Current Releases
AWAY FROM HER Iris would have seemed to be the first and last word on movies dealing with Alzheimer’s disease, yet here comes Away From Her to provide it with troubled company. Like that somber drama, this new picture, which marks the assured directorial debut of 28-year-old actress Sarah Polley (The Sweet Hereafter), proves to be a difficult, unsettling watch, all the more so for those who have lost someone to that dreadful disease. Yet what both films also share is a commitment to portraying the ravages of that affliction with clear-eyed honesty, tracking not only the effects on its victims but also on the caretakers who provide support even as their loved ones are fading away right before their eyes. Judi Dench was remarkable in Iris, yet it was Jim Broadbent who walked away with an Oscar. Similarly, early reviews have focused on Julie Christie’s superlative performance, but it’s really the Canadian veteran Gordon Pinsent who holds the film together. As his character watches his wife place a frying pan in the freezer or bond with a fellow patient (Michael Murphy) because she can’t recall that she even has a husband, he draws us in with his stillness, his whispered frustrations, his seething impotence. His character’s silence is deafening; you can hear his heart break a mile away. ***1/2
THE EX I have no idea how he takes his coffee, but when it comes to comedy, Danny DeVito takes it black — as evidenced by the string of dark satires he’s helmed over the course of two decades. In his hands, one can only speculate how far The Ex would have taken its dark comic undercurrents, but in the mitts of director Jesse Peretz and novice screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman, it doesn’t take them quite far enough. Still, The Ex offers enough in the way of laughs to earn it some measure of approval. Zach Braff plays Tom Reilly, who, along with his wife Sofia (Amanda Peet) and their newborn son, leaves NYC for Smalltown, Ohio, to work for his father-in-law (Charles Grodin). The trouble starts immediately when Tom is paired at the office with Chip Sanders (Jason Bateman), a paraplegic who still carries the torch for Sofia from their school days. Hoping to win her back — and taking an instant dislike to her husband — Chip sabotages Tom at every turn, embarrassing him in front of coworkers and alienating him from his family. The material is too often played for broad laughs that fail to achieve their purpose, but there’s some nasty pleasure to be had in watching the escalating feud between Tom and Chip. It’s just a shame the movie cops out by pulling its punch toward the end. By displaying a little more nerve, the filmmakers could have had a vicious pit bull of a comedy, on the order of Kingpin or DeVito’s The War of the Roses. But by neutering themselves, they’ve delivered a comedy whose bark is ultimately worse than its bite. **1/2
FRACTURE For the most part, Hollywood has grown so inept at staging whodunits that it’s a blessing to come across a film like Fracture, which lets audiences know from the outset that he-done-it. The “he” in question is wealthy engineer Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins), who has just shot his adulterous wife (Embeth Davidtz). With the identity of the villain in place, Fracture can then borrow a page from the Columbo playbook by following the protagonist as he tries to piece together the details of the crime. But the lawman here is a far cry from Peter Falk’s lovably rumbled detective; rather, he’s Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling), a hotshot attorney who’s used to winning and who agrees to prosecute Ted because, hey, the man has already signed a confession, right? But in his arrogance, Willy has underestimated Ted, and it’s a disastrous move that might end up costing him his career. Fracture has its fair share of plotholes — enough that you might be tempted to grab a shovel and a bag of cement mix — but it features an exquisite cat-and-mouse game that makes it easier to overlook its flaws. And for once, here’s a film in which it’s not instantly obvious to predict every twist resting just over the horizon. The film grows flabby in the midsection thanks to a superfluous subplot involving Willy’s romance with his new boss (Rosamund Pike), but once it gets back to focusing on business rather than pleasure, it straightens itself out. Hopkins is solid in a role that veers toward Hannibal Lecter terrain, but it’s Gosling who gooses the proceedings with a thoughtful performance. ***
GEORGIA RULE On the heels of Jane Fonda’s disastrous return to the screen in Monster-In-Law, it’s clear that the career resuscitation isn’t going exactly as planned. Fonda’s Georgia, a family matriarch who runs her household the way a drill instructor lords over greenhorn recruits, is a one-note shrew, and one of this schizophrenic movie’s greatest failings is that it never acknowledges that it’s this woman’s puritanical behavior which started the chain reaction partly leading to the miserable circumstances that plague her daughter Lilly (Felicity Huffman) and her granddaughter Rachel (Lindsay Lohan). Then again, it’s not just Fonda’s fault that Georgia is a poorly realized character; blame also must be directed at scripter Mark Andrus and director Garry Marshall. Marshall in particular has no clue how to orchestrate the movie’s heavy themes involving alcoholism (Lilly), nymphomania (Rachel) and possible child abuse (Rachel claims she was repeatedly molested by her stepdad when she was 12); after all, he’s the director who viewed mental retardation as little more than an amusing character quirk in The Other Sister. Here, he tries to lighten the movie’s mood by having Rachel give a blowjob to a nice Mormon boy who’s seriously trying to serve God (har har) and then painting the lad’s girlfriend and her pals as the story’s heavies. Worthy mother-daughter sagas reached their zenith with 1983’s magnificent Terms of Endearment; Georgia Rule, by contrast, fails to elicit much in the way of any genuine emotion. If there’s not a dry eye in the house when Lilly and Rachel finally hug, it’s only because audiences will have cleared out by that point. *1/2
NEXT One of the weakest adaptations yet of a Philip K. Dick story (“The Golden Man”), Next is most notable for how it shunts the vibrant, 46-year-old Julianne Moore off to the sides while it gives 43-year-old Nicolas Cage a noticeably younger love interest in 25-year-old Jessica Biel. (In similar fashion, the movie’s poster makes it look like Biel’s bodacious ta-tas are the leading characters.) Biel is basically filling the same function as she did in last year’s The Illusionist, which is serving as girlfriend-pawn to a magician hoping to keep her out of harm’s way. Cage’s Cris Johnson actually uses his Vegas “magic man” act to cover up the fact that he can see two minutes into his own future and therefore shape his destiny to his liking. Cris considers his gift a curse, but FBI agent Callie Ferris (Moore) believes it can help her locate a Eurotrash terrorist outfit plotting to destroy Los Angeles with a nuclear bomb. Into the mix walks Liz Cooper (Biel), a teacher who’s been frequently appearing in Cris’ visions and who might hold the key to … well, something; the movie never bothers to elaborate. Next quickly loses altitude once it becomes apparent that Cris’ powers will conveniently come and go as needed to keep the screenplay lurching forward. Yet even this slipshod quality is tolerable until we reach the final portion of the film, a monumental copout on the level of those overused “It was all a dream” stories that our fiction writing professors would urge us not to pen back in college. One plus: It’s great to see Peter Falk (now 79) as Cage’s confidante, even if his screen time seemingly runs shorter than the end credits crawl. *1/2
OFFSIDE Offside is the latest effort from Jafar Panahi, the Iranian auteur who, let’s make no bones about this, currently ranks as one of international cinema’s most accomplished — and certainly most important — filmmakers. Like Zhang Yimou back in the 1990s, Panahi has frequently found himself the target of government interference, with all of his works banned outright from being screened in his homeland. Lucky for us, these humanistic efforts (Crimson Gold, The Circle) have steadily been making their way to U.S. shores — and, more surprisingly, to the Queen City. This one’s about a group of young women who try to sneak into a stadium to see a World Cup match. Since it’s illegal in Iran for women to be in the same sports arena with men, they’re placed in a holding cell, whereupon they engage in lively chats with their reluctant jailers. Dramatically, this enchanting and illuminating effort is far less punishing than Panahi’s previous pictures, which isn’t to say it’s any less critical of the way things stand in this Middle Eastern nation. Yet for all its railing against archaic (and misogynistic) ideas, it also introduces us to a handful of endearing characters (male and female), in the process humanizing a nation that is only presented to the U.S. as a boogeyman threatening — what’s the popular term? — “our American way of life.” Offside is exactly the sort of movie that George W. Bush and his cohorts in crime wouldn’t want you to see, since it reminds us (since we miserably failed to absorb the lesson from Iraq) that women, children and other innocents will be the ones paying for his proposed premature ejaculation of a war. ***1/2
SHREK THE THIRD Mike Myers may well be the star of the Shrek franchise, but he’s hardly the one whose character most vividly remains in the minds of moviegoers. For the 2001 original, Eddie Murphy earned the lion’s share of the positive notices for his vigorous vocal work as the obnoxious donkey sidekick (even if it was just a reworking of his vigorous vocal work as the obnoxious dragon sidekick in Mulan). And for the 2004 sequel, it was clearly Antonio Banderas as the debonair Puss In Boots who emerged as the cat’s meow. In Shrek the Third, both the donkey and the kitty have largely been neutered, and the film’s makers didn’t bother to introduce any compelling new characters to pick up the slack (Justin Timberlake’s Arthur and Eric Idle’s Merlin certainly don’t cut it). The result is a step down from the first two flicks in the series, though the drop isn’t nearly as precipitous as its detractors will insist. Shrek (which somehow beat Monsters, Inc. for the first Best Animated Feature Oscar ever handed out) and Shrek 2 (which stands as the third all-time top moneymaker) were amusing enough, although the impersonal style of animation, rapid succession of instantly dated pop culture references and fondness for scatological humor always left me a little cold. Shrek the Third brings the exact same ingredients to the table, only what’s offered feels more like leftovers. The film’s most original conceit is turning Disney’s damsels in distress (Snow White, Cinderella, etc.) into feminist warriors; the rest is mildly amusing but mindless, the work of businessmen who will measure the film’s success by Happy Meal sales and other commercial tie-ins. **
SPIDER-MAN 3 The appeal of Spider-Man has always reached far beyond the comic book crowd: Over the decades, he’s become an icon of enormous proportions, a larger-than-life figure who, in the superhero genre, is matched perhaps only by Superman and Batman. With this in mind, director Sam Raimi and his various scripters have fashioned three Spider-Man flicks that have all managed to remain true to the spirit — if not always the letter — of the comic series. What’s even more notable is that the three pictures have been remarkably even-keeled in quality and ambition: None have reached the giddy heights of, say, 1978’s Superman or 2005’s Batman Begins, but they have all achieved what they set out to do: provide solid entertainment for the summer movie crowd. With a script by Raimi, his brother Ivan, and Oscar winner Alvin Sargent (Ordinary People), this third installment is packed to the rafters with activity and excitement. On the domestic front, Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst) find themselves struggling with relationship woes, while on the battlefields of NYC, Spider-Man must face off against the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), Venom (Topher Grace), a resurgent Green Goblin (James Franco), and his own dark impulses. With so many spandex hijinks going on, it’s a wonder that the movie isn’t wall to wall with pounding action. But with a generous running time of 140 minutes, Raimi is able to occasionally slow down the pace and allow more introspective moments to take center stage. ***
28 WEEKS LATER What is it about the zombie flick that brings out the social critic in filmmakers? George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead subtly touched upon racism, while his Dawn of the Dead was a glorious exploration of mindless consumerism. Decades later, Danny Boyle used 28 Days Later to examine the unchecked spread of SARS and similar diseases. Now, here’s Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo (Intacto) tackling the sequel (Boyle remains as an executive producer). Working from Rowan Joffe’s script, he’s made a zombie yarn that also serves as a condemnation of American military might in Iraq. Yet let’s put aside the sociopolitical context for a minute: Taken strictly as a full-throttle horror film, 28 Weeks Later delivers the goods. Set months after the original movie, this finds the virus still affecting folks throughout the British Isles. Efforts at containment eventually succeed (i.e. “Mission accomplished”), and the survivors start over in a self-contained city, all under the eye of the U.S. military. Naturally, a security breach occurs, the zombies start overrunning the city, and the American troops begin indiscriminately killing everyone in sight, whether they’re zombies (read: insurgents) or humans (read: innocent Iraqi civilians). Moviegoers can take or leave the message beneath the mayhem, but what’s on the surface for everyone to enjoy is an expertly crafted terror tale that’s heavy on the jolts. And given the film’s final shot, 28 Months Later isn’t out of the question — let’s just hope it doesn’t bring down what’s been a bloody good show so far. ***
WAITRESS Waitress is to Felicity star Keri Russell what The Good Girl was to Jennifer Aniston: a choice opportunity for a television beauty to flex her thespian muscles. And like Aniston, Russell doesn’t disappoint, delivering a fine performance that keeps viewers in her character’s corner every step of the way. Russell plays Jenna, who creates killer pies as a waitress for a quaint little diner. For friendship, she turns to her fellow staffers, the chatty Becky (Cheryl Hines) and the mousy Dawn (the late Adrienne Shelly, who also wrote and directed the film). But for love and affection, she’s out of luck, since she’s married to a domineering redneck named Earl (Jeremy Sisto). Life with Earl is bad enough, but matters become even more complicated once she discovers she’s pregnant. She embarks on an affair with the new doctor in town (Nathan Fillion) and soon begins dreaming about leaving her husband and starting a new life. Where Shelly excels is in her ability to dig beneath sitcom scenarios and focus on some hard truths that all too often define one’s choices in life. Two of the three waitresses engage in affairs while the third ends up with a dweeb who almost makes Norman Bates look like a catch by comparison. But Shelly never judges these people or their actions, understanding that folks with limited options will often grasp at whatever straws are placed in front of them, as they realize that they have to work with what they’ve got (as one character remarks when asked if he’s happy, “I’m happy enough”). Russell is resplendent, but let’s be sure to heap copious praise on wily vet Andy Griffith, who plays the diner’s cantankerous owner. ***1/2
OPENS FRIDAY, JUNE 1:
GRACIE: Carly Schroeder, Elisabeth Shue.
KNOCKED UP: Seth Rogen, Katherine Heigl.
MR. BROOKS: Kevin Costner, William Hurt.
This article appears in May 30-30, 2007.
