New Releases
CATCH AND RELEASE Susannah Grant has written solid scripts for other filmmakers (Erin Brockovich, In Her Shoes), so it’s lamentable that for her own directorial debut, she didn’t keep a winner for herself but instead settled on a screenplay that must have been hiding for years in the back of her sock drawer. Catch and Release stars Jennifer Garner as Gray Wheeler, who, after the death of her fiancé, turns to his best friends for comfort and companionship. There’s roly-poly Sam (Kevin Smith), who, unbelievable suicide attempt notwithstanding, will provide the comic relief; there’s dorky but smitten Dennis (Sam Jaeger), who will provide the nervous tension; and there’s bad boy Fritz (Timothy Olyphant), who will provide the romantic sparks once Gray realizes he’s actually the right guy for her. Grant’s best works reveal a real attention to detail when it comes to human foibles, which makes it all the more surprising that these characters are so broadly drawn: Take out a few PG-13 innuendoes and what’s basically left is a sitcom pilot ready to be dropped into the prime-time schedule once American Idol wraps its latest blockbuster season. Garner, excellent over the course of five years on Alias, continues to search for the right big-screen role — this isn’t it — while Juliette Lewis is depressingly cast yet again as a goober gal who possesses more eyeliner than brains. **
VENUS Peter O’Toole is the show, the whole show, and nothing but the show in Venus, a movie that seems to exist for no other purpose than to nab its leading man that ever-elusive Oscar. Phase One has been successful in that O’Toole snagged his eighth nomination for his performance; now, can he overtake The Last King of Scotland‘s Forest Whitaker and actually walk away with the award? Regardless, it’s nice to see the acting legend shine once more on the big screen, even if the movie surrounding him largely functions at the level of an accomplished dinner theater production. The 74-year-old O’Toole stars as Maurice, an actor who spends most of his waning years hanging around with his longtime friend Ian (Leslie Phillips). Into his orbit comes Jessie (Jodie Whittaker), the daughter of Ian’s niece, and Maurice finds himself developing an offbeat relationship with the young woman who appears to be barely out of her teens. Maurice is one-quarter mentor, three-quarters lecherous old man when it comes to Jessie; for her part, she won’t put up with his groping but nevertheless finds herself enjoying his company. The May-December romance, which brings to mind the coupling between then-55-year-old (and O’Toole’s Becket costar) Richard Burton and 17-year-old Tatum O’Neal in 1980’s Circle of Two, is far less interesting than the scenes in which Maurice reflects on his long life and discusses the vagaries of old age with his peers. Look for Vanessa Redgrave in a nice cameo as Maurice’s ex-wife. **1/2
Current Releases
BABEL Babel arrives courtesy of director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and writer Guillermo Arriaga, the same team that gave us 21 Grams and Amores Perros. Like their past efforts, this is a gloom-and-doom dissection of society, whipping between various characters and their interconnected storylines. Certainly, this is the duo’s most ambitious undertaking, yet for all its scattered strengths, it’s also the least satisfying, hampered by a structure that feels schematic rather than organic. Several of the Big Issues — border disputes, Middle Eastern tensions and gun control — are handled in ways that feel overly familiar, perhaps because we’ve seen them tackled more adroitly in other multistory flicks like Traffic and Syriana. The freshest storyline concerns a deaf teenage girl (excellent Rinko Kikuchi) in Tokyo who grows increasingly frustrated as she’s unable to find any male who’s willing to provide her with love and compassion — this plot seems the least driven by obvious ideology and therefore best illustrates the picture’s theme of the lack of communication that exists between people. There’s a lot to chew over in Babel, but because it’s overstuffed, it also means that there’s a lot not worth swallowing. **1/2
CHILDREN OF MEN No matter how closely I scoured each scene in Children of Men, I couldn’t find Charlton Heston lurking anywhere in the background. Yet a Heston cameo would have been apropos, given that this adaptation of P.D. James’ book harkens back to the cinema of the early 1970s, when Hollywood was hell-bent on churning out nightmarish visions of the future in such works as The Omega Man and Soylent Green (both starring Heston). Aided by spectacular cinematography and set design, director Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien, A Little Princess) creates a future world (the film is set in 2027) that is utterly believable and quite frightening, not least because it looks so much like our present-day world. The premise here is that women haven’t been able to get pregnant in nearly 20 years, meaning that humankind is on its way out. As a result, chaos is the order of the day, and only in London does there exist a pretense of a (barely) functional society. But when it’s revealed that an immigrant (Clare-Hope Ashitey) somehow finds herself carrying a child, it’s up to a working drone (Clive Owen in a forceful performance) to protect her from the various political factions that would exploit her for their own cynical means. The multi-tentacled storyline begs for a mini-series length, but armed with only a feature-film running time, Cuaron still manages to pack a lot of incident into this exciting tale of our world as one gargantuan war zone. ***1/2
DREAMGIRLS Jennifer Hudson couldn’t even make it to the top on American Idol, so what could she possibly bring to the big screen? If Dreamgirls is any indication, plenty. Delivering a knockout performance, Hudson is a revelation in the role of Effie, the lead singer for the R&B outfit the Dreams who’s relegated to backup vocals once savvy yet sleazy manager Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) decides that the noticeably thinner Deena (Beyonce Knowles) would better help the Supremes-like group hit it big (the third member, well-played by Anika Noni Rose, is content to remain in backup mode). On the narrative level, this adaptation of the Broadway smash is only too happy to wallow in its show biz clichés, content to let other ingredients (the music, the acting) carry it along. Yet Hudson is so powerful that the film suffers whenever we’re left with just Beyonce or Foxx. Luckily, Eddie Murphy is on hand providing some prickly tension as fading star James “Early” Thunder, while writer-director Bill Condon stages the musical numbers for maximum impact. But it’s Hudson who owns Dreamgirls; her delivery of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” is worth a standing ovation — or at least a recount on American Idol — all by itself. ***
THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND Based on Giles Foden’s novel, this employs a fictional character to take us inside the regime of brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada (Forest Whitaker): Nicholas Garrigan (James McAvoy), a Scottish doctor who agrees to serve as Amin’s personal physician and regrets his decision once Amin’s true nature comes to light. The film could conceivably be viewed as yet one more work in which a white man is given center stage in what is primarily a black man’s tale, yet a couple of elements set this apart from such pandering works as Cry Freedom and Ghosts of Mississippi. For one, Garrigan (nicely played by McAvoy) isn’t the usual bland Caucasian bathed in the light of liberal guilt but a conflicted young man with his own ofttimes prickly personality. And while McAvoy has more screen time, the sheer force of Whitaker’s superb performance — to say nothing of the dynamic character he’s playing — guarantees that he remains the story’s central focus even when he’s not in front of the camera. Paradoxically, you can’t take your eyes off him, even when he’s not there. ***
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA Before this picture, director Clint Eastwood had already helmed one film in 2006: Flags of Our Fathers, a look at the American soldiers who hoisted Old Glory on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima during the World War II battle. Whereas the respectable Flags provided the Yankee point of view, this superior picture gives us the perspective of the Japanese soldiers who fought and, for the most part, died in this bloody skirmish. Eastwood and scripters Paul Haggis and Iris Yamashita stay away from the politics of the war in the Pacific, choosing instead to focus on the humanity of the Japanese men required to defend this island from a U.S. takeover. The name actor attached to Letters is the magnetic Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai); he plays General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (the author of the film’s literary source), a sensible leader who knows that he and his army are doomed but still does the best he can in an impossible situation. War movies used to be a dime-a-dozen in Hollywood, but recent times have seen them become almost as rare as the Western and the musical. Here’s one that comes along at the right time. As Bush callously plots to send 20,000 troops to their potential deaths, here’s a film that reminds the rest of us that all soldiers have names and faces — and most deserve better than to end up as body bag fodder simply to serve the interests of petty tyrants who incorrectly fancy themselves great leaders. ***1/2
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM This family film plays with fire by employing the services of three overexposed actors — Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Robin Williams (only Will Ferrell is missing) — and potentially allowing them to run rampant through an overstuffed fantasy yarn. Mercifully, though, Stiller is muted, Williams is similarly restrained, and Wilson … well, Wilson is still pretty annoying (two out of three ain’t bad). Stiller plays Larry Daley, the new night watchman at a museum where the exhibits come to life after the venue closes for the day. The benevolent Teddy Roosevelt (Williams) is helpful to have around, but Larry has his hands full evading Attila the Hun, dealing with a mischievous monkey, and settling squabbles between a miniature cowboy (Wilson) and an equally diminutive Roman commander (Steve Coogan). A clever premise (adapted from a children’s book) is hampered by lackluster scripting and directing, though Ricky Gervais provides some choice comic moments as the supercilious museum head. If nothing else, this should command the attention of kids who are already bored with their Christmas presents. **
NOTES ON A SCANDAL Judi Dench is so good at what she does that in recent years, she’s become something of a bore. Because she’s always cast as the no-nonsense matriarch with more brains and gumption than anyone else in the room, her career’s been in a depressing holding pattern. Notes On a Scandal doesn’t exactly find her breaking away from this mold, but because she’s given so many more nuances to explore, she’s able to excel via her finest work in quite some time. Cate Blanchett, (not surrendering an inch of the screen to her formidable costar), plays Sheba Hart, a newly arrived instructor at the same British school where the humorless Barbara Covett (Dench) also teaches. Initially irked by the presence of this luminous newcomer, Barbara eventually becomes her confidante, imagining in her mind that their affection for each other might even run deeper than mere friendship. After Sheba foolishly starts an affair with a 15-year-old student (Andrew Simpson), Barbara feels betrayed, but also realizes that she now has a perfect instrument of blackmail at her disposal. Notes On a Scandal is little more than a lurid melodrama — one that could benefit from some late-inning twists, I might add — but Dench and Blanchett, slinging around juicy dialogue by scripter Patrick Marber (from Zoe Heller’s book), turn this into something more. Think of it as Masterpiece Theatre filtered through Days of Our Lives. ***
PAN’S LABYRINTH Let’s make this clear from the start: Pan’s Labyrinth is not one for the kiddies. Even with that inviting title, even with fairy tale trappings full of faunas and faux-Tinkerbells, even with memories of the family-friendly Jim Henson-David Bowie concoction Labyrinth, Mexican writer-director Guillermo del Toro’s R-rated adventure is packed with disturbing images, political subtext and gory interludes. In short, when was the last time a fantasy flick brought to mind Schindler’s List? It’s as if del Toro had uncovered the darker aspects of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland adventures and found a home for them in his own fractured fairy tale. Set in 1944 Spain, the story centers on young Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), who along with her pregnant mother (Aridna Gil) has journeyed to a remote outpost to join her mom’s new husband, a brutal Fascist officer (Sergi Lopez) in Franco’s army who’s assigned to wipe out the resistance fighters in his midst. Steering clear of her stepdad, Ofelia stumbles upon a magical world lorded over by a faun (Doug Jones). But this fantasy realm isn’t a peaceful retreat from the horrors of the everyday world; rather, it’s a manifestation of the fears and pains that define one’s daily existence. Full of wondrous and disturbing images (The Pale Man is one of the great monsters in recent cinema), this is a rich viewing experience that demands additional viewings. ***1/2
OPENS FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9:
HANNIBAL RISING: Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li.
NORBIT: Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton.
VENUS: Peter O’Toole, Jodie Whittaker.
This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2007.
