New Releases
THE NIGHT LISTENER Robin Williams returns once again to the dark side — no surprise, since in recent years his dramatic turns have consistently earned better reviews than his comedic work. The Night Listener doesn’t call on the actor to conjure up as many demons as he did in One Hour Photo and Insomnia, but he still delivers an effectively somber performance in this adaptation of Armistead Maupin’s book. Williams plays Gabriel Noone, a late-night radio personality who’s feeling glum after his boyfriend (Bobby Cannavale) leaves him. As a distraction, he reads a manuscript given to him by an editor friend (Joe Morton); the story, written by a teenage boy named Pete (Rory Culkin), tells of the lad’s sexual abuse at the hands of his parents and their accomplices. Moved by the tale, Gabriel strikes up a phone relationship with both Pete and Donna (Toni Collette), the social worker who adopted him. But as Gabriel becomes more emotionally attached to the pair, evidence surfaces which suggests that Pete might be a character manufactured by Donna and not an actual person. Directed and co-written by Patrick Stettner, whose 2001 drama The Business of Strangers (starring Stockard Channing and Julia Stiles) deserved greater exposure, The Night Listener establishes an appropriately menacing tone and sets up an intriguing cat-and-mouse scenario between Williams and Collette (who’s genuinely creepy here). But the deeper the story goes, the more it unravels, leading to a damaging finale that isn’t ambiguous as much as it’s asinine. **1/2
WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR? A social document largely structured like a murder-mystery, Who Killed the Electric Car? is the latest nonfiction feature to indict today’s twin threat of corporate greed and governmental corruption. If there’s any doubt left (and why would there be?) that the bald eagle should be replaced by the gas pump as the symbol of the United States, this movie closes the lid on that case. With the usual mix of talking heads and vintage footage, the film details how during the 1990s, California elected to fight its smog by passing the Zero Emissions Mandate. General Motors led the charge in coming up with a way to work for cleaner air by creating the EV1, a revolutionary car that ran on a battery and therefore required no gasoline or oil changes. But almost immediately, a fearful GM began sabotaging its own product, aided by the oil companies, the Bush administration, the shady head of the California Air Resources Board and uninformed consumers who opted for gas-guzzling SUVs that (as one person puts it) “could crush their neighbors.” And because the EV1 could only be leased rather than purchased (another sign that GM wasn’t serious in the first place), it was no problem to recall all of the vehicles and have them crushed or shredded. Like An Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car? isn’t a partisan project — even right-wing Mel Gibson is shown extolling the virtues of the EV1, along with the leftie likes of Tom Hanks — but rather a depressing look at how the welfare of this country is repeatedly sabotaged by the avarice of those wielding all the power. ***
Current Releases
THE ANT BULLY It used to be Oscar-bait productions that had no trouble snagging the A-listers. Now it’s the kiddie flicks that have them lining up to sign on the dotted line. But the problem with the high-powered lineup on view here — Julia Roberts, Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep and Paul Giamatti — is that it promises a viewing experience that never materializes. Writer-director John A. Davis’ slender screenplay might have well been produced by a committee well-versed in mining the usual kid-friendly clichés. Forget comparisons to Antz or A Bug’s Life (both superior to this): The Ant Bully, in which a little boy gets shrunk to ant size and learns all about friendship and teamwork from the busy little bugs, is indistinguishable from any other subpar toon flick that mixes bodily function gags with snooze-inducing “lessons” and believes it’s being profound and inspirational. Alas, the only thing it inspired in me was a sudden urge to spray the screen with Raid. *1/2
CLERKS II The sequel to the 1994 film that placed Smith on the indie map in the first place, this Jersey hurl is pretty much what you’d expect from this often crude, often insightful filmmaker, only with too much of the former and not enough of the latter. Twelve years down the road, wishy-washy Dante (Brian O’Halloran) and foul-mouthed Randal (Jeff Anderson) are still minimum wage earners, here flipping burgers for the Mooby’s fast food chain. Randal isn’t happy that his buddy will be abandoning him for marriage and Florida; neither is Becky (Rosario Dawson, quite delightful here), the Mooby’s manager who enjoys her easygoing relationship with Dante. That’s more than enough plot for a Kevin Smith feature, since with him, the wordplay’s the thing. But the verbal exchanges aren’t as clever as in past flicks, and while the romance and the raunch coexisted easily in the wonderful Chasing Amy (still his best film), here they’re often at odds. Even those reliable cutups Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith) aren’t allowed to live up to their potential. **
JOHN TUCKER MUST DIE One of the biggest problems with this teen comedy is that it never aims very high: This is the type of film in which the token adult figure offering words of wisdom to wayward youth is a character played by, uh, Jenny McCarthy. So even with that title, don’t go expecting another Heathers or Election, school satires with the blood-spilling bite of a Great White. John Tucker Must Die, directed by I’ve-rarely-met-a-premise-I-couldn’t-neuter Betty Thomas (Doctor Dolittle), is the usual pandering claptrap, centering on the efforts of three high school beauties (Arielle Kebbel, Sophia Bush and Ashanti) who use a wallflower (Brittany Snow) to get revenge against the stud (Jesse Metcalfe) who’s been simultaneously dating all of them. This painless but forgettable film is primarily populated by fledgling TV stars more adept at modeling than emoting, though a few do garner notice. But the film’s gender politics are woefully confused, and any movie that ends with a cake fight has clearly run out of anything interesting to communicate. **
LADY IN THE WATER With each subsequent picture, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs) has exposed himself as a filmmaker of limited means; if this pattern of diminishing returns continues, he may soon be reduced to trying to revive the long dormant Police Academy series. For now, though, we’re stuck with this dud about an apartment complex superintendent (Paul Giamatti) who tries to protect a Narf (sea nymph) from a Scrunt (wolf) until she can make contact with the Great Eatlon (eagle), all the while keeping one eye peeled for the Tartutic (killer monkeys). This was originally conceived by the auteur as a bedtime story for his daughters, and in that context, it probably worked fine. But as a motion picture aimed at adult audiences, it’s a mess, at once ridiculous and risible. Requiring characters to behave in illogical ways and making up the rules of the game as it goes along, this eventually reaches such high levels of absurdity that by the end you can’t help but wonder if it was all a put-on, Shyamalan’s “screw you” to the critics, studio suits and audience members who abandoned him with The Village. *1/2
MIAMI VICE One of the damnedest movies I’ve seen this summer, Miami Vice is successful only part of the time and confounding all the way through. Since his days as a guiding light on the trendsetting TV series from the 1980s, Michael Mann has revealed himself as a sober, serious filmmaker (Heat, The Insider), so it’s no surprise that his big-screen version bears little resemblance to its TV counterpart. There’s very little in the way of fashion sense or MTV visuals, surface elements that made the show stand apart from the pack. Mann has instead elected to turn his Vice into something altogether leaner and meaner — if not necessarily tighter. The movie runs approximately 2-1/4 hours, and audiences expecting a zippy action flick will find this bo-o-o-ring indeed. Yet those who can tune into its wavelength will frequently find themselves fascinated by its beautifully composed shots, its startling bursts of violence and its baffling narrative segues. As Crockett and Tubbs, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx bring the requisite attitude but little else. **1/2
MONSTER HOUSE Young DJ realizes that something’s not right with the creepy house directly across the street; suspecting it’s possessed by an evil spirit, he sets out to uncover its secrets. At its best, this animated adventure harkens back to the fantasy flicks of the 1980s, movies in which innocent children leading sheltered suburban existences often had to cope with the supernatural terrors that lurked around every corner and often even under the bed — it’s no coincidence that the era’s leading practitioners of this sort of unpretentious fun, Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, are executive producers on this new film. As with many of the 80s titles, there’s more here than meets the eye, as what initially appears to be a straightforward haunted house tale morphs into a haunting tale about love, retribution and acceptance, complete with a back story that’s as affecting as it is unexpected. ***
MY SUPER EX-GIRLFRIEND Like those superheroes who hide their costumes under street clothes in order to protect their identities, this likewise masks its intriguing subtext under the surface charms of a romantic comedy. Luke Wilson plays a mild-mannered guy who learns that his new girlfriend (Uma Thurman) is also the superheroine G-Girl; once he sees how needy, possessive and jealous she can get, he foolishly attempts to break up with her. Superhero yarns often center on the personal travails of their protagonists and how difficult it is to balance saving the world with establishing meaningful relationships. This takes that notion to more realized extremes, detailing how the awesome responsibility of perpetually being expected to make things right can weigh heavily on a hero’s psyche, turning them into an edgy, paranoid and lonely individual. Thurman locates the inner angst in this character, and while she’s effective in full-on comic mode, she’s even better when we can see the madness peeking out from behind the super-facade. ***
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST Those expecting amazing feats of derring-do won’t be disappointed by this sequel to the 2003 smash. The effects-driven action scenes are clearly the picture’s highlights, and they alone make this worth the price of admission. But while the first Pirates felt like both a self-contained movie and the theme park attraction on which it was based, this one just feels like a roller coaster ride, full of momentary thrills but leaving little in its wake except a sudden desire to rest for a minute. It isn’t breathless as much as it grows tiresome, and it’s especially depressing to see how little the characters have been allowed to evolve. The central thrust finds Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) tangling with the ghostly Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) in an effort to save his own soul from eternal damnation; it’s possible that his scheme will require sacrificing his friends (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley), but that’s a compromise the self-serving Jack can accept. The best fantasy tales are often the ones in which the special effects are subservient to the characters, not the other way around; still, this moves quick enough to keep most customers satisfied. **1/2
SCOOP Last year’s Match Point earned Woody Allen his best reviews in years, but Scoop finds the writer-director sliding back into his more familiar position these days: a once-great filmmaker now churning out minor works that earn a few positive notices but are mostly met with critical indifference. Scoop, which bares some similarity to Allen’s more polished Manhattan Murder Mystery from 1993, is a diverting trifle about an American journalism student (Scarlett Johansson) who learns that a handsome British aristocrat (Hugh Jackman) might also be the notorious Tarot Card Killer. While Johansson (so memorable in Match Point) has unfortunately adopted the Woody-stutter-speech for this latest role (thereby illustrating that she’s no Diane Keaton), Allen himself scores some points by having his lowbrow character (a vaudeville-style magician) mingle with the upper crust of British society. And continuing the trend begun in Anything Else, he again casts himself in the role of a hesitant, hands-off mentor rather than as a wrinkled lothario scoring with women young enough to be his granddaughters. That’s a blessing. **1/2
OPENS WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 9:
WORLD TRADE CENTER: Nicolas Cage, Michael Pena.
OPENS FRIDAY, AUGUST 11:
PULSE: Kristen Bell, Christina Milian.
WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?: Documentary.
ZOOM: Tim Allen, Kate Mara.
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.
