NEW RELEASES
CHARLOTTE FILM SOCIETY Movies begin this Friday at the Manor and continue the following Friday at Movies at Birkdale. Call 704-414-2355 for details.
BARAN Iranian director Majid Majidi (The Color of Paradise) returns with another honest, humanistic tale, this one about a hot-headed Iranian man whose resentment that he’s been replaced at his cushy job by an Afghan boy turns into a peculiar form of affection once he discovers that the lad is actually a girl in disguise.
STORYTELLING Todd Solondz’s first two features (Welcome to the Dollhouse and Happiness) were both home runs, but the best he manages this time out is on the level of a double. The first part of this two-tale movie, about a college student (Selma Blair) who finds herself attracted to a gruff African-American professor (Robert Wisdom), makes for a provocative 30 minutes, but the second and longer episode, in which a middle-aged nebbish (Paul Giamatti) attempts to film a documentary about today’s youth, benefits from excellent performances but is hampered by its tendency to merely repeat the usual points about disaffected teens and the cult of celebrity. 1/2
Also: The German comedy ENLIGHTENMENT GUARANTEED follows two brothers whose path takes them from Munich to Tokyo, where they learn to deal with various obstacles; France’s THE TOWN IS QUIET has been described as an Altman-esque look at the interlapping fortunes of the various denizens of a French port city. (Unscreened)
SIGNS There’s been much discussion about how the unofficial cinematic theme of the summer has been father-son relations (Road to Perdition, Minority Report, Austin Powers In Goldmember), but it seems to me that the unofficial theme of the entire year has been the ability of deceased wives to reach out from beyond the grave to offer guidance to their emotionally floundering spouses. Like The Mothman Prophecies and Dragonfly, the latest yarn from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) is at heart a story about a man, in this case a former reverend (Mel Gibson), whose faith is tested after the loss of his wife but who slowly comes around once he opens his mind to the possibilities of supernatural intervention. Yet since that plotline won’t have ’em lining up at the box office, Shyamalan wraps his metaphysical musings around a rickety story about how the crop markings in Gibson’s corn fields might be early clues that an extra-terrestrial invasion might be imminent. As long as Shyamalan keeps his film swathed in shadows, it achieves its goal, with the director’s understated style and Gibson’s strong performance working nicely in tandem with the overall air of ambiguity. But once matters are spelled out in the second half (think Independence Day without a budget), the movie loses its potency, limping its way toward a highly contrived finale that’s supposed to tie everything neatly together but instead merely comes off as Shyamalan’s latest desperate attempt to one-up the twist ending of The Sixth Sense. 1/2
TADPOLE It’s been 35 years since Mrs. Robinson seduced Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, and in the interim a name’s been given to this extra-curricular activity. “Tadpoling” is the term given when a woman hooks up with a man at least 10 years younger, and Tadpole is a winning new comedy that looks at some Manhattan intellectuals caught up in such a scenario. Twenty-four-year-old newcomer Aaron Stanford plays 15-year-old Oscar, a student advanced far beyond his years (he’s apt to quote Voltaire at any given moment and has no patience for girls his age who, as he puts it, possess “baby hands”). Oscar has fallen in love with his stepmother Eve (Sigourney Weaver), but it’s Eve’s best friend Diane (an excellent Bebe Neuwirth) who ends up bedding him while both are buzzed; this puts Oscar in a dilemma, as he doesn’t want his stepmother learning about his tryst lest it interfere with his pursuit of her. It’s a refreshing change to have an intelligent male teenager for a protagonist (Oscar wouldn’t be caught dead hanging out with the characters in Dude, Where’s My Car? or other such inane features), and writer-director Gary Winick, who shot this film for under a million and then took it to Sundance (where it earned him the Best Director prize), and co-writers Heather McGowan and Niels Mueller approach this potentially controversial material in a bubbly manner that may irk moral crusaders but will delight others attuned to its witty frequency.
XXX The troika behind the 2001 sleeper smash The Fast and the Furious — star Vin Diesel, director Rob Cohen and producer Neal H. Moritz — has reunited for another disreputable genre flick that’s even more trashy yet also more fun than their previous outing. Diesel, staking his claim as the most popular bald leading man since the heyday of Yul Brynner, plays Xander Cage, a modern outlaw and extreme sports enthusiast who gets pressed into serving his country by a sharp government agent (Samuel L. Jackson). Cage’s assignment takes him into the heart of an Eastern European outfit hell-bent on toppling all existing world powers and allowing anarchy to reign. The film’s tagline is “A New Breed Of Secret Agent,” and in that respect, they got it right: With an attitude that’s surly rather than suave and sporting elaborate tattoos over most of his body, Diesel’s Xander Cage would never be mistaken for James Bond or even Austin Powers. Yet along with a new breed of secret agent, this movie could have benefited from a new breed of secret agent plotline, but instead this magnetic character finds himself competing against the usual assortment of dull Eurotrash villains hell-bent on world domination. Still, the stuntwork is aces, even when at the service of absurd action scenarios — audiences may find themselves simultaneously gasping in awe and hooting in derision at some of the slam-bang set pieces on display. 1/2
CURRENT RELEASES
AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER Where the difference in quality between, say, Jaws and Jaws: The Revenge, or Psycho and Psycho III, can only be measured in light years, the three films in Mike Myers’ Austin Powers series have been remarkably consistent, each one alternately soaring and sinking for the same reasons. In relating the groovy adventures of the 60s-era secret agent who finds himself transplanted in today’s modern society, star-creator Myers and director Jay Roach will feature a great gag and then repeat it until it’s run completely into the ground. This modus operandi alternates with the pair likewise taking a terrible gag (usually scatological in nature) and milking it for what little it’s worth and then some. If we must compare, this third entry is better than the first but not as sharp as the second, with the high points consisting of a terrific opening sequence featuring several surprising cameos (including a few Oscar winners), the addition of Michael Caine as Austin’s spy daddy, and an expanded role for Verne Troyer, again stealing all the scenes as the diminutive Mini-Me. Myers, as usual, has plenty of opportunities to mug it up, playing not only Austin but also his arch-nemesis Dr. Evil, returning villain Fat Bastard and a new criminal mastermind known as Goldmember (the least funny of the lot). How much you enjoy this will depend on your acceptance of the film’s ratio of hit-to-miss nyuks. 1/2
EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS Superb sound effects have enhanced many a sci-fi flick or war epic, but has a motion picture actually ever been ruined due to an ill-advised aural decision? Eight Legged Freaks certainly makes the case for such a claim. There’s never been a truly great “spider” movie (1955’s Tarantula probably comes closest, though even that pales next to many of the era’s more accomplished sci-fi outings), and it’s fun to imagine what a filmmaker like Paul Verhoeven could have done with this subject matter and an R rating. But as befits its title, this PG-13-rated piffle is ultimately as threatening as that Snuggle Fabric Softener bear, and except for an isolated scene here and there, even arachnophobes shouldn’t have a hard time sleeping after sitting through this thing. In depicting its tale of a small town overrun by overgrown spiders (mutation courtesy of a radioactive spill), the movie features all jokes all the time, a ploy that worked well in Abbott and Costello’s monster mashes but one that often falls flat here. As far as the actual spiders go, the special effects are decent enough, and just the sight of these creepy-crawlies bouncing all over the screen might have been enough to elicit a shiver or two were it not for those infernal sound effects. Rather than stalking in silence, these arachnids continuously make non-threatening yelps and chirps that bring to mind the Star Wars saga’s Jawas and Ewoks as well as those Gremlins chatterboxes. It may be true that children should be seen and not heard, but it’s safe to say that this idiom also applies to cinematic super-spiders.
FULL FRONTAL After winning an Oscar for the gritty Traffic and conquering the box office with the glitzy Oceans Eleven, director Steven Soderbergh has elected to do what many filmmakers in his exalted position have the option of doing: Go deep, by making a grainy, low-budget, indie-style flick that purports to tackle heavy issues by following a group of recognizably flawed individuals coping with fairly ordinary issues of everyday life. The naval-gazing result is an exercise in motion picture masturbation as much as anything else, and yet it’s also impossible to dismiss out of hand, catching its stride after a shaky beginning and ultimately allowing us to understand what drives these fairly self-absorbed individuals created by screenwriter Coleman Hough. Among the players taking part in the movie’s loosely interconnected story strands are Julia Roberts as a journalist profiling a popular black actor (Blair Underwood), Catherine Keener as a public relations executive dissatisfied with her marriage to a mild-mannered writer (David Hyde Pierce), and Mary McCormack as a masseuse whose search for happiness hits a number of hurdles, not the least being an encounter with a lonely producer (David Duchovny). Soderbergh plays with the whole notion of cinema as an exercise in voyeurism (some of the subplots are presented as films-within-films, with one leading to a cameo by Oceans Eleven co-star Brad Pitt), and he and his actors aren’t afraid to engage in frank discussions about the illusory nature of love and the allure of various sexual mores. The end result is stimulating if not entirely satisfying. 1/2
K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER Not to be confused with K-9 (a Jim Belushi bomb), K-2 (a mountain-climbing dud) or even K-PAX (a Kevin Spacey disaster), the fact-based K-19 is nevertheless strictly DOA. If there’s anything to add at this late date to the venerable sub-genre of sub flicks, hack director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) and writers Christopher Kyle and Louis Nowra don’t even come close to finding it, preferring instead to trot out a creaky vessel that seems stitched together, Frankenstein-style, from past underwater adventures. Sean Connery was smart enough not to bother to attempt a Russian accent in The Hunt for Red October, but here are Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson limply using now-you-hear-them-now-you-don’t accents as the two top dogs on a Soviet submarine sent out to sea under perilous conditions during the height of the Cold War. What ensues is a half-hearted Mutiny On the Bounty, with the no-nonsense captain (Ford) squaring off against his more compassionate second-in-command (Neeson) as they both profess to do what’s best for the sailors under their command. The usual themes pertaining to honor among men and courage under fire are repeatedly brought to the surface, along with the expected scenes featuring malfunctioning machinery, unsettling water leaks and a bombastic score that tries to bully our emotions at every turn. It’s all too familiar to be even remotely effective.
LOVELY & AMAZING Six years ago, writer-director Nicole Holofcener made her feature debut with Walking and Talking, the sort of off-the-radar charmer that nobody ever hears about unless they happen to take a chance on a bargain rental at the video store (at which point they then rave about it to friends who couldn’t care less). Her belated follow-up may meet the same fate, but regardless of this auteur’s obscurity, here’s clearly a filmmaker who cares about exploring what ordinary people do and say in the course of trying to improve their lot in life. Less satisfying than Walking but still overwhelmingly generous in spirit, this stars Catherine Keener as a struggling artist who’s merely one eccentric cog in a self-doubting family that also includes her mother (Brenda Blethyn), who’s recovering from liposuction; her cute sister (Emily Mortimer), who wonders if she physically has what it takes to become a big actress; and her 8-year-old sibling (Raven Goodwin), an adopted African-American girl mulling over the things that make her different from the rest of her family. Holofcener doesn’t gloss over her characters’ insecurities and occasionally antisocial behavior, meaning their actions aren’t always easy to take; on the contrary, she believably details how each person’s lack of self-confidence creates problems where none may otherwise exist and makes the struggle to connect with others all that much more difficult to navigate. Keener is excellent (though she largely plays the same role in Full Frontal), but it’s Mortimer who steals the show with an emotionally and physically bare (talk about full frontal) performance.
REIGN OF FIRE Eschewing the gee-whiz approach of Dragonslayer and forsaking the downright silliness of Dragonheart (with Sean Connery as the voice of a talking dragon), Reign of Fire may well be the most grim dragon movie ever made — and it’s all the more effective for the filmmakers’ decision to play it straight. Working from a script by Matt Greenberg and newcomers Gregg Chabot and Kevin Peterka, director Rob Bowman (The X-Files) paints the world of 2020 as hell on earth, with hordes of dragons out to kill the few remaining pockets of humans that have managed to avoid the deadly beasts ever since they were awakened from their slumber approximately two decades earlier. One survivor (Christian Bale), a sullen young Brit who witnessed the creatures’ resurrection as a 12-year-old lad, figures it’s best to lay low and count on all the dragons perishing through starvation, but his course of action gets waylaid by the maneuverings of a macho American (Matthew McConaughey) who figures he knows a way to violently put an end to the fire-breathing menace. Reign of Fire holds no real surprises in either its plotline or its characters (when one guy states to Bale, “Look, Quinn, I’m your best friend…,” we can all figure what’s going to happen to him), but as a rush of pure entertainment on the gritty side, it can’t be faulted, and it’s buoyed by some truly exciting action sequences as well as arguably the best dragons ever created for the big screen.
ROAD TO PERDITION The screen version of Road to Perdition may be paved with good intentions, but that may not be enough to appease fans of the acclaimed 1998 graphic novel penned by Max Allan Collins and illustrated by Richard Piers Rayner. And yet, I doubt most will mind the liberties taken by director Sam Mendes (in his sophomore effort following American Beauty) and scripter David Self (Thirteen Days) as they bring this stark story to the screen. Renowned for its involving storyline and eerily atmospheric black-and-white imagery, the Perdition novel tapped into near-mythic elements on its own pulp level, yet the movie not only manages to reproduce that sentiment but also to improve on it, adding additional levels of portent to its weighty tale of family dysfunction in the gangster era. In one of his finest, most subtle performances, Tom Hanks stars as a soft-spoken mob hit man who, along with his 12-year-old son (Tyler Hoechlin), hits the road seeking revenge after his wife and other son are murdered by the rash offspring (Daniel Craig) of his employer (Paul Newman). This is that rare film that improves on its source material, thanks partly to the three-dimensional tweaking of Newman’s crime lord and the addition of a new foil for Hanks’ hit man: a crime scene photographer (Jude Law) who doubles as an assassin-for-hire. Conrad L. Hall’s cinematography is outstanding, yet even the visual panache takes a back seat to the absorbing father-son dynamics that resonate throughout the picture. 1/2
This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2002.
