NEW RELEASES
BASIC The satisfaction derived from such “gotcha!” titles as Seven and The Usual Suspects is that these movies successfully take us for a perplexing ride before zapping us with a surprise ending that feels absolutely right. Conversely, many similar brain twisters have fallen flat from the start, by offering supposed plot turns that are obvious 10 minutes into the picture. Basic, the new thriller from director John McTiernan (career high: Die Hard; career low: last year’s Rollerball remake), doesn’t reside in either camp. Not even Nostradamus could have predicted every twist in this convoluted thriller, yet in the end, we don’t feel fulfilled as much as happy to get out of the auditorium alive. (The woman seated next to me succinctly summed up the experience as the movie headed into its 48th change of narrative direction by wearily groaning, “Not again…”) Initially, the intrigue is entertaining, as an ex-Army Ranger (John Travolta) in Panama is tapped to find out what went wrong on a military exercise that led to the death of a reviled sergeant (Samuel L. Jackson). Two witnesses — one tight-lipped (Brian Van Holt), the other flamboyant (Giovanni Ribisi, adding to his string of rancid performances) — offer differing versions of what went down, but any hope of a modern-day Rashomon is soon dashed as the movie gets bogged down in a haphazard series of twists, turns, backslides and pirouettes — very few of which make sense after the whole story is revealed. 
PHONE BOOTH It’s only April, yet Colin Farrell has already appeared in as many movies this year as Daniel Day-Lewis has headlined over the course of the past decade. Following a co-starring role in The Recruit and a supporting turn in Daredevil, Farrell finds himself top-billed in this efficient drama that was delayed because of the real-life sniper shootings. The Irish actor plays Stu Shepard, an obnoxious New York publicist who gets pinned in a phone booth by a sniper (Kiefer Sutherland) who has already offed a pedophile and a ruthless CEO and now wants to take Stu to task for his boorish behavior toward others. OK, let’s get the idiocy out of the way: In a city the size of New York, determining that a publicist whose primary flaw is his rudeness should be third in line to die would be like learning there’s a special room in Hell reserved for Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and…Pete Rose. Get past this dubious logic, however, and what’s left is a taut psychological thriller that’s directed for maximum impact by Joel Schumacher and vigorously performed by Farrell. And while most films that run under 90 minutes are generally long-on-the-shelf duds that sacrificed all coherency to the cutting room floor — the 85-minute View from the Top, which Gwyneth Paltrow made before 2001’s The Royal Tenenbaums, is the latest example — this one’s a happy exception: With a crisp running time of 80 minutes, Phone Booth knows exactly when it’s time to clear the line.
CURRENT RELEASES
ALL THE REAL GIRLS Writer-director David Gordon Green, an NC School of the Arts grad, follows 2000’s George Washington with another movie shot entirely in rural North Carolina. This sophomore effort is so laid back — so in tune with the naturally sleepy rhythms of everyday existence — that it feels unlike any love story I’ve seen in quite some time, with a simplicity and directness that truly touch the heart. Twenty-two-year-old Paul (Paul Schneider) has spent his entire life wooing women and then dumping them, but with virginal 18-year-old Noel (Zooey Deschanel), he feels a special connection, one that makes him want to do right by her. Yet ultimately it isn’t Paul who takes a misstep, and soon the pair are working hard to salvage their tainted romance. Green has a strong love for — and deep understanding of — his small-town characters: When they say something that shows they’re not exactly the brightest bulbs in the box, it’s a way of acknowledging their limitations, not a way of getting a cheap laugh at the expense of ignorant Southern yahoos. I won’t reveal how it all turns out, but I will say that Paul’s statement after he’s been damaged — “If anybody smiles at me ever again, I’m gonna freak out” — will bring a rueful smile to the lips of anyone who has ever loved and lost, even if only temporarily. 1/2
CITY OF GOD A South American GoodFellas, City of God is a dazzling achievement that marks Fernando Meirelles as a masterful filmmaker with world-class aspirations. If the traditional gangster flick has appeared to be hobbling on its last legs over the past few years, this lightning bolt of a movie proves that there are still fresh ways to tackle familiar material. Based on actual events, this Brazilian import takes a hard look at a Rio de Janeiro slum and dissects the lifestyle of the youthful thugs who rule with a bloody fist. Make no mistake: As depicted here, the “City of God” (the name given to the area) is nothing less than a war zone, with blood flowing as swiftly and steadily as water over Niagara Falls. Our clean-cut protagonist in this urban epic is Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), whose desire to become a professional photographer might be just the thing to lift him out of the surrounding squalor. On the opposite end, there’s Li’l Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora), a rabid gang leader prone to killing anybody at any time — perhaps not since Ralph Fiennes’ Nazi in Schindler’s List has there been such a frightening portrait of unadulterated evil onscreen. Admittedly, it’s tough to withstand 130 minutes of continuous nihilism, but Meirelles and his contributors are so completely in command of this material (the storytelling moves like mercury) that it’s impossible not to get caught up in their descent into Hell on Earth. 1/2
THE CORE Burrowing beneath the earth rather than taking off into space, The Core is an inverted Armageddon, and the fact that it isn’t even one third as doltish as that inexplicable blockbuster means the battle’s already half-won. To be sure, the movie’s science wouldn’t hold up under the scrutiny of an eight-year-old, but viewers fond of similar (and similarly far-fetched) fantasies like At the Earth’s Core and Journey to the Center of the Earth should have a reasonably good time. Instead of “A” list stars like Armageddon‘s Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, this one features “B+” caliber actors like Aaron Eckhart and Delroy Lindo, solid performers who make up in professionalism what they lack in box office appeal. They lend conviction to this drama in which Earth faces imminent destruction after its inner core stops rotating, thereby causing an increasing number of global catastrophes. Realizing that the only way to save the world is to get the core spinning again, a team of “terranauts,” including a science professor (Eckhart), an inventor (Lindo) and a NASA pilot (Hilary Swank), climb aboard a specially designed subterranean vehicle and head due south, straight to the center of the planet. Even if the pedestrian script isn’t as compelling as the special effects (which detail, among other sights, the collapse of the Golden Gate Bridge and a pigeon assault on Trafalgar Square), Jon Amiel’s competent direction and an able cast provide this with a certain measure of respectability. 1/2
DREAMCATCHER Long past his glory days as a two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter, William Goldman has spent the last two decades as a hack-for-hire, mainly churning out witless scripts (The General’s Daughter) while bitterly criticizing Hollywood luminaries in the pages of Premiere and Variety. Bad karma continues to dog this man, since his latest project, an adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, fails in spite of its initial promise and impeccable production values. At first, this movie from reliable director Lawrence Kasdan (who co-wrote the script with Goldman) looks like it’s going to be an effective supernatural thriller, centering on four lifelong friends (Thomas Jane, Damian Lewis, Jason Lee and Timothy Olyphant) whose childhood acquaintance, a simpleminded boy, imbued them with unusual powers. Despite the obvious cribbing of other King material (Carrie, The Stand, “The Body”), the first section of the film maintains an eerie grip, taking its time with character development and laying out the groundwork for a compelling mystery. But like Signs, the picture suddenly shifts gears to turn into a choppy, noisy FX blowout, with alien invaders primed to take over the planet and a team of military men (led by a wasted Morgan Freeman) dispatched to annihilate them.
THE HUNTED It’s depressing enough when lousy movies manage to snag the services of one talented Oscar winner, but finding two stranded in the same drivel seems like an especially monumental waste of resources. Following last year’s Snow Dogs, which buried past winners Cuba Gooding Jr. and James Coburn alive, this dreary hybrid of The Fugitive and First Blood finds Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro set adrift in a pallid action yarn that further soils the once-distinguished career of director William Friedkin. Monotonous in the extreme, this casts Jones as a retired fighting instructor who’s forced back into action after it appears that one of his former pupils (Del Toro), a born warrior who snapped after serving his country in bloody Kosovo, has been going around murdering heavily armed hunters before they can blow away innocent wildlife critters (wait, shouldn’t that make him a hero?). This whiff of a plot is just an excuse for cinematographer Caleb Deschanel to shoot reams of lovely exterior footage (filming largely took place in the Pacific Northwest), for the trio of scripters to resort to sloppiness at every turn (for someone skilled at being “invisible,” Del Toro’s character sure leaves a lot of muddy footprints for Jones’ tracker to conveniently follow), and for Friedkin to stage a repetitive series of showdowns between his stars. 1/2
VIEW FROM THE TOP Gwyneth Paltrow’s participation in such brainy entertainment as Shakespeare In Love and Emma makes it easy to forget that this talented actress has starred in her share of imbecilic features, most notably the tepid thriller Hush, the karaoke debacle Duets, and now this clunker about a small-town girl who dreams of making it as a flight attendant. Starting out as a stewardess for a dinky airline that specializes in flying drunks to Las Vegas, Donna Jensen (Paltrow), along with her sister-in-flight (Christina Applegate), soon lands a position with the classy Royalty Airlines. With a famous former stewardess (Candice Bergen) as her mentor and a dedicated dweeb (Mike Myers) as her instructor, Donna seems poised for great success, but conflict rears its head once she falls for a law student (Mark Ruffalo) whose own career would keep her grounded in his hometown of Cleveland rather than flying the New York-to-Paris route. There’s much to cherish in this so-bad-it’s-good movie, the sort that would have been right at home on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The leaden dialogue is chuckle-worthy, while the sentimental moments are hilarious in their earnestness — in fact, the only parts of this film that aren’t funny are, appropriately enough, the comedic bits. This is also the sort of mishmash that finds room for an offensive gay caricature (Joshua Malina), plenty of back-catalog tunes on the soundtrack, and a cameo by that esteemed thespian Rob Lowe. 1/2
WILLARD For all its ickiness, Willard is that most exotic of movie creatures: a remake that handily bests the original. The 1971 version, itself based on Stephen Gilbert’s novel Ratman’s Notebook, may have been a box office hit, but it’s also an inert motion picture, taking itself far too seriously as it relates the supposedly poignant tale of a lonely young man (Bruce Davison) whose only friends are the rats that live in his basement. This stylish remake, written and directed by Rob Bowman (a major force on TV’s The X-Files), tosses out all pretensions and tackles the material as a pitch-black comedy, which, in retrospect, was clearly the only way to go. As before, Willard Stiles (a perfectly cast Crispin Glover) is a mild-mannered introvert whose relationship with his rodents offers him a brief respite from the unpleasantries that otherwise inundate his existence, from the machinations of a hateful boss (R. Lee Ermey) to the demands of an overbearing mother (Jackie Burroughs, whose ghastly appearance elicited more moviegoer gasps than any of the rats’ antics). Nobody can accuse Willard of pandering to audience demands — the picture looks grungy, Morgan takes his time with the pacing, and the fate of a cute kitty cat will have PETA puking — but darn if this thing doesn’t deliver the goods for folks not averse to an unsettling satire that offers as many nyuks as yuks.
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2003.
