the Bennet sisters, whose busybody mom (Brenda Blethyn) sets about finding them suitable husbands against the backdrop of 19th century England. The oldest daughter Jane (Rosamund Pike) immediately lands a suitor, but the independent Elizabeth (Keira Knightley) finds herself embroiled in a grudge match with the brooding Mr. Darcy (Matthew MacFadyen). Romanticists who fell hard for Colin Firth’s Darcy in the 1995 BBC miniseries may or may not warm to MacFadyen (who’s fine in the role), but there’s no quibbling over Knightley’s intuitive, note-perfect work as Elizabeth. Kudos, also, to Roman Osin’s endlessly inventive camerawork, the sort not usually found in period pieces of this nature. Rating: ***
PRIME Meryl Streep admirably underplays the role of the kvetchy Jewish mom, a therapist who’s distraught when she learns that her 23-year-old son (Bryan Greenberg) is dating one of her patients, a 37-year-old divorcee (Uma Thurman). The stakes might seem greater if Greenberg’s character were stepping out with a woman played by, say, 70-year-old Judi Dench, but after a shaky start that promises a rehash of Monster-In-Law (please, God, no), the movie eventually finds its rhythm not so much in the expected spats between the lovers but in the genuine bond between the conflicted therapist and the damaged flower placed in her care. Streep and Thurman invest their characters with a great deal of passion, though Greenberg is only so-so as the object of everyone’s attention. Rating: ** 1/2
SHOPGIRL Claire Danes, stripped of anything resembling a personality, plays a Saks glove counter flunkie who’s so man-hungry that she drapes herself all over an obnoxious slacker (Jason Schwartzman) whose idea of safe sex is to wrap a Ziploc baggie around his pecker before intercourse. When it appears that this relationship won’t go anywhere, she next succumbs to the advances of a wealthy older gentleman (Steve Martin) who can buy her lots of pretty things but can’t commit emotionally. Shopgirl is based on Martin’s novella of the same name, and although he wrote it a couple of years before Lost In Translation came around, it’s obvious that director Anand Tucker wants to capture the same air of melancholy and romantic yearning that distinguished Sofia Coppola’s exemplary film. Alas, the only thing lost in translation here is the point of this aimless, airless dud. Rating: * 1/2
WALK THE LINE One often encounters an overwhelming sense of déjà vu when watching a biopic about a celebrity, since they tend to trace the expected ups and downs in the most conventional manner possible. Yet “conventional” doesn’t have to mean “boring,” and for all its familiarity, there’s plenty to like about Walk the Line. Director James Mangold, adapting (with co-scripter Gill Dennis) two Johnny Cash autobiographies, does a fine job of capturing an electric period in rock history without any strains of self-importance. First and foremost, though, the film positions itself as a love story, one that finds Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) locating his soulmate in country star June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). Phoenix commands the screen, yet even he’s topped by Witherspoon in her most fully realized performance since Election. Phoenix may provide the movie with its voice, but it’s Witherspoon who delivers its soul. Rating: ***
YOURS, MINE AND OURS A descent into the pits of hell disguised as a motion picture, Yours, Mine and Ours is the sort of broad, insincere schmaltz that moviegoers seem to eat up at this time of year (see: Cheaper By the Dozen in 2003 and Christmas With the Kranks in 2004). A widower (Dennis Quaid) with eight kids bumps into his former high school sweetheart, now a widow (Rene Russo) with 10 children. On a whim, they decide to get married, but managing a household comprised of 18 minors proves to be a formidable challenge. A remake of a pleasant 1968 film with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball, this jettisons all semblance of wit for the sake of one noisy, overwrought sequence after another. Somebody please kill this before it breeds again. Rating: *
ZATHURA Like Jumanji, this is based on a children’s picture book by Chris Van Allsburg. Despite both involving a magical board game, this film differs in that it’s set in outer space, showcases better visual effects, and replaces Jumanji’s Robin Williams with a manic, defective robot (on second thought, that last point might not qualify as a difference). Imaginative without being particularly exciting, Zathura will appeal immensely to young viewers while causing adults to be the ones to occasionally fidget in their seats. Grown-ups, however, will be the ones who benefit from the script’s funniest quip, a throwaway line involving the indie flick Thirteen. Rating: ** 1/2
OPENS FRIDAY, DECEMBER 2:
AEON FLUX: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand.
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney.
This article appears in Nov 30 – Dec 6, 2005.
